Suddenly She’s Doing Stuff

Sometimes I like to engage Zoe by lying on my back on her play mat and closing my eyes for thirty to forty five minutes. During that time I become a human jungle gym. She’ll crawl all over me, back and forth, over the top, until either she offsets herself and falls on her head and screams or lands on my crotch and I scream. Sometimes, rarely, she’ll get bored and actually play with one of the dozens of toys spread across the floor. What she prefers to play with, however, is the pile of newspapers that “we will get to, as soon as we have a few moments,” or… well, basically anything that isn’t a toy. She is more likely to play with her toys if I am joining in, but if I am sitting on the couch (or engaging her from a horizontal position with my eyes closed while on the couch) she will need to be near me, climbing up the side of the coffee table pulling everything to the floor. There is basically a six-inch strip directly down the center of the coffee table that she can’t yet reach, but the coffee table only remains organized for about ten minutes in a twenty-four hour period. The rest of the time it is covered in crap that needs to be shuffled about whenever Zoe is awake. If I’m sitting at the dinning table she will need to be crawling around the legs of the table and chairs looking for old Cheerio’s to eat. And if I head into the kitchen she will follow me in and head straight for the cats bowls.

At ten months old, she is curious about everything and is so distractible that she gets distracted from her distractions. She has to explore every bag within reach, every cabinet that is open, and every speck on the floor. She can pull herself up, so anything that is within her reach she will grab. She has also been making climbing motions with her legs. She seems to know what needs to be done, lifting one leg to pull herself up, she just can’t figure out all the mechanics of the task. It won’t be long before I find her on top of furniture that was previously safe for all the stuff we pulled from lower spaces.

She has also recently started performing tricks on command, such as clapping and dancing (her dancing consists of a cute little head and shoulder wag). Yesterday I wanted to demonstrate--to a complete stranger at an Old Navy store--Zoe’s shuffling crawl, so I put my cell phone down on the floor and told her to fetch, and she obliged. I am now training her to fetch my slippers and the newspaper so I won’t need to get a dog. However, even though she has learned a few tricks, she still doesn’t understand spatial differences. When she gets to the top of the stairs she recognizes that it requires some different action but can’t conceptualize what is required. After she ‘touches’ the open space for a few moments, she will put her hand out as if she is going to crawl and just leans herself forward. I think she is trying to place her hand down on the next step. It’s a good theory but doesn’t explain why she’ll crawl right off the edge of the bed.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

There’s a Superfund Site in my Daughters Diaper

Zoe has moved almost completely to a real food diet, and we are living the consequences. The first is a glut of breast milk. It’s beginning to fill our freezer and refrigerator. Okay, maybe fill is an exaggeration but I wish breast milk tasted good on ice cream. I would not go wanting. The other is in her bedroom, used only for diaper changing these days (her crib is used only when I need her in a safe place for a few minutes—she screams like we’re breaking toes if she is left in there for more than ten minutes). Alison has suggested we make a mobile from air fresheners. I won’t go into the composition of her diapers contents, but I will say that I’ve learned to breath entirely through my mouth. In the past, in situations when excluding my nose from the breathing process would have been advantageous, I’ve always taken a little sniff, my curiosity always overpowering my better interest. During Alison’s cesarean the surgeon performing the procedure suggested I breath through my mouth (which did not help allay my anxiety.) I couldn’t help but to surreptitiously sniff a little—stopping short of a full nasal inhale—and was fortunate not to smell anything that would have provoked that legendary father-passing-out-in-the –operating-room-during-childbirth event. But Zoe’s diapers have transcended bad. We have crossed into another dimension. Trust me, it’s bad.

