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Goodbye to All That

Posted on March 31, 2008 by seesyong4

    Dearest Babbleonians,

    This is the last official post of Babydaddy. It’s been a pleasure sharing Josie with you guys, and a big thanks to everybody who read the blog and made comments and didn’t threaten to sue. The best thing the internet has to offer (so far as I can tell) is a sense of community. It allows the members of a fairly lonely culture to feel less alone.
    Whatever else it might be, parenting is scary, particularly for first-timers, and we’ve been thankful for all the help we can get. This includes Liz, the world’s most awesome babysitter, Susan, our visiting mom, and both sets of parents, who we don’t see enough, but feel blessed to have around. And it includes you guys. Both Babymamma and I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to share our experiences and ask questions and hear back from parents who are either struggling with the same problems, or have found ways to solve them. You guys rule.
    The reason I’m stopping the blog has more to do with something one of the commenters brought up a few weeks ago: the idea that Josie may eventually read this blog. Both Babymamma and I always saw this space as a kind of public album, something that would allow us to keep a record of her first year or so. We never envisioned it running much longer than that.
    That’s not to say that we won’t write about her again. She’s at the center of our lives. But the blog medium has a certain kind of immediacy, and a reciprocal surrendering of privacy, that we don’t want in our lives forever – and that Josie may not want, either.
    As a writer who puts myself out there in public a good bit, I’m used to hearing back from folks who think I’m an idiot. But both Babymamma and I were disturbed to discover that there were folks using the blog as a way of expressing their animus for me, or their perception of me. It made Babymamma, in particular, uncomfortable. And as much as I urged her not to let these trolls bug her, I could see why she was upset. When you make your private life public, when you seek attention in that broad a manner, you’re inviting not just the cool and the loving, but the angry and aggrieved.
    It’s also true that Babble itself has changed. In its best incarnation, the site is a wonderful way of building community. But as with any new business, the bottom line is the bottom line. For all the wise and thoughtful writing the site offers, it also depends on peddling a certain kind of lifestyle, one that sometimes confuses emotional necessities with material luxury.
    My own take on the future, now that I have a kid (with more to come, hopefully) is that we’ve got to start changing our own lifestyles, on behalf of our kids. I don’t want to get too grandiose or didactic – and Lord knows, I’m prone to both – but I do want to urge the folks who read Babble to think about the ways in which we might change our lifestyles to deal with the realities that face all of us: the end of the cheap oil era, climate change, depletion of water.
    No, I’m not suggesting we should throw away our computers and go live off the grid. (In point of fact, I would perish if forced to live off the grid.) But I am suggesting that certain modern conveniences – the fast-paced, super-abudant ones – should come to an end. And that we’re going to need to slow down and connect more, not through screens, but in real life.
    That’s part of what Babymamma and I are trying to do these days. We’ve joined a babysitting cooperative. We’re looking into pre-schools that have volunteer programs. We’d like to limit our screen time to working hours. It’s Spring, after all, even if Boston still hasn’t picked up on the hint. The flowers will be blooming. The birds will be out in force. And Josie will want to hug all of them…

 

     

Posted in arrivederci, auf widersahn, sayanora | 51 Comments

Hug It Out! Suck It Up!

Posted on March 30, 2008 by seesyong4

 Josie turns 1.5 years on Tuesday. No fooling. The big innovation this week: hugs. She’s in a phase. How wonderful is this? It’s wonderful beyond description. It’s like what I dreamed it would be having a daughter: super affection, minus the exhaustion. We’ve also begun a ritual of walking around the block, our daily constitutional. This allows us to go see the birds and to visit our neighbors Bridget and Jim (Bridget gave Josie a bunny slightly larger than her, which she hugs with great ardor) and to visit any stray dogs that might be around, none of which frigthen Josie, unless they bark right in her face. She doesn’t scare easy.

    At the same time, Josie is taking a serious interest in the basic girl stuff. She’s super into dressing her dolls and giving her dolls bottles, the basic modeling behaviors. She also loves to go run and get the dish rag and wipe up random patches of the floor, which she considers cleaning. And she’s got a vacuum fetish that is unrivaled. When Babymamma gets out the vacuum, she goes into a frenzy. And she’ll yell out “vacuuuu!” several times a day, no matter where she is. We don’t know what to make of this, frankly.

   With boys, it seems more obvious to me, from an evolutionary standpoint. For hundreds of thousands of years — before the sliver of history that modern man represents — boys who focused on large, fast-moving objects (i.e. animals) and who engaged in physical combat behaviors generally did better, survived, and passed down their genes. That’s why lots of the boys we know are obsessed with cars/trucks/buses/planes/whatevers, and why they tend to get into imaginative play that involves disembowling. I can’t quite figure out what evolutionary trait would select for vacuum fetishism. Yes, I know, she’s just copying Babymamma. But it’s like like Babymamma LOVES vacuuming. It’s not like she exudes the attitude: Hey, I was BORN to vacuum. And maybe she vacuums a bit more than other folks, because of cat hair, but we do have wood floors.

