Picnic

I took Lyla on a picnic this afternoon.


No, we did not steal the kilt off a morbidly obese Scottish man.


He gave it to us.

Snack orders

I took Lyla to the doctor yesterday and discovered she has a double ear infection. So the teething theory might have been flawed. Anyway, she's on medicine now and feeling better, though her nostrils frequently spew geysers of ectoplasm. It happened twice in the car today, and the only thing I had that resembled a tissue was my sunglasses bag. Mental note to launder that. Twice.

And on the pregnancy front, every morning for the past, I don't know, seven weeks or so, I have prepared for Julie a breakfast of one egg and one slice of cheddar cheese between two toasted halves of an English muffin. She can't function otherwise.

I remember with the first pregnancy looking forward to the second trimester, when the sickness would dissipate and Julie would become a fully functioning member of the household again. Alas, it never really happened, and come to think of it, I don't think Julie has opened the dishwasher since early 2008. She does other things, of course, at least she did until this latest impregnation. One thing that her sickness hasn't touched is her ability to give orders.

Home from work today because she feels awful, she calls over from the couch. "I need a good snack for the evenings. Any ideas?"

"You don't know your own snack cravings?"

Deep in thought, she comes up with nothing. "Come on, just give me some ideas."

"Fruit roll-ups? Count Chocula?"

"You get one more dumb one."

"Jenga pieces?"

"Okay, you're done. It can't come in a box."

That eliminates Jenga. "No box. You want snacks in a sack? A snack pack in a sack? A snack sack?"

"It has to be real food."

"Snacky packy sacky?"

"I am going to murder you."

"I'd make a bad snack."

"Ooh! I want a baked potato! A baked potato, mutha-fucka!"

"Oh my goodness. That was awkward."

She doesn't even hear me. "Ooh, and sour cream in a squeezable bottle!"

"As opposed to a box."

"Go to Target, monkey boy. Fly! Fly!"

Unconditional love

So yes, Julie is carrying the second coming of our collective DNA. She is due at the end of January, which lines me up perfectly for a Groundhog Day vasectomy. I realize that with our beauty and intelligence, we owe it to humankind to pump out as many babies as possible, armies of babies, entire civilizations of babies, but I think two is a good number. We'll replace ourselves on Earth and never listen to the kids bicker over who has to sit in the middle seat.

Julie is just past 10 weeks along and didn't want to announce it too early. Trouble is, as you saw in yesterday's photo, her stomach started blabbing it to the world weeks ago. With your second pregnancy, you pop out faster because everything has already been stretched once before. "Do I look fat, or do I look pregnant?" she likes to ask me.

"Yes," I like to reply and then run away.

I don't care if it's a boy or girl. Well, I take that back: I'd prefer one or the other. The problem with a boy is that one day he will be manlier than me, probably around his 12th birthday. What do I do then? Buy a pickup? And the problem with a girl is that with Julie, Lyla, Daisy, and Tulip already under one roof, another girl would erase any chance that I'd ever get my way about anything. At least if I had a son, we could commiserate.

When we told Lyla about the baby in Mama's belly, she accepted it without question or comment. Clearly she doesn't comprehend that she's getting a new brother or sister and that she'll soon have to share her spot on the center stage of our lives. All she knows is that Mama ate a baby, and that doesn't seem to bother her one bit. If that's not unconditional love, then I don't know what is.

One more

Lyla didn't eat or drink much yesterday, so at 4:00 AM when she woke up and requested milk and ee-ohs (Cheerios), I brought her downstairs. Once in her high chair, she sneezed messily and giggled.

After I mopped the snot off her face, I told her to cover her mouth and say excuse me and then demonstrated with a gigantic fake sneeze.

She looked at me expectantly. "More."

"Ah...ah...ah...CHOO! Excuse me."

"More."

I did it three more times, and Lyla cried when I said I was all done sneezing. And she really cried when I made her go back to bed.

Jen and Jason came over for dinner, and during much of the meal we took turns sneezing when Lyla commanded it. Then I gave her a bath and put her to bed.

