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.