Milestones

As Edie progresses through each of the major milestones of baby-dom, Kitty looks on wistfully, wishing she could make it all go slower... as I silently high-five myself just out of eyesight.

Don't get me wrong, I know that one day I'll look back at these early days of my (hopefully) last baby and wish that I could have them all back again.  But not today.  Today, I'm all about getting out of the darkness of the baby cave as fast as humanly possible.  This is the downside of having a six year old and a baby.  You know that all of the literal crap that you're cleaning up now goes away.  Sure, it's replaced by new crap - but that crap is figurative, and therefore less smelly.

Let's review some of the big milestones of the last couple of months:

• No more cloth diapers - YES!
• No more formula - YES! 
• No more bottles - YES!
• No more 4000 lb infant carrier - YES!
• No more stupid rear-facing car seat that does nothing but make Edie scream - YES!

That said, there are some milestones that I'm in no rush to reach, such as the removal of the pacifiers or the crib, since anything that keeps the baby quiet and/or contained is all good with me.  Despite my comments above, I'm also OK with diapers.  Since Edie's a little girl, there's no actual crap - she just poops rainbows and ice cream.  Or at least I assume she does.  I don't change diapers.

That brings the remaining milestones down to the following:

• No more Lego eating: I hope we hit this one soon, since we've gotten kind of lax about the crumbling cardboard guardrails that currently separate Edie from 5000 Lego Star Wars characters, so carefully crafted to fit the toddler trachea like only the Danish can.  Quality control is so good there that I bet I could still choke on the Legos I had as a kid.

• No more baby gates: Again, the sooner the better on this, given Edie's tendency to see all physical barriers as obstacles to overcome through kicking me in the face, punching me in the face & screaming... at my face; plus she loves to slam dunk her pacifiers over these Tony Fernandez style, which while adorable, results in many pacifiers/shoes/socks in the cat food - which we protect with a baby gate.

As my boy Roger Murtaugh says on poorly dubbed network television broadcasts of Lethal Weapon, "I'm getting too old for this spit."