It's exhausting. And we only have one child.


Houston, we have a problem.

Animals

This evening we attended a potluck at the home of Julie's boss's boss's boss. His house was totally boss.

As he and his wife warmly welcomed us, Lyla requested milk by making the hand-on-teat squeezing gesture. Thirty-seven seconds later, she spilled it down my shirt and all over the kitchen floor. In a remarkable feat of hospitality, we were not hastily ushered out the door.

Guests had been encouraged to bring an appetizer or dessert to share since it was, as I mentioned, a potluck. Somehow, despite our highly organized, well-oiled, handcrafted clock of a household, we forgot all about our contribution until we were strapping Lyla into her car seat. Now, as we gazed at the impressive spread before us, we decided to leave the bag of Twix bars in the diaper bag, lest we bring shame upon the family.

The evening progressed, and our poor little child and her teething agony slowly became one with her mama's shoulder.



We are party animals.

Filling the gaps

I had lunch with Lyla and my mom, and Lyla just barely tolerated us. Back at home she took a nap and woke up hot. Her armpit told us she was feverish, and her finger in her mouth and the drool running down her chin told us why.

She is becoming saber-toothed.

On her tray is pasta, apple, and bread with hummus. She was also offered apple sauce and two types of crackers. She declined every item, and not politely. After some angry gulps of milk, she demanded to be let down from the highchair, and then she demanded to be picked up.

It does seem like Lyla could stand to grow a tooth or two in there. I don't know how many teeth she's supposed to have at this age, but she looks a little like a hillbilly when she opens wide.

And now as I write this she is full of Tylenol and sleeping through the thunderstorm. Tomorrow, perhaps she'll be full of teeth.

More chicken

This is a child who wants more chicken and is about to freak out because I am not giving her any.

"Titten!"

"You've had enough chicken. Have some Cheerios. Mmm, Cheerios!"


Failure.

It was on the way home from daycare that Lyla started talking about chicken, so I ordered sweet-and-sour from a Chinese place and drove with Lyla to pick it up.

"We're going to get chicken, Lyla."

"Titten."

"But it's going to be very hot, so we'll have to wait."

Putting Lyla back in her car seat in the restaurant parking lot was the low point of her life.

"Lyla, in order to eat chicken, we need you in the car seat so we can drive home and put the chicken on a plate and let it cool."

"NOOOO!"

During the most difficult parenting moments, the saving grace is that I am much stronger than Lyla.

At home I stripped the breading off approximately one hundred pieces of chicken, and Lyla ate them all like it was a chicken eating contest at the state fair.

"Titten peez."

"Um, you sort of just ate more chicken than should be humanly possible at your age."

"Titten!"

"Hey, how about some hummus and bread?"

Miraculously, she considered it. "Ummutz."

I quickly slathered hummus on bread, and she hoovered it and demanded more chicken, at which point I suggested the Cheerios.

Then Julie came home, surveyed the scene, and committed treason. "Why don't you just give her more chicken?"

I read Lyla's mind: Mama's home! No more mean Dada! More titten!

Around and around

In exchange for some peanut butter toast, Lyla agreed to make amends for dissing me on camera yesterday.




We're hot.

I like to structure my days with Lyla like this: morning activity, nap, afternoon activity. On Tuesday we did the Children's Museum in the morning and the pool in the afternoon. Today we did the zoo in the morning and rides at the Mall of America in the afternoon. I am exhausted.

All rides for little kids go in a circle. As a kid, I always survived those rides by picking a point in the distance and focusing on it, then picking another point, and so forth. With Lyla, though, I'm looking at her, making "Wooo!" sounds so she knows it's supposed to be fun, and also trying to prevent her from slipping under the lap bar. It's hours later, and my head is killing me.

Hi, my name is Dan and I felt sick after the Blue's Clues ride.

Hiii, Dan. Tell us your story.

Yeah, so we sat in a big blue dog and went around and around. It also went up and down, but mainly around and around and around, and I felt like I might barf on my daughter.

