I had to go to work today, so Gia and I only had a half day together. Only three things of note.
1) In the morning when I dressed her, I asked her to sit down on her bed while I looked for a cute outfit for her to wear*. To my complete surprise, she sat on her bed and patiently waited for me to dress her.
2) I handed her a piece of lunch meat today and told her it was delicious. It was turkey by the way. I handed her the whole slice. It was floppy, wet, and slimy. She frowned at it and just handed it back to me. Good for me, because I was poised like a ninja waiting to dive across the kitchen and catch it before it hit the floor when she threw it aside in disgust like I expected her to. Knowing that she trusts daddy, I rolled up the turkey, took a bite and told her how yummy I thought it was. She gave me a blank look and decided that she'd rather go stand in the living room. On her way past, I tried to stuff a bite of the rolled up turkey in her mouth. She opened her mouth, but kept on walking without stopping to take a real bite. I did manage to get a taste of the turkey on her little tongue though. I watched as she took about three steps out of the kitchen, did a u-turn without stopping, grabbed the turkey from me, then stuffed it in her mouth and took off to look out the window. Sucker. I can play her like a piano.
3) I was in the office getting ready to go to work, and was in a mild panic as I thought that I was going to be late if I wasn't out of the door in about two minutes. Whenever a baby is making noise or movement, then suddenly stops, parents always take notice. She was standing in the door way, and I was crouching over my freshly ironed shirt in the middle of the office. We stared each other down like cowboys at high noon just before a duel. She was looking at me wondering whatever it is babies wonder about (probably how she was blessed with a father as good looking as I am), and I was wondering why she looked like she was about to fly across the room and attack my face. Then she made that face. It's the face where she scrunches up her face like she's having a mild stomach ache (the same face her mom makes when I try to dress her by myself). It usually means she's crapping her pants.
Just as I am starting to dread changing a diaper before leaving, making me even more late, I see that she has a lot of urine running down her leg, splashing onto the carpet. Not quite like in the Exorcist, but pretty close as far as I was concerned. At this point I did what every good parent does, I yelled, "YOU STOP PEEING ON THE CARPET RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY!" She must not have been listening because she didn't stop; not even a little.
I need to stop the story right here for a moment to explain some things. First, I've only seen her leak through a diaper once or twice before, and it was never this bad. Second, every morning she walks around in a night gown type thing, so I could not immediately see the problem with the diaper.
I jumped up off the floor, ran over to her, picked her up and turned her upside down so I could investigate this defective diaper, only to be confronted by her naked little butt. At some point during the few minutes I left her playing in her room, she hiked her night gown up and yanked her diaper off. I can only assume that she was coming down the hall to show me her latest method of frustrating me when she was overcome with the need to pee all over our floor. Being in a hurry, and always resourceful, I grabbed the first thing that came to mind that could soak up pee, a fresh diaper. I threw it on the floor and stomped on it a few times. Later I told Gloria that where ever she saw a diaper on the floor, that was where the baby peed and I didn't really have time to clean it up. I was sure she would understand. Fast forward to the minute I'm walking out the door. I call for Gia to walk over to me so I can get her in the car and to grandma's house. She comes out of the office and down the hall holding a diaper in her hand. I start yelling at her not to dig in the trash when I realize that it was the diaper I just got done putting on her three minutes before. She wears pants at all times now.
*All cute outfits chosen by me are preselected, and then folded together by Gloria. I am incapable of doing simple clothes math. When I put two articles of clothing together that I think will match, and hold them up for inspection, lightning strikes and thunder claps. If our life had a sound track, the part where I try to dress the baby on my own every morning would sound like a clip from Jerry Springer. Jeering, some cruel laughter, a couple black ladies yelling, "Oh NO he didn't!" You get the idea.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Gia on August 26, 2008
I'm writing this particular entry about three days late, but this is where I wanted to start.
Today was a fun day for us. All the time you hear parents talk about their kids having learned something which is a total surprise to their parents. "Where did you learn that?!" The parents always say. With the frequency of these types of stories being passed around among parents, you'd think that they wouldn't be surprised when it happened to their own child.
I always imagined that one day (in a few years) I'd be driving around in traffic, cursing at other drivers when from the back seat my innocent little angel would chime in with "YEAH, YOU UKKING DICK!" or some other cute variation of some totally inappropriate thing I'd screamed at someone else earlier. In actuality, it happens a lot sooner than that. For example, back when our family had roommates, at one point everyone in the house had a head cold at the same time. Gia was only about 6 or 7 months old and she would sit on her little blanket on the floor and cough. At first we got worried, but then soon realized that she would always smile while she was coughing. That little faker never even got sick from us, she just sat around fake coughing. Apparently she couldn't resist joining in on all the fun of a head cold.
