In which I learn the importance of the diaper bag

I like to think I'm getting better at doctors visits.

I used to  enter into the office like an awkward hurricane, a class 5 mess clumsily hauling a baby in a car seat, several toys and a diaper bag packed with solutions to any baby related problem. It was awful. By the time the doctor showed up I was a flustered, sweaty mess. I've now eliminated the fat and just carry the baby. I gamble they'll get me in and out and I wont have need for the desert island survival kit in the diaper bag. 

I'm at the office of one of Abbys specialists. I really dislike this office; they have Fox News on in the waiting room and the staff is rude. Its drive through health care with none of the speed but all of the impersonal dullness. Based on our visits so far, we wait an hour for every five minutes we see the doctor. I hate this place.

The old ladies sitting across from us have stopped talking about how cute Abby is and are now whispering and trying not to look my way. I'm too distracted to notice.

I play with Abigail while we wait, most of my thoughts directed to how much I hate waiting around just to receive bad news. Im distracted enough not to notice the change in Maude and Eustice across the way, to not notice the change in Abigails demeanor. The smell brings me back to the world.

Tank, destroyer of worlds, has launched an attack on the clinic. The diaper bag is in the car on the other side of a large parking lot on a 105 degree day.   A moment passes where I seriously think about feigning ignorance, bringing her into the appointment then dealing with the problem after.

As I pick her up for strategic repositioning I realize the magnitude of the problem. I understand why Mildred and Velma don't want  to look at Abby. What I assumed was a minor setback is in fact a disaster.  We have a full blowout while wearing white pants. She's covered in filth from the middle of her back down to her knees. I unknowingly displayed this horror to the entire waiting room for at least five minutes, a stinking testament to my distracted parenting.  

I sprint across the face of the sun, grab her diaper bag and return to the waiting room drenched in sweat dragging a wretched baby and a survivalists diaper bag.  The woman behind the counter directs me to the bathroom. I'm not sure if the pity in her eyes is for me and what Im about to deal with or for Abby and whats she's going to have to deal with for the next 18 years.

The bathroom is small and hot; the minute we walk in Abby starts to lose her cool. I fumble about until  the entire diaper bag is strewn across the bathroom. I find what I need: her changing mat, a diaper, every wet wipe in the bag and a change of clothes.

Changing Abigail is a battle under the best of circumstances. She kicks, turns and flails her way through the entire process. Trying to change her in this hobbit sauna is a nightmare. Her mat slides all over the changing table making it nearly impossible to corral her. Im pouring sweat and cursing, she's screaming at the top of her lungs. Im surprised nobody in the lobby called the cops. "Yeah, Im pretty sure theres a drifter having a knife fight with a baby in the bathroom. Can you send help?"

Ten minutes, 45 wet wipes and one full clothes change later we emerge from the bathroom. My hair is soaking wet from sweat, I've taken off my dress shirt and Abby is royally pissed. I greet the doctor wearing an undershirt and looking like I just stepped out of the shower.

What comes next is worse. Abigail has a clot behind one of her ear tubes, they need to go in and replace it. She got another ear infection because the damn tube is sealed shut. The kid can't buy a break.

I know it could be worse. I know there are other kids and families that have it much worse. But dammit, at this point, on this day I just want something to go smoothly for her. I want her to be able to go two weeks without her cough coming back, without having tubes shoved in or yanked out of her ears.

Until that day we'll wait for specialists and have meltdowns in lobbies and bathrooms. We will cut a smelly, sweaty path of destruction across the city until this kid is better. Fear us, we are a hot mess.

The Claw Scoot Revolution

Tank is taking over the house.

 Im  not sure yet if she's plotting against Mary and I, but I do know she aims to take down the dogs. Its not that the dogs bother her, they simply don't give her the respect she thinks she deserves. If she can't earn their respect through petting and delighted squeals, she'll earn it through intimidation. She runs the floor, they need to know that.

Meeting with her war cabinet. Left to right: Lt. Gen. Jiggle Ant,

 Field Marshall Lion, Col. Krinkle Owl. 

Her crawl was unconventional enough to lure them into a false sense of security. She drags herself along the ground with her right arm and kicks her feet while her left arm swings in the air ready to grab, push, pull or slap. It looks as if half of her is trying to swim in a winter coat while the other half is crawling up the beach. On first glance its not a crawl to be feared.

