Another one in the books

Lyla's at Grandma and Grandpa's tonight while Julie and I bring in the new year. We had dinner out and saw a movie because we are total party animals. Julie wanted to get shit-faced, but I reminded her that she's 72 months pregnant.

Another year is about to start. Here's what 2010 looked like.

January


February


March


April


May



June


July


August


September


October


November


December


Happy New Year. Suddenly the prospect of being a father of two feels very, very real.

Countdown

We had dinner at Jodie, Matt, and Ava's house. Ava is ten months old and is this close to running around the house. I don't even remember the ten-month-old version of Lyla. Wait, hold on a sec. There she was:


I wrote on that day about how exciting it was that Lyla stood unassisted for three seconds. Not that mobility is a contest, but I think Ava might be winning.

It was pajama day at daycare, and around noon they piled all the kids into the gym and had a New Year's countdown followed by a dance party. That's more active than Julie and I will be during the actual countdown. Really it's a countdown to the year we'll have another kid.

Maybe it'll be a 1/11/11 baby. Or a 1/1/11 baby. Or a 12/31/10 tax-break baby. Julie had an appointment yesterday, though, and the cervix door is not the least bit ajar. So maybe it's looking more like Groundhog Day.

In training

Lyla has turned to the dark side of reading and shunned good, hearty books for glossy, advertisement-filled magazines.

Or has she? We're pretty sure she's just training for her black belt in toddler dexterity by finger-thumbing through magazines page by page. Her eight-page books aren't long enough, and our adult books don't have enough pictures. Magazines are perfect.

Turn. Turn. Turn.

"Hey, Lyla."

Turn. Turn.

"Lyla?"

Turn. Turn. Turn. Turn.

"Lyla, say cheese."



Turn. Turn. Turn. Turn. Turn.

Calculus

I gave Lyla a Dora sticker book for Christmas, and it's her new security blanket. She sleeps with it at bedtime. A sticker book. Women are nutty.

At bedtime Lyla decided that if it was all the same to us, she would just stay up and operate without sleep from now on. It was not all the same to us. First we tried to wait her out after she opened her door and cried by the gate, but that didn't work. I went up there and failed right away. I only know beginning algebra, and an upset Lyla is like calculus, or at least trigonometry.

Julie knows calculus. She went upstairs, took into account all the variables (ha ha, get it?), and yoinked the sticker book right out of Lyla's hands.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--"

"I'll give this back to you once you get into bed."

"--OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Yeah."

That wasn't the end of things; Lyla continued to get out of bed, get her book taken away, get back into bed, and so on. But eventually Julie broke her spirit, and Lyla put the sticker book directly under her face, nuzzled it, and closed her eyes.

Daya-Daya

Lyla woke up at 5:00 this morning. She was nice enough to read a magazine while I dozed.

For some reason, the word Dada has evolved into a vaguely southern-sounding Daya-Daya.

"Ah need moh Teeyos, Daya-Daya."

"You need more Cheerios, what?"

"Peez. Moh Teeyos, Daya-Daya."

In other news, check out my sweet ride.


It's a 2008 Subaru Outback, and it has heated leather seats. With all of Julie's amniotic unpredictability, would it be rude if I requested that she sit on small stack of towels?

You don't need to answer that; I know the answer.

Hey, maybe Daya-Daya is supposed to be Australian. You know, like Outback? Clearly the child operates on an elevated mental plane.

Lady

I took Lyla to the zoo today, and she carried that purse around everywhere. When it was time to leave and she put up her usual fuss about wearing her jacket, I told her I was going to count to three and she could either put her jacket on or lose the purse.

Suddenly the jacket was a pleasant and logical option.

Christmas highlights

Lyla sometimes gets fixated on a book and requests that you read it three or four times in one sitting. This morning it was The Christmas Story.


Jesus wins! Suck it, Santa.

Before heading over to my parents' house, Lyla opened our gifts. Or rather, she instructed her mother to open them. "Open dis."


If you recall, my family has the bizarre tradition where the children go upstairs before the gift opening begins. They wait there until they hear the Nutcracker Suite start playing downstairs. Back in the day, I think it was a way for the adults to have an early morning cocktail.

Well anyway, I went up there with Lyla since she's the only kid left. She only needed a little moral support.




