My Little Nadia

At gymnastics today Zoe became completely focused on the bar (no, not the kind that serves martini’s), and by the time we left at the end of our forty-five minute session she was able to complete her flips without my help. To perform a flip one needs to grasp the bar firmly, lean forward (there is a wedge-shaped matt that allows the little kids to reach the bar without having to be lifted or pull themselves up, and have enough clearance when they flip over the other side), and twist your body over the bar while keeping your grip firm on the bar. You tuck your head in, and if performed correctly, your feet land on the matt while still grasping the bar. Once you start spinning you gain some speed, and the hardest obstacle Zoe (and every kid in the class) had to overcome was the instinct to release her grip halfway through the spin. What’s surprising about this accomplishment is that while instructing her she seems to ignore all instructions. In fact, she seems to do the exact opposite to what I am telling her, and if I press her she will simply walk away. I should point out that the initial instruction took two people; the class instructor holding one hand firm to the bar and guiding her feet, and me holding her other hand firm to the bar and making sure she tucked in her head (so as not to break her neck, which is really bad form). Anyway, what this feat tells me, and should also be clear to you, the reader, is that my daughter is extremely talented and dexterous (and a bit obstinate). Please feel free to send letters of awe and amazement to my home address.

Zoe is adapting well to the new baby in the house. She knows that when the baby cries he is hungry and will tell you, “Baby. Eat. Boob.” When the baby is sleeping Zoe will put her finger to her lips and say, “Shhh,” then proceed to talk in a normal, loud voice. So far she doesn’t seem to mind the baby’s presence, and seems to have accepted him with hardly a blink. There were a few confused looks early on, but she acts as natural to having the baby around as she does the cats. In fact she seems to treat the cats and the baby almost exactly the same. I’m sure this will change as Calder begins to become more of a presence, and when she is allowed to interact with him more, but for now there seems to be peace in the house, if not a whole lot of sleep.

In our house old cell phones end up in Zoe’s play area, so it’s not uncommon to see her stumble across one and start chatting to various people. Her favorite people to chat with are Tallulah, her friend, but also Mommy, Papa (aka Grandpa) and Mama (aka Grandma). The calls are often brief and lately have gone something like this. “Hi. Hi Tallulah. Yeah. [Pause to listen] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Pause to listen] Yup. Bye.” I guess I should be happy that she’s not racking up imaginary minutes, because even imaginary cell phone bills will wipe out what remains of my investment portfolio.

It’s off to a slow start, but check out the newest blog in the family at www.calderchronicle.com

Our Morning

It’s 6:00 am. I let Alison sleep and head upstairs with Zoe. Here is our morning.

I set Zoe up on the counter while I heat up milk for her, make a cup of coffee for me, and Zoe helps me feed the cats. She always makes at least one of the cats wait for his food as she decides where she will place the bowl. Before we settle into playtime I check my emails and headlines on the computer while I drink my coffee. Zoe knows this is the routine but will still bug me incessantly. My coffee finished I move over to her blue play area. We start with tea. Minnie (Mouse) does the pouring and we usually do animal tea (toys from the farm and zoo get places in cups; sheep milk, tiger tea, giraffe tea, etc.). Then Minnie poops and we have to change her diaper. We have imaginary wipes and diapers, and we put them in a pail, which we then dump in an imaginary trash truck. Then it’s time to pretend change Zoe’s diapers (like I don’t change enough diapers in a day). Zoe wanders over to her books and pulls out an ABC book. We get halfway through, then some letter reminds her of something and she wanders off to play with the abacus on her activity block for a few minutes. Then she gets distracted and pulls down her two jack-in-the-boxes. We crank them for a while—I try to get her to jump with each pop of the weasel—then we move onto her shape puzzles. We do all ten then she leaves me to clean them up so that she can explore her toy box, where she discovers a book that makes music when you shake it; “Read, daddy.” After the book she opens her box of treasures (random small objects she has collected) and fiddles with her 3-D glasses for a few minutes. Then she wants to play the nighty-night game. This entails each of us taking turns lying on the floor and puling a stuffed animal/pillow out from under the others head, so it (our head) goes clunk on the matt. After she gets tired of that game she decides that she wants to see mommy, but gets distracted by the baby’s car seat on the way to the stairs. For some reason I pick it up and start spinning it with her inside, setting a precedent I would regret for days. After ten minutes or so my spine has popped out of my lower back and I convince her that we need to take a brake. She heads back to her toy box. On this trip she finds the soft caterpillar book. “Read daddy.” After the book, “Tea daddy,” but gets distracted by box of treasures; finds Thomas the Train card, so moves over to the Thomas the Train set and stands in the center of the tracks, accidentally knocking over the trains. “Uh-oh.” Pause; “Play-Doh, daddy.” I start to clear the activity table so we can play with the Play-Doh and find a tea set spoon in the crayon bag. We’re back to the tea set. I sit down in front of tea set but Zoe moves past me to toy box and rediscovers the caterpillar book. I suggest we have breakfast. “Read, daddy.” “Okay, I’ll read it once, then breakfast.” We read it three times. Zoe helps me make her breakfast of 1/3 banana, a one-egg cheese omelet, a slice of cheese and a glass of orange juice. We finish eating as mom comes up at 8:00.

