Trip

We went to San Diego over the weekend, but our camera's batteries died, so no photos. We didn't do much; tried to relax. It was chilly down there (as it is up here). Thursday is the big trip to Florida; none of us are looking forward to it so much, but it's hard to complain about Christmas in Florida, especially given the weather in most of the country right now.

We've been watching movies with numbers in the title. Not sequels, but movies with actual numbers mentioned somewhere. We figured it would get us to watch some films we might not see otherwise. So we started with Capricorn One, a classic example of late 70s paranoia: astronauts are supposed to go to Mars, but they don't: instead, it's faked, with the Mars scenes shot in a studio. It stars James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and...O.J. Simpson. Elliot Gould is the journalist who exposes the scam. Not such a good movie, but fun enough.

Back

I'm doing Daddy Day Care until the end of March, so I'm going to be blogging a lot more often, I'm guessing, if only to maintain my sanity. We also plan to take A LOT of classes together, Emily and I.

Since I haven't posted for awhile, I'm including a more recent photo. Today Emily and I spent the afternoon together; we did laundry and went to the playground. She became very interested in standing on manhole covers and got very angry when I made her come home. Oh, and we had brunch with our former French teacher, Christine, who lives in this gorgeous spot on the Mesa. You can see UCSB from a deck they have over the ocean, on a clear day (it's about fifteen miles up the coast). The water was very blue and Emily spent most of her time climbing the stairs.

Good eatin'

Yesterday, at the playground, just after we were remarking to another couple that Emily has not tried to eat sand, J noticed that she had a handful of wood chips in her mouth. A very large mouthful. It took us a while to get them all out; she even continued to chew one on the way home, and we had to extract it with a toothbrush. At least it's solid food--we're still having a hard time there, though she has done better the last couple days. She's even managed to feed herself with a spoon.

She seems to be a lefty, though apparently this doesn't get determined until much later. She throws (very well) left-handed, and uses her left hand (always) for the spoon.

A visit to the doctor

Emily is 22 pounds, and healthy. She got a shot, which she didn't like so much, but when we got home she slept 3 hours and seemed like a much more developed baby when she woke up. She seems on the verge of saying actual words and of walking. I hope these two don't happen at the same time--I see her walking along shouting out demands. We're still having some trouble with the solid food--she insists on trying to feed herself, and she can't, but we figure that she's not going to starve.

I can hear cheerleading camp nearby. It's an annual rite here, and I'm not as annoyed by it as I used to be.

New Developments

Emily has a new toy area, seen above, that she is enjoying very much. Yesterday she spent about half-an-hour there, alone, flipping through her books and talking to her stuffed animals while I had lunch. Her talking is interesting--she points at things and says either "Bah" or "Gee." We're not at all sure what the difference is.

Back to the Kitchen

So yesterday I'm walking with another dad (we go to Starbucks once a week or so), and the maintenance workers in our complex, seeing us, say, "Giving mom a break. Good for you!" Neither of us said anything; the other dad, who is also doing most of the childcare this summer, was outraged, but as I told J, I was honestly relieved that they didn't see me as a wussy man who is doing childcare while his wife brings home the bacon. But of course the assumption that they made is not surprising; what kind of weird world do I live in now? Never in my wildest dreams did I expect that the 1970s would be some kind of progressive pinnacle, and from there, we would go backwards. In theory, I mean, obviously--few dads stayed home in the 70s either, but still, it was seen as a desirable goal. Now it's not even part of our thinking. If Emily isn't wearing pink, people assume that she's a boy--no matter if she's wearing some sort of equally "girly" color. Or even clothes with flowers on them. If it ain't pink, it ain't a girl. Apparently my generation is rebelling against the unisex clothes we wore growing up.

Strange Voices

Emily's voice has changed, literally overnight. She woke up yesterday talking in a very different way--it's hard to describe how, but it's a more grownup version of baby talk. She's really into her dolls now, and talks to them at length about something or another.

I complained to J, who complained to a list she's on, of the door-slamming, and it's produced a flood of complaints about noise in Family Student Housing, including one woman whose neighbors wash dishes and vacuum, frequently, at 3 am. So we don't have it quite so bad. It's hard to understand the mentality of someone who, in a shoddily built apartment complex, believes that it's ok to vacuum at 3 am.

The photo is of Emily in her new outfit.