Its not graceful, but what she's pieced together is deadly, a sneakily efficient utilitarian scoot. She's fast and quiet. Her knife hand is free is anyone gets mouthy.

The dogs are in flight. I've told them Abby will be eating real food soon and then they'll be best friends. They don't buy it.  As soon as they settle Abby runs them off. Respect will be earned.

Cheeks and Lion detained for questioning

Baby Babble, Worry and the Woman Behind the Curtain

Abby gets monthly visits from a wonderful, helpful woman from First Access, an organization that helps kids that are at risk for developmental delays (in Abbys case, being born two months early).She checks where Abby is at developmentally, gives us advice if theres something we need to work on and generally makes us feel better about one of the more terrifying aspects of having a premature kid. She's fantastic.

We also go to the developmental center at Blank Childrens Hospital once every couple months. Its a sparkling new facility at the hospital where Cheeks lived for her first month or so.

Walking into Blank throws me off my game. It shouldn't, the people were great to us and everyone left healthy and happy. There just something about that place thats an accelerant to my neurotic awkwardness. Its weird. A picture of her from her NICU stay is hanging in the lobby of the developmental center. What should make me happy and proud makes me uneasy.  I hadn't looked at pictures of her in the hospital in a long time. That stay seems like a lifetime ago; shes small and vulnerable, nothing like the kid I'm struggling to hold onto in the lobby.

I barely recognize this kid

We were ushered into the room, Abby got stripped down to her diaper and weighed and measured. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Abby in her diaper, wrapped in a flimsy blanket. Me pacing around the room trying to keep her distracted. After 30 minutes of pointing out various pictures, lights and mirrors shes had enough and is filing various complaints with me. Abby and I spend a lot of time waiting around at Doctors offices. We're not getting any better at it. Tank is getting worse. After 45 minutes  my irritation is turning to anger, I'm gaming out scenarios in my head, most of which involve something radical like writing a strongly worded letter. Cheeks is out of control, screaming epithets, throwing things,making threats.

I go back to whats usually the Tank neutralizer, the giant mirror in the room. I realize its a two way mirror and shut off the lights. Sitting behind the mirror is the lady we have the appointment with. We see her, Abby cusses and she comes into the room to start her assessment.

When I ask here what she was doing behind the mirror she says paperwork. I think back to the time in the room, cataloging any curses, threats or bodily noises made by me or Ms. Cheeks.

The next 45 minutes are spent making me pay for my insolence.  The questions are all asked as accusations, like someone emphasized the wrong words in her script and also maybe put in random exclamation marks. The cumulative effect of the questions is to make me think I don't know my kid at all.

"How much does she eat a day?"   

Uhhh, well theres a bottle in the morning afternoon and evening and some of that mashed up gunk.

*annoyed sigh* How much!"  

Oh ahhh...hmmm. Carry the one, minus spillage...uhhh 28 ounces?

"Is she crawling?"  

Well shes kind of scooting. She gets where she needs to go. That kid is a monster scooter. Fastest scooter I've ever seen, thats for sure.


"Crawling. Knees tucked. Crawling"


Well no. She kind of drags herself with one arm and keeps an action arm free for slapping or grabbing. She's developed her own technique, like Bruce Lee with Jeet Kune Do.


"Hows her talking?"


Well, she yells a lot. Sometimes its excited yelling. Sometimes it angry. Rarely sad. The happy yell is fun, though I think technically thats a squeal. Technically. 


"But talking.Goo goo. Gaa Gaa. Daa. Daa. That. Talking. Any of that?

No, no babbling.

This is a problem. She's lagging in communication, they'll need to see her again in a couple months. Its likely that her hearing issues are the cause but they're not sure. We know she's not deaf, she responds to our voices and noise. We dont know how well she can hear, or if she can just now hear us after the tubes.

If Abby had showed up on time and everything had gone smoothly I'd still be a worrier. The fact that she was early and had a bumpy first month makes me freak out over everything. The constant monitoring of development means I'm always thinking about where she should be, why she isn't there and what we can do about it.

