The Practice Baby

I finally understand why people jokingly refer to their first born as their "practice baby" (or, at least that's what my mom always said about me!), so they could "work out the kinks" before having any more kids. While I haven't done anything as dreadfully stupid as letting my daughter play with knives, I feel like I've already made some mistakes that need to be learned from.

Case in point: the other night, after hastily strapping my daughter into her car seat from a nighttime trip to the store, she started wailing as we pulled out of the parking lot. At the next stop in our trip my wife discovered that I had accidentally strapped one of her legs into the car seat, as if she was sitting "Indian style". (I'm not sure if that phrase is still considered politically correct, but it's the only way I know to describe that position.)

I was the cause of my daughter's discomfort, and I felt awful. Luckily, she wasn't actually injured, and she seemed to have forgotten about it a few minutes later. (Lucky for me, babies have the attention span of a gold fish!)

On another occasion, I sat my daughter up on her changing table, so it would be easier to put a button-up shirt on her. Sitting her up to put her shirts on was one of the benefits of her newly discovered ability to prop herself up, when positioned as such.

What I didn't account for was the the range of motion of her head from her fulcrum (her butt), the fact that I had centered her on the changing table, and the fact that she hadn't, at the time, perfected the ability to keep herself propped up in the sitting up position. I'm sure you can already guess what happened...

...TIMBER!!!

In the split second that I looked down, to grab a bow to put on her head, she fell backwards and bonked her head on the end of the changing table. I waited for a second to see if she had actually hurt herself, which was just enough time for the pain to reach her brain and the infamous "bucket lip" formed, followed by a heartbreaking scream.

Another time, in a similar situation, I sat my daughter on the floor next to the computer desk while I looked something up online (probably the answer to a parenting question). Even though I had propped her up perpendicular to the computer desk, to account for the fact that she might fall over, when my dog came over to give her a "kiss" she fell over sideways and bonked her head on the desk! Again, the "bucket lip" and crying ensued.

Sometimes I ask myself, "Am I really cut out to raise this kid? It's only been a few months and I already feel like I've ruined her GPA!"

So, maybe the "practice baby" theory is true. Or, maybe my mom was just making fun of me.

Although, I guess it's only really funny if, despite the occasional head bonk, she still turns out OK!

Clearing Out The Pipes

I've never claimed to have all of the correct answers when it comes to caring for a baby. In fact, that was the basis for naming my blog Father Doesn't Know Best. Truth be told, over the last several months of fatherhood I have had to learn many lessons the hard way.

One such lesson was that not all baby foods move through a baby's digestive system the same way. Actually, some foods are pretty good at causing a "back up in the pipes".

A few months ago, when we first started our daughter on solid foods, we had great success in getting our daughter to try new foods. Every few days we tried a new food, and every few days she had a new colored poop. (See "What Goes In Must Come Out")

It was fun times.

Then, about two weeks ago, the endless rainbow of color in my daughter's diapers stopped flowing. At first it had only stopped for a day, which at the time was normal, but when she was still "backed up" after two more days I was concerned.

The saddest part of it was that she was still trying desperately to poop. It was apparent when she was trying, because her face would turn bright red and she would make audible pushing noises. Even sadder, on a few occasions she actually vomited because she was pushing so hard. Occasionally she would get out a small, stinky, solid "nugget", but nothing of a size that would have equalled the amount of food that had gone into her.

After some quick Internet research (my favorite parenting resource) I discovered that many of the foods that my daughter had recently learned to enjoy (carrots, bananas, rice) were actually constipators. I felt awful.

Luckily, a steady diet of prunes and prune (or apple) juice diluted in water is the easy fix for constipation. Keeping her hydrated should also help. And, after a few days of supplementing my daughters diet with the sweet brownish slime and prune juice water, her "pipes" started flowing again.

And, flow they did.

After about a week of the prune treatment, we noticed our daughter trying her hardest to push something out again. She was sitting in her high chair at the time (her favorite place to "go", for some reason) and stood her up on the ground. After a few seconds of pushing she screamed loudly, which wasn't uncommon after having a "nugget" stuck between her diaper and her butt, so I took her into her room to change her.

The thing that I found in her diaper made an expletive jump out of my mouth, as I called for my wife to come look.

In my daughter's diaper was a "nugget" (although it was more like a "boulder") that was about the length and width of her calf! I understood why she was crying so loud...if I had passed something that big, comparative to my size, I'd be crying too.

Her poor butt!

The next day, another "boulder" came out in the morning, and two smaller "nuggets" came out in the afternoon. They must have been what was causing the blockage in her "pipes", because the next day after that, the flood gates opened.

The day following the last of the blockages, my daughter had FIVE near-blowout diapers over the course of the day, three the day after that and two more the next day. Her "pipes" had certainly started moving again and must have been disposing of a week's worth of poop!

After a few days, the normal rainbow diapers returned and my daughter seemed much more comfortable. Her preschool even called us to tell us how great of a day she was having, and what a good mood she was in.

Can you blame her?

Thankfully, I've learned my lesson through this process and will be more diligent from now on about the foods that I feed her and keeping her hydrated.

And, giving her some prunes every now and then as a precautionary measure might not hurt either.

I Think My Baby Is Crazy!

I could easily be described as goofy or strange by people that know me well enough, but far from clinically insane. My daughter, on the other hand, seems to be a different matter.

One of the most fun things about being a parent is watching your child develop their own personality and learning their idiosyncrasies. Over the last few months, as my daughter's own personality has started to emerge, it appears that she may have already jumped off the deep end.

My hypothesis started a few months ago when she first learned how to grasp things with her hands. One day, while my daughter was playing on her play mat, the kind that has bars over with toys hanging down, she suddenly grabbed one of the toys that looked like a duck, pulled it to her face, and began screaming at it.

I'm not sure what the duck had said to her, but whatever it was really pissed her off! For several weeks after that, until we changed out the toys on her play mat, she would do the same thing, several times a day, to the same toy.

The insanity had begun.

Since that moment, there have been other "indicators" that my baby is crazy. For example, my wife and I now wake up every day to the sounds of our daughter "singing" to herself. While it's certainly not the worst way to wake up, it isn't the nicest of a wake up calls when she decides that she wants to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.

However, one of the most recent, and more concerning, indicators of craziness is the fact that she seems to be turning into a gummy, gnawing, cannibal.

Before my daughter had developed her motor skills, and couldn't coordinate her movements very well, she would nuzzle herself into our chests whenever we held her. Now, whenever my wife or I pick her up, she opens her mouth wide, gives a battle cry, and buries a gummy vampire bite into our necks, ears, or faces.

And, now that she has some teeth it's really starting to hurt!

My wife told me that at her age, she is exploring her emotions, and that they baby-vampire bites are her interpretation of "kisses", but I really think she is trying to eat us!

While I'm sure there are developmental explanations all of my daughter's crazy actions, that are all probably well above my head, I still think my little one is "a little off".

Then again, this is probably all some sort of cosmic payback from my parents.

Why Isn't This Gross?

Since having a baby in my life I've discovered that my wife and I have a much higher tolerance for what I find disgusting now.Things that would have instantly triggered my gag reflex before parenthood barely register on my personal gross-o-meter now.

The other night, my daughter woke up screaming her head off. My wife was the first responder that night and as she was fumbling around in the dark, searching for a fallen binky, she ran her hands through something thick and wet. After turning on the lights in the room she discovered that she had just ran her fingers through baby vomit.

Without wavering, or even washing her hands, she plucked out daughter out of bed and began to change her. Kindly enough, she also turned on all of the lights in the house as a subtle gesture for me to "get the hell out of bed."

