Date

This afternoon I drove home for a quick wardrobe change before this evening's school open house. I met Julie and Lyla as they drove up, and Lyla immediately requested a walk to the hydrant across the street. She's not usually a hand-holder, but she knows the trek down the driveway and across the street requires hands. So we walked together like a giant and a munchkin on a date.

On the way we talked about her day at school.

"Did you have a fun day at school today?"

"Yeah."

"Did you play with the other kids?"

"Yeah."

"Did you eat lunch?"

"Yeah."

"What did you have?"

"Blabble-de-bibble."

"Ooh, that sounds yummy."

"High-dint!"

"Yes, that is the hydrant."

"Red." She nodded importantly.

"Yes, it is very red."

We started back. "Did you go down the slide?"

"Yeah."

"What did you say when you went down the slide?"

"Whee!"

Then we stopped to throw helicopter seeds.

Worthy nugget

Lyla's daycare does not excel in giving daily nuggets of information. "Lyla built fireworks today and also threatened Bobby with an AK-47." No, instead of something that specific (and awesome), we get this: "Lyla enjoyed playing on slides and listening to music." No way! Slides!?

Julie demands more now that Lyla is back to full time, so since I pick up Lyla, it is my job to tease out a worthy nugget.

Today's nugget: "Lyla likes to walk up to kids, take whatever toy they're holding, and say 'Ha ha ha!' Then she gives the toy back."

Now that's what I'm talking about.

Ugly transition

When we got home today, Lyla ran around our driveway with a Happy Meal princess in one hand and a bottle of sunscreen in the other. Then she requested a walk to the hydrant across the street. She was happy to see the sameness of home.

I go back for school workshops tomorrow, an abrupt transition back into the world of people who wake up in the morning and drive someplace and, you know, do work and stuff.

So tomorrow we'll have to haul her out of bed by 6:15 so that we can all get out the door on time. It'll be ugly. How do people manage two kids?

Braaaaaains

We're headed to my grandma's house today, and while I think they have a computer to access the internets, interlink, and world wide webs, I doubt they have WiFi. I'll upload photos tomorrow.

I continue to be amazed by the hotel lobby waffle maker. I wonder how long the average person would wait in line for a waffle. Seven hours? The eggs (nummies, as Lyla would say) come just before the waffles, so to get them you have to stand in line with the waffle eaters. The overall mood and temperament of these folks reminds me of zombies with empty plates, waiting in line for brains.

A one-night stay in a hotel with a toddler requires a luggage cart, so off I go to fetch one. As I pass through the lobby, if I notice the waffle makers are available, then damn it anyway, I'll probably stop.

***Update***
Here's a photo.


Can't you picture a little boy in that stroller?

Horsey

Julie is involved in bridal shower shenanigans this weekend, so I took Lyla and my mom to Duluth for a grandparent whirlwind tour. This afternoon we had lunch with my mom's dad and a couple uncles and cousins and several others from less familiar branches of the tree.

We ate at Sammy's Pizza, and after Lyla shat her pants I discovered the absence of a changing table in the restroom. My new policy when faced with shit-pants and no changing table is that I refuse to take care of things in the restroom. Today I spread out the child on the carpeting outside the restroom, extra diaper under her head as a pillow. Nobody walked past, luckily for them, because it was a doozy of a twosie.

I know it's obnoxious, but I don't care. My daughter is not going to lie down on bathroom tile. Well, at least not until her 21st birthday.

Not even then--because we're going to have a lot of talks.

Anyway, then we had dinner with my other grandpa, and tomorrow we're seeing my grandma (the one we didn't see at the Dunes a couple weeks ago). So this summer, Lyla will have seen all four of her great-grandparents. And she got to pet a horsey.

Sock probability

We cut Lyla's hair.


Just kidding.

If you throw 57 random people in a room together, there's a 99% chance that two will have the same birthday. It's on Wikipedia, so it must be true.

Why is it, then, if you sift through 57 random socks in Lyla's drawer, there is only a 3% chance of finding a match?

Bunny part two

Lyla got her hair done this morning at the Dada Salon. (That's Dada as in Dad, not Dada as in Dadaism, which now that I think about it would work too since that hairstyle is really anti-style.)

The weather left nothing whatsoever to complain about, so after an early nap we hightailed it to the zoo's farm exhibit. Inside a giant barn with no obvious purpose, there was a bunny you could pet while supervised by a highly-trained threesome of teenage zoo volunteers.

"Lyla, do you want to pet the bunny?"

She threw me a piercing gaze, reading my face for hints that I might be joking. Then she said "Yeah" with a higher pitch than normal and with more than a little desperate yearning.



Then everything stopped. Treetops stopped swaying because the breeze stopped blowing. Everyone froze mid-step. Two bears play-fighting in the water became a ferocious tableau, water droplets all around them suspended in the air. And Lyla continued petting that bunny, petting and petting it. Petting and petting and petting it.

