Looking back

This is after we took Lyla to the Children's Museum. She had fun with everything unrelated to the exhibits. The garbage cans fascinated her, as did the hand sanitizer we used on her right after. She loved the elevator. And the stairs--wow! The stairs were magnificent. So we bought a membership.

Lyla's friend Anja's mom posted a 2009 month-by-month photo retrospective, a concept that I'm going to steal in a moment. But first check hers out.

Now here's Lyla's 2009:

January


February


March


April


May


June


July


August


September


October


November


December


Happy New Year!

Why I feel old

We're coming up on it, the start of a new decade. The aughts are over. Or whatever the hell we'll call them.

I feel kind of old. Fast-forward 50 or 60 years, and Julie and I will be in a nursing home hot tub doing blow. I'm not even certain what blow is, but we'll do lots and lots of it once we hit 90. So anyway, hot tub and blow, and some orderly will come in and warn us against staying in too long and getting wrinkly (which will inspire any number of funny retorts), and we'll ignore him and reminisce.

We'll say things like, "Remember the winter of aught-nine? Golly!"

Lyla and her quadruplet brothers will probably have grandkids by then. They'll know about the aughts from history class. That's why I feel old.

That guy

Julie and I had today off and dropped Lyla at daycare because we are terrible people.

Then we went out to lunch, bought used books (I'll let you know how I like the 2003 edition of Investing for Dummies), and walked around Lowe's. I bought a drill with more torque than my current drill because torque is directly proportional to masculinity, and I was running low after the incident a couple weeks ago when I cried during Grey's Anatomy.

We also looked at counters and sinks. I'll spare you further detail on that.

Then after the obligatory Target run, we picked up Lyla and went home.

I'm remembering now that there was a guy at lunch with his five-year-old daughter. They were cute. I'll totally be that guy, too, but right now I'm the guy who gets excited about daycare and running errands alone with Julie. It makes sense, and it doesn't.

Elmo = Heroin

There's an Elmo video on YouTube where he sings about his four ducks going away for various reasons and then returning. It's so catchy that it makes you want to quack and/or dig out your brain with a spoon, so you might not want to watch it.

To Lyla, it's heroin. When anyone goes near the computer, Lyla runs over and shouts frantically, "PEEEEEZ," which means please. When she says it, her arm veins bulge.

I wonder if it's filled with subliminal messages. If you watch it backwards and in slow motion, will you see hundreds of milky nipples?

Cheese, texting, and human kids

Before this next picture, I told Lyla to say cheese.


Ignorance of the law does not justify breaking the law, so I suppose it's our parental duty to teach Lyla that driving while texting (DWT) is illegal.




We took Lyla to the zoo today. She was much more interested in the people than the animals. Human kids are like big versions of her, and she's very narcissistic. It's funny, though, because Lyla thinks every non-adult is a baby. She saw a girl who was about six or seven and said "Baby!" I think we'll hold off teaching her words like ugly and old.

Mama's girl

This is going to be trouble.

Merry day

Whenever Lyla sees an old picture of herself, like this one from last Christmas, she points and says "Baby!"

My family has a strange Christmas tradition that involves the kids going upstairs after stockings and waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the adults downstairs to play the Nutcracker Suite. When it finally comes on, the kids come down the stairs, squint at the flashing cameras, and tear into their presents.

Lyla didn't really know what was going on, but like last year, she played along anyway.




Merry Christmas, everyone. Had we sent cards, this would've been yours:

Chalk art

I like this last one. Jodie and Matt gave Lyla the easel, and we were pretty sure at first that she would have no idea what to do with it. The chalk went straight into the mouth, for instance. After a brief demonstration of chalk-drawing technique, however, Lyla took to it quite well.


If you analyze this drawing, you can see lots of metaphors. For instance--well, I don't want to fill your head with ideas. You can see for yourself.

The other daddy

Today I walked into Lyla's daycare room, and Lyla had toddled into the adjoining infant room. I heard one of the teachers in there laugh and say "Lyla!" and I poked my head in to find her in the arms of another man. A dad had walked in to get his kid, and Lyla ran right to him. I caught the little strumpet red-handed.

It's okay. No matter what happens at daycare, I'm the daddy she goes home with.

Non sequiturs

Lyla's forehead is no longer goose-eggy. There were no falling incidents today, so we can rest assured that she's not experiencing some sort of perpetual vertigo. It's funny how I always zoom to the worst possible scenario, such as assuming that a day with multiple falls could be a sign of perpetual vertigo.

In unrelated news, Lyla can say the name Emma (there's at least one Emma at daycare), so Lyla thinks every baby in the world is named Emma. Lyla also has a teacher named Amy who she calls Mamie.

And in news unrelated to the previous unrelated news, Lyla is developing a mealtime attitude. I know this will be hard to believe given that she's such an accommodating young lady, but when Lyla doesn't want something on her tray, whether it's food or a sippy cup of milk, she shoves it to the floor dismissively, like Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada. Then she says "Uh oh" all innocent-like. It's hilarious.

Goose egg

No caption needed.

Lyla's teachers had to fill out an incident report because the child stood on a toy and fell and plonked her head.

The excitement continued at home. Lyla was simply walking from one side of her nursery to the other when suddenly it was as though the floor was covered with marbles and banana peels. She thwacked herself good on the floor.

And oh, the goose egg did grow. That above photo with Lyla's hair blown away from her forehead is a perfect before shot. We didn't take an after shot. You'll just have to use your imagination.

After a flurry of Google searches, we determined that it probably wasn't a huge deal. She cried like mad, then felt better, and then wanted to walk around. When I brought her face to a lamp and then carried her to a darker room, her pupils dilated appropriately. We iced the bump.

Then 30 minutes after putting her to bed, I barged in and woke her up to ice it again. She was not pleased. We'll check on her again in a bit just to make sure.

Hey, maybe she'll have a sweet bruise tomorrow to show everyone. I should teach her how to say, "You should see the other guy."

Step count

We clipped a pedometer to Lyla's pants in order to quantify how insane of a walker she is. In two hours, she walked over 2,000 steps. I believe that's the equivalent of 72 miles.

Then my mom and sister came over, and Lyla really got going. We don't have pedometer numbers for it because it didn't get reattached post-nap, but I imagine it would've started smoking.





And by 6:30 this evening, Lyla was fast asleep.

The season

Lyla approves of pudding.

Julie and I decided several weeks ago that a good Christmas present to ourselves would be to not put up our Christmas tree. Bah humbug! It was a good decision: our tree is 10 years old and has about a hundred detachable branches that you have to slide into the trunk. It's a total pain. Plus, Lyla would go nuts and probably try to eat the ornaments. So don't judge us.

It hasn't felt like Christmas anyway. I don't know what it is. We're not depressed about it or anything, but for some reason we just haven't felt very jolly about Christmas this year.

In possibly related news, being sick sucks. Remember last Sunday when I had food poisoning? Well, Julie had the exact same thing two nights ago, and it was awful. Then we remembered that the Wednesday before last, Lyla threw up in her crib a couple times, which we didn't analyze at the time because the next morning she was fine. But now, with all of us suffering similar short-lived illnesses staggered in the same two-week period, food poisoning no longer made sense.

It was a viral stomach flu, like you might get on a cruise ship. Our new theory is that Lyla got it from daycare, I got it from her, and Julie got it from me. The lag in between makes sense for two reasons. One, with stomach flu you're contagious from the onset of your symptoms until three days after you feel better. And two, if you do get infected, you don't get it right away. It (gulp) incubates in your intestines for a couple days before manifesting in myriad unpleasant ways. So we all had stomach flu. Case closed.

Julie's still contagious, so she had to miss her family's Christmas party. Trust me: nobody wants what we had, especially Julie's sister Jodie, who is preggers. Julie was totally bummed to miss out, though. I did drive up with Lyla for a couple hours. It was fun to see everyone, but bittersweet because if your wife is stuck at home quarantined and you attend her family's Christmas without her, it doesn't feel like Christmas.

But it was fine. I got home and made Julie dinner. After that, we helped Lyla play with her new Elmo doll and farm set. We watched her try to wrap her head around the idea that Elmo exists simultaneously in books and in person.

Then we ate pudding.

And after putting Lyla to bed, I went downstairs with my poor contagious wife. She rested on the couch while I did what I should have done weeks ago. I put up the tree.


I can't wait to show it to Lyla tomorrow. Now it feels like Christmas.

Sleeping brain

This is how my brain feels today.