March madness

Julie is feeling a little better now, so she sat on the porch in her pajamas and took these photos.










This was the first snow-free Minnesota March in approximately 15 million years. Last year on this day, we got six inches; today it was 75 degrees--a vast improvement.

Bleah

Julie's still sick. I have dropped off Lyla at daycare the past two days. The issue is that daycare opens at the exact time when I'm expected at school. Between the two locations is a 32-minute drive. Luckily I don't have a first period class.

Yesterday when I dropped off Lyla, she wrapped her legs and arms around me when I tried to pass her to her teacher. "Dada! Dada!" she said, panicked and red-faced. It sucked. Today was a little better.

Julie feels awful, though. This particular stomach flu or whatever it is seems like a completely miserable experience. I'm thinking it's just a matter of time before I come down with it too. I feel sick about the prospect of feeling sick. Bleah.

Broccoli

I mixed some broccoli with Lyla's pasta this evening. Broccoli has an advantage over other vegetables because it's a word Lyla knows. "Bah-ca!" And sometimes she takes it to the next level: "Bah-bah-ca!"

In the above photo, note the piece on the tray itself. It's about to disappear.


Now it's in her hand. We have a rule at the table that it's not okay to throw food on the floor, but it's perfectly acceptable to give food to Mama or Dada. Lyla follows this rule impeccably about 23% of the time.


This was one of those times. I happened to have some hummus on the table, so I dunked the rejected floret.


Note to self: start a rock band and call it the Rejected Florets.

Lyla loves hummus, so she was all over that action. The broccoli entered the mouth.


Three seconds of relative calm, and then:


We were close. Unfortunately, despite the rule prohibiting food on the floor, Lyla's bowl did not survive her floret rage.


But how do you tell your baby "No no" when you can't stop laughing?

Keeping her away from the clown

Today I took Lyla to the Children's Museum.




In this last picture, Lyla was ready to go, and she was certain that Mama was on the other side of the emergency exit.

"Uh, Mama's at home, kiddo."

"Mama. Mama!"

"We can't go through the--"

"Mama!"

So we left. On the way to the Children's Museum parking ramp, you pass a McDonald's in the skyway. There's a bench on which you can pose next to a Ronald McDonald statue. It scares the shit out of me.

I'm not one of those weirdos who pretends to be scared of clowns because that's the fashionable thing to be scared of.

"But I'm seriously freaked out by clowns."

Sure you are.

What freaks me out is--well, put it this way. Here's a list of random people that Lyla doesn't know. If she saw any of these people walking down the street, it wouldn't faze her even slightly.

- Barack Obama
- Wonder Woman
- Albert Einstein
- Gandhi
- Oprah
- Mother Teresa
- Jesus

So it's very important that we shelter her from Ronald McDonald a wee bit longer.

A lot of information

Julie was out of commission today with some random malady that might be what Lyla had and is definitely, definitely not pregnancy. Let's pause now and give collective props to single parents. I don't know how they do it. I had one full day with the child, and I'm ready to sleep for about three or four days.

After a respectable morning nap, I took her to Potbelly, Sports Authority, and then to the zoo with my dad, Grandpa Tom, or as Lyla calls him, Bah-pa.

Bears lounged, monkeys swung, and leopards plotted escape.

We ran Lyla ragged. I imagined a two or possibly a three-hour nap upon arriving home. Instead Lyla took a zero-minute nap.

This evening, I took her to REI because they have a cool play apparatus that looks like a tree house. There's a stupid-looking bear there with his hand up and a word bubble that says, "If you're taller than me, then you can't play in my tree, asshole," or something like that. I am approximately four feet too tall, but I got right in there to ensure that Lyla didn't suddenly decide to face-plant down the big log steps or whatever.

So we went up the steps, through the log tunnel, down the ridiculously steep steps on the other side, and so on. And so on. And again. And once more. And then again. I began to sweat.

I haven't told the whole story. See, what you must be wondering is why Lyla was such an energetic little freak baby today. Let's just say that since we got home three days ago, her diapers have been lackluster. With each day the suspense has built, until this morning when the cork shot out of her. I know that's a lot of information, but that's exactly what I was thinking when I changed that diaper: dude, that's a lot of information.

New place

This evening during Lyla's bath, I taught her the song "Row Row Row Your Boat." She sang the first three words followed by gibberish. It was a proud moment.

We'll probably switch daycares this summer. We're thinking (*thinking*) about a second baby, and the reality is that we can afford this daycare with one child, but not with two. Plus, Lyla's a toddler now. Does she really need the red carpet and the caviar?