If you think it was tedious reading this, try doing this every day.

Visit the newest blog in the family at www.calderchronicle.com

Zoe gets a Brother

Zoe was very excited on Tuesday, April 21, to meet her new brother Calder, who was born the day before. For months I had been preparing Zoe for the baby’s arrival with small details of what to expect. I told her, for instance, that the baby would cry a lot. Whenever we would see a baby while out and about she would put her hands to her eyes and go wah-wah. So when she met Calder and he indeed did started crying, she seemed more amused than upset. It’s hard to gauge Zoe’s thoughts on the new baby, but since we have made an effort not to deny Zoe any attention while at the same time we are showering attention on Calder the transition to a four-person family appears to have not traumatized her too much. It didn’t hurt that Zoe also received a lot of gifts along with her brother, and that the baby’s diapers happen to fit her baby doll. As time goes by we will know better how Zoe will adapt to this change, but for the moment we are jut trying to keep her from poking out a baby eye as she identifies his various parts.

Zoe is growing in many different ways. She is beginning to string individual words together, and her coordination is improving dramatically. For example, she recently put her shoes on and strapped them by herself (on the correct feet), and on her little push-trike she was able to strap herself in, which is slightly tricky. As a two-year-old she certainly has her moments of obstinacies. I’m not sure at what age she will learn to say, “I’ll try it myself, please,” rather than screaming, “Mine,” and yanking it away, but I expect that will go away faster than her habit of completely ignoring us when we are issuing commands. Which is probably why it’s so nice when we ask her to do something and she does respond:
Me: “Zoe, can you pick up that strawberry you just dropped on the couch?”
Zoe: “No,” and walks away. At least she’s not ignoring me.

One of Zoe’s cute quirks is her dislike of tags. All new toys must have their tags removed. Just now I had to cut the ‘only to be removed by consumer’ tag from her doll (which a few moments earlier she had been pushing around in the stroller and repeatedly crashing into chairs). When I tuck her in at night and spread the blanket over her, if I inadvertently put the tag-side toward her she will repeat uh-oh until I turn the blanket around. Come to think of it, this extends beyond tags and into everything that is obviously not ‘part’ of the item at hand. If she is eating an orange she will uh-oh the small, stringy pieces that cling to the side. If she is eating a plain bagel she will uh-oh the occasional sesame seed stuck to it, even though she will specifically ask for a ‘seed’ bagel at the store. I guess she feels that everything should have its place, and that even the smallest items should be dealt with. This world order has not yet expanded to her play area.

‘Life with Zoe: The Second Year’ is hot off the press at my Blurb.com bookstore (www.blurb.com/user/store/dbglass)
See all the recent (and older) photos of Zoe at picasaweb.google.com/dbglass
Visit the newest blog in the family at www.calderchronicle.blogspot.com

Introducing Calder

Calder Alan Glass was born on April 20, 2009 at 9:45 AM in Walnut Creek, California. He was 6 pounds, 11 ounces and 19 and 3/4 inches long. He arrived healthy and screaming (a good thing) with a full head of dark hair, and both he and mom Alison are both doing well. On Tuesday we left the hospital and returned home, where we could commence with our sleepless nights and pace the hallways with the new baby in the middle of the night without putting on pants.

