Milestones

Each developmental milestone in a child's life is met with mixed feelings.  For example, as of this weekend, Edie is no longer wearing her three-month clothes, is now sitting in a high chair at the table with us, and has jumped up to a #2 bottle nipple.  It's an amazing experience, watching your baby grow, learn and adapt to her environment, but there's a little bit of mourning thrown in as you watch the time slip away, knowing that you'll never have those early days back again.

Of course, none of that sappy crap applies to sleeping habits.  The sooner that this little bag of cry learns to sleep through the night, the better.  And so it was that we moved her out of our room this weekend and into her nursery and her crib.

And lo and behold, it happened!  On Tuesday night, she slept through the night, for nine straight hours. Kitty and I were still up every two hours elbowing each other in the sleeping ribs to see if either had fed her and then struggling to fall back to sleep wondering if she was dead, but whatever.  Sleeping through the night is a big freaking deal.  If we had known that all it was going to take was moving her out of our room and away from my snoring, we would have done this weeks ago.

Alas, it wasn't to last, since she woke up twice last night.  But now that we know it's possible for her to make it through the duration, the door is opened back up to that elusive benefit of having children that sleep through the night:  the ability to get really drunk again!

Just kidding.  We've been doing that anyway.

So as not to leave out our older superstar, Finn also had a big weekend/week.  He finally figured out how to pucker up his lips and gave me a real kiss for the first time in his life instead of haphazardly smashing his lower face up against mine like a disinterested fish.  He also had a huge breakthrough in the pool and is now willingly putting his face underwater over and over again.

While those are nice developmental steps, neither one improves my drinking, so we'll still give Edie first billing.

Priorities, yo.

Cheating

He's certainly got a Daddy belly

I judge my parenting success the same way that all other literary fathers judge theirs:  by the number of blog posts that I put up each month.  By this measure, July was not a good parenting month for me.  Only one post with any text and two cheating picture/video posts.

I have a really good excuse though:  beer tastes DELICIOUS in July.

But that won't come through in the Google Analytics reports that my children and  I are sure to be reviewing over the dinner table in twenty years, so I'm going to cheat and backdate this post (written on August 1) to July 31, so I can at least have four posts up in July.

Don't judge me.  I judge myself already.  Which is why I drink.  And why we subsequently don't have any blog posts.  It's a vicious circle.

Another reason that we lack posts this month is because we've been having too much fun.   And not just with our cross-country family excursions.  Just in the last week, Kitty and I have been having WAY too much fun, reliving our younger years at a couple of Phish shows.  It's too early for the kids to develop addictions to hacky sack and hemp jewelry, so Grandma flew out for the week to watch them while we went off to destroy our livers.

Boy was that a mistake.  Recovering from a debaucherous weekend is hard enough, but it turns out that it is significantly complicated if you've got a baby at home and are therefore not getting any sleep.

Whoops.

On the plus side, over the dinner the other night, my mother mentioned that while we were gone, she asked Finn what he wanted to be when he grew up.  After pointing out that I had wanted to be a volunteer firefighter or policeman (my wife can work!), Finn said that all he wanted to be was a Daddy.

After the requisite "awww"ing was done, I asked him why.

"Because Daddies have all the money."

Thank goodness.  I was worried that I had become a role model, which would be a lot of pressure.  Good to see that I'm still just the guy that buys Legos & ice cream.

Although after a weekend at the Gorge spending $13 per beer, if Finn were to see my wallet now, I'm not sure he would want to be a Daddy anymore.

Summer Trip

2013 Summer Trip, a set on Flickr.

Good times. Good times.

Suspicious Package

This arrived in the mail yesterday.  I need to figure out what list we're on so we can get off of it.  I don't need any more of these.



(Can also be seen here)

Travelin' Light

There's nothing like a family vacation to make you need a vacation.

Notes from the last two weeks, spent cruising the east coast and checking in with the families:

• Both kids traveled very well, which I can only attribute to the soothing smells of Daddy Travel Sweat.  Works every time.
• A 100% increase in children results in a 300% increase in crap that needs to be toted to and from the airport and between each house stop.  Huge props to the lovely folks at Hertz for driving us to the airport in our rental car, thereby removing at least one repacking effort from the tally.
• After a rough start in NY, Edie made liars out of us all with nothing but sleep & smiles for the rest of the trip.  This is the second consecutive year in which a child has deliberately contradicted the behavior documented in the blog, thereby calling into question my credibility.  Which is not difficult.
• Finn continued to prove that he is a master of travel with exactly zero issues, even though he had to spend hours in the car listening to his sister cry next to him.  Thank goodness for the lovely hot pink gun club ear protection that helped him drown out the sound, though it did result in a new car rule that people wearing ear muffs cannot ask questions.  Apparently, we can only take so many questions, immediately followed up "What did you say?"

More pictures will be coming along soon, but there were three other highlights that must be called out:

• This trip provided the much-anticipated Meeting of the Edie Parkers, with five-month-old Edie Parker facing off against her 98-year-old great grandmother, Edie Parker.  Handbag maker Edie Parker and former Jack Kerouac spouse Edie Parker were unable to attend but sent their regrets.