Don't buy toys

Emily's favorite new thing to play with is the salad spinner. She carefully takes it apart and then scrapes the bowl across the floor (yikes...). The cabinet it's in is now baby-proofed, so she crawls up to it and yanks on the door, over and over, until I open it. She also loves to play with the remote controls, and her daddy's old cellphone. Her actual toys? She likes some of them, sometimes, but on the whole, is indifferent.

I did a good deed today on my walk with Emily: I found a wallet on the sidewalk and turned it in to the Sheriff's Office at the mall. Not that I was tempted to keep it (for the simple reason that I hope if I lost my wallet, someone would do the same for me), and besides, I'm far too cowardly to go on a shopping spree with someone's credit cards--I assume I'd get caught right away. I was afraid that the officer would ask for my name, and I didn't want to give it, because it's just embarrassing for the other person, who would probably feel some need to do something nice in return. Anyway, he didn't, so it won't be a problem.

Fun day

Yesterday we took Emily to a wedding (Michael and Rachel)--she wore a new dress. The wedding was lovely, and we had a lot of fun.

Today is back to earth in a hurry. Family Student Housing is plagued by door-slammers. You know, people who think that the door must be slammed with incredible force to close. Or in other words, people who have no manners, which is pretty much the norm here in the Land of Solipsism (as I was typing this, another door just slammed). Anyway, the door-slammers wake up Emily when she's trying to nap--seriously, that's how hard they slam their doors. One of them is our downstairs neighbor, so it's not surprising that this one wakes Emily up, but there are two across the courtyard who consistently wake her. Idiots. One of them is 8 months pregnant; I have fantasies of standing outside their door after the baby born and pounding a drum or something, so that they can see what it's like.

If we left this place tomorrow, it wouldn't be soon enough.

Zen and the art of baby maintenance

So after two weeks, I'm finally starting to get into a comfortable rhythm with Emily. It's very odd; staying home so much to take care of a child is like getting off of caffeine (or so I imagine, not having any desire to do that). At first, you're restless, like there's something else you need to be doing (namely, work); you look around a lot, even while (or especially) while you're feeding her. Eventually, though, you start to focus in on the task at hand, and you feel a sort of calm. It also helps that because my schedule is more regular--meaning that it's completely based on her--she naps at fairly regular times for fairly regular amounts of time. I try to use this time to read (right now, Dickens' Barnaby Rudge; there's a reason it rhymes with "trudge"), though often, having attained a calm state with Emily, I suddenly become restless when she's asleep and sit surfing the web or watching sports on television.

She has a big cut under her nose, having entered the stage when she's going to bash various parts of her body against objects. I saw it happen but there was nothing I could do about it.

Pointing

This is Emily's new thing. In a few minutes, I taught her to point at the moon, and now she does this each evening, though she makes no attempt to say "moon," as I also try to teach her. Interestingly, she talks a lot more when her mother is home. I suspect that I'm quieter than I think I am when we're alone, though I do try to ask her questions and so on.

Little Children

Even in somewhat liberal almost-Southern California, being the dad at the playground is very odd. First, that I'm the dad, usually, at the playground is odd. Many of the families in family housing here are desperately trying to live out a 1950s fantasy in which the woman stays at home while the man works. So the playground is lots of mothers, and yours truly. The mothers regard me with skepticism, and no one has tried to talk to me; when I try to talk, they mumble politely and ignore me. One mother, as I stood holding Emily so that she could watch the bigger kids play on the monkey bars (she's taken an intense interest in other children now), made a comment so bizarre that I could only conclude, later, that she suspected that I was a pervert. They won't even make eye contact with me. The atmosphere here is so weirdly stifling that sometimes it feels like a John Cheever short story, but unfortunately without the booze.

Anyway, you read about men staying home to take care of the children, but where are they? Maybe I should try a different playground. This is one of the few times in my life in which I would actually be relieved to talk to another man.

Who knows?

Emily's new obsession is the toilet. Not using it, of course, since she's only 10 months old. Rather, pulling herself up on it. Given a chance, she will make a beeline for the bathroom. I would take a picture of it, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. Anyway, it's made us at least try to keep the bathroom much cleaner.

She's sleeping a lot in her crib now, usually from 7 pm to midnight at least, and we should just put her back in there after she wakes up--she seems to sleep much better there than she does with us. We had to take her our last night because she banged herself against the side.