    Regardless, we’re both delighted with her early interest in domestic stuff, and babies in particular. We’re hoping when the time comes for her to have a little brother or sister, that this will bode well. Can anybody out there give us some reassurance on this point? Or will she love the idea of a baby sibling, but hate the actual reality?

  
 

 

Posted in suck, vacuuu! combat behaviors | 2 Comments

Oh, Why Bother with Words?

Posted on March 21, 2008 by seesyong4

    Babymamma took this photo the other day and when I looked at it, I said: That is Josie. It captured her essential shtunkdom.

    Happy Spring!

     

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Our First Argument!

Posted on March 19, 2008 by seesyong4

    Josie and I got in an argument.

    It’s kind of exciting and horrible, all at once. And I don’t mean that we got into a disagreement. We’ve had plenty of those. We got into a full-fledged argument. To wit:

    I had submitted to her maniacal requests to play with the idiotic animated animal game on babymamma’s computer and we had gone to the screen with all the sleeping animals in the pet shop, who you can wake up by jabbing the keys — which is frankly weird and disturbing, if you think about it, sort of like your own animal torture screen — and I was asking Josie to identify the colors of the various animals.

    “What color is the cat?” I said.

    “Yellow!”

    “Right! What color is the chick?”

    “Yellow!”

    “Right. What about the frog? What color is the froggie?”

    Josie paused for a second then said, “Yellow!”

    “Yellow?” I said. “Are you sure? Isn’t the froggie green?”

    Josie furrowed her brow and said, “Yellow!”

    I pointed to the froggie again. “That’s yellow?”

    Josie nodded. “Yellow,” she said firmly.

    “Wait a second,” I said, playfully. “Isn’t that froggie green? Isn’t that color green?” 

    Josie shook her head. “Yellow!”

    And it wasn’t like she was just contradicting me. You could see that she simply disagreed and wasn’t going to kowtow to my ridiculous notion about the frog being green. It was an insult to her intelligence.

    I felt kind of like how I did when I appeared on “Hannity and Colmes” — which is to say not just incredibly sexually turned on by Sean Hannity and his big, beefy sausage bod, but also confused as to how to overcome such dogged rhetorical surety.

    Is this what awaits us at the station of the cross know as the Terrible Twos.

    Please, if you’re going to answer, try to lie in a manner that will make us feel better…

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

Posted in beefy, big, sausage bod | 7 Comments

Weekend Update

Posted on March 14, 2008 by seesyong4

    So I realized that I’ve failed to provide follow-up posts on a number of what seemed imminent child-rearing crises but which were mostly just us being nuerotic first-time parents. With that in mind, some updates…

    Crisis: Josie will never learn to speak because she is addicted to her bink!

    Resolution: Josie is still addicted to her bink, but now talks up a storm. Yesterday alone, she said six new words: “Shut” “your” “f*cking” “pie” “hole” and “dad.” Kidding! Her six new words were actually “quit” “exploiting” “me” “for” “your” “stupid” and “blog.” Oh, I guess that’s seven. She’s evolving!

    Crisis: Josie won’t nap!

    Resolution: Josie will nap, but only when she decides she’s good and ready to nap, which is generally (but not always) at around one in the afternoon.

    Crisis: Josie is impossible to take on an airplane!

    Resolution: Rather than dragging our child on long, unnatural journeys through the air, we’ve determined that it is best for our souls, as well as the planet, if we eliminate all modes of travel based on petroleum. This year, for instance, we’re doing a house swap with a lucky couple in scenic Medford, MA!

    Crisis: The cat (Petunia) is scratching Josie’s face!

    Resolution: The cat’s will has been broken, utterly. She is a shell of her former, face-scratching self.

    Crisis: Josie is not afraid of anything and therefore risks getting hurt constantly!

    Resolution: Josie is not afraid of anything and therefore risks getting hurt constantly.

    Crisis: Josie is addicted to sugar!

    Resolution: Josie is addicted to cheese.

   

    As you  can see, there’s an important lesson to be learned here. It is foolish (if somewhat inevitable) to sweat the little bumps of child-rearing. These too shall pass. Also: you probably don’t want us babysitting your kid.

     

 

Posted in "exploiting" "your" "stupid" "blog" | 6 Comments

Luvin’ Spoonful

Posted on March 11, 2008 by seesyong4

    Dearest Babbletrash,

     It’s me, Josie. My dad has another one of his “funny, morning headaches” so he’s asked me to fill in — again. This morning’s topic: things I no longer need anyone’s f***ing help with, thank you very much. Let’s start with drinking. (Why not? My dad does.) And let’s forget all about the Sippy Cup. What a loathesome, condescending invention. No, these days, when I want to get my drink on, it’s all about the cup.

    Here’s what I’m talking about:

     

 

    The reason the photos blurry is because I’m getting my chug on. I’ve just downed fifteen ounces of buttermilk. And here’s what happens next…

 

     

 

    I shake my cup around and burp at max volume until my mamma gets very sleepy and compliant and then I demand MORE BUTTERMILK.