I need a subscription to Fretful Father

The meeting with the developmental  robot has me worried she cant babble because of my bad parenting. It seems all we can do is wait. I already babble at the kid all day. I beg her for a Da Da everyday. I have long, rather one sided conversations with her all the time.  If anything I talk to her too much! We went grocery shopping Saturday and I was talking to her about the role of regulatory agencies* and a lady buying milk gave me a very worried look.

Now we wait and enjoy our beautiful little girl. And I worry.

Chill out, Im fine.

*In my defense, Abby started bashing the EPA. She started it

Old

Im officially old.

Mary points out new white hairs on my head and beard every day. The highlight of my weekend was getting ten hours of sleep Saturday night. I went to bed at 9 and slept until 7.

Abby wakes up at 6 at the latest, she's our alarm clock. Last weekend I woke up before her and felt great. "Wow, Abigail slept in! I feel great!". It was 6:20 in the morning. I "slept in" until 6:20am on a Sunday. OLD.

I traded in my Honda Civic last week. It was the first new car I ever purchased. The Civic treated me well in our time together, the first car I ever owned that was good to me. I thought she was pretty. She was reliable. She was always there.

The car I was in a relationship with before the Civic was a 1993 gold Chrysler Imperial. She was unreliable, big and ugly. She was horrible to me but I couldn't get out of the relationship.

I should have seen it coming when, after having her for a month, she broke down on me right in the middle of our college campus. There is nothing the ladies love more than the sight of a guy pushing a broken down gold boat down the middle of the street.

I broke it off with the Imperial when the power brakes and transmission both went out simultaneously as I parked on the top floor of a downtown parking garage. The garbage barge would now be impossible to stop. I constructed my gameplan for getting out of the garage: 1. If the breaks don't slow me down pull the emergency break. 2. If that doesn't work throw it into park, the transmission is already screwed. 3. If all else fails consult a bible.

Basically, the parking ramp turned into my own personal terror luge. The minute I got rolling downhill I forgot the plan and just laid on the brakes and horn as much as I could until I hit the street. The security footage would show a gold blur , horn blazing with me behind the wheel screaming in terror.

That was it. I managed to get  the car back to my aunt and uncles and found a place that would tow it away AND give me forty bucks.

When I get back from work that day there was an envelope in the door containing fifteen dollars. The guy pulled up, looked my car up and down and decided no way in hell he was going to give me forty bucks for it. Nope, thats not a forty dollar car. Thats a fifteen dollar car.

Screw the Imperial. The Civic treated me right. I would driven that car until the wheels fell off if it had four doors. A fat guy, a two door civic and a baby is fine as an intro to a terrible joke but makes for an irksome reality. Getting a car seat in and out of the car was a pain. I had to tilt and twist Abbys car seat to get it in. She enjoyed the cut rate amusement park ride, my back didn't.

When we were looking for a replacement car our priorities were roominess, safety and reliability. Responsibility is sexy! We ended up getting a 2012 Ford Fusion and really like it so far. Abby misses her daily carnival ride but is enjoying the smoother ride, the quieter cabin and better sounding Yo La Tengo.

Smooth ride. Quiet cabin. Airbags. If I keep aging at this rate I'll be eating Abbys pureed chicken and peas in under five months.

Catch up

Session is done. My bitterness level is down from "I hate everyone" to "I hate a lot of people but probably not you". I think I can write again.

Lets play catch up.

Abbys health: It was a rough winter for Abigail. She was illness free all of two weeks from January to May. The rest of the winter she had a bone rattling cough and a double ear infections.

Listen to this cough. This is the worst thing I've ever heard. I'd listen to Fran Drescher sing the entire Kid Rock catalogue before this cough. It pained us every time she went into a fit. There was nothing we could be but try and calm her down, then worry.  Abigail felt like this for months. Terrible.





Cheeks ended her first Easter in the hospital with Pneumonia.  She'd been sick all week, we thought she sounded terrible and the urgent care clinic agreed. We decided we needed to take Abby to urgent care after dinner at my folks house. Not knowing where we our day was headed I gorged myself as is my easter tradition (its a holiday I honor everyday).  This is not a sound strategy for a night at a hospital. Instead of passing out in a chair I fought back deviled egg burps while talking to an emergency doctor. If I've learned anything from Abbys health problems, its that if you burp deviled eggs into your doctors face your room will be a recently converted utility closet.