Her curiosity is amazing. She wants to touch everything, see everything, and talk to most things. She has long, earnest conversations of babble with one of her dolls, with an occasional "Ha!" thrown in.

My course was canceled, so I'm the primary caretaker this summer. I'll report back on how this going.

Lovely

The last few days have been those kind of lovely California days you never want to end--warm, but not hot, a little hazy from the morning fog well into the day. On these kind of days, I wonder how I can ever live anywhere else. Sometimes it occurs to me that I've lived in California by far longer than I've lived anywhere else by choice (currently three times as long as I lived in New York City), so I must be a Californian in some sense. I don't mind staying here--just not in Santa Barbara.

Emily at Disneyland. Apparently the actor playing Goofy was between shifts (this is at the hotel) but wanted to play with Emily.

Separation anxiety

Emily has gone to Disneyland with her mom and grandmother. This is the first time I've been separated from her overnight, and I'm very sad about it--coming home this morning to an empty apartment after taking them to the train station was a real downer.

Why didn't I go, too? First, I may have jury duty; so far, I haven't, but I have to call all week. Second, I probably wouldn't have gone anyway, since I don't like amusement parks. My parents dragged me to them as a child; I hated the rides, and when I yelled, they laughed at me. I know that they were just trying to 1) get me to have fun; 2) make light of my mortal terror. Still, it's not a happy memory. Plus it's not as if I was an dour child anyway (though this is apparently their memory of me): I loved playing sports and so on. I did enjoy the parks to some extent, so long as I didn't have to go on any rides. Or only the low-key ones, like those little cars on tracks you could drive around.

No, I would have gone--if Emily has fun, I want to see it. I just hope she never asks Daddy to ride a rollercoaster.

Growing quickly

Yesterday we went to a barbeque on the beach. Emily hadn't napped much all day. Refreshed, perhaps, by the sea air, she slept soundly for two hours in her stroller. When she woke up, she seemed strangely older: she talked for several minutes in nearly full sentences of babble, nodding and making eye contact with whomever she was speaking to. Maybe it was being around all those academics, and she, too, was trying to be pompous (actually, these were almost all very nice people, which is why we went). She looks different, too, in the last few days--her face has more definition, and she looks older somehow.

We finally broke down (well, I did, since I was the one against it) and got a video camera. Now we can bore everyone with movies of Emily trying to walk or smearing peanut butter on her face and so on.

I want my mommy!

Emily has finally figured out that she's separate from her mother's body--so the developmental psychologists say happens around this age, and I now believe them. She does not like to be separated from her mommy at all. If J leaves the room, Emily crawls, bawling, after her. If J goes into the bathroom, Emily crawls up to the door and pounds it, usually with her fist, but sometimes with her head. If mommy leaves the apartment, she cries and looks pathetically out the kitchen window to see her go by. When the door opens, she jumps and crawls rapidly towards it, hoping it's mommy.

Her smile is so big now that it's a little demonic sometimes.

The explorer

Emily's trips around the apartment are becoming increasingly . . . aggressive. She doesn't much like to sit still now at all, no matter which toy we try to tantalize her with. She tosses it aside and immediately is off. If a door isn't completely closed, she will push it open. Our apartment doesn't seem big enough, and we worry that she's bored. Does she need some new kind of toy? A little jungle gym? A keyboard? Should we play with her more, or just leave her to crawl around and figure things out (like why wires don't taste so good)?

She's also on a solid food strike. This is apparently typical--they start to want to feed themselves before they actually can. She closes her mouth, firmly, turns her head, and swats angrily at the spoon. J came up with the idea of wrapping Cheerios in sticky fruit as a finger food, and this has worked somewhat--she does eat some of it, though more of it goes on her clothes and the floor. Oh well, babies are supposed to be messy, and we've certainly kept her unnaturally clean so far.

The dustbuster obsession continues. Last night I actually used it and she came crawling rapidly towards me to be near it.