Calder’s middle name ‘Alan’ was decided as soon as we knew we were having a boy. It was Alison’s father’s middle name and the name he went by. Alan passed away on October 3rd, 2007. It is my hope that Calder will exhibit many of Alan’s fine traits. The name Calder took a little longer to come by. There were many, many months of indecisiveness and hundreds of names were considered. We wanted a name that had some meaning to us (I suggested Bo, for President Barack Obama, but Barack and family named the first dog Bo a few weeks before Calder’s arrival). We mostly explored authors and characters from their books, my top runner being Roth (as in Philip) or Nathan (as in Zuckerman), who was Roth’s alter ego in many of his books. But as names were rejected, we started to explore places Alison and I had visited together (Zoe’s backup name was Hana, the small town on the island of Maui) and artists. Calder quickly became the front-runner, but even as we were entering the hospital we were thinking of other possibilities. Obviously we settled on Calder, after the artist Alexander Calder, and I feel that the name Calder Alan Glass has a particularly presidential ring to it, so feel free to address him as President Calder Alan Glass. It’s only a matter of time before it will be a requirement.

Photos of Calder can be found at picasaweb.google.com/dbglass/Calder1stMonth
And don’t forget to keep track of Zoe at lifewithzoe.com

My Little Angel

Sometimes when I get irritated with Zoe I have to remind myself that she is only two. Suddenly I find myself looking at those irritants with amusement. For instance, Zoe has a non-spill bubbles toy that she likes to have the top removed, making it into a sure bet that she will spill it. So my choices are a screaming child or soap spilled on the porch (for obvious reasons bubbles are an outside-only toy). So, I take the top off and a few minutes later she knocks it off the bench. She’s upset but I tell her it’s okay and refill the bubble container. She picks up where she lefts off, but she is in her bare feet which are now coated in slippery bubbles, as is the porch she is standing on. Woops, out go her feet from under her, and now she is sitting in the wet, soapy puddle; and crying because she fell. Think of how much more peaceful my time with her would have been if she had just kept the top on the bubbles. And even though I could have predicted the entire chin of events, it was amusing in retrospect.

I’ve discovered that Zoe understands Portuguese. Our house cleaners are Brazilian and like to hug and hold Zoe, and one of the women only speaks Portuguese. Today she asked Zoe, in Portuguese, where her doll was and Zoe pointed toward the windowsill, where the doll indeed was. I could run other experiments, but for now I will just assume that she understands Portuguese.

I would have thought she was too young, but the words poop and bum can make her laugh so hard she gets a case of hiccups. And if she passes gas she gets this big grin and yells ‘fart’. Until proven otherwise I’m going to blame Alison for Zoe’s sense of humor.

Zoe is playing with my phone (because I made the mistake of putting it down). I have a smart phone with a removable stylus. I ordered special styluses that also have a small pen built into them. We are out on the porch and I told Zoe that she could use my phone but DO NOT REMOVE THE STYLUS because it will fall (not ‘might’ fall) through the cracks on the porch. So she walks the three steps into the house and removes the stylus, then walks back outside and drops it onto the porch and through a crack.

Here are a few things that I find myself doing as a father that I never would have dreamed I would be doing.
• Sniffing her behind to see if there is a poop.
• Holding out my hand to receive a have chewed piece of food that she finds yucky.
• Singing ‘Wheels on the Bus’ in public spaces.