As I write this I’ve been watching Zoe play. For a few minutes she was content to take her plastic nesting boxes and repeatedly bash it into her wooden puzzle of farm animals. I can understand the pleasure she must derive from such an action. Often I wish I could smash with abandon without suffering any consequences. She then moved over to the pile of books (those cardboard ones that withstand multiple chewing’s) and actually flipped one open and turned a couple of pages. “Look, Honey, she’s reading!” She’s at an awkward stage where she’s curious about everything but does not have the coordination to do much about it. She can’t open boxes or operate her monkey-in-a-box or nest her nesting boxes. But she’s very good at pulling things off the coffee table and finding small, chokeable sized items that we overlooked on the floor. Speaking of choking, yesterday I took a First Aid and CPR for All Ages class. It was either that or clean and childproof the house. The instructor, a retired fireman (overweight, diabetic and leaning on a crutch) spent a third of the class instructing, a third telling ‘example of situation’ stories from his years in the fire department, and a third of the class raining doom down upon us in the form of doorstops, toilets, electrical wire, perverts, car seats, house plants, germs, cordless phones, and unscrupulous retailers intent on selling us parents useful albeit deadly accessories. Although I now feel a little more comfortable knowing that I have at least some inkling of what to do if Zoe gets eats my iPod Nano, I have decided that it would be a good idea just to move into an empty, padded (but not too padded) shipping container until Zoe is older.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

Year End Roundoup

It’s just past 5:00 PM on this last day of 2007. Alison and Zoe are napping before the festivities tonight and I'm sitting in our darkening living room watching a brilliant sunset light up the sky over the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. It was also just around this time of the day when Alison and I were married in this same room three years ago, today. In a week Zoe will be ten months old. Although not yet walking or talking she has definitely developed a unique personality and clearly remembers certain songs and books. When we play music she does this little shoulder and head dance that is cuter than a box full of rabbits. When we get to the, "Down came the rain," part in the itsy-bitsy spider song she does a big downward motion with her arms. And when we tell her we’re going to read her the Pajama Time book she gets all excited and does her little head wag.


And she may not be crawling but she’s fast and hardly ever falls and whacks her head anymore. She’s particularly interested in the cat food, and will cross the kitchen in the time it takes me to fill their bowls and put them on the floor. I have to remove her from the kitchen else she will pull their bowls away from them as they eat.

I’m also happy to report that Zoe seems to be eating enthusiastically now. After my last blog posting we discovered that she is a bit anemic, so I have made a big push to sit her down three times a day with iron rich foods. The most iron rich food is liver, and surprisingly she actually likes chopped liver. Alison, the resident vegetarian, is thrilled that she is getting the big doses of iron but refuses to cook or feed Zoe the liver.

Another thing we were told to do is to start brushing her teeth (she still only has the bottom front two). I was afraid that she would fight us but she really seems to enjoy it. We bought her own tiny little toothbrush and after we get her into her pajamas at night I’ll put a pin-drop of toothpaste on the brush and manage a good thirty seconds before she has had enough. She hasn’t really learned the spitting part, which is why I only use a dot of toothpaste. I think once she learns to spit it will be even more fun.

It’s time to get everyone up and ready for our big night in the city. I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that Zoe gets to visit with everyone who reads this blog.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

Zoe Hits the Road

It used to be that I could put Zoe down on her little play mat and basically ignore her while I did stuff, like write this blog (how can I be expected to write a cute blog about Zoe if she’s bugging me all the time?). Now when I put her down she stays put for maybe five minutes, than will sidle—no, more like crab-walk—all around the room to get into everything she shouldn’t get into. First she’ll make her way over to the stereo to fiddle with the knobs and to go through the CD’s and DVD’s. She’ll then make her way over to the fireplace tools. Once blackened, she’ll spend a while by the box next to the couch that holds all the take-out menus and electronic gear and pens and other do-dads that hang out in the living room. On her way across the room she’ll pause by the coffee table to see if there is anything she can reach that she can pull to the floor and hopefully tear. If not she’ll continue on to the stack of newspapers where she will sit for twenty minutes or more tearing them all into little shreds. If she still has energy she will make her way to the top of the stairs, and if I have not blocked the stairs with the box containing the uninstalled gate she will attempt to fall down the stairs. She actually knows what, “Zoe, please don’t do that,” means but chooses to ignore me.

