And we thought Seattle was rainy

Pop quiz: What's better than a 5 hr flight from Seattle to Newark with a baby?

Give up?

How about a 5 hr flight that's diverted to Syracuse due to thunderstorms, with (hopefully only) 3 hours on the tarmac, before compleing the final hour to Newark. With a baby.

If that baby were anyone other than Finn, I'd be jumping out the back and making a break for it, but the Ninja is handling it well.

Here's mommy sticking a spider on his face to distract him. Let's hope he doesn't get bored with the spider or it's going to get ugly. For mommy, that is.



-- Posted From The Syracuse Tarmac

Mobile blogging

In preparation for our big trip on Friday, I've downloaded a blogging app for the iPhone and this is the maiden post. Of course it was difficult to turn off the Yankee game to type this since they're actually winning for a change, but I make big sacrifices for my kid.

Whom I've now lost sight of.

Never mind. There he is standing on the window seat. See?



Impressive. He got up there all by himself. I did mention he's a big climber now, no?

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go post on Facebook about his impending fall. Does anyone know if I can get a doctor via Twitter?

This is quality parenting, 21st century style.

Dad's Day

Father's Day was everything that it is supposed to be. I got to sleep in (8 AM!), I had coffee hand delivered and I spent the day at a baseball game with my family. Finn was considerate enough to change his nap schedule for the day to free up our afternoon and he made it all the way until the 8th inning before we had to split. I don't care what was happening on the field, that was a major victory.

The only part that didn't go as planned was when Drew folded him up in the chair. In Drew's defense, he didn't see Finn standing on the chair next to him. Or maybe he did see him and Finn's first complete sentence was, "The Tarheels suck." Either way, one minute we were all enjoying the baseball game, the next minute Finn is staring at the sky and kissing his kneecaps. I'm sure he deserved it.

This picture was taken just pre-folding. You can totally see the wheels turning in Drew's head.


So a happy belated Father's Day to all the dads out there and a big shout-out to Kitty and the little guy that makes it possible for me to enjoy the holiday. I'm an extremely lucky dude, as I am reminded daily.

Now let's hope that luck holds as we prep for a cross-country flight on Friday...

Terribe, horrible, no good, very bad

With Finn's increased level of activity and seemingly incessant need to get all up in everything's business, comes a whole new level of mess. We barely washed this kid when he was a baby, but now it seems like he needs to be hosed down daily. He comes back from daycare soaking wet and muddy. He exits dinner covered in Ranch dressing and whatever healthy food the dressing was trying to mask. You can't tell where he ends and the pile of vegetables under his chair begins.

Even though he loves bathtime in the tub, running a bath every night always seems like too much work, so we mix it up periodically with a shower. This is a two person job. One person to hold him in the shower and one person to run around the outside of the shower curtain playing peek-a-boo. I drew the peek-a-boo card tonight which meant I was also on drying duty.

After a nice shower, there's nothing I enjoy more than doing laps around the house naked and it turns out that Finn is into that too. I figured I'd let him run around a bit while I got his diaper & PJ's ready. Bad idea #1.

I didn't notice the pile of poop on his floor until he had already stepped in it and was tracking it back toward the bathroom. I quickly scooped Finn up and threw him back in the shower with his mom. Bad idea #2.

We have an old claw-foot iron tub upstairs, and while quaint & cute, it doesn't really drain very quickly. Since Finn's feet were covered in poo, this now meant that the shower water remaining in the tub was slowly turning brown. Eager to begin trying to bleach her feet, Kitty washed Finn quickly then set him down outside the tub while I continued scrubbing the carpet with toilet paper (extremely effective). Bad idea #3.

Finn took off down the hall again, still unencumbered by any sort of poop prevention device. Knowing that he often saves "the best" for last, Kitty frantically tried to call him back to the bathroom; calls he ignored. When he finally decided to listen, he ran back to the bathroom at full speed down the hall, only to slip on the now soaking wet floor and lay out flat on his back, thunking the back of his head soundly on the floor.

The scene is now: me on hands & knees scrubbing poop out of carpet with fraying toilet paper; Kitty in shower, standing in poo water; Finn laying on his back on the floor, naked, screaming at the top of his lungs. Awesome.

Luckily, the tile is cork and the baby's head is apparently concrete and/or lead so no permanent damage appears to have been done to anything other than our nerves. And perhaps the carpet. Luckily we're still on a diaper service, so from here on out, I can just carpet the upstairs in cloth diapers for bath time.

I don't have a picture of Finn and poop, so here's a picture of Finn and Aunt Holly.

Hmm. Perhaps I could have phrased that better.

Cat's in the cradle

I used to idealize business travel. Expense accounts and frequent flier miles were something to look forward to, but these days I would much rather spend my time in my own bed, listening to Finn discuss current events with his Hootie owl over the baby monitor, than I would trying to figure out how to discreetly hack into the hotel neighbor's wi-fi.

I haven't had to travel for work since Finn was born, but that streak ended last week when I made it from Seattle to London to NYC and back inside 5 days and 2 hours, 5 days and 1 hour of which were spent in the air. This was by far the longest that I'd been away from the boy and in that span of time he has started shaving, been married (twice) and retired after a successful career as Journey's fourth lead singer.

He's also got a new word ("wa-wa", which we're pretty sure means either "flower" or "convenience store") and has mastered the art of mountaineering.

He was already starting to climb before I left, having summitted Mount Jungle Gym down at the park and regularly perching himself in the mini easy chair in the bedroom, but he is now legitimately climbing stairs - using feet instead of knees. He's also able to pull a wicked Luke Perry on the gliding ottoman in his bedroom.

That thrills me to no end and not just because I love to see him having that much fun. It's also because I really love Luke Perry.

It's good to be home.

Yes man

Most of the time, Finn is a very agreeable dude. Pretty much always, with the exception of feeding time which he still hates with every ounce of his being most days. Or at least it seems that way. Perhaps it's our fault, though. Maybe we're just not giving him what he's asking for -- which is a difficult thing to determine since he's not great at communicating beyond the banshee wail.

He does have words, like "yeah" and "dad" but I'm not sure he's really using them appropriately.

For instance, "dad" is any light fixture. The dome light in the car is dad, the lights in the kitchen are dad. Sometimes, even the sunshine is dad. I don't mind, I just wish these other dads would kick in for daycare or at least change a diaper every once in a while. Deadbeats.

As for "yeah", he can be counted to use it as a response to almost any question:

Do you like pepperoni pizza? Yeah.
Do you think Mommy is hotter than Megan Fox? Yeah.
Do you think Daddy is better looking and has more range to his right than Derek Jeter? Yeah.

He nailed the first two, but the last one made it clear that he has no idea what he's talking about.

He's thrown around some other sounds that could be words, including "Cash" for the cat and "hot" for the stove, but that may just be wishful thinking. Either way, he's getting closer, which can mean only one thing. Unless I want his first words to all have four letters, I'm going to have to start watching my mouth around the house.

Parenting is hard.