    There’s also the whole eating situation. News flash: I am no longer being spoon fed. That time is over. Any food transport happens at my initiation. Like so:

 

    First, the spoon goes down and in…

   

   

    Then it goes slowly up around for a minute or so, until I’ve actually got Cheerios on the spoon…

 

     

    

    Then in goes in my piehole …

 

     

        

    Hey, who forgot to put sugar on my Cheerios!

    I swear, do I have to do everything around here?

    Yes, apparently, I do.

 

Posted in buttermilk, funny, morning headaches, sugar | 3 Comments

Our Charming Dictator

Posted on March 6, 2008 by seesyong4

      The other night, Babymamma and I were laying around in bed, in that not-unpleasant state of exhaustion familiar to the parents of toddlers. And I was thinking about this episode that had taken place earlier, in which Josie had grabbed three of her pacifiers from her crib (something she’s not allowed to do, and therefore does constantly) and marched into our room and insisted on being hoisted up onto the bed and then proceeded, for the next half hour, to rotate the various pacifiers from my mouth to Babymamma’s mouth to her own mouth. And the crazy thing (as I thought about it) was that Babymamma and I went right along with this game, even pretending to make ostentatious sucking noises with the pacifiers, which sent her into paroxsyms of glee. Which sent us into paroxsyms of glee.

    And occurred to me: Now that Josie is walking and talking and exercising her will unto the world, she’s basically like The World’s Most Charming Dictator Ever. I mean, she just marches around issuing orders (“up!” “walk!” “no!” “cheese!”) and we march around kind of shaking our heads and pretending that we’re the sort of parents who enforce some modicum of discipline and inevitably obeying her orders.

    Recently, we’ve found ourselves sort of asking her permission to not immediately accede to her wishes, negotiating with her, as it were.

     “No, baby, we’re not going to climb the stairs this morning. How about if we go read a book? Whatever book you want.”

     “Sorry Jos, we’re not going to jump on the couch. Okay, we’re only jumping on the couch for a second … okay, that’s the last jump … okay, last one …”

     Do you guys do this, too? Are we screwing her up? Babymamma says I should just chill. But I’m starting to think that, in our effort to make Josie happy, we’re risking turning her into, well, what we think of as “a charming dictator” but which might play elsewhere as a “brat.”

     Am I calling my daughter a brat? Not really. The fact is, she’s usually insanely charming to other people, and does well with other babies and toddlers, even. I’m just wondering how other parents deal with this question of when to gratify her (constant) demands, and when to say “no” and how to say “no.”  Because, as should be clear by now, we’re totally helpless in the face of Josie’s thermonuclear cuteness.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Kissin Cousins

Posted on February 29, 2008 by seesyong4

    I mentioned that we went to California, right? This was our annual Get-the-hell-out-of-freezing-New-England-and-let-the-grandparents-drool-on-Josie pilgrimage and it went just fine, thank you. The airplane ride is a bit more challenging now that Josie is a toddler (i.e. I had to walk her up and down the aisles 37 times). And Jos got herself a little fever that freaked us out for a night. But overall, she had a ball and got to know her grandpa Ricci and grandma Babs much better, to the extent that one afternoon I wandered into their bedroom and saw all three of them napping together, a sight of such unutterable cuteitude that it just about made my heart explode.

    But the highlight for Jos was the chance to hang out with her cousins Daniel and Lorenzo, the aforementioned Wrecking Crew. These are the guys, you’ll recall, who taught her to walk over the summer. They are two of the world’s sweeter human beans and they spent a long time hanging out with Josie and getting her to make the sounds of various barnyard animals.

    Being the sicko I am, all I could think as I watched them cavort was: Man, in ten years Josie is going to be crushing so hard on these guys she won’t know what to do with herself. But for now, let’s just leave these three to their innocent pleasures, such as examining the lawn (and each other) for potential bug problems…

     

 

      Oh, and doing some fine dining, of course…

 

     

 

    And a little alphabet work, naturally…

 

     

 

         

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Josie Meets Jade

Posted on February 24, 2008 by seesyong4

    Like a lot of kids, Josie is obsessive on a few subjects Among these (as documented) is cookies, for instance. The color yellow, her absolute autonomy at every moment of the day, pasta, and dogs. She is totally committed to dogs — “woof woofs” in the common vernacular — and will often stand at the window of our little house and make a forlorn woof woof noise. The problem with dogs, though, is that they are mostly larger than Josie and capable of knocking her down (without meaning to) and some of them bite.

    We managed to solve most of these problems with Jade. Jade belongs to our friends Katie and Closey. She is a teacup maltese. What does this mean? It means that — while technically still a dog — she can fit inside a teacup. I’m only half kidding. This dog is really unbelievably small. So the two of them did a play date yesterday, pretty much Josie’s Most Awesomest Play Date EVER. Check it out:

 

     

    Josie makes a careful approach…

     

     

    Some initial olefactory exploration ensues

 

     

 

    Oh yeah, it’s business time!

 

     

    The unsung joys of the chew toy

 

     

    This is a look that says, basically: I’m very pleased with how all that went and, by the way, until you get me one of those dogs I’m never going to be happy like this again for the rest of my life…

 

     

Posted in canine kissin, jade, teacup maltese | 5 Comments