It’s fun to watch her move about, and interesting to note how unaware she is of possible danger. Her head clears the coffee table by maybe half an inch, and I’ve been there to catch her as she simply leans forward and free falls at the top step. She has also learned how to open kitchen drawers, but doesn’t realize that they will hit her in the face if she pulls while she is sitting in front of it. Nor that she should remove her fingers before she closes them, something I frequently forget as well.. Fortunately I keep all the uninstalled cabinet locks in a top drawer, so she won’t choke on them.

She has also been eating a lot more solid foods. We had a ritual every morning where we would sit together on the floor and share a bowl of Cheerios in soymilk. Except today we had her nine-month checkup and I learned that she should not have soy for at least a year and that we should not share a bowl because of bacteria. Apparently I’m loaded with nasty bacteria. Not everyone, just me. The pediatrician suggested Cheerios in breast milk (yuk!) or formula. Definitely puts a kink in my morning bonding routine. I also do things like share my burrito with her. I’ll pull out a little piece of chicken or steak and suck the nasty spicy stuff off and bite it into a less chokeable size, and then feed her the licked-clean tasty morsel. Apparently another no-no. I would have thought the salsa would kill any bacteria. Fortunately she likes bagels and animal crackers, which don’t require the introduction of my bacteria to enjoy. When we give her the crackers she gets all exited and gives us a big head wagging smile. Then she will work on that single cracker for fifteen minutes, slowly turning it to mush, which she uses to create a cookie-kabuki mask. Fact: one animal cracker can cover a twelve square feet of surface area.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

The Big Apple of My Eye

Last week Zoe made her first trip to New York City (excluding a trip made in utero). We were only in town a few days (Alison was there for a conference) but it is mid December and it was cold (no I’m not a wuss, I’ve just become comfortably accustomed to California weather). With Zoe, there’s the problem of not knowing how cold she really is, so we simply pile her in many layers. We bought her a jacket before we left, and a cute monkey hat and mittens (it’s not a hat for monkeys, it’s a hat with a monkey mouth and ears—very cute). We also were given some fleece-lined pants. After layering her in a long-sleeved shirt, sweater and all the other necessary cold weather gear she basically sat mummified in her stroller in a semi-comatose state. Then again, when I take her for walks at home she reclines in her stroller in a semi-comatose state as well. Although in California we just call it being laid-back.

In New York Zoe experienced her first snow. Unfortunately there were only about a dozen tiny flakes, so I don’t think she even noticed. She also took in the art at MOMA, but slept though most of it (yey!). At the Metropolitan Museum of Art she was more interested in her three cousins and the skylights than the art. At the Italian restaurant she ate a double portion of paper tablecloth cover. At the Indian restaurant she was carried around by at least three of the waiters while we ate. I left a big tip. As we passed the horse-drawn carriages I stopped so she could meet her first horse. She seemed confused. Only after I had been petting them and holding Zoe’s face inches from theirs did one of the drivers (drivers?) tell me that they (they being the horses, not the drivers) sometimes bite. And she may have, it’s not really clear, she may have completely ignored the famous Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. If I had to hazard a guess as to what her favorite New York attraction was, I would say it was the large mirror mounted to the wall in our hotel room.

All in all New York was a lot of fun, but it was a short trip and we didn’t get to see everyone or everything we wanted to. Having a baby constrains one somewhat, as you are at the mercy of naptimes and other baby induced limitations. But on the other hand it is fun carrying her around the city, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of people telling me that Zoe is an adorable baby. Maybe the people who say that to me say that to every parent, even if their kid is an ogre, but I like to think it’s because Zoe is special. Take a look at the photos. I’m sure you’ll agree with me.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass. I’m behind in updating my photos, but check back soon and there will be some great new photos.

The Week after Thanksgiving

Last week we hosted eighteen people for Thanksgiving dinner, my excuse for not publishing this blog last Sunday. However, that means this entry is a bit longer than usual, which will either be a treat or a tedium you will have to endure. Speaking of Thanksgiving, our efforts to get Zoe to eat solid food is slowly progressing. Zoe has rediscovered yams—she was off them for a while—and Alison and I have begun feeding her tiny pieces of food off our plates. During Thanksgiving Zoe rejected the turkey but seemed to like the lentils (with five vegetarians in attendance we supplemented the usual with some specialty dishes). We discovered, however, that Zoe wasn’t actually chewing the lentils. The whole lentils continued to expand in her stomach and came out the other end plumper and juicer than ever. They were almost the perfect lentils, except for the fact that they had come out of her back end. I’ve also begun feeding her Cheerios. Dry Cheerios, however, get stuck in her throat, so I feed her little soymilk soaked O’s directly from my own morning bowl. I’ve included a video of this morning ritual. Zoe also enjoys eating socks, dirty tissues, cat food, particles off the floor, leaves and grass and pretty much anything that gets stuck to her hand. Most real food, however, will, after being masticated, elicit a gag and get pushed back onto her shirt.

Recently I discovered a local group of stay-at-home dads. They meet at various East Bay locations to talk about sports and trade baby gore stories. They then continue on to someplace for lunch that serves beer. Or more precisely, they continue on to someplace that serves beer, for lunch. I’ve been working toward regaining some of the pre-Zoe glory days of wasting a half-day at a coffee shop, and here I think I have found the solution. I meet other fathers to who also happen to like wasting half a day. This last Monday, after some quality kid time at a park, we traveled a few blocks to a local brewpub, where we proceeded to kill off at least four pitchers of beer while I sat and fed Zoe French fries. Zoe and I then went home and took a nap.

Lately Zoe has wanted more attention. She will be happy to play with her toys as long as you sit close by, preferably close enough so that she can climb on you. However, the minute you walk away, even if you stay in the same room, she will begin to cry. So, the moment comes where I need to bake a brownie. You know, offload some freight? Build a dookie castle? Squeeze a coily? Before I’ve even reached the stairs she’s crying. So I carry her down with me and plant her in the hallway outside the bathroom door, directly facing the toilet. I set myself down and discover that it’s not so easy to sink the Bismarck while your daughter is watching. So I partially close the door, but to keep and eye on her and prevent another crying fit I’m forced to play peek-a-boo at the same time I’m trying to put the fruit in the bowl. I can only tell you that it’s fortunate that I am a mature adult and can handle these situations with poise and what some might call savoir-faire.

The other day I was trying to straighten up and Zoe was in one of her stay-close moods. So I donned the Snuggly and proceeded about my business with her strapped to my chest. I thought she would get tired of it pretty quickly, but she seemed to enjoy attempting to grab everything within her reach. I was reminded of that character from the Schwarzenegger film Total Recall, Kuato, the small head and arms growing out of the chest of one of the characters. Except Kuato was the genius leader of the rebel force and Zoe is a jabbering set of moving arms trying to grab stuff out of my hands. Note to self: what did Kuato do while George, his host, was hatching a new superintendent?

Zoe continues to change in small, subtle ways. We actually play a game in which she participates. I take a plastic stacking ring and say, “Blue one on Zoe,” and place it on her head. She’ll hold her head steady for a moment while looking up, and then move her head so it falls. She then picks it up and hands it to me to repeat (and repeat and repeat). I sometimes shake things up by saying, “Blue one on Daddy.” Or I use the green or yellow or even the red one. Good times. She has even begun to study the little nesting boxes, as if she is trying to figure them out, rather than to just smash them against one another. And although she is still not crawling, she has realized that her almost-crawl needs something, so she goes from having her legs tucked under her to a face down, stretched out position, what most of us would call a nap. She hasn’t quite figured out that to actually get anywhere she then needs to move her limbs.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

With a BAA and a MOO

This week we all suffered through Zoe’s second cold. Zoe suffers because she can’t breath, isn’t sleeping well and generally seems to be under the weather. Alison and I suffer because Zoe is not sleeping well. And she hates getting her nose wiped. If nasal mucus glowed in the dark you would be able to see our house from the moon. I swear the next cold she gets I’m buying myself a hazmat suit. Mid week I decided the only way to clear the crusted on by-product of her cold was to immerse her in water, so once again I tried the ducky tub. If you remember the last time I tried the ducky tub, Zoe screamed the second her toes hit the water. This time I tried a different approach. I put her in the empty tub and slowly, one cup at a time, filled the tub. By the time it was filled she seemed to be enjoying herself, or at least enjoyed sucking the water off the bucket of toys I crammed in with her. I, of course, took the obligatory baby-in-the-bathtub photos, which I will save and use to blackmail her with when she is older.

Although Zoe is not crawling, she manages to shuffle around. However, she does so surreptitiously. I’ll look over at her playing quietly on her play area, and a few moments later I’ll look up and she will be playing quietly in the snakes’ nest of wires behind the TV. Because she has not started crawling I have yet to childproof any of our rooms. This of course means that one morning we’ll wake up and she’ll be standing by our bed demanding breakfast (which would require that she eats real food, another not-yet). I’ll be forced to duct tape her to the floor while I quickly hide all the breakables and screw the kitchen cabinets shut.

Yesterday I had a quiet hour to myself while Alison and Zoe napped. Since our house is actually one giant acoustic box and ninety percent of our floors creak (I’m planning on spray painting those areas that don’t squeak a bright orange so I know where I’m allowed to walk during nap time) I am limited to the kitchen. I was happily fixing a light dinner (pommes de terre with saucisson a la Provincal in a nice beurre noisette, you know, nothing fancy) and found myself repeating the rhyming text from one of Zoe’s favorite books, Barnyard Dance. “Stomp your feet! Clap your hands! Everybody ready for a barnyard dance.” I tried to force something from Springsteen into my head but instead I got, “Bow to the horse. Bow to the cow. Twirl the pig if you know how.” I fear that Alison and I will be dancing in the dark (did you catch the Springsteen reference?) and I will whisper seductively into her ear, “Bounce with the bunny. Strut with the duck. Spin with the chickens now cluck cluck cluck!”

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass.

Teeth, Tubs and Tests

As promised, the big news! Zoe has two teeth. The two lower central incisors’ have popped through and are like cute little razor blades. The good news is that it explains why she has been so grumpy lately. We’re hoping that with these new chompers of hers she will take an interest in eating something other than her toys and any paper product she can get her hands on. Since she puts everything in her mouth that she can pick up (or get her mouth to) I decided to trick her by giving her some apple and pear wedges as toys. She picked them up, looked them over, than casually tossed them aside. Maybe I need to carve her food into blocks or stuffed animals or books or anything that does not resemble food. Maybe I need to rub various food items on Alison’s nipples, you know, to get Zoe to equate one food item with another. Did you notice how mature I am not to add a humorous comment to that last idea?

It’s bath time, and we are excited to use Zoe’s new bathtub, a blow-up ducky with a bill that quacks when you squeeze it. Up until now we have bathed her in the kitchen sink using the faucet sprayer. She has always liked the water and we expected to be the laughing, happy parents watching our daughter splash joyously in her water-filled ducky tub. The tub, however, proved a bit difficult to fill, the faucet in the tub not reaching over the rim of the tub, so dad got a pre-bath, as did the floor. I got the camera ready (I put the pre-set to ducky tub) and we carried her into the bathroom. All was going ducky (yuk-yuk) until we started to lower her into the tub. As her toes touched the water she let out a scream and pulled her legs away. After a few tries (and the always futile attempt at reasoning) we were back in the sink. I guess this means early swim lessons are out of the question.

I gave Zoe a little IQ test, and she is off the charts.

• Test: Identify the pig (in a row of three animals). Result: She chose the chicken.
• This proves that Zoe is a Freethinker. A Freethinker is the cognitive application of freethought, a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logic and not be compromised by emotion, authority, tradition, or any dogma. We humans created identifiers, so who is to say a pig is a pig?
• Test: Which color is blue (choice of yellow or blue toy)? Result: She chose yellow and whacked herself in the head with it in her enthusiasm.
• Kudos, Zoe. This demonstrates your objectivism, which holds that she has a mind-independent reality. Or more precisely, that the role of art in her life is to transform abstract knowledge, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that she can comprehend and respond to with the whole of her consciousness. Such as whacking herself in the head with the color of her own choosing.
• Test: Put the smaller block in the larger block. Result: She put the smaller block in her mouth.
• Zoe is clearly an anarchist in her non-recognition of authority. Obviously she intended to connote a lack of control and a negatively chaotic environment. However, I think she prefers to be called a libertarian socialist rather than an anarchist.
  

For those not keeping track, Zoe turned eight months old four days ago. The fun is just beginning.

Tip: Click on the photo at the start of each blog to expand.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass.

Big Changes Soon (But Not Yet)

After a month-long hiatus I’m back with surprisingly few new developments to report. It’s been a difficult few months (see A Sad Goodbye) but we’re settling down and getting back to our routines. Zoe’s sleeping, never great before, has taken a real nose-dive. Last night she was up every hour for a quick snack and during the day she refuses to nap for more than a half hour at a time. She also lately seems to have a short attention span so I’m having to frequently move her from one activity area—play mat, ExerSaucer, bouncy thing that hangs in the doorway and causes you to bang your knee every time you try to squeeze through, soft two-inch pile lambs wool that I put on the kitchen floor with a few toys so she can keep me company while I cook until she falls off and whacks her head against the kitchen floor—to another. I’m assuming that Zoe is getting bored so quickly because she’s so smart she needs more challenging toys. I’m keeping my eye out for a used particle accelerator on Craigslist.

We’ve also had a setback. Back in my September 30th blog I ballyhooed Zoe’s advanced eating skills. You might remember a fantastic little video of her gobbling up a warm bowl of pureed yams. Well, thirty days later and yams are still about the only food she’ll eat. And even yam eating is dependent on her mood, time of day, hunger level, and number of distractions. We have added to the list of rejected food pureed chicken (actually, everything is pureed), store bought (yet organic) jarred food combinations, applesauce and butternut squash. I usually try to eat something while I’m feeding her so that, a) she learns by association, b) she wants something I have and, c) I don’t starve to death while I’m carrying her around the house the rest of the time. Today’s poll, how many of you had a breast milk only diet until you where in your teens?

As of this posting Zoe is not yet mobile, and with each passing day I say a little prayer of thanks. We had been worrying that she hadn’t shown any interest in being any more mobile than leaning too far forward while reaching for a toy and tipping onto her head, but the other day I realized that my being able to place her in the center of the bed while I used the facilities was a convenience I would probably not enjoy for too much longer. The first real motion we had came the other day, and we can all be thankful that I was right there with the camera (i.e. the video is at the bottom of this blog).

If I have sounded at all negative about her various lack of development I assure you that I am not concerned. I myself can’t seem to eat a meal without spilling something on my shirt, so if at forty two I’m not able to successfully feed myself why should I expect more from an eight month old? However, I will make a prediction that by the time I write the next blog something big will have happened. Stay tuned!

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass.

A Sad Goodbye

On October 3rd Dr. Alan Savitz passed away after a long illness. As a good friend of Alan’s said so eloquently, Alan loved to walk in, talk with, look at, listen to and eat up the best of the world around him and left it a better place for having been there. Alison and I are happy that he was able to spend time with his granddaughter Zoe in his final months and we are sad that he will not be here with us to watch her grow. Alan was an extraordinary man and we will miss him.