So we toured a couple places today and liked one of them. They don't have the leather chairs in the front lobby, the oak desk in the director's office, or the parking lot full of luxury cars. But they do have a bunch of kids who look happy to be in school.

Maybe this new place is cheaper because there's less in the budget devoted to meaningless glossy things that are more for the parents than the kids.

Dehydration

Our last two days in San Diego, Lyla drank a total of four ounces. So last night we took her to the emergency room.

We quickly realized that the emergency room was a mistake. For one thing, Lyla didn't show the classic symptoms of severe dehydration: lips looked fine, she was alert, and nothing looked sunken in. For another thing, it was a three-hour wait with the promise that every serious walk-in would go ahead of us. Lyla needed sleep, and she needed fluids, so we left.

Lyla won't drink juice or eat popsicles, so at home we opened the Pedialyte bottle and syringed it into her by the milliliter. She hated every second of it, but we got it down.

We took her to the doctor this morning. She's lost over a pound and has a slight ear infection. Probably she had the stomach flu. We'll spend the next few days coaxing fluids and basic solids into her.

Back home

We're home. Lyla spent about 12 minutes reminding us of our names. "Mama! Dada! Mama!" Etc.

"Dada's in the kitchen," Julie said when I went to get some water.

"Dada!" Lyla said before running after me just to make sure it wasn't going to be another three-day bye-bye.

I think we're going to skip daycare tomorrow.

Ready

Lyla has been asking about her mama and dada. It's hard to think that she isn't really capable of understanding that we're coming home tomorrow. She probably thinks her new permanent reality is Grandma Jackie and barfing.

Grandma Jackie is of course worried that Lyla will forever associate her with barfing. Like, Grandma will arrive at our house on Christmas Eve or whatever, and Lyla will take one look at her and barf all over the Christmas tree. That would be hilarious.

It does sound like they had an excellent day today, complete with a trip to the park. Lyla also rediscovered her sock monkey jack-in-the-box and sat with rapt attention while Grandma turned the crank. Jackie estimates she made that thing pop up 2,000 times.

But after a day free of barf, a barf occurred at 6:00 this evening, which is puzzling. We're wondering if Lyla did have a 24-hour bug, but now she's stressing about where her mama and dada have gone. We'll see; the good news is that both Julie and I have the rest of the week off, so a doctor visit might be in order.

Anyway, here we are.


Julie gets mad because she claims I deliberately ruin every picture.



She's obviously wrong, though.

We walked around a botanical garden in Balboa Park, and Julie took photos.





I did my impeccable impersonation of Tim Gunn from Project Runway. "Designers, could you gather around? The flora in this botanical garden will serve as the raw materials for your next challenge. You will have 10 minutes to uproot whatever you can carry, and that time starts now. Make it work!"

Tomorrow we fly back to reality. I'm ready.

Stop barfing

We're having a nice time in San Diego.

But back home, our hypothesis about the fluoride causing Lyla's barfing proved incorrect. Yesterday afternoon she unleashed barf a few more times. She didn't have a fever and was cheerful after each barf. After a couple calls to the nurse line, lots of fluids with electrolytes, and some crackers, Lyla seems to be done barfing. Grandma Jackie has handled things well.

Oh, here's a photo of Lyla from today. She looks like a person who doesn't want to barf again.


And here are some from the San Diego Zoo. We'll bring Lyla back here the second she's old enough to truly appreciate and remember it.






The monkey agrees: no more barfing allowed.

Barf head

We leave for the airport in about an hour. In this photo Lyla is saying "Mmm" about yogurt.

Grandma Jackie is in town to tend to Lyla's demands while Julie and I slack off in San Diego. We started the vacation early by ditching Grandma and baby and going out to dinner. We got a text at 7:05 saying that Lyla had been bathed, was happy, and was in bed.

Fast-forward to just after 1:30 in the morning. I heard Lyla crying and figured she had sent her three binkies careening to the floor. I entered the nursery to find the child sitting in her crib, covered with vomit. The vast majority of this vomit was on the top of her head. It was as though she vomited skyward and it all came down in the same place. Either that or a leprechaun still hung over from St. Patrick's Day sneaked in there and decided a baby covered with his barf should be the treasure at the end of the rainbow.

But regardless, Lyla was not pleased. After waking up Julie, I picked up Lyla with a large pair of tongs and deposited her in the bath. After hosing her off, she slept soundly the rest of the night.