Abby was a trooper at the hospital. She's been a champ throughout all of her illnesses.The only thing she knew was sickness. The fact that she resigned herself to feeling terrible depressed me.  She'd cough, look up at me with tired puffy eyes and shrug her tiny shoulders. "Hey Dad, this is life and life sucks."

sick sick sick 

The children's hospital emergency room is never a happy place, but it has to take on a special grimness on a holiday. People dressed in their sunday best sitting next to wailing, sick or bloody children.  One of the things we discovered at the children's hospital is that there may need to be a looser definition of child. The patient across the hall from us was in his early teens and getting his shoulder popped back into place. It was  Kenny Powers muppet babies. "AAHHHHH YOU ************ IMMA CUT YOUR **** OFF YOU AHHHHH MOMMA **** THIS ****** ***** DONT TOUCH ME AGAIN YOU ***** OH **** YOUR ICE CREAM ************." The poor kid sounded like he was in tremendous pain, but he was cursing just beautifully in a prepubescent high pitched voice and it was killing me.  I wasn't laughing at his pain. I was laughing at his art. One of the few things I'm good at in life is cursing. If you can make me blush you should graduate to the regular hospital.I tip my hat to this vulgar Shakespearean tadpole.

Also, one of the medications they put her on made he stool look like red velvet cake. That was interesting. Dark red velvety stool. It made it look like Abby had a chest burster alien gestating in her stomach. I wonder how often they forget to give warning about the side effects, leading parents to sprint the emergency sure their baby just crapped out a kidney.

Abigail was released from the hospital after a day of treatment. The doctors referred us to an ENT for the ear infections and a pulmonologist for her cough.

Go home, you're both too pretty for the hospital.

Abigail has failed her hearing tests because of fluid behind her ears.  The ENT said they have to assume she has hearing loss until she proves them wrong. I understand this, it makes sense. That doesn't make it less terrifying. "We're going to assume your house is burning down until you get home and its not". "We're going to assume you got fired until you get to work and your badge works." Oof.

The first step to proving them wrong was getting tubes in her ears. The fluid behind her ears was thick, she was really sick. We've noticed a big improvement in her mood since the tubes were put in, she's more vocal and seems to be able to actually hear us. She goes in for a new hearing test this week, we're hoping she proves them wrong.

The pulmonologist has been treating her cough with allergy medication, breathing treatments and an inhaler. The treatments have made a big difference, but she hates them. Gassing her has never been easy, its almost impossible now that she's 18 pounds of wiggling fury. Hopefully we can ween her off of the treatments as the summer goes along.

Development: She's catching up to the punctual babies in almost every area. They want her to be at least at -2 months on all her developmental goals, so at the last check up they looked for her to be at 6 months. She was at 8, her actual birth date. Fantastic. She's catching up in weight and height, her head continues to grow at superhuman rates.

She's crawling, she's sitting up, her teeth coming are in. Fun. She doesn't want to be held, she wants to be on the ground causing trouble. I was playing with her on her xylophone today and it occurred to me that this kid was really damn boring up until two months ago. Always cute, always loved  but kind of boring. What was a nice art installation has turned into this fun badass kid. She's chasing the dogs all over the living room, bullying them out of their favorite spots. Their quite life of leisure is over.   If she had been born on time she'd be king of the babies. A mad, bulbous cheeked tyrant ruling polk county babies with chubby iron fists. Generalissimo Cheeks.

The teeth make her dangerous, two on the bottom and fangs on the top. I was playing with her yesterday and she bit down on one of my fingers. If I had been asleep I would have woke up with a bloody nub where my index finger used to be. The fangs are impressive. She either wants to taste dog flesh or is really excited about True Blood coming back  next week.

She's feeling better. She's playful and talkative. She's happy, we're happy. Everyone is happy except the dogs, who are just looking for a place to lay down in peace.

Im going to play you a song about feeling good

Molly the killer

Warning: Non Abby Post ahead

Our lab Molly is a pansy. She's 60 pounds of sweet, nonthreatening dumb.

 I've seen this dog lose a street fight to a squirrel. Molly misread the squirrels body language and thought it wanted to be friends. She picked the squirrel up in her mouth and started to give a guided tour of our backyard. The squirrel, apparently disapproving of the itinerary, bit the hell out of Mollys mouth. Molly ran back into the house whimpering, disgraced and beaten.  My 60 pound dog got ran out of our backyard by some smug neighborhood squirrel. 

This dog is not as tough as she looks

We've been giving her a hard time about this ever since. 

"Oh, you're a big dog barking at those people in the street. Big tough dog.  You weren't  acting so tough that when the squirrel kicked your ass!" 

"Seriously, you're barking at that deer? That thing is like 800 squirrels. And it has horns. Seriously Molly. You're embarrassing us both."

We may have pushed her too far.

I was under the weather all weekend, oblivious to everything other than the pain in my head and the heating pad I was laying on. I was dozing on the couch when I heard Mary yelling out the back door.

"Nonononononono! Oh run run squirrel oh no she's going to get himmmmm no run squirrel you're almost ohhhhhh no!"

By the time I got to the backdoor the squirrel lay wounded in the neighbors yard and Molly was doing one of many victory laps. The squirrel got free, made it through the fence and crawled halfway up the tree before succumbing to her wounds and falling to the ground. It landed in our neighbors yard, dying.   I threw on some clothes, grabbed a trash bag and a shovel and walked around the block to the neighbors house.

Our neighbor is a sweet older woman. She lives alone and loves animals. Loves them. She lays out corn and sunflower seeds every day in the winter to feed the deer and squirrels. I'm nervous about what I'm walking into. 

She doesnt answer her door. A needed break. I head to the backyard to finish my quest and she greets me at the backdoor. She mumbles something about not wanting to answer the door because she wasn't put together but I think she was just reluctant to open the door for me. I look like hammered hell. I'm sweaty from the fever, I have mad scientist hair and Im carrying a shovel and black trash bag. I look like I just graduated from murder college. I could hear front doors locking as I walked down the street.

When I told her the reason for my visit she looked ill. I  hoped she would go back inside after I explained why I was in her backyard but she wanted to see. 

"So, ugh, there it is."

"Oh no, no no no. He was such a nice one. Ohhhh no. Such a playful friend."

Oof. I feel awful. Nice neighbor is upset by the death of this squirrel and I feel responsible. Also, its a damn cute squirrel, straight out of squirrel central casting. It would not surprise me if this squirrel was signed to be the third male lead in the live action Chip and Dale Rescue Ranger  movie.

The squirrel is still alive.

"So yeah, I didn't want to scare you by just coming into your backyard. And I didn't want it to suffer anymore or for you to have to deal with it so if you want to go"

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, uh, I guess I have to kill it?"

The reaction that got, the pain it brought my neighbor, was enough to make me briefly contemplate running a mostly dead street squirrel to the emergency vet. 

She kneeled down to pet the squirrel. I stood beside her with my shovel and trash bag, a sweaty,  disheveled squirrel grim reaper.

When I got home Molly met me at the door. She was thrilled. She won. Her good name was restored. She could not have been happier.  I went downstairs, my weekend of illness now a weekend of illness and accessory to squirrel murder. We pushed her too far.

Gilde Sanitarium

Abigail has been sick for the last week.What started as a cough progressed to a bad cough that then turned into a bad cough with an ear infection. The Tanks treads have come off and its taking us longer than we'd hoped to get rolling along.

I don't feel good. Mess with me and die.

The cough came on slow, a chirp she barely noticed. Two days later it was a roar, a malicious sound that was too big, too angry to be coming from her tiny body. She coughed until she threw up. She coughed herself awake at night. She coughed herself awake in the morning.

Waking up at night has been rough. She's been a great sleeper and we're now spoiled. We're no longer battle tested, sleep deprived parents. We're soft. She's slept so good for so long I don't know how to deal with waking up. It is killing us, slowly and painfully. I stood in front of the refrigerator at work for five minutes last week before I realized I originally went to the back to make copies. Two more weeks of this and there will be a lean cuisine jamming our fax machine.

The coughing spells that dont wake her up are somehow worse. An extended coughing fit at two in the morning that ends abruptly and leaves complete silence, that's the sort of thing that makes me break out in a cold sweat. I'm never able to go back to sleep when this happens. I have to sneak into the room, try and detect her breathing, then sneak out without waking her. Dumb, but the mind goes to ridiculous places at 3 in the morning. I imagine Abigail laying there like Mama Cass, furious that someone gave a ham sandwich to a baby with a chest cold.  Its asinine but I have to go see that she's ok.

The doctor ordered albuterol treatments to help with cough. I pictured an inhaler, a little tube we held up to her mouth twice a day that would cure her with no fuss, no fighting. What we actually received was a  machine that looks like its used to commit war crimes. Its a gas mask, vials of liquid and a machine that sounds like a large electrical generator at war with itself. When put together, the gas mask coughs out an ominous white smoke while the machine that powers it roars in the background.  Abigail is justifiably wary of this devil machine, I have to restrain her the entire time I'm gassing her. If I ever join a cult I have a catchy first bullet for my resume.

This is how Darth Vader started out

Two days later she's still fussy, still fighting her robot nurse and now running a temperature. The 101.7 degree temperature seemed high to me so we called after hours care. After listing Abigail's symptoms, the multiple doctors office visits and her current treatment the doctor yawned and advised to come in the morning. When I asked about Abigails temperature, about how high it should get I start to freak out, the doctor told me 105. 105! If I check her tomorrow and she's at 103 I'm throwing her in a cooler full of ice and redlining the civic all the way to the emergency room.

The third doctors visit that week revealed that her chest cold turned into an ear infection. Thankfully this treatment is bubblegum flavored antibiotics that she loves. Much easier than baby gassing.

I hope the ear infection is a childhood thing and I didn't curse her with my inner ear problems as this same thing happens to me every time I get sick.  Mary passed on her messed up toes, I possibly passed on my tiny eustachian tubes. I fear she may be cursed to a life of constant ear infections, dizziness and ill fitting shoes.

 Sorry sweetheart!

Bad genes and sick,still looking fabulous

Stupid like a fox

Dropping Abigail off at daycare always made me feel like garbage. I tried listening to news, listening to music, sitting in silence. Nothing worked, the drive into work always bummed me out. Stewing in silence made things worse. NPR made me think of Ms. Cheeks (ohhh, I bet Abigail sympathizes with the plight of Guatamalen plantain pickers). Cheery music backfired, the Muppets Movie soundtrack just made me imagine Tank as a muppet being neglected by other muppets.

Old daycare always felt to me felt like I was dropping her off at a detention center. It was the TSA holding cell of daycares. Safe but boring. No feedback, no activities, no participation, no plan for growth. I felt confident she wasnt going to get shived by other babies but it turns out that not enough for me.

She's been at bourgie urban daycare for three days and we've already received more notes, more feedback and more positive interaction than we received the entire time we were at homeland security detention center for kids. When Mary picks her up at night they talk to her about what Cheeks did during the day. They send home a sheet full of notes detailing her entire day. Her second day there she took a wagon tour of the facility, did footprints on construction paper for valentines day and spent the rest of the time playing with toys or on a play mat.



Happy Valentines Day, here are my tiny feet























A lot of this is for our benefit. The footprints mean nothing to her. Fine. But damnit, daycare is expensive. Its for us but its thoughtful and sweet. The only things we ever got from TSA daycare were mystery clothes changes and unidentifiable guilt.

I worried it was stupid to move her this early. Yeah, Im stupid. Stupid like a fox!

Pope Penguinhat will be able to speak in Simpsons
references by age 3

Transition

Abigail started at her new daycare this week. We're both excited and apprehensive about the change. Time to see whether we had legitimate complaints or if we're completely insane. I checked with my bookie and completely insane is currently +400. Easy money.

I wasnt included in any of these discussions.

The uncertainty and regret I felt when dropping Abigail off for her last day at her original daycare surprised me. When I dropped Tank off in the morning the woman who watches her seemed sincerely sorry to see her go. "She's such a good baby! I'm going to miss my little (bosnian word I hope means beautiful girl and not daughter of jackass). Ohhh come here my good baby I miss you so much." Crap, now I feel like a jerk. Why are we moving her again?

Picking a new daycare was difficult. Its shocking that two neurotic worriers would have a difficult time picking a place to leave their first kid. I'm amazed we were ever able to leave the hospital.

We had two locations that were highly recommended by friends and both happened to have openings. Daycare 1 is on the outskirts of town, situated in an area that looks like it was farmland four years ago. Its  out there to accommodate all the folks fleeing the mean streets, the decaying urban jungle that is Des Moines.  Its a really nice facility, run by a spitfire of a woman who obviously loved the place, the kids and her staff. Its a little generic, a little sterile and very inconvenient for me. Mary would be forced to drop off and pick up every day. That's a lot to ask.

Daycare 2 is right in the middle of Des Moines. Its a parent co-op, a warm bourgie daycare more or less on the way to work for both of us. The parents are involved supporting the school. Most of the kids go on to the schools downtown where we want to send Abigail.

Both good choices, we each had a favorite. Mary favored sparkling urban sprawl daycare. I preferred warm urban daycare. In the end, the convenience of Des Moines won out. If we don't like Abigail's new digs theres a 90% chance its because we're crazy.

Crazy? I started to second guess our decision 20 minutes later. What if we don't like it? If we don't like this place I'm on the hook! There was a great place out in West Des Moines but nooooo I had to go with this one. Because of me, Abby is going to be stripping her way through beauty school. Marys daycare would have had her on the Supreme Court by the time she was 50.

Dont let me go to Rico's Uptown Beauty College!

My guilt dissipated as soon as I dropped Abby off at her new daycare. The clear superiority of the place absolved me of my neurotic garbage.

On my way out of the building I ran into someone I know from work. Ross works for the Department of Public Safety. When I think of the guy I think public safety. If its good enough for him it should be good enough for us.

Assuming we're not nuts.

Put me down crazy person

Note

Apologies on the lack of posting. We're in the midst of the legislative session and I dont have much time to write for fun. I hope to do better going forward.

Paranoid Parents

We've learned lessons from or chosen to ignore our other shaky decisions, but daycare remains an issue.

Mary and I had no idea what we were doing when we picked out a daycare. We're getting used to it now, not knowing what we're doing. We're really good at it.

We thought we'd be able to find the perfect daycare for the perfect price while knowing nothing about what we were really looking for. A perfect plan that hasn't really worked out.

The bad daycares were easy to spot. Should the provider be that visibly angry? Are those kids watching Judge Joe Brown? Is that a roulette wheel in the corner?

 Abigail's current daycare is ok. Its fine. Serviceable.  The problem is that now that I know this kid, ok isn't good enough. Safe and clean was enough for abstract future baby.It is not enough for Abigail.

You're holding my kid in one hand and drinking scalding hot coffee out a paper cup in the other. She comes home in new clothes and no note why. Formula spill? Did she get sick? You don't know? The fact you don't know why she needed to change clothes makes me nervous.

We want feedback. Is she reaching for things? Did she do tummy time? Please understand, we're paranoid because she was so early. She's doing baby things you say? Thats not all that helpful.

Pope Penguin Hat IV does not approve 

Our expectations are too high. We are crazy people. We toured one of the nicer daycares in town. Expensive. Nice neighborhood. There was structure. Handouts. Newsletters. They have specific goals and activities designed to achieve those goals. Everything about the place was polished except the staff.

It was fine dining with hobo waitstaff. It was Hamlet with Brendan Frasier. When I got home I realized I spent most of the tour thinking of bad analogies.

Every employee was related.That doesn't seem very professional.  Almost every employee had visible tattoos. Not cool tattoos. No interesting art, no artistic sleeve, no quirky, charming tattoos. No, these were hearts in fading gray on hands. A rose with a stem dripping blood on the forearm. A tattoo of what Im almost sure was the Taco Bell Chihuahua barely exposed on a breast.

Trashy tattoos alone are ok. When you roll that trashy tattoo up with stretch pants, a hard rock cafe tee shirt and bright hair dye I start to get nervous. If I wouldn't let the lady with a tattoo of the tasmanian devil on a jet-ski cut my hair  how the hell can I leave Abigail with her?

When we left I asked Mary what she thought. "It was really nice except for the carny staff". I love her.

Milestones

The first time we noticed Abigail sucking her thumb Mary squealed with delight, took a picture and wrote it down on the calendar. Same goes for the first time Abigail slept through the night, the first time she smiled and the first time she went to the doctor. Shes growing so fast that it feels as if not documenting every burp, smile, nap and poop would be criminal. Somehow writing everything down will keep her a baby, completely ours, innocent and beautiful.

This is of course silly. In five years if you ask me when Abigail first sucked her thumb I will give you the Gilde blank stare and move on without comment.

REMEMBER!

I have no doubt this is common for inexperience parents. My Mom kept a calendar of my first year. She didn't keep a calendar for my brother. She says its because she was too busy, not enough time between working and having two needy jerk babies. I suspect she started a calender, reviewed it after four months and found that most entries were either "is my baby's head supposed to be so big and bald" or "Dear lord why didn't I quit while I was ahead". Not wanting to pay for therapy, she scrapped it.

no hair? no records

My Mom gave us the calendar she kept from my first year and we've had a great time going through it. Its fun for me as it allows me to imagine my folks as new parents, buying their first home and trying to figure things out. Its fun for Mary because she feels like my character is apparent from an early age.

"Joe loves to look at himself in the mirror lately-he doesn't smile at anyone the way he smiles at himself". Yep, that sounds like you. No one entertains you like yourself.

"Still prefers to take the lazy way out but can hold his own bottle in a pinch" Mmmmmmmmmhhhhhhmmmmm. Don't you have laundry to do?

The milestones I find astounding don't make the calendar. Abigail projectile vomited for the first time last week. Its amazing but apparently not worthy of calendar documentation.

Shes been congested so I ordered what I thought was an high quality bulb syringe to help clear her out. Turns out that while the thing I bought works great, you have to provide the suction. They assure you theres a filter and theres no way you can suck anything through the tube but I still cant convince myself to manually suck snot out of Abbys nose. Luckily Mary is a good parent and did what needed to be done.  I tried to document the moment (Jan 5th, 2012: Mary manually sucked mucus out of Abigails nose for first time) but Mary felt its not a real milestone.

I will remember this device long after I forget when Abby first went to the doctor. Put it on the calendar!

Spa day package includes nose suction

Big Day

It was a big day in the Gilde household. Abigail went to daycare for the first time, I went back to work.

Because she's a convicted felon, we had to take extra care before dropping her off. We used to just check her diaper for shivs;  that stopped after one bloody trip to target. In Abigail's defense that was an outrageous price for a Winnie the Pooh rattle. Lesson learned, now we have to strip search her adding time to the morning routine.



Don't send me in there unarmed!























The drop off was relatively painless. We asked a few questions, they asked a few questions. Not wanting to leave we asked more, crappier, questions. I got the sense that they wanted to hurry us out the door as fast as possible. I assume lurking first time parents equals sobbing first time parents. Experienced baby handlers all, they know nothing will ruin a day faster than seeing a fat man cry.

I resisted the urge to run back into the place and grab Abigail, quit my job and write the worst novel in American history. Driving to work, my phone seemed determined to bum me out. It played every damn maudlin song in its library. Hey, Mountain Goats followed by Tom Waits with a Cure kicker. Thanks a lot iPhone, you stupid jerk.

Work was predictably hectic after being off for two months and returning a week before the legislative session. I told Mary I felt as if I was starting a new job. She told me that's a feeling that a lot of Moms feel when they return to the workforce. That may well be true but didn't do much for my anxiety or masculinity.

I didn't call the daycare facility all day, a fact I was proud of until I started to wonder if that made the daycare providers think I was a bad dad. Maybe everyone calls in and my self-discipline will be misinterpreted for callousness. Maybe they'll start watching me extra close. I have a felon baby and I didn't call the first day. Its a family of monsters.

I did my best to push these stupid thoughts and my desire to go see Abby to the back of my brain and start to catch up on work.  It helped that everywhere I looked I saw Abby. I have six pictures of her up at my desk. I'm one candle and chicken foot away from my desk being a really creepy baby shrine.

It was a hard day to stay focused. With the Caucuses that night, Fox news broadcast live from outside my office all day. I need to go to the bathroom, hey there's Mitt Romney giving a robot interview to interchangeable blonde fox anchor #3. I need to go talk to Legislative Services and there's Rick Perry losing an argument to a 4 foot tall marble statue.



I'm Joe Gilde and I approve this message























Big Day.



No baby fights or police calls. Success!