Hey, did I mention that Julie's pregnancy nausea has returned? Hurray! It happens to some women late-term, according to the internet. Julie's favorite medicine is the popsicle, and she's been eating them constantly. All she wants are the orange ones, but she doesn't mind the red ones, and once all those are gone she'll tolerate the purple ones.

Today we got all the way down to the purple.


What to do when your toddler insists on her own popsicle, which is pure sugar and the size of her forearm: run it under hot water until it's two-thirds gone.

Let's end on a disturbing note, shall we?




Merry Christmas, everyone!

Hail Mary

As you know, Lyla sleeps in a toddler bed, and we put a baby gate in the frame of her bedroom door to prevent her from sneaking downstairs at night and stealing my beer. It's a pleasant room and a lovely bed, highly conducive to long periods of sleep. At some point about two weeks ago, however, Lyla decided that she would never take another nap there as long as she lived.

It crept up on us. "Oh, she's not feeling well," we said to ourselves two weekends ago when several nap attempts failed. And she spent last weekend with her grandparents where she napped grudgingly in the playpen, so that doesn't count. But now on this normal weekend in her big-girl bed, Julie and I finally sensed the pattern and discovered Lyla's true issue: she's evil.

Evil about naps, anyway, in the way that all two-year-olds are evil about naps. You know that TV show where the British nanny comes to teach manners to the satanic children of hapless American parents? That show says to calmly and wordlessly place the flailing devil-child back in its bed each time it gets out. I am here to tell you that that tactic is bullshit.

So is putting Lyla in the baby crib to show her that she's acting like a baby. Go downstairs, listen to her cry, go back upstairs. "Are you ready for the big-girl bed now?"

"Yeah! Bid-dirl bed!" she says with that cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die look in her eyes.

Pick her up, exit nursery, head goes down, step over the gate, place her in the bed, step back over the gate, shut the door.

The door opens.

"No nap! Ha ha!"

After a good 40 minutes of Julie and I switching off, we were more exhausted than our daughter was acting. Then came a Hail Mary.

"Lyla, we're not coming up here any more. You can either lie down in your big-girl bed and go to sleep, or you can cry. But Mama and I are done. Take a nap or not, it's up to you. We love you."

I walked downstairs and shrugged at Julie. We heard Lyla open her door, and for the next eight minutes she stood at the gate and loudly and comprehensively outlined our parenting deficiencies. Then there was silence.

"Do you think I should--"

"No. Absolutely not."

Two more minutes.

"Now?"

"Shh."

I inched up the stairs. This is what I found.


She slept there on the hardwood floor for an hour and a half. I'm calling it a Christmas miracle.

Natural eye

We had Christmas today with Julie's side of the family. Lyla got a digital camera that actually functions. Apparently it's indestructible, which I'm sure Lyla will test vigorously in the coming days. Clearly she has a natural eye for the nuances of photography.


Her genius will only improve when she learns which way to point the thing.

In all, she got about 12,843 gifts. Here's what held her attention once everyone left.


Tomorrow my sister is having a Christmas Eve shin-dig. And on Christmas we'll head to my parents' house, where Lyla might get a gift or two more. But hopefully she won't get a baby brother until 2011. So far, so good.

Fist pump

I let Lyla watch a Dora episode after dinner. You can almost see her braincells dying.

Just to be on the safe side, since Lyla has been an abominable crab and since we're heading into a holiday weekend, Julie took Lyla to the Target clinic for an ear check. Sure enough, one of them was infected. I'm relieved, actually, for it means that Lyla's behavior toward us isn't necessarily a symptom of sudden and irreversible hatred.

Her mood did seem better today, probably because she has medicine to take. Julie and Lyla at the clinic:

"We're going to see the doctor, Lyla."

"Yeah. Dot-toe"

"She's going to look in your ear."

"Yeah."

"And if it's infected, you're going to get some medicine."

This provoked wide eyes and a palpable increase in yeah intensity.

"YEAH!"

I'm glad the Arsenio Hall fist pump isn't even on the periphery of Lyla's generation; I don't think I could handle that with every single dosage.

The closest path

Lyla got a thing of stickers from her daycare teachers along with three pieces of chocolate. She ate one in the car, and then Julie managed to talk her through the trauma of not getting a second.