‘Life with Zoe: The Second Year’ is hot off the press at my Blurb.com bookstore (www.blurb.com/user/store/dbglass)

See all the recent (and older) photos of Zoe at picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

The Chronicles of Toilet

I recognize that by choosing to have children I have forgone my right to privacy. And I, once a modest person who only reluctantly used public bathrooms for those lengthier visits, now find myself having to entertain (and distract) during WC visits. But a person can only take so much. During a recent visit to the facilities, Zoe, as usual, joined me. I like to distract her while I am performing, since I will sometimes get stage fright. But a small bit of air escaped and Zoe proceed to chant, “Fart. Fart,” a word I swear I did not teach her. A few minutes later she got distracted by the door, and started to swing it back and forth. Two things; first, two-year olds have a propensity for closing their fingers in doors, so I have to by very diligent (which can be distracting in a negative way). Second, our bathroom is very small and the door will hit me on the knee if I don’t watch out. Zoe, after playing with the door from inside the bathroom for a minute or so, stepped out and pulled the door almost completely closed behind her. Ahhh, privacy. I closed my eyes and rested my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands (I really don’t get much alone time). Then Zoe charged in like a bull, propelling the door ahead of her. Fortunately my head prevented the door from crashing into the wall. I decided I would save all my business for when the children are grown.

Here are a few of our current daily rituals.

• If we travel from one floor of the house to another Minnie Mouse must accompany us. Going down she gets tossed from the top step, and with every bounce I must say, “Ouch.” If I am not around than she does the ‘ouch’ part for me. On the way up Minnie has to hop, but I’ve streamlined the process by making her do one giant hop from the bottom to the top.
• At meal times Zoe has to get her own placemat from the drawer. It doesn’t matter if there is one at her seat, she will get a new one.
• When we pull on a pair of pants we have to let her pull up the front. It’s a concession on both our parts; ours so she is participating in the getting dressed process, and hers because she wants to do it herself but knows she will just get frustrated when both legs get stuck in one leg hole.
• I can lift her into the car, but she has to climb into her car seat herself. I can latch the bottom portion of the seatbelt, but she has to do the top. If you forget and latch it, it must be unlatched so she can do it herself.
• Onesie pajamas; we do the bottom two thirds of the zipper and she has to finish. Forget and you have to unzipper and start again.
• We now do animal teatime. Animal teatime consists of putting the small, plastic farm and zoo animals into the teacups. “I’ll have a cup of giraffe tea, please.” The sugar is a little person, so we usually have little girl sugar.
  

There are many more, but I’ll save them for another day when I can’t think of anything else to write about.


Don’t forget to pick up you copy of ‘Life with Zoe: The Second Year’ at my Blurb.com bookstore (www.blurb.com/user/store/dbglass)

You can also catch recent (and older) photos of Zoe at picasaweb.google.com/dbglass

Acting Her Age

Zoe has developed a habit of storing food in her cheeks like a chipmunk. A chunk of apple handed to her at the end of lunch lasted through a long play session and was only reluctantly relinquished at naptime (after drinking her milk). An almond lasted at least three hours before we forced her to give it up, again at naptime. As a child I remember having trouble swallowing raw carrots. I would chew on them for ages but could not get the muscles in my mouth to complete the process. Zoe, however, doesn’t seem to be stuck on a particular food, and doesn’t always store the same foods. I’m not worried about this new habit, since her eating is otherwise normal. And Zoe seems to think it is normal to keep a piece of food tucked away and will happily open her mouth to show us whenever we ask (although she is somewhat reluctant to spit it out when we ask; try explaining the concept of asphyxiation to a two year old). I expect that this will be a short-lived idiosyncrasy, but I will definitely get concerned if she starts storing her toys in there.

I played a little trick on Zoe the other day, and unfortunately it has become a favorite game. It’s called ‘nighty-night’ (her name, not mine). We’ll be in the middle of some activity and suddenly she will announce, “nighty-night’,” and we will have to stop and play the game. Here’s how it goes: one of us will lie down on the floor (or ground, if we are outside) and put our head on something, such as a stuffed animal or ball. Whoever is not lying down will pull the object out from under the others head. We then say, cuckoo, cuckoo. It’s tedious now, but I still chuckle when I think back on the first time I did it to her. Another game we play—and this one has not gotten old yet—is to put her in the basket of her colossal Tonka dump truck, count one, two, three, then push her across the yard. A good push is when she gently hits something, like the shed or a bush without getting hurt. It’s sort of takes finesse, much like curling. Fortunately I have so far avoided accidentally pushing her down the stairs.