• This was also the first time that all of the Finn grandchildren were gathered in one place, which only proved that the rest of the world better watch out.  This is one good lookin' group. 

• And finally, we all got to wish MeMa a very happy birthday at the greatest lake/BBQ place on Earth, Winding Trails in Farmington, CT, where all of the lifeguards appear to have been ripped directly from the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.  I'd include pictures to prove this, but I wasn't quite sure how to approach them as a group for the photo op without sounding ridiculously creepy.  You'll just have to trust me on this one.

It was a blast, but I sincerely hope that we don't have to do anything like it again any time soon.  Really.  Any time soon.

I need a nap.

Fort

In both of his report cards this year, Finn's teacher took care to point out that one of the things he needs to work on is his soft hands.   OK, I suppose those are two things to work on.  While I was quick to note that soft hands are actually desirable for a major league shortstop, I was smartly ignored and we went about discussing things hobbies that he could pick up that could strengthen his hands.  And so it was that we entered the Lego Era.

What began as a fun activity that both Finn and I could share, with me yelling at him to follow the instructions and him smartly ignoring me (trend) and building whatever he wanted, turned into an explosion of creativity and innovation for Finn.  He very quickly learned his way around a Lego set and I became a creative liability in our partnership.  I chose to fill my role by purchasing ridiculously overpriced Lego-branded organizers to keep the Lego kingdom that's growing in our corner in check and promising to negotiate with Santa for more also-ridiculously-overpriced Star Wars themed Lego kits for Christmas.

As an aside, it's pointless to argue Lego economics with a five-year-old.  Cost means nothing to Santa, according to Finn.  I point out that while Santa can likely build the Death Star kit in his workshop, he still needs to acquire Lego materials from somewhere and even with the government subsidies that he surely enjoys, that's expensive.  I've been informed that I'm incorrect in this matter and that Santa has a line on all of the Lego materials that he needs at no cost.  Santa has a guy.  I need a guy.

After watching Finn immerse himself completely in all of these tiny little construction projects, it seemed like it was probably time for us to take the next step in our builder journey and build a fort.  A real fort.  Not the kind with couch pillows and blankets.  Yeah, let's build a fort.  We've got the space in the backyard.  I've got tools.  Let's do it.

In should be noted that this realization had absolutely nothing to do with the Father's Day article that I had just read about all of the awesome dads that apparently build their children their own working space shuttles every day of the week.  No, that article didn't make me feel like a total loser that's disappointing his child with his every non-space-shuttle-building breath.

Either way, now that I've made the mistake of actually verbalizing this thought in front of Finn, it looks like we're building a fort.  Because after all, the only way to be lamer than the dad that never builds anything for his kids is being the dad that promises to build something for his kids and then drinks beer in front of the TV until he falls asleep instead.  And I already do that enough.

Unfortunately, I'm completely out of my league when it comes to major construction projects.  So it's  a good thing that we're headed back east in a couple of days so I can consult with the handier members of my family.  I bought two idiot-proof books of fort & treehouse plans online and with Grandpa and Uncle Scott's help, we just might be able to pull this off.  By 2015.

Of course, if this turns out to be completely out of reach, maybe I can use all of the materials that I'll have purchased to build a box to keep the new Roll-over Edie model in.   And with that "parenting" distraction out of the way,  I can get back to what's important.  Drinking beer until I fall asleep in front of the TV.

Work

The unexpected passing of Tony Soprano wasn't the only thing giving everyone a case of the sads yesterday - the world at large also wept because everyone knew that it was Kitty's first day back at work.   After scrupulously reviewing our family budget 357,421 times over the past month to determine whether we could keep ourselves in organic toothpaste and hand-sewn Norwegian cloth diapers on one income, we finally came to the realization that it just wasn't possible.  

Lord knows that a life without artisinal truffle kale chips is not a life worth living.

And so it was that Kitty rejoined the workforce, but not before liberating Edie from the clutches of the baby factory daycare that we had enrolled her in and into the arms of our new nanny, Katherine.  It's obviously not as good as watching Edie herself, but we like our significantly reduced chances of catching the millions of baby diseases that teem through the depressing concrete-block infant daycare so much that it made the additional cost worth it.  Plus, having Katherine come over to take care of Edie every day has the added benefit of directing Kitty's frustration & anxiety away from me and back toward the person that now gets the pleasure of staying home with her daughter.  Which is nice.

Of course, we had to absorb the increased childcare costs somewhere and it wasn't going to be my beer budget, so we went with the most extraneous item we could think of - e.g., Finn's clothing.  What's that you say?  You saw Finn leaving the house this morning in pants that were two inches too short and a pair of dirty Crocs with white socks on underneath and therefore don't think that this is the time to start limiting his clothing options? 

Whatever.  He doesn't care.  His lunchbox is filled with delicious kale chips.  And that's really all that matters.