Julie and I did not. See, the last time this happened, it was a stomach bug that resulted in both of us becoming vomitous days later. Would it hit us in San Diego? On the plane coming home, perhaps? In a cab?

It could've been something Lyla ate, we decided. But we were 93% sure that Grandma's 7:05 text was legit and that they didn't secretly stay up late cavorting with men and getting hammered.

This morning a babbling, silly Lyla woke up and wanted to talk about giraffes and ducks. Nowhere was the sorority cautionary tale from last night. I changed her diaper and took her to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and it was there that I made a startling discovery. It was something Lyla ate: a pea of fluoride toothpaste. Yesterday we bought new toothpaste, but we didn't look closely enough at the label, and you can't use fluoride toothpaste until a kid learns to spit it out. Lyla's doesn't spit yet. Our bad.

After yogurt, I explained to Lyla what happened. "Your teeth are so strong that they'll still be attached to your skull thousands of years after you die. Fluoride is a chemical that attacks the plaque that grows on those teeth. Imagine what it would do to your tummy. Daddy's sorry."

Vacation

Tomorrow Julie and I are going to San Diego, and Lyla is staying behind with Grandma Jackie. We'll be gone for three nights, so it'll be the first time in Lyla's life that we won't see her for two consecutive days.

Not that she'll care. Grandma is way more fun than Mama and Dada. Plus, she'll get to hang with Auntie Jodie and her cousin Ava. I'm sure Jackie will break a rule or two. There will be TV, late bedtimes, and sugar. Lyla will be just fine.

I can't decide if I want her to miss us like crazy, or not.

Prom queen

Since it was an infant prom and Lyla is a big toddler now, she made a fashionably late appearance and then left. The little boys were impressed and started drooling as soon as they saw her. Or rather, continued drooling.

The toddler room is full of big kids, and to be honest, I'm a little intimidated. I don't have any idea how to act around a person who is three years old. There's this one precocious young woman, for instance, with hair like Shirley Temple and a name that you might give a Cabbage Patch doll; seriously, it's like Presley Cassandra Xavier or something.

I was pulling a pink scribble-painting out of Lyla's cubby when Presley Cassandra Xavier started singing her ABC's with perfect pitch. "Wow," I said, and turned to Lyla and started singing them and doing the hand signals. I made it all the way to P with signals, a personal record. I glanced over to Presley Cassandra Xavier, and she had this "Oh. My. God." look on her face, for she, like Lyla in her car seat that one day, thought that I had forgotten the alphabet.

"Look sweetheart, I'm an English teacher. High school."

I really wish I would've said that. Instead I held up Lyla's schizo-painting and said, "Do you know what color this is?"

"Pink," she said with pity in her eyes, as though I was retarded.

Then her dad came and we all walked out together. They climbed into their shiny new white Lexus SUV, and we squeezed into our 2002 gray Corolla with one working headlight.

It was awkward, and I felt a little bad. You look at them, and then you look at Lyla and me, and there's no comparison. It's not our fault, though. It's not like we set out to be that much better looking than them. That's just how it is.

Dirtball

Lyla has always been a Sunday bather. How dirty can you get running around the house in the winter? Plus, she's not often overly artistic in her pants anymore, settling instead for tidier contributions. So what's to bathe?

But Lyla ran around outside in the 65-degree weather most of today. When I picked her up she was sweaty and grubby and kind of a dirtball. So now I understand why kids get baths every night. Her hands alone looked like she had spent the afternoon cramming charcoal eyes into the sockets of a dust-storm snowman.

Plus, tomorrow is prom, so she needed a bath. So one thing about daycare prom is that it's actually only an infant room thing, which we didn't realize when we ordered the limousine and rented the hotel room. We're dressing her up anyway, even though she'll likely spend tomorrow break-dancing on a muddy Slip 'n Slide.

Infant room retrospective

Julie has been practicing her alphabet sign language, though I'm blaming her if Lyla grows up writing the letter C backwards.

Lyla's last day of transition was today. As of tomorrow, she is a full-time toddler. I think she'll be okay. Yesterday was her first nap on a cot, and she made it 90 minutes. Today's cot nap eclipsed that by an entire hour, which is epic. The teachers say this is normal, that the new toddlers are exhausted and stay on the cot due to peer pressure. They theorize that in the next week or so, Lyla will enter a stage of cot rebellion, which will ultimately result in her falling asleep in her highchair, face in the food.

The infant teachers sent her home with a CD of photos from the nearly eight months she spent in the infant room. Here is a sample.