That's embarrassing, Dan.

Let's change the subject. Here's Lyla looking at a dolphin.


I tried to convince her it wasn't a fish. "Mammal, Lyla. Maa-maahl."

"Fiss!"

Rejected

Lyla was saying, "Tu-tu, are you?" I think she wanted someone to rescue her from her green beans.

We tried to get her to recreate the moment on video but were unsuccessful. "Lyla, where's Tulip? Where is she? Can you ask where Tulip is?"

Lyla bent over the highchair and pointed at Tulip. "There."

Then she requested a picture with Mama. Just to warn you, the next one is gratuitously cute.


"Dada's turn," I announced. Lyla responded enthusiastically.


Lyla is like the pretty girl in middle school who was all nice and talked to you when no one was around but then rejected you as soon as someone cooler was in the room. I'll take her to the zoo tomorrow anyway.

Rainy day

I took Lyla to the Children's Museum today. Her favorite activity was getting her hands bubbly at the bubble station....


...and then washing them off at the water station.


She was in the toddler zone, so I just kind of stood there and tried not to get in the way. Some parents at that place are way more hands-on than I am. They narrate their child's every move and insist that he try this or try that, no, do it this way, there you go, you did it! Then they tell him good job about nine or ten times because they think the little guy's self-esteem depends exclusively on their praise.

My parenting strategy is to pay attention just enough so that I don't lose Lyla. I believe Scout Finch referred to Atticus's style as "courteous detachment," and that's my Children's Museum goal.

By the way, I hate when overbearing moms turn Lyla into a sharing lesson for their bratty kids. Lyla just happens to toddle over, and suddenly it's "Give the little girl a ping-pong ball. It's her turn. I'm going to count to ten. Share with the little girl, or you don't get a Happy Meal later." So then I feel obligated to encourage Lyla to stand there until the sharing lesson is over, when what I really want to say is, "It's okay. Lyla doesn't give a shit about that ping-pong ball. Can we go now?"

Lyla's second-favorite activity was stealing my admission sticker. It's customary there to put stickers on babies' backs so they don't fiddle with them. I should've put mine on my back, too, because Lyla was always like, "Up, peez!" and then she'd rip it off my shirt, making it look like I'd sneaked in.

This is where she decided it belonged:


And when I said, "Where's Dada's sticker?" this is how she responded:


Her third-favorite activity was the drinking fountain. "Mo, peez!" It was a good time.

Cup by cup and bite by bite

This morning I took Lyla to the playground and she decided to transfer all the sand from one area to the other area, cup by cup, which ended up being approximately 5,234,453,543,672 grains of sand. She would've completed the task if there weren't swings to distract her.

Later we had lunch at Jen and Jason's, and Lyla once again sought out the lap of Jason when it was time for dessert.


He's getting better at sneaking bites here and there.

Over the cuckoo's nest

This is an outfit that only works if you're under 2 or over 80.

I don't favor censorship, but I'm considering the immediate removal of four books from the household. My state of mind creeps ever closer to tongue-waggling insanity each time Lyla says "Dada, boo peez!" and presents me with one.

Here they are. If you are responsible for us owning one or more of these books, then shame on you.

4. Princesses are Pretty

Sample line: "Princess Polly laughed out loud, to everyone's delight. 'You've found my little Fluff!' she cried, and kissed the blushing knight."

This book contains the dumbest stories I've ever read. I can't do it anymore. Thankfully it's no longer a favorite of Lyla's, probably because it's hidden behind a couch cushion.

Insanity rating: 5 minutes in a straitjacket rocking myself in a fetal position

3. Elmo's 12 Days of Christmas

Sample line: "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me one red monster up in a tree!"

Lyla is only satisfied with this book if I sing the entire thing. By the time I get to the twelfth day of Christmas and its twelve monsters drumming, I'm ready to convert to Judaism.