As I came into the room and was informed of the situation I immediately started taking the vomit-coated sheets off her bed, although getting some on my hands I also pressed forward without stopping for a towel. The entire time I was changing the sheets I couldn't help but think "Why isn't this gross to me?"

That wasn't the only time that I've had that thought. Those words have also crossed my mind while pulling a huge booger out of my daughters nose and wiping it on my own pants, in the heat of the moment. And, of course, there are the countless experiences with full diapers and blowouts. (See "The Blowout")

One of my favorite moments (although, not my own) of enduring our daughter's grossness happened the other day when my wife was about to give her a bath. In the two feet from removing my daughter's diaper, to placing her naked butt in the bathtub, she managed to pee all over my wife's leg. Being quite the trooper my wife actually made it about halfway into the bath before calling me for backup so she could change.

What is it about your own child's bodily fluids that make them seem less gross, and even comical, than most would find them to be? All of the above examples would have sent me gagging from the room pre-fatherhood, but now I just find myself laughing about them.

I'm beginning to be convinced that it's some sort of psychological defense mechanism to keep parents from running screaming from their kids, and continuing to find them to be cute, despite their foibles.

Whatever the reason, I'm glad it exists. My daughter is adorable and I'd hate to think otherwise just because of some body fluids.

The Toys Are Taking Over

As I was driving to work today, being serenaded at every red light and bump in the road by the polyphonic sounds of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven being played, 16 notes at a time, by an electronic piano toy lodged somewhere in my car, I realized that even though my daughter is only seven months old, her toys are already making their move to overrun my life.

And the toys are winning.

You wouldn't think that a seven-month old would have the ability to spread her toys all over every room of our house, two cars, and the houses of our friends and parents, especially since she isn't very mobile yet. But somehow she does, and her toys end up in the most surprising places.

The other night, as I was getting into bed, I nearly jumped out of my skin as my feet rubbed up against something furry (and clearly not my wife's legs) at the bottom of my bed. After jumping out bed and pulling the sheets back I found my daughter's stuffed Elmo looking back at me with a grin.

I had never been scared by a Muppet before.

When my wife and I originally bought our home, we thought that it would make for a great starter home. It was a little small, but had the space that we needed for ourselves and a little one. What we didn't take into consideration when buying our home was that our daughter would need at least as much square footage for her toys as we would need for the rest of our living space.

Since we didn't plan for toy space at the time, we now have to learn to live in peace with the army of toys which are slowly replacing our carpet as the floor covering of choice in our house.

One way that I have learned to make peace with the toys (and keep them out of my sight occasionally) is to have "camouflaged" toy boxes hidden in strategic places around our house.

Besides the (rarely used) toy box in my daughter's room, there is a wooden footlocker in our living room, which had previously housed high school yearbooks and other memorabilia, that has become the "summer home" for toys that decided to vacation in the living room.

In our bedroom, a bottom drawer which used to contain a number "personal" items, from days before children, has become a resting place for toys that sneak into the bedroom in the morning while my daughter watches my wife and I get ready for work.

In the kitchen, toys that are used to entertain my daughter in her highchair, while my wife and I prepare food for the three of us, are chained (via "links", a great toy accessory) to a kitchen chair, which keeps them from cluttering our dining room table, as well as keeping them safe from falling to the floor as my daughter plays "Pick It Up, Daddy!"

My car, on the other hand, has already seemingly lost the war. Once a toy hits the floor of the backseat they tend to stay there until they become wedged somewhere they aren't supposed to be and need to be removed, usually identified by the aforementioned polyphonic music playing over and over again.

I am already painfully aware that as my daughter gets older, that the toys will become more advanced as well as bigger in both size and numbers, and like my impending grey hairs, all I can do from now until then is constant damage control.

For now, I just keep holding on to the hope that one day the battle will be over and my wife and I will have prevailed. Until that day I will do my best to find more hiding places for toys and eventually start "abducting" unloved toys in the night, to start making room for their replacements.

So Elmo better be on his guard and stay the hell out of my bed.