Anyway, today I noticed a few things that she has learned without me ever noticing before. One makes me immensly proud of her, and the other makes me think that her mother is teaching her ways to make my being a stay at home dad more difficult. I was holding Gia on my lap while I was eating lunch. Since she just turned one, and has four teeth, it is often easier to just feed her whatever I am eating, rather than make her a plate of her own. She just dumps all the food on her lap, turns the plate upside down, then smears the juices around the highchair anyway. So she is sitting on my lap and I am feeding her about every third or fifth bite. At some point she picked up the fork and started dragging it around on the plate. At first I thought that she was just banging it on the plate to make noise, but quickly realized that she was trying to get the food onto the fork. With my help, I stuck some food onto the end of the fork for her and let go of the utensil. Immediately she turned the fork around and stuck it in her mouth, pulled the food off, and went back for more food. We repeated this excercise until she couldn't fit any more food into her mouth, as she was too busy practicing her new skill to chew. I told her she could "give some to daddy?" and she obiediently put the fork over her left shoulder, right into my mouth. I was floored.
After we were done eating and everything was cleaned up, I noticed her second new skill. Somewhere, probably from me, she learned to blow her nose. Anyone who has ever fought with an infant to get the boogies out of their nose would initially think this is a wonderful turn of events. Not in this case. She still fights if I try to wipe her nose; and if I just hold the tissue to her face, she just sticks her tongue out and gets the whole thing stuck in her mouth. However, when she is alone, she will blow her own nose. The problem is that she blows her nose onto her wrist.
I was walking past her room when I thought I heard what sounded like her blowing her nose. I peaked in the door and to my surprise found her standing in the middle of the room with her wrist pressed to one side of her nose, blowing snot all over the place. She blows it onto her wrist, then wipes it up her face and into her hair with her other hand, then walks around the house touching all those things I've already told her 40 times today not to touch. While being elated that she made one small step toward learning to do one small, but gross, thing on my own, I also realized that now I was going to have to watch her even more closely all day long, lest I have snail trails of snot all over the house.
Today was a fun day for us. All the time you hear parents talk about their kids having learned something which is a total surprise to their parents. "Where did you learn that?!" The parents always say. With the frequency of these types of stories being passed around among parents, you'd think that they wouldn't be surprised when it happened to their own child.
I always imagined that one day (in a few years) I'd be driving around in traffic, cursing at other drivers when from the back seat my innocent little angel would chime in with "YEAH, YOU UKKING DICK!" or some other cute variation of some totally inappropriate thing I'd screamed at someone else earlier. In actuality, it happens a lot sooner than that. For example, back when our family had roommates, at one point everyone in the house had a head cold at the same time. Gia was only about 6 or 7 months old and she would sit on her little blanket on the floor and cough. At first we got worried, but then soon realized that she would always smile while she was coughing. That little faker never even got sick from us, she just sat around fake coughing. Apparently she couldn't resist joining in on all the fun of a head cold.
Anyway, today I noticed a few things that she has learned without me ever noticing before. One makes me immensly proud of her, and the other makes me think that her mother is teaching her ways to make my being a stay at home dad more difficult. I was holding Gia on my lap while I was eating lunch. Since she just turned one, and has four teeth, it is often easier to just feed her whatever I am eating, rather than make her a plate of her own. She just dumps all the food on her lap, turns the plate upside down, then smears the juices around the highchair anyway. So she is sitting on my lap and I am feeding her about every third or fifth bite. At some point she picked up the fork and started dragging it around on the plate. At first I thought that she was just banging it on the plate to make noise, but quickly realized that she was trying to get the food onto the fork. With my help, I stuck some food onto the end of the fork for her and let go of the utensil. Immediately she turned the fork around and stuck it in her mouth, pulled the food off, and went back for more food. We repeated this excercise until she couldn't fit any more food into her mouth, as she was too busy practicing her new skill to chew. I told her she could "give some to daddy?" and she obiediently put the fork over her left shoulder, right into my mouth. I was floored.
After we were done eating and everything was cleaned up, I noticed her second new skill. Somewhere, probably from me, she learned to blow her nose. Anyone who has ever fought with an infant to get the boogies out of their nose would initially think this is a wonderful turn of events. Not in this case. She still fights if I try to wipe her nose; and if I just hold the tissue to her face, she just sticks her tongue out and gets the whole thing stuck in her mouth. However, when she is alone, she will blow her own nose. The problem is that she blows her nose onto her wrist.
I was walking past her room when I thought I heard what sounded like her blowing her nose. I peaked in the door and to my surprise found her standing in the middle of the room with her wrist pressed to one side of her nose, blowing snot all over the place. She blows it onto her wrist, then wipes it up her face and into her hair with her other hand, then walks around the house touching all those things I've already told her 40 times today not to touch. While being elated that she made one small step toward learning to do one small, but gross, thing on my own, I also realized that now I was going to have to watch her even more closely all day long, lest I have snail trails of snot all over the house.
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