Baby-proofing

We spent a little time (ok, J spent a lot of time) worrying about baby-proofing and a little time actually doing something about it (J spent a little time; I left to go watch soccer on television or something). As Emily is now very much on the move, we have realized that our apartment is one danger zone after another. Some of the danger is due to our professions (bookcases about to topple over at the slightest tug; a computer hard drive she loves to pull herself up on), some due to our passions (my gigantic CD tower), some just plain negligence (wires), some lack of income (cheap furniture that is easy to topple over). It's...well, not a nightmare, that would be too strong, but certainly upsetting that Emily crawls around from one trouble spot to another, as if she has some sort of nose for it--but not that she'd have to in this place. Her current favorite is the dustbuster, which is obviously going to have to be moved, probably into the same closet we put the paper shredder, another early favorite in her explorations about the apartment. The picture illustrates another favorite trouble spot--she's obsessed with what's on this table, and unfortunately, there's far too much.

It's made us see our apartment in a whole new way, not in a good new way, but instead a new way that says, "Man, we're slobs."

The University

As I was pushing Emily home a couple of days ago, I couldn't help but notice, yet again, how ugly the UCSB campus is. It's in a gorgeous location, but they've made a mess of it. When the prettiest structures on campus are the parking garages, you know you've gone wrong. It's hard to single out one particular building for crimes against architecture, but the administration building might be the ugliest: it resembles, apparently deliberately, a prison, with narrow slits for windows (did the architect consider the scenery outside distracting to cubicle-bound bureaucrats?) and lots of steel.
It seems to embody the message administrators usually send to college students: please don't bother us. Just pay your bill and get out. They should tear everything down and start over. There is a lot of construction now(it's hard for me to teach my class over the noise, which also seems symbolic somehow), but they're probably just putting up more ugly buildings. There is one new science building with lots of glass that I like a lot. I'll try to take a picture of it and post it.

Dancing Emily

Yes, she started dancing. While sitting, of course. But it's a definite dance--one of her little dolls plays music, and she bounces along with it.

Children are very funny with their toys (not just because she'd rather play with the New York Times than any of her toys); they have tremendous affection for one of them for a few days, then ignore this same toy, then love this toy again sometime later. You're supposed to rotate toys frequently because of this, I guess, but even someone as anal as I am, with days to discard old razor blades and switch to new ones entered into a calendar, cannot keep up a consistent rotation of toys.

J is preparing for a big lecture on Tuesday, so I have Emily all day today. We have big plans--a long walk, and she's going to watch Spain-Latvia in EuroCup 2008 qualifying with Daddy and a neighbor.

A new favorite picture of Emily. This was at a Red Robin restaurant in Calabasas, on our way back from San Diego. For some reason, Emily loved this place--she flirted with the customers and staff, in between expressing skepticism at something her mom was saying, as indicated by the photo.

Because she's moving around so much, there have been several mishaps the last two days, including her pulling a floor lamp over thanks to my negligence (why I thought she couldn't pull over this cheap, flimsy lamp is beyond me); luckily it scared her more than anything. Apparently I have to be more vigilant; she's very strong, and able to get into all sorts of trouble. I looked over a little while ago and she had somehow pulled my wallet off of the coffee table and was rifling through my credit cards. She's discovered that there are goodies on top of this table (watches, keys and so on) and usually makes a beeline for it whenever you put her on the floor.

See Emily Play

So Emily is getting bigger and bigger, and let's face it, a lot more interesting, obviously from an adultcentric point of view. She's moving around now like crazy--you have to watch her all the time--and saying things that sound very much like actual words, or at least good attempts at actual words. This, by the way, does not seem much like the product of linear development--she went from not being able to crawl at all (except scooting backwards) to crawling at will, and fast. We were caught almost completely unprepared.

She's really an amazing little baby. I don't mean that she's some kind of genius (how most parents around here see their children); I mean that she's kind and sweet and loves to laugh. She's (still) so patient with our lousy parenting--our fumbling attempts to change her diaper, clothe her (ok, I'm more fumbling than J), put her in her carseat (I typically bang her head on the roof of the car), and so on. Even when she's crying, she tries to regain her good humor. Sob, smile, sob.

Big event

Emily is crawling. Just now ( Thursday, 1:45 pm). Though apparently this isn't such a big deal, we've been told. Sitting up is a much bigger developmental milestone, and she's been doing that for a while now. Some babies never really crawl--they scoot around a little and then start walking. Still, I'm glad, for her sake--she's been getting very frustrated by objects that are out of reach, and now she can get to them. You're not supposed to move things closer to her, but usually we do because we can't stand to see her so unhappy.