Insanity rating: 10 minutes in a room with padded walls and a towel in my mouth so I don't swallow my tongue

2. Minnesota ABC

Sample lines: "F is for state fair," "K is for Kensington Rune Stone," "X is for X-country skiing"

If you decide to write an alphabet book for children where each page contains a letter and something that starts with that letter, then you had better goddamn get it right. "F is for state fair." You cannot invent something stupider than that. Plus, I'm sorry, but the letter X is suddenly interchangeable with the word cross? That offends me to the core. And what the hell is the Kensington Rune Stone?

Insanity rating: 15 years in a private cell writing manifestos with safety pencils on circles of paper

1. Julie's photo album from high school

Sample page: Julie and her ex-boyfriend cuddling under a blanket and umbrella at a rural Wisconsin athletic competition that may or may not be a tractor pull

Lyla points at the young man and says "Dada."

Insanity rating: Total frontal lobotomy

Man-project

I believe that face is due to wanting, but not getting, more hot dogs.

Lyla's nursery door has never been aligned properly, so you could only close it halfway and even then it would go "Crrrump." For the better part of Lyla's first 19 months of life, I did nothing to fix the problem. "Nigh-night, Lyla," we'd say before crrrumping the door shut. Crying in the middle of the night? Crrrump. What's wrong honey? Oh, here's your binky. Crrrump.

Speaking of class and sophistication, remember the window air conditioning unit in the nursery because our central air is more central to the downstairs than upstairs? Well Julie fights an internal battle every time we don't turn it on. "Is Lyla too hot? Oh my gosh. The monitor says it's 76 degrees in there."

"Children all over the world survive heat in excess of 76 degrees."

"But do you think she's too hot?"

"I think you could fry an egg on her face."

"I'm going in there."

"No you're not."

"Yes!"

Crrrump.

"WAAAAAAAAAAH!"

So yesterday I fixed the door, my first man-project of summer. First I told it how the crrrumping made me feel and asked it to stop. When it didn't respond, I sawed some sense into it, and now it functions properly.

Next Julie wants me to paint the front porch. I think that can wait until July.

Ungodly early

Lyla went to bed Tuesday night at around 5:30. She was exhausted from taking in all the newness of daycare. Consequently, Wednesday morning she awoke at 4:45. While that's a mere 30 minutes before I wake up during the school year, it is now summer and therefore a time I cannot even comprehend. It felt awful and empty, a cruel time, an absurd time. I know God does not sleep, but at 4:45 I wouldn't be surprised if he dozes.

So this evening, after Lyla's second day at the new daycare, my goal was to keep her awake as long as possible. We read books, ate waffles, chased each other around the house, and got in a huge fight about my unwillingness to help her push the marker cap on the bottom end of the marker.

"You can do it yourself."

"NOOOOOO! PEEEEEZ!"

"Sorry, kid. I'm not going to be your lifelong marker-capper."

"WAAAAAAAH!"

Bedtime was 6:30. Hopefully that means I'll get to sleep until 5:45 tomorrow.

Highlights from four hours at the zoo

Here she is intimidating the hell out of a leopard.


Then we ate some snacks, or as Lyla would say, "Nacks!"


Today she was all about the cows. We were in the big smelly cow barn, cows on one side, cows on the other side, and Lyla looked around and said, "More." Like, "Dad, conjure me some more cows."

"Um, these are all the cows they have."

Silence. Staring at cows.

"So...wanna go look at some chickens?"

"No."

"Okay."

"More."

Then we stopped at one of the zoo playgrounds and, after some actual playing, Lyla decided that her cup contained not nearly enough pebbles.


She filled it up, fist by fist, dumped it out, filled it up, dumped it out, and on and on for 20 minutes. She was in the zone. It was very important work, and I could tell she was making profound discoveries about the world. I finally moved her under the slide to get her out of the sun.

Can't compete

Julie and I entered Lyla's new daycare room this morning and saw tiny people sitting in tiny chairs around a tiny table. The teachers were filling bowls with Kix and milk. Lyla toddled off and sat right down. Julie and I filled her cubby with her nap accoutrements (blankie, dolly, binky), hung up her jacket, and waved goodbye.