Eventually the Earth lurched back into its orbit around the sun. Butterflies fluttered. Pigs oinked. A group of kids walked up to the bunny, so with a lot of encouragement Lyla gave them a turn.

But then it was her turn again.

And then someone else's.

Then hers.

And on and on.

Finally it was time to go. "No!" she cried.

"Say bye-bye to the bunny."

"NO!"

"Come on, honey."

"No."

"Please?"

"NOOOOO!"

"Hey, do you want to sit on the tractor?"

"Tacta."

The mystery of Bobby

Lyla came home with crazy hair today.

After dinner she walked up to Julie and, hands crossed in front of her, said "Bobby."

"Bobby? Who's Bobby?"

"Hey Lyla," I interrupted. "Let's--"

"Hold on, I want to know who this Bobby is."

"Bobby? Who cares?"

"Well look where her hands are. She put her hands there and said Bobby. Lyla, who is Bobby?"

Lyla nodded. "Bobby."

"Hey kiddo," I said. "Is Bobby a little pervert at daycare?"

"Yeah."

"Dan!"

"Hey Lyla, is Bobby a big dinosaur with horns where his butt should be?"

"Yeah." She pointed to the window, then the door. "Bobby."

"Oh my God, Julie, does she have an imaginary friend?"

Julie shrugged. "Lyla is Bobby outside?"

"Yeah."

I picked her up. "Okay, let's go. Show me Bobby."

Outside I followed Lyla's pointed finger all the way to the car window. She pointed to the car seat. "Bobby."

"Bobby's in the car seat?"

"Yeah."

"Is he okay in there?"

"Yeah."

"Should we leave him there?"

"Yeah."

I walked her up the porch steps to where Julie was standing in the doorway. "Bobby's locked in the car."

Julie's eyes expanded. I put Lyla down and she ran over to the couch and began climbing it. "Bobby! Bobby peez." She reached for a box of crackers on the table behind the couch.

"No no, Lyla," I said, taking the box. "Dinner's over. We're not having bunnies."

"Dan, bunnies!"

I smacked my forehead. "Bunnies!"

"Bobbies!"

I put down the bunny crackers, looked out the window at the bunnies playing in the yard, and thought about the car seat with its bunny-shaped shoulder pads.

Lyla must think we are total dumb-asses.

Oh boy

One nice thing about having a daughter is that as she gets older, I can act like an idiot and she won't think that's how she should act too. She and her mother will just glance at each other and say in unison, "Men." There's a certain license for shenanigans when you're the only man in the house.

Granted, the dad has the responsibility of treating the daughter the right way so that she doesn't spend her teenage years seeking the attention of horny boys. And no matter what you do, it's possible she'll choose some douche-bag boyfriend and I'll have to intimidate the hell out of him. But I can do that, no problem.

So then with a second daughter, I imagine there would be an immediate breath of relief that it's not going to turn your whole world upside-down. If you have one daughter, what's another one? You have hand-me-downs and the promise of the bond that sisters share. And you never have to interact with a penis on the changing table.

"Are you certain it's a boy?" I said to the x-ray technician.

"Well, he's showing off pretty well," she replied.

Oh fuck.

I've had a lot of other thoughts since then, but that was the first. A son? Let us count the ways that I will screw up this young man's life. I can't be this kid's example of manhood. I mean holy shit: I was on the speech team. What if he wants to play football or go hunting? "Okay, son. Let's get your uncles on the phone."

"Yeah, my dad's okay," he'll tell his friends. "I don't know. He cries during Grey's Anatomy. What's there to say?"

I'm ridiculously excited, don't get me wrong. Just a little freaked out.

Lyla quit the band

Julie and I took Lyla to the Children's Museum. A highlight of the place is a stage where you can pick a song, play fake instruments, and see yourself on TV.

I think the photos speak for themselves. Suffice it to say that there appeared to be creative differences.

Ikea

We went to Ikea today, God help us, and Lyla immediately cried foul. Luckily she does not yet have the vocabulary to express her feelings on Ikea because if she did, it would've been "Mom, this place is bullshit."

She changed her tune after some meatballs.


Then we took her to the fun part of the store and encouraged her to break rules.




On an unrelated note, back at home Julie gave Lyla her first ponytail.


Then I put together what will hopefully prompt a revolution of toy organization.

Teaching her to fish

Julie downloaded a farm animal application onto her iPhone, where you swipe your finger over a barn door to reveal the animal inside. "I don't have the barn on mine," I told Lyla twice after Julie left for work. Luckily the young lady doesn't know that apps are easily transferred between household iPhones, so she quickly abandoned her desire to spend the day playing video games.

Gosh, before we know it she'll have an iPhone of her own--which I will of course equip with a GPS app that will let me know where she is at all times.

Anyway, she only associates the barn game with Mama, and my plan is to keep it that way. Plus, we had a kitchen to deal with today.


That's a bowl of Cheerios in the microwave. On a side note, my stupid idea of the day was that I could eat a bowl of Julie's Cocoa Puffs pregnancy cereal while Lyla ate Cheerios. "Lyla, Cheerios are Lyla cereal. This is Dada cereal." She totally freaked out.

The play kitchen commanded her attention for five minutes or so, but the shopping cart became the vehicle into the toddler zone. I lay on the floor reading a magazine for quite some time while she pushed it all over the house.

The only issue was the divider between the living room and kitchen. There's a piece of trim on the ground that obstructs anything with wheels. I thought to myself, I am not going to be this child's goddamn cart lifter my entire life. "Pick it up, kid!" I said. She responded as you might expect.


You should teach a child to fish instead of giving her a fish, and all that. She did figure it out eventually. Until that moment, though, it was pretty hilarious.

What you can get for $30

I was like, "Give the camera attitude, Lyla," thinking we'd end up looking totally bad-ass together. But alas, she looks bad-ass and I look like a retarded duck.

You saw Anja's play kitchen from yesterday, right? Check this out: I stole it from their house.


Just kidding. This one's different; Julie found it on Craigslist. I'm thinking that with all the plastic food and whatnot behind that purple door, I'll be able to sit back and read magazines all day tomorrow while Lyla cooks, cleans, and eats.

We also got her a shopping cart.


Tomorrow Lyla will be 21 months old, not an occasion for presents, but what the hell.

BFF

Today we went to Anja's house to play. Friendship between toddlers is a curious thing. They don't act like friends, more like work colleagues who dislike each other but whose managers have told them they need to keep things civil.

"Hi Anja. How was the commute?"


"Fine, Lyla. How was yours?"

"Fine."

Like actual managers, Anja's mom and I sat around while the girls did all the work. Overall, they conducted themselves with professionalism.



A couple times we did have to intervene to give job performance feedback, usually on the topic of sharing materials. I personally felt Anja was the superior sharer, perhaps because all of the materials actually belonged to her. "Hey Lyla, what's happening? Yeah, so I'm going to need you to let Anja play with her own shopping cart for a little bit, mmkay?"

Two hours later, the girls had interacted minimally but had coexisted nicely. We went out to lunch, where they continued to, for the most part, peacefully ignore each other.

But when toddlers are together, if you're lucky you'll eventually witness a flash of their true feelings for each other.


And of course once we left, Lyla talked about Anja for the rest of the day.

Missing me

I like sneaking up on Lyla at daycare. She's always so happy to see me, throwing her arms around my neck and crying a little because she has missed me so much all day.


"Hey Lyla!"


"Lyla! Dada's here! Woo hoo!"


Look at her face: "Oh. He's here. That guy."

When I dropped Lyla off this morning, I set her down in her room, and she immediately started babbling and walked away from me and toward the other small people. I said "Well, see ya" to no one in particular and left.

Back to this afternoon.


"So, what are you doing there, Lyla?"


"Boo. Lellow."

"Yes, blue and yellow. Hey, any interest in going home to see Mama?"

"Mama! Baby bebby."

"Yes, Mama has a baby in her belly."

"Dada baby bebby."

"No sweetie, that's just a gut."

"Dada butt."

"No, a gut. But I have a butt too."

"Lyla butt."

"Hey, should we go see Mama?"

"Mama!"

9 out of 10 "experts" say it's a boy

Well, we're pretty sure the fetus has boy parts. The ultrasound isn't until next week, but several experts have weighed in. The experts have no medical training whatsoever, which makes their ability to telepathically read the genitalia of our fetus all the more impressive.

Julie's motion sickness is the real clue, you see. She can't even watch commercials without feeling nauseated. "Oh well you know it's a boy then for sure," one expert said to Julie. I'm sorry, do the little testicles mess up your inner ear or something? Ma'am, it looks like you have a case of uterine testicular vertigo.

Julie also craves lots of pasta and pizza, another clue that it's a man-baby. "I so craved those things when I was pregnant with my son," another expert told her. Julie did not crave pizza and pasta with Lyla. She only wanted girl foods, like bagels and McDonald's snack wraps. Case closed.

I think we're safe to just skip the ultrasound and go shopping for some footballs for young Perviam.

In other news, Grandma Jackie sent Lyla some new pajamas. Also, we're teaching her how to blow her nose.

Teaching it to heel

When a child won't come when you want it to, simply say "Bye bye, child!" and walk away. It will follow.

"Bye bye, Lyla!"


"Lyla! Bye bye!"


"Lyyyylaaa."


Oh well.