By the time they got home, the thought of chocolate had formed a seal around the pea-sized rational sector of Lyla's brain. We relented. Lyla won. What are you going to do? Sometimes the closest path to pasta is chocolate.

Hoping for a snow day

I'm looking outside at another autumnal snowstorm. I wonder if they'll cancel school tomorrow. Even if they can get the plows out and revving, where will all the snow go? Still, the last time we had a snow day, hell did too.

The other guy's insurance company offered me fair compensation for my totaled car, which floored me. Now I need to further narrow my list of small wagons I want to buy. I've driven a couple Toyota Matrixes (Matrices?) and been mildly pleased but not left with the feeling that I was in the car. I also like the look of the Subaru Impreza but have never sat in one. Maybe I'll surprise even myself and opt for the Jetta.

My dad calls it the car disease, and I definitely have it. On Saturday I was up until 2:00 AM scouring the internet, comparing car reviews on different sites. The part of my brain that tells me it's time for bed actually fell asleep, which of course meant trouble for the rest of my brain. I need to buy a car so I can stop obsessing about cars.

Julie did not give birth today or show any signs of impending birth. I told my classes that I could be gone for five days at a moment's notice but that, if the baby were a steak, at this point he would only be medium. Let's all hope for medium well or well done, I told them, or better yet crispy like Lyla was at 41 weeks. I'm glad I'm modeling for my boys, particularly, how to discuss pregnancy with class and maturity. Maybe tomorrow I'll give a mini-lecture on the cervix door.

Santa's lists

After this afternoon, it's possible that Santa dug out his good-girl list and attacked Lyla's name with white-out or possibly lye. Despite the positive behavior reports from Grandma and Grandpa, Lyla came home and unleashed her entire anti-nap arsenal. It was more than enough firepower to avoid the nap altogether, and also more than enough to drive her parents a notch or two closer to the asylum.

Hey, I know: let's have another baby!

Julie did not have any cinematic pregnant moments today, except for one dramatic monologue on my ineptitude in nap-related matters. I think it would've been better with thundering music in the background and a slow-motion zoom-in on the wild eyes and flying spittle, but maybe I'm more Tarantino and she's more Eastwood.

But Lyla's down to sleep now, thank goodness, for Julie got her to stay in bed after I failed yet again. My theory is that she used the Vulcan nerve pinch.

Hmm, I wonder which list I'm on.

Not yet...hopefully

So far, Julie has not had a baby today. She started having contractions at lunch, and when they got worse in the car, I called the hospital and told them we were on our way. Then I got choked up as I drove and felt like a total girl with Julie gripping her armrests and saying through gritted teeth, "Dan, what's wrong?"

After three hours of monitoring and some random drug that hopped her up but somewhat lessened the contractions, they sent us home. Julie's just shy of 35 weeks, so they're not going to aggressively prevent labor. Obviously we'd all like her to hold on for another nine days or so because anything under 36 weeks earns the baby an automatic stay in the ICU. Plus, Julie and I were planning on seeing a lot of movies between Christmas and New Year's.

So the cervix door is shut, but it's not exactly airtight. This kid could lock and load at any time. Probably it's all a false alarm and we'll get induced at 41 weeks like we did with Lyla, visiting Starbucks one last time before adding another human to the planet. But who knows?

Meanwhile, in case Julie amnio-splats the bedsheets, Lyla's going to hang out at her grandparents' house another night. Here she is with my mom.


Study the photo; bask in its myriad absurdities. And wish us luck.

Eggs

Lyla is spending the night at her grandparents' house. I'm going to sleep in until, like, 7:00.


Julie has a cold and a chesty-sounding cough. This morning she came downstairs feeling pretty miserable and requested this pregnancy's most enduring craving: Cocoa Krispies. Meanwhile, Lyla ate Cheerios in the highchair, still under the impression that Cocoa Krispies are mama food.

When only twelve Krispies dribbled out, the empty box sucked the air from the room.

"Uh..." I said.

"Huh?" Julie said and then saw what my uh was about. Her face fell.

"I could make you eggs?"

Lyla looked up from her Cheerios. "Edds!"

"Yes, I'm going to make Mama some eggs."

"You don't have to," said Julie like a martyr.

Lyla burst into tears. "EDDS! AH WAH EDDS!"

It must have been the perfect storm of pregnancy hormones, chest cold, cereal snafu, and sobbing child; suddenly tears began to stream down Julie's face. What do you do when you're late for work and the two most important women in your life are sitting at the kitchen table crying about breakfast?

First you acknowledge that sometimes your life is utterly absurd.

Then you make eggs.

Witty

Lyla on the changing table:

"Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop."

I kept a straight face until the ninth or tenth poop, but then I totally lost it.

Tih toe

Do not be deceived. This version of Lyla was as disagreeable as they come. At daycare her objection to her coat was so severe and so sustained that I ended up throwing her over my shoulder without it and using my superior strength and agility to strap her into her straitjacket, I mean car seat.

She slurs her words even more than usual when she's that mad. All I heard was "AH WAH TIH TOE!" over and over again.

"Lyla, any chance I could get you to stop crying?"

"AH WAH TIH TOE! WAAAAAAAAAAAH! TIH TOE! AH WAH TIH TOE!"

"You want your jacket?"

"NO DATTET! AH WAH TIH TOE!"

"You want some chicken?"

"Yeah."

"Oh! Well, when we get home--"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AH WAH TIH TOE!"

"You want chicken?"

"NOOOOOOOO! TIH TOE!"

We had traveled roughly one block by this point.

(Turned out she wanted a sticker. Tih toe. Sheesh.)

Enormous

The other guy's insurance company has assumed full liability for the crash. They will reimburse my rental car, the car seat (if airbags deploy, get a new car seat), and the cost of the car. They still need to get their assessor to inspect the car and determine how much it was worth. I imagine I'll get some kind of low-ball offer, but who knows.

Back in class today, I apologized to my freshmen for placing them in the ethical quandary of whether to feel bad about my crash or happy that speech day was canceled. They giggled.

In other news, Lyla's new passion in life is putting on her own pants.


She does not yet see the value in first removing the existing pants.

And in still other news, we're starting "Word of the Day" with Lyla, each morning trying to teach her a word that no normal two-year-old would ever know.

"Lyla, say 'enormous'."

"No-muts."

"Eee-nor-muss."

"Eh-no-muss."

"It means BIIIIIIIIIIG!"

"Yeah. BIIIIIIIIG."

"Enormous."

"No-muss."

"Elephants are enormous."

"Yeah."

And so on.

We'll see what she retains. Later this morning, Lyla was upstairs with Julie.

"Lyla, what's the word of the day?"

"Pezzants!"

Fine

I am fine.

I got into a pretty legit car accident this morning on the way to school. I was minding my own business when all of a sudden this guy pulled directly into my path from a residential cross-street. There was no time. That instant before impact--the objective, cruel inevitability of it all--might haunt me for awhile.

Both my airbags deployed. My first thought in the aftermath was that my car must be on fire, so I got the hell out of there and dialed 911 from the side of the road. Turns out all that smoke wasn't smoke, was actually airbag-related, not fire-related.

It's tough to fit everything into a quasi-narrative, so I'll just list some other highlights.

- The other guy got cited for failure to yield the right of way.

- He and his passengers were fine.

- Julie was not happy at all about any of this. I voice-mailed her from the back of a police car. She played the message back to me later, and I sounded like a meth addict who had just wrecked his car.

- The backseats of police cars are not comfortable at all. No leg room and no upholstery, probably to make it easier to scrub off bodily fluids. Icky.

- I decided the most sane option was to go to school, as my freshmen were scheduled to give speeches. I had an assistant principal come pick me up once the police report was filed.

- Made a quick stop into the school nurse's office and was initially given a clean bill of health. Then I showed her the pictures, and she quickly changed her tune.



- Went to the doctor. Doc said no contact sports for a week, which throws a wrench into exactly zero aspects of my life.

- I have no idea what my freshmen did today.

- Aside from some neck soreness, I feel fine.

- Now I'm renting a blue Hyundai and am trying to resist the urge to shout "HYUNDAI" as I drive.

- I will never drive that route to school again. I realize that's irrational.

- Totally forgot to take a photo of Lyla until she was in bed. Here she is asleep.

- We explained to her that Dada's car got an owie and went bye-bye. She seemed a little sad about it.