Somewhere along the way Zoe has decided that passing gas (a.k.a. farting) is funny. I guess if you has no inhibitions then squeezing a short tuba honk out of your rear end could seem kind of funny and not so much a social faux pas. Every time she lets one rip she gets this big smile, but she has also learned how to pass the blame. Following her joyous grin she will say, “Minnie,” who also gets blamed for all the soiled diapers in the house. I can already see that her younger brother will spend countless hours (after he learns to speak) defending himself against slander.

Don’t forget, Life with Zoe 2 is now in print. Get your limited edition copy now at www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/620442

The Preschool Edition, Part II

On a drive recently I handed Zoe a small cup half filled with cereal. After a few minutes she stopped eating and rested her head against the side of her car seat. A couple of minutes later her eyes closed. I reached back and gently removed the cup from her hand. She opened her eyes and reached out for the cup, which I handed back. Her eyes quickly closed, and after waiting a few minutes I again took the cup from her hands, and again she opened her eyes and reached for the cup. It is important to note that a sure sign that Zoe has fallen asleep is her hypnagogic jerk. It happens every time she falls asleep. So, I’m driving and waiting for another chance to grab the cup, when she does her little body jerk. I hear a rain of cereal settling about the car. However, she is still holding the cup, which still has some of its contents. Then her grip releases. Now she’s asleep.

After a difficult search, a dozen or more schools toured, registration fees sent to a handful of schools, and endless discussions with other parents at every conceivable opportunity, Zoe has managed to land one of the five girl spots at a coveted (or so I was led to believe) preschool. The entire process of getting her into a preschool caused me some stress, to the point where on more than one occasion I lay awake at night pondering the choices. My first choice was based on a number of factors, but as I mentioned in a previous post, it was the proximity to a coffee shop with free WiFi that really had me excited about the school. There is also a pizza shop across the street, a butcher that makes decent sandwiches, a cheap Chinese restaurant, a bakery, and a great independent fruit and vegetable grocer. All this and it’s only about a mile from our house, so I can easily walk there and back. I’m sorry, did you just ask me if it’s a good school? Did I mention that it was near pizza and free WiFi?

There are two toys that consume a good portion of Zoe’s attention. The first is her tea set, which I have mentioned numerous times before. I fear the word tea because it is my duty, countless times during the day, to sit down and go through the motions of serving tea. But the tedium of the activity is exacerbated by the second toy, a stuffed Minnie Mouse. Minnie must pour the tea, pour the milk, and spoon out the sugar, and Zoe has come to expect a little dance with each step. But Tea is not all. Minnie has to be included in every single activity we do. When Zoe’s diaper needs to be changed I first have to change Minnie’s diaper. If we travel from one level of our house to another, than Minnie must accompany us. And she can’t just be carried, she has to hop down the stairs. When we act out the book Barnyard Dance—another dreaded activity, performed at least a couple times a day—Minnie has to go through all of the motions. She goes with us in the car and on walks in the stroller. Zoe wanted her to join her in the bath the other day. And when Minnie went missing for a couple of hours all I heard every five minutes was Minnie. The only place that Zoe does not ask for Minnie is in her crib. Maybe she’s afraid that Minnie will hog the blankets.

You’ve waited all year for it, but it has finally arrived. It’s Life With Zoe, The Second Year. Yes, this exciting blog and hundreds of the cutest photos you can imagine all in one magnificently put together book. Order yours now and Zoe will never be far away.

Buy the book at http://www.blurb.com/user/dbglass

Best Dad Ever

This blog was written almost a month ago. Between then and now my computer hard drive failed. There were many hoops to jump through (and one moderately sized check to write), but thanks to my good friend Mark my computer ended up in competent hands and not only were my documents saved, but the six thousand (yes, six thousand) photos were saved as well. Enjoy.

Here is a quote from the father of Zoe’s friend Tallulah (passed along by Tallulah’s mom): "I think David is the best Father. He is so terrific with Zoe, he does an amazing job." Now, I’m not sure how he came to this conclusion, but who am I to contradict him? I plan on using this quote frequently.