I think deep down Lyla does not care about us at all. Or maybe it's that we can't compete with Kix.

She had a great day. The outdoor play area's ground is wood chips, and Lyla showed compelling evidence that she had spent the afternoon doing headstands out there. The nap went fine, the meals went fine, and there was only one instance where she started crying and asking for Mama.

Or maybe her teacher just made that part up.

Easing the transition

I took Lyla to her new daycare for an hour today to play, in anticipation of her first full day tomorrow. I felt it was important that she have a strong parental role model present to help ease her transition to this scary new place. If she freaked out, then I could comfort her, maybe take her home, explain to her softly that it would only be Tuesdays and Thursdays this summer and that we could take it as slowly as she wanted.

Three minutes into it, she forgot I even existed. She was off painting, climbing, eating, popping bubbles, and chatting with the teachers.

Meanwhile, I sat on the floor and got high-fived, sat on, climbed on, and hugged by six miniature humans. One of the teachers looked down at me and said, "So you teach high school? I don't know how you people do it."

"I was thinking the same thing of you," I replied as a little girl with a full diaper kissed my chin.

Lyla will be fine there. As far as easing the transition goes, she didn't need me at all. Maybe I needed her.

Good eating

Auntie Jen and Soon-To-Be-Uncle Jason had us all over for dinner tonight.

Miraculously, Lyla did not try to steal Ava's binky. In fact, she made it her mission to help whenever Ava didn't have one lodged in place.


This was dessert:


It's a homemade banana cream and caramel pie. That's not a magazine photo; that's what we actually got to eat.

Jason drew the short straw and wound up with Lyla on his lap, so he did not eat much dessert.





He got maybe one bite.


Clearly, good eating is tiring.


Make that exhausting.


Jen took all the photos in this post. Jen and Jason blog about amazing recipes here.

Officially done

The book storage room where I teach is an inappropriate place for a toddler to play. Hundreds of books balance precariously on ancient shelves whose structural integrity is questionable at best. It's dusty. It's also an old bathroom.

Hmm? Yes, an old bathroom. The fixtures have been removed, but you see those blue tiles on the wall and that bathroomy floor. Students at this school read books stored where their scholarly predecessors once pooped and smoked.

So Lyla sat on a box and colored on an upside-down plastic tub while I inventoried a play (Our Town), a novel (Slaughterhouse-Five), and a memoir (Black Boy). If you're looking for good stuff to read this summer, then (avoid this blog, ha ha) these three titles would serve you well.

I'm officially done for the summer. Very exciting.

Like Bun-Bun

Lyla and I moseyed down to have dinner with my parents, aunt, and grandma. Lyla appreciated the change of scenery.


Also, my aunt has a bunny named Bun-Bun, and while Lyla politely refused to touch Bun-Bun ("Bye bye!"), she liked it very much when he was out on the deck pooping.


All in all, Lyla ran herself ragged and fell asleep the moment her head hit the car-seat.


I realize I might have committed a traffic violation by taking that photo. It went like this: hold phone up, push button, put phone down. Hey, at least I didn't text it to anyone.

I'm done with students for the school year, but contractually I have to go in tomorrow morning to check out. The fact that tomorrow is Saturday makes my brain want to explode a little. But I've decided to bring Lyla. She can help me inventory novels and archive grades. Maybe she'll poop all over the place like Bun-Bun. It'll serve them right for making us come in on Saturday.

Mugshot

Hot mess:


She looks like she's just been arrested for slapping another baby at the grocery store.

For future reference, the following conditions do not always result in a photogenic baby:

- Three minutes until bedtime
- After pigtail rubberband removal
- While she's failing to reach a binky on the opposite side of the crib

So then I put her to bed, ate two microwaved burritos, and headed to Starbucks to grade the last papers of the school year.

Back home two hours later, I realized I left the camera in the nursery. I crept in and discovered that the felon-baby from earlier had been replaced by this one.