Speaking of being the best father, from this same couple I often hear about activities that they are doing with their daughter, and I think that I too should be doing those same activities and wonder why I didn’t think of that as well. For example, they are always talking about the art projects their daughter Tallulah is involved in. Now one problem I have is I don’t like a mess, so I have always avoided those activities that are messy, such as painting. Just the thought of a paintbrush, dripping with bright, wet colors in the hands of Zoe gives me chills. But not to deny her an artistic outlet, this week I purchased a batch of Play-Doh. We have a designated area where we play with the dough, but it’s not surprising that there are now squishy specks of color scattered about the room. And I’m not sure how it is improving her artistic skills, since she mostly likes to just take the dough in and out of their little jars.

This week Zoe came down with a twelve-hour virus that had her throwing up about every twenty minutes for the first half of the day. Our house was scattered with various towels to try to catch the offending outflow, which nevertheless usually ended up on one of us. The only positive to come out of this is that by the end of the day, whenever she saw a towel she would say blah, while sticking out her tongue. I’ve taught her how to make fake throw up sounds; my work is done.

Okay, this is old material, but here it is. The other day I could not get Zoe to try some piece of food that I had prepared. She adamantly refused all my tricks to get her to taste it. However, in the last week I’ve caught her licking the kitchen cabinet handles, licking the dishwasher door, eating Play-Doh, picking up and eating food off the playground, and sticking a crayon in her mouth. Am I just serving her the wrong food? I see lots of trendy baby food at the market. Maybe I should star my own line of food that looks like trash. In the instructions I will direct the parents to either leave it on the floor or smear it across a piece of furniture.

Zoe Turns Two

Yesterday Zoe turned two. I looked back (on this blog) about what I had to say on her first birthday and to see how far we’ve come (lack of sleep has caused me to blank out the previous twelve months). With all the changes we’ve seen over the last year the first thing that comes to mind is Zoe’s recent and often repeated phrase, “No, mine.” I commented on her use of this phrase a couple of weeks ago, but beyond being an attestation of the infamous age of two it shows how independent she has become. She uses the phrase when we leave the house; I can’t carry her down the forty steps to the street, she has to walk down herself. I’m not even allowed to hold her hand. She uses the phrase when we get to the car. I am no longer allowed to lift her into the car seat; she has to climb in herself. When it’s diaper changing time she says it as we enter her room, meaning she will climb up onto her changing table herself. Once on top I am not allowed to position her, she will get herself into the proper position by herself, which is actually sort of cute (or ironic), since her independence doesn’t extend as far as using the potty.

There are other indicators of how fast she is growing. A year ago she was just starting to stand and she wasn’t talking. A year ago I could use the bathroom without her needing to join me; and without the additional five minutes it now takes because she has to walk down the stairs herself, stopping every few steps to exam some piece of dirt she finds along the way. I see her changing emotionally as well. When we read her a book with a sad part, she gets sad and sometimes we have to stop for a hug and reassurance that everything will turn out fine in the end (she is allowed that luxury as a two year old). She remembers things—even the smallest things—that happened to her sometimes months earlier, like receiving a bag of peanut M&M’s from a flight attendant on a trip, and pointing up into the air every time she sees a bag at a store. And I don’t know if she does this ironically, but when she sees towel she makes a fake throw up sound (she sticks her tongue out and says, “blah.”) from her experience during an illness, when we kept a pile near us for vomiting episodes.

Zoe’s second birthday party was a huge success; she scored a huge pile of birthday loot. The party started at three and stretched past her bedtime, and this morning was the first time I’ve seen her so absorbed in her toys that she didn’t need to sit on the counter while we prepared coffee, fed the cats, and prepared her morning milk. I’m not always thrilled with the idea of children getting huge piles of gifts (although I’m perfectly fine if people give me huge piles of gifts), but Zoe’s toy box is filled with stuff that dates back to her infancy. Also, this was the first opportunity to give Zoe gifts based on things that she has shown interest in, not just random things we thought she might like. She may cast off these new toys by the end of the week, but for the moment we can enjoy her joy.

There are some changes I am looking forward to, such as not having to change Zoe’s diaper or having her sleep through the night. But like a year ago I will miss the baby that is disappearing. I know that there are a lot of exciting times and plenty of changes still to experience, but I for now I can still get choked up thinking that soon I would be sending her off to school and into the big wide world.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZOE.