Episode 41: The first Christmas

Welcome back. I hope that everyone had a nice, relaxing holiday time, although I know that most of you didn't considering that it was, in fact, the holidays. I have been toiling over this 'First Christmas' post for about a week trying to decide how I was going to approach it. I wrote about five drafts, some of them with more pictures than words, others long enough to be converted in to a novel. Unsatisfied, I took a step back, had a drink and remembered why I am writing this blog in the first place. It isn't to brag about my kid or document her life like an Internet scrapbook, it is to document my own experiences and my fly-by-night parenting efforts. With my purpose realized (sort of) and Monica back to work this week, I am finally inspired to write again.

There have been countless times in my life where an event or situation has not lived up to the anticipation that preceded it, and after Av's first Christmas I can add another bullet to that list.
Since early December an entire room of our tiny second floor apartment has been devoted to Av's Christmas. Hundreds of dollars worth of toys and clothes sat wrapped under the tree for weeks. Bows and ribbons and Christmas cards donned the walls and every morning she would walk over to play with the wrapped boxes with no idea that there was anything actually inside of them.

All of the anticipation of knowing what was in the boxes made me excited to see her open them up on Christmas, hoping that my selections would bring a smile to her face. So, with this in mind and those same boxes now blocking the back window of my car, we made the trek to Dedham to celebrate the holidays with Monica's family.

In retrospect, Christmas was exactly how it should have been. It was pretty much just like any other day with the baby, there was just a considerably larger amount of people getting in her face. She woke up bright and early, played a little bit and was down for a nap before most of the family was even awake. She only opened one gift that morning, an unwrapped wagon that was sitting in the living room. She absolutely loved this wagon, as you can see from the picture above, and spent the entire morning sitting in it and laughing.

As for the rest of the gifts they were opened sporadically throughout the day with little fanfare. Eventually she figured out that the things in the boxes were for her, but her attention span is still a little short, so she would just play with the one toy and showed little to no interest in moving on to the others. I was pretty disappointed at first, as I was hoping for AFV-winning videos and stacks and stacks of cute, excited photos, but when I stepped back and thought about it Christmas was exactly as it should have been. Her biggest contribution was getting us out of both church and spending any significant amount of time at Monica's grandparent's house. Thanks, kid. Next year, as we head full speed toward the Terrible Two's, will me much more fun. I hope.

More important to me was the time following Christmas. I knew Monica had the week off and I was looking forward to both a break from having her alone all day and to some fun family events during the week. Unfortunately, this crappy New England weather that we have ruined much of the week and any chance of traveling somewhere extravagant was pretty much gone (and yes, I am at the point in my life where I pretty much consider anywhere outside the Salem/ Beverly area extravagant. Don't even get me started on going to Boston. It might as well be Australia).

So much of the week was spent in the apartment hanging out, playing, and learning how to walk (which she can do now, video to follow later this week). Also, it gave her a chance to become religiously attached to her mother again like she was this summer. Meaning, essentially, that I can only pick her up or go near her if we are playing or if Monica isn't home, and I am pretty much shut out at bedtime, snack time and at any point that she wakes up during the night. This has also taken a tole on what was starting to be a good sleep schedule. Now she wakes up at night calling for Mom again, and will not nap nearly as long during the day. This has made me nervous to go back to having her all day and reminded me that no matter how cool I think I am, I can't even hold a candle to Mom in her eyes. (In every other situation, of course, no one is cooler than me).

There you have it. An uneventful Christmas (at least for Av) and an uneventful week of nothing that followed. New Year's Eve was spent on the couch and the last three days of the weekend were spent at the Beer Works hawking beer... and so another 12-month journey begins. The next big event is Av's birthday in February, meaning I have about six weeks of mundane parenting ahead of me. Lucky readers!

Let's go make some memories...

The holidays are as much about survival as they are about celebrating. Good thing I have this kid of mine to keep me busy. Lots of hugging and hand shaking ahead in the next few days. I wish you all well. With any luck I will return with photos and video worthy of showing off.

Merry Christmas if you celebrate that sort of thing.

Episode 40: Bubble video.

Just a video entry today. I am going to try and add more of these as posts. Noticing the baby making noises, Monica walked in the other room this morning to find her blowing bubbles with her mouth. Both disgusting and funny. Sorry if the entry title attracted any college kids looking for Spring Break videos.

Episode 39: Meat Basket

Above is an example of a line of novelty food toys manufactured by the Adornica Company, located in Mumbai. Recently, Target carried these and other varieties of the 'food basket' toys, classified on the Adornica website under 'dramatic play,' in its $1 value bin. Mostly as a joke but kind of because Av likes to chew on plastic toys we purchased the 'Meat Basket' (not shown, unfortunately), which contained small plastic meats such as hot dogs, sausages, what appears to be a lamb chop, a chicken leg and a hamburger patty. You can see an example of some of the meats in the Meat and Cheese Basket shown above.

Initially there was some debate over what exactly we were going to do with the Meat Basket. We weren't sure if we should give it to her for Christmas, let her have it right away or perhaps give it to someone as a novelty gift. No decision was made, and after a few days it just ended up sitting on the floor, still in the cellophane packaging next to the presents that had already been wrapped.

Unbeknown to us, Av apparently had her eye on the Meat Basket because yesterday she finally went over, picked it up and pawed at it until she could open a hole in the packaging and pull out the meat. Like most toys, she played with it for a while and then cast it aside.

Fast forward to this morning. Around 8:00 we were playing in the living room and she started getting cranky as if she wanted something. I tried feeding her, playing with her, doing all sorts of different things in an attempt to find out exactly what it was. Finally, after about 20 minutes of frustration, she grabbed my hand, stood herself up and walked me over to the Meat Basket. She sat down, let go of my hand and shook out all of the plastic meat. Who knew?

Episode 38: Come to think of it, Av's skin is kind of dark. DAMN YOU TIGER!

Having been a father for 10 months, and an expecting father for nine months prior to that, you would think that I would be used to the idea by now, or at least aware of it in my daily conversations, but every so often I am still reminded that I am now 'one of those people with kids.'

I'll explain.

Yesterday at work a customer at the bar was engaging myself and a co worker of mine in a conversation about Tiger Woods. As I mentioned in the previous post, I am obsessed with the Tiger Woods saga. It is my new favorite news story. The conversation was focused around how dumb Woods must be to agree to a $300 million pre-nup when he was, as we know now, a notorious womanizer even before he was ever married or fathered children.

The three of us agreed that paying off your ex-wife was an awful waste of $300 million, and were debating how he was going to clean up his image enough to make that money back in endorsements when another customer at the bar, who I know because he comes in frequently, chimed in.

'Guys, guys, you're missing the point here. He deserves to pay that money. He should have to pay money to all of the kids he let down who looked up to him. Dan, what would you tell your daughter if she were older? What if she was a fan of Tiger Woods?'

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This question shocked me back in to reality. I AM going to have to have difficult discussions with my daughter, and perhaps any other children who happen to come along in the future. So, I thought about it and it actually made me mad. Not that Tiger Woods 'let people down.' No, it angered me that so many people hold athletes to such a high moral code, in a way allowing their children to be let down.

One of my favorite human beings, Basketball Hal of Famer Charles Barkley, once said after throwing a guy through a bar window, or a DUI or something, 'I am not a role model.' Those words, uttered sometime in the early 90's, have never rung more true than they do today. Athletes are not, and should not be role models. Ever. Do they lead desirable lifestyles, getting paid millions and millions of dollars to play a sport for a living? Yes. Do most young children, especially young boys, strive to be like that some day? Of course. But it should be the performance on the field, not off of it, that those children look up to. Furthermore, it should be the responsibility of the child's parents, not the athlete, to instill the values that they want in their children.

It should also be the responsibility of parents to expose their children to REALITY. Yes children can, and I think should, play sports. Yes, I think sports are a great outlet and a great way to drift away from real life for adults, too. That being said, my favorite athlete growing up, and still to this day, is Shaquille O'Neil. I have always loved the guy. He is a dominant basketball player and he has a personality bigger than his 7'1, 320 lb frame. I have seen all of his movies (Man of Steel is my favorite) and I even listened to his rap album (once). As a child I wanted to be a basketball player. Unfortunately, I stopped growing up at 6'2 when I was about 16 and I started growing out at about 20, expanding (or, as I like to say 'filling out') from 170 to about 205 lbs. Parents should take note. Tell your kids to keep working hard at the sport they play, but know that they should probably study for their English test, too, because they are probably going to have to consider getting a real job some day.

One of the reasons that I like the Tiger Woods story so much is that Tiger, more than any other athlete ever, has made millions upon millions off of this 'I'm a great guy' persona that he puts forth. In a time when Pacman Jones is showering strippers in cash, Ray Lewis is avoiding murder charges for a Superbowl night stabbing and Alex Rodriguez is fake-crying because he used steroids, Woods was held on a pedestal as the 'holier than thou,' perfect pro athlete. All this story does is expose Woods for what he is. Another lying, cheating, money-hungry athlete enjoying his life and the endless supply of cash and promiscuous women that it provides.

It is for these reasons that I do not feel bad about the blatant invasion of privacy that the media displayed with this story. As a former reporter, one of my least favorite things about the profession was the amount of time that was spent digging in to people's lives. I despised stories where I had to call a person's family after they passed away or even worse, had to try and dig up dirt on a person suspected of doing something that was perceived wrong or inappropriate. I don't know exactly why I became a reporter, but I know that it wasn't to ruin anyone's life.

On the national level, I feel like nothing is more inappropriate than the sports media digging in to and reporting on the personal life of athletes. Reporting that Tom Brady had a baby is one thing, but why do I need to read on ESPN.com that the aforementioned O'Neil got divorced? Or that CBS football broadcaster Jim Nance has to pay his wife $600,000/ year in a divorce settlement? I don't care, and neither should you.

On the other hand, the Woods story is different. The media has stroked Woods' ego more than any other athlete in history. Painted him, like I said, as the greatest thing in sports. Splashed him on every magazine cover and never once said a bad word about the guy. Well, he fooled the media just like he fooled his wife, and now I am not sad that he is paying for it.

Do I think Tiger is a scumbag for what he did? Sure, I do. Not necessarily because of what he was doing, however, it is more because he has two young kids who now have to deal with the situation moving forward, and because of the false persona that I mentioned above.

What would I tell my daughter if she were a Tiger Woods fan? I would tell her the same thing I would tell anyone who looks up to these athletes: sports are entertainment, and the athletes are getting paid- a lot- to do it. You can strive to do what they do, you can wish to be like them and make all of that money and get all of that glory, but what those people do off the field is no different than what the guy next door does when he isn't working at the bank, or the construction site or wherever he works. If the man at the grocery store deli leads a secret life and cheats on his wife, how is that different than if Tiger Woods does it? It shouldn't be if you instill values in your children rather than allowing popular culture to do it for you.

Consider this. I hear the tired old argument all the time about 'today's professional athletes' or even in the entertainment world, 'these actors today' or 'these sluts on TV today.' This is far from unique to today's culture, it i just reported more because we are in the age of the Internet and 'instant' news. JFK slept around. Mickey Mantle was such a drunk that it shortened his career and eventually killed him. Judy Garland had a massive drug problem. It isn't the era. It is the lifestyle. No matter what anyone says, no one can predict what would happen to them if they were handed millions of dollars tomorrow. I can call Pacman Jones every name in the book for what he has done, but if I was awarded NFL first round draft pick money, lets say $8 million just for the argument. If I was handed $8 million at age 20, there is no telling what I would have done with it. I went to my first strip club when I was 19 (sorry Mom). How would I have acted if I had $100,000 in my pocket instead of $100? I would like to think I would have acted civilly, but there is no guarantee.

Athletes are not, and should not be role models. If you want to argue the merits of paying these young men and women that much money that is fine, but just remember it is our fault that it is this way. Sports and entertainment are the Great American Getaway, and we are willing to pay $12 for a movie ticket and $200 for a good seat at Fenway Park. That is telling movie studios and and team owners to pay away because we want the best. We want to see Brad Pitt in that bad ass leading roll and God Dammit I don't care if you have to pay $100 million each, I want the best player at ever position on the Red Sox.

My point , if there is one, is that sports and entertainment aren't going anywhere and they surely are not going to change, so instill values in your own kids and don't be fooled by the 'nice guy' athlete, because you never know when you are going to wake up to find out that he or she was carried out of a hotel room in handcuffs covered in blow and trying to explain what happened to that hooker.

Sorry if today was a little off topic or at all preachy, but, after all it is my blog. Don't worry, the holidays are coming up. You will all get your fill of Av tearing up wrapping paper and the like.

Episode 37: The one where I realize I have lost touch with reality.

Despite the fact that I am arguably working harder on a daily basis as a stay at home dad than I have ever worked at any 'real' job, the general feeling of anxiety and worthlessness that comes along with being virtually unemployed has done nothing but increase in recent weeks, and once again it is starting to consume me.

I am not sure what started it. Maybe it is due to a recent increase in successful high school classmates 'reconnecting' with me via Facebook. Maybe it was the conversation my manager at Beer Works had with me last week where, among other things, he said I had the 'mindset and work ethic' needed to become a 'successful' restaurant manager. Maybe it is just because I am sick of not having any money. Whatever the case my be, and as much as I enjoy staying home all day, I am going to have to do something to get my life back on track soon.

The problem, really, is that I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. I said I wanted to be a teacher when I went to college because it seemed like an easy career path to take (and aside from nursing it was the program with the highest female enrollment). When I realized two years in that I didn't care enough about other people's kids to be a good teacher, I chose journalism because everyone said I was a good writer and the professors in the Communications program seemed less snooty than those in the English department. So, I rode it through, abandoning my dreams to be a sports writer early on and settling on a life as a news man. Now, five years and about 200 involuntary cat naps during municipal meetings later, I am back doing what I was doing before college. Working in a restaurant and slowly nursing a hatred for the human race.

For weeks I have drowned my anxious feelings in a sea of Jim Beam and racked my brain to try and come up with a worthwhile career. I stalked through Facebook profiles and asked friends with 'real' jobs questions. I have reviewed every career and college website in existence and watched my fair share of commercials for Everest, Le Cordon Bleu College and Bryman (which are all very convincing). But it took a news story that I would have both loved and hated covering to bring everything full circle for me.

I am speaking, of course, about the Tiger Woods saga. It has everything that anyone could want in a news story. A compelling, rich, world famous public figure, long believed to be golf's version of Jesus, is all of a sudden destroyed by a bizarre series of events that include massive international infidelity. As a newspaper reporter I would have had a good time covering this story for the first few days, and then probably would have started wishing for it to go away around week two. But as a bartender, I couldn't help but read every article and stay glued to the TV, basking in satisfaction as the 'golden boy of golf' was embarrassed publicly in a way only legends in perversion like Marv Albert can relate to.

It was during one of the many (completely unnecessary) 'breaking Tiger news' cutaways on ESPN last week that I had a professional epiphany. The 'breaking news' involved a press conference outside of an Orlando area hospital. A gentleman, perhaps slightly older than myself, with a beard and similar build was answering questions from reporters. He was titled 'hospital spokesman.' He answered what he could, said 'no comment' a lot and joked with reporters. He was wearing a suit. He looked nice. Now THAT is a job I could do. Spin some PR for whatever company or organization I work for, face the crowds if something happens and look good doing it.

Now, public relations has long been considered among reporters as the 'evil empire', but that is primarily because they make about twice as much money and do about half of the work of a journalist, and at this point in my life, I am totally willing to kneel at that crossroads.

Yes, I had it all figured out. Take the GRE, go back for my master's in strategic communications, get a job. The end.

Unfortunately, I hit yet another snag in my plan almost immediately.

Apparently, and without realizing it, it appears that I have somehow missed out on the past 5-7 years of technological advances. I still have a tiny, crappy flip cell phone. I run Windows ME and know little of operating computers beyond Microsoft Office. I still have a Playstation 2, which doubles as a DVD player, and I have to ask for help before I upload videos and pictures to this blog. I do not own an Ipod or a GPS system, and, like an old man, I just don't get this whole 'Twitter' phenomenon. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I feel like my 51-year-old father who had dial up until 2007.

Part of the problem is that I am more interested in how the Chia Cat Grass Garden works than I am about computers, and I only have like six friends and half a job, so I don't exactly need the newest touch screen communication technology either.
Still, this is going to be an issue, considering my role as a stay at home dad will require me to get this degree online, and I don't even come close to meeting the technology requirements listed in the course catalog. Looks like I have a longer road to travel than I thought.

So, for now it looks like I will just have something new to worry about as I watch others continue to get high paying jobs and schedule dinner dates with groups of friends on Friday nights, where they will inevitably make me fetch them 1,000 things and then tip 15 percent. I will continue to sit on my couch and watch ESPN 2 while other bearded spokesmen get the glory at important press conferences, and I will keep being envious of that minority with the GED who is installing HVAC equipment thanks to his courses at Kaplan Career Institute. I will just have to pick up some extra shifts tending bar and keep punching away at the blog until I find time to take a computer course or two. That said, my kid is crying (again) so I had better get back to work. I wish this job paid better (or at all) because I kind of like it.

Episode 36: THERE IS FISHWATER IN MY *$#%^*@ BEER!

Tuesday was Christmas Tree day on Roslyn Street, a long anticipated (by some) moment as it marked the first time our baby would experience the festivities from this side of the womb.

By all accounts, Av has already made one Christmas special, making her first appearance last year in Monica's descended stomach, creating backbreakingly sober moments for Mom and a lot of forced awkward family conversations for Dad. Now that she is here, we are hoping that she embraces the holiday with childhood joy and vigor and such. Like, the kind of vigor that wins you $20,000 and a bad voice over from Tom Bergeron.

For essentially my entire life, Christmas Tree Day has been little more than a mess of aggravation, angry drinking and family dysfunction. As a child the annual trip would typically end in some sort of fight. Sometimes about the tree, sometimes about the trip to get the tree. Eventually, someone came to some sense and just bought an artificial one and called it a day. As an adult, the experience has not been much different, although the aggravation and fighting has been caused by other factors.

Before moving to Roslyn St., Monica and I lived in one of those 'period-centric' apartments in Downtown Salem. You know, the ones that people covet because of their 'history' or 'charm.' If I were a single guy on my own with a decent job it would have been a 'sweet pad' or a 'phat crib' or whatever the kids are calling them these days, but if you wanted to do anything beyond the Four S's (shower, shave, shit, sleep) you were in trouble.

The problem come Christmas Tree Day, along with the low ceilings, was that the floor was all slanted and warped. I actually think it may have been the original floor. I am not really sure because the whole place was covered in carpet (including the kitchen and bathroom), but the small glimpses of wood that I did see were not in good shape. The slanted floors made it difficult to put up the tree, naturally, because you had to try and cut the stump to fit the warps in the floor. Yeah. Last year's tree was tied to a hook in the ceiling just to keep from falling over.

Luckily, the floors here are perfectly level and the space we cleaned out is plenty big enough for a good sized tree, so we were off on a good foot there. I still had concerns about getting the tree to the second floor and still had bad memories of when I was ripped off at the Christmas Tree place last winter, but I promised myself that I was not going to lose my shit this year.

Tuesday night we packed up the kid and took the Ford Escape to a new tree place next to the mini golf course in Salem. The tree was a little pricey, but it was clearly marked and the men who worked there were nice, so I didn't mind. I am not hard to please. Actually, the entire experience went pretty well until I tried to get the lights up. That is really where it took a turn for the worst.

With the baby isolated in the kitchen at dinner time I attempted to string a set of lights around the tree, which was pulled in to the middle of the floor. I tested the lights before I put them on and they all worked. Great. Simple. I started to get aggravated about half way around the tree when the lights started to tangle up, and from there it was a downhill slope. Before long I had wedged myself in to a corner, tangled in lights, holding on to a fish bowl that I had almost knocked over. I don't even know how this happened. It just did. To make matters worse, while wedging myself in the corner, I spilled a good amount of fish water out of the bowl, and directly on top of my beer. I couldn't hold it back any more.

So, I yelled and swore a little and blew off some steam. Got un-wedged and finished the job. A bit calmer, I plugged in the lights. Only half of them lit up. COME ON!

My guess is that in the tangled mess I got myself in to I either A. Stepped on a bulb and broke it, or B. spilled fish water on one and it seeped in to the bulb. Whatever. The point is that th elights didn't work. I quickly ran to the Family Dollar, only to come back with a box of colored lights instead of while. Merry F-ing Christmas.

Actually, the light saga was pretty mild compared to past years, and I was able (with the help of some bourbon) to relax and regain my composure. As for the baby, she liked the tree and laughed at the lights, which she was then tangled in, but all-in-all she didn't really seem to acknowledge that anything was different.

Later in the week we decorated it, largely without her as she really just tries to eat everything and gets in the way, and we wrapped her presents and placed them under the tree. It would be a lovely Christmas if she knew what the hell Christmas was. Hopefully this will be the start of a new holiday trend, where things go smoothly and the kid has a good time. Although, it is only Dec. 11. I wouldn't put that bourbon away quite yet.

Episode 35: Family road trip

For only the second time in 10 months of life, Av was subjected to the serene wonder that is Western Massachusetts last Sunday- forced to endure the three hour car ride down the Mass Pike and all the pleasantries that come from a day of visiting distant family.

Nearly all of my family members still live in the western part of the state, including my mother, who due to car troubles and general laziness has not seen the baby since spring. Just as important as visiting Grandma Mary was paying a visit to Great Grandma, my grandmother, who I have not seen since she moved to a nursing home this summer. So, with the holidays coming up and many a grandmother to visit, it was time to pack up the family for a day trip and make the rounds.

Av was extremely well behaved on the ride to The Pitt, as we planned it to take place simultaneously with her morning nap. Being in the car always helps extend the length of the naps and she pretty much slept straight through the trip. She arrived at my mother's house with great fanfare, as expected, and was presented with gifts almost as soon as she walked in the door.

I came inside and said hello to my mother, who informed me that my sister, Bethany, had taken their dog for a walk. I had completely forgotten that the family had obtained a new dog since the last time I was home, and I immediately had visions of Av dragging the poor thing around the house by its tail. Or punching him in the face like she does with our cats.

In the mean time, my father and his wife, Carol, came for a visit and the living room quickly filled up. He and Carol get out to Salem every few months and were over a few weeks ago to visit the baby, but wanted to stop over and see her while we were in town as they live about 45 minutes away. (At this point you are probably wondering how awkward it must be for my father and his wife to spend part of the morning at my mother and her boyfriend's home. Surprisingly, it is cordial and friendly. Almost no awkwardness at all).

In any event, my sister returned with the dog, who my mother described as a 'barker,' which both excited and confused the baby. The dog did bark, quite a bit actually, but it seemed to have little effect on Av.

The real highlight of the journey for me was heading up to visit my grandmother. She is in fairly good health for a 93-year-old woman, but does have trouble seeing and hearing, along with being a diabetic and a host of other ailments that are pretty much unavoidable when you are in your ninth decade of life. Up until a fall a few years ago she was still taking the bus downtown by herself and going for walks, but age finally caught up to her and it became too much for her to remain at home.

We walked in to the nursing home, which is located next door to the middle school that I attended, and met her in a small family visiting area in the lobby, as we did not want to subject Av to any potential transfer of disease in the nursing home hallways.

Having not seen Gram since April, I expected the worst when I walked in the room, but instead saw a rather healthy-looking woman with majestic white hair sitting in a chair waiting for me. (For my entire life my grandmother has dyed her hair brown, which usually came out looking pinkish, so seeing her with the silver locks was shocking). I walked over and gave her a kiss, at which point I realized she was having a very hard time making out who everyone was. She obviously knew my mother and sister, as they visit her often, and she knew me by my voice, but I am not really sure she even knew Monica (or 'what's her name' as she usually calls her) was even there.

I sat down next to her and noticed there was a sign on her walker that read in about 56 point font 'MARY. REMEMBER TO USE YOUR WALKER WHEN YOU ARE WALKING' clearly, and in typical Gram fashion, she had broken this rule many times.

We sat and visited for a bit which was nice, but I was disappointed in the lack of interaction between she and Av. Gram, obviously old and senile couldn't do much in the way of interacting with the baby, but whenever I tried to bring Av over she would just cry. It was sad for me only because I knew that Av would probably never remember Gram, and she would surely never get to spend the time with her that I did as a child. She will never taste her meatballs or pick flowers or stalk animals (like bears) in the field behind hr house.

We bid farewell to Gram, which was bittersweet because the visit was short, but at the same time you can only tolerate a nursing home for so long, and left for dinner. A few surprise relatives arrived with some second cousins and such and we ate dinner and departed. A fairly painless trip for me and the baby, not so much for Monica. Western Mass can be tough on a girl who grew up in Dedham, a town with no personality or open space. That is OK though. One day in The Pitt isn't much compared to the living hell that is holidays at her grandparent's house.

The trip home wasn't as smooth as Av had a few melt downs, but all-in-all it was a pretty successful mission. Everyone even left with gifts. Monica got a sweater for her birthday from my dad and my mom presented me with what I am referring to as the 'box of magic.' Two bottles of bourbon and two pint glasses lifted from the restaurant my uncle once owned right before it went out of business this summer. Thanks, Mom, you just got me through the holidays with that one.

Episode 34: There goes the neighborhood

Loyal readers, I am sad to say that some unfortunate events took place this week that signify the end of an era in this blog's history.

I regret to inform you that the obese sweatpants family has moved on from Roslyn St. Evicted by their landlord and sent away in the night, only to return the next day to retrieve a mere fraction of the hermit-like collection of junk that dominated their apartment.

Police have been coming back and forth from the green house since we moved in to the neighborhood, but we always suspected it was some sort of domestic violence involving 300lb sweatpants man, his wife and his (rumored) retarded brother. As the summer came to a close, however, it became apparent that the bulk of the confrontations took place between the sweatpants family and the building's landlord, who I believe lives in the apartment upstairs.

Loud battles in the driveway and in front of the house revealed that sweatpants family was living in squalor in a house filled with trash, useless trinkets and I am guessing some unkempt animals.

A yard sale soon followed (which I still kick myself for not attending) and soon after the circa 1988 Ford Bronco, sitting filled front to back with trash in their driveway, was hauled away by Bill's Auto Clinic- who were clearly just the middle men in a long, sad journey to the junkyard across the street that is polluting the water adjacent to the train tracks.

All of these signs pointed to an inevitable conclusion. The filthy, dysfunctional failures I loved to observe would be no more.

In what I like to think was somewhat of a classy move, but probably wasn't, the father took the two young daughters away in the night last week in a large, green minivan. The next day he sat in said minivan for upwards of three hours while a crew of movers removed his belongings from the house. Saddened, I watched the saga unfold from my window, hoping to witness something noteworthy. It didn't happen.

Yesterday the final chapter was written as a junk removal company pulled up in front of the house and proceeded to free the first floor apartment of any and all remaining evidence of the family's residence there. They were there for a long time, too, I can only imagine what they puled out of that place.

A little side note- when I was in the early years of college I spent my summers working for the Pittsfield Housing Authority where a large part of my job was to clean out apartments in the projects when families would move out in the night. This happened frequently, as it was the projects, where crack dealers and prostitutes need to leave in a hurry sometimes. The crap we found in those places was unreal. Sometimes disgusting, other times funny. Either way, I wish I could have seen the inside of that place because I bet it would be project-worthy.

After watching the junk removal company for a while I stopped to reminisce for a moment before saying my final goodbyes to one of my top sources of neighborhood entertainment.

Later in the day I saw my downstairs neighbor actually leave the house, somewhat restoring my faith in humanity. At the same time three college girls looked at another apartment across the street. It was 2:45 p.m. They were wearing sweat pants... and all faith is once again lost.

As for my kid, she can drink from a cup now and she ate spaghetti- o's today. Unfortunately, those developments did not make her tired, so I have to go tend to her needs again.

R.I.P. dysfunctional, obese sweatpants family. You will be missed.

Episode 33: Eating like a grown up

It only took 10 months, but Av is officially at the point now where she is too smart for me to fool her. This is especially evident when it comes to food. Always a fan of eating, she has been mowing down bottles and baby food at every opportunity since the day she was born, but we reached a point recently- I am not sure when exactly- where she realized the food that Monica and I eat is much better than what we give her. This has created some challenges.

Since she has an abnormally large amnount of teeth for a child her age, we started giving Av adult food a few months back, just simple things like bananas, dry, overcooked pasta or tiny pieces of toast. Lately, though, she has started to become more picky and pretty much refuses to eat most of what we try to give her. This is especially apparent when we try to eat dinner at the same time as her. Might as well forget about whatever baby food is in front of her, because she isn't eating it.

Now, weighing in at like 100 lbs, Monica gives herself a bad rap about her diet. For all of the sno-caps and tacos she eats she also consumes her fair share of Caesar salads and stir-fry. I, on the other hand, at double the weight, have potentially the worst diet of anyone in America. Essentially, I still eat like a 15-year-old. At the grocery store when Monica is off buying chicken, bread, milk and veggies, I am in the snack aisle collecting various chips, dips and snacks. I still eat fruit snacks and Bagel Bites like my parents are away for the weekend and I frequently get lost in the sea of novelty sodas in the Stop and Shop drink section. If asked, I would list my favorite food as 'Popsicle.'

Worst of all from a health standpoint is my disgusting addiction to cheese. I think that I am pretty much single-handedly responsible for keeping the Vermont Dairy Farmers in business. I love cheese and I will eat all varieties for a snack at any time of the day. If I lived by myself I would eat cheese and mustard sandwiches for lunch six days a week. (The other meals would probably be freeze pops). Now, I know that this diet is probably less than healthy for a man headed down the back side of his 20's, but up until now I really had no reason to care.

Enter my nosy daughter.

Now that she wants to eat everything that I do, I am forced to cut back on my single-guy lunch foods, like microwave nachos, bagel sandwiches and Cheetos. Don't get me wrong, I still eat the foods when she isn't around, but at lunch time I now have to pretend that we are eating the same thing in order to get her to try some. This has resulted in unwanted spoonfuls of oatmeal, baby food, pineapple and mandarin oranges. Worst off, she LOVES Popsicles. So I can't even eat them when I am with her.

I can now say, without a doubt, baby food is one of the most disgusting things in the world. Sure, the apple sauces and fruit purees aren't bad, but if it involves meat or vegetables, stay the hell away. I don't blame her for not wanting it.

Another side effect of her obsession with adult food is a love for the refrigerator. I don't blame her, really. It is where the food is and she always sees us opening and closing it. Not to mention, it is filled with plastic bottles, which she loves to chew on. Now she wants in whenever the door is open. She will sprint over in her little walker and crash in to the door so I can't close it. It is both maddening and hilarious at the same time.

I am off to go try and trick her in to eating some of her own food hidden within some pasta or maybe oatmeal so that she doesn't have an 'I'm hungry' melt down. I will leave you with this video of her trying to steal things from the fridge. Notice how she uses the index finger as an exploratory device.

Episode 32: Happy Holidays, or whatever you want to say about it

So the holidays are officially here, meaning much of the next two months will be filled with traveling, drinking, eating and way , way too much time spent with distant 'in laws' for whom I have little to no interest in being around. This all started yesterday with Thanksgiving at Monica's parent's house where, of course, the baby stole the show for better or worse.

Despite a beer tragedy (as in not having any- damn you Massachusetts and your pioneer-era drinking laws) and 3-4 hours of overall crankiness from the girl, the day was pretty low-key and successful. Then again, I did not have to change Av's post turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and squash diaper this morning.

She was dressed to impress in what appeared to be some sort of infant-sized wedding dress and dumb little black shoes, and she won everyone over with her cute face and little tricks. I call them tricks because I know she does them on purpose as despite being 10-months-old, she knows that everyone is looking at her because she is adorable, and she knows what kind of reaction she is going to get before she does something. I am in so much trouble when she starts walking and talking.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because there is no stress of buying gifts, I don't have to go to church and I get to eat. A lot. Unfortunately, much of the day is spent smelling food that I cannot yet have, and usually ends with me feeling like I just took down half of the buffet at Golden Corral. Either way, I'll take it over the hustle and bustle of Christmas and the half-ass holiday that is Easter. (I mean, really, Easter? Come on. Usually I don't even know when it is until like two-days before because it isn't even held in the same month every year. Not to mention Easter Baskets. C'mon, just give the kids a gift certificate to CVS so they can pick out their own candy and maybe a Wiffle Ball bat. Yeah, yeah, I get the whole 'Jesus dying' thing. OK. Just go to church and pray then. Like All Saints Day or whatever).

Christmas is really the holiday that gets me down, to be honest. Sure, it is supposed to be 'joyful' and it is if you are 7-years-old and waiting for Christmas morning ( unless you're me, who is still waiting for that Power Wheel I asked for in 1989), but for adults the entire month of December is nothing but stress- and shopping. Even at the pet store- where I attempted to go today to buy cat food and a new fish for Monica (goldfish have like a 30 second life span. What useless pets)- there were hoards of people stocking up on, well, I don't know, dog beds? I get waiting in line at 4 a.m. for a $200 TV. But your pet does not care what it gets for Christmas. In fact, your pet does not know it is Christmas so save your money.

Christmas also bugs me because of all of the singing. Whether it be traditional carols or new jingles like that one from the Gap commercial that makes me want to punch  hole through my TV, they are all irritating and they are all jammed down my throat.

I am hoping that having a baby this year makes the day a little bit more enjoyable for me, as she will be a good excuse for leaving family functions. I am not above making my daughter cry if I want to leave somewhere, either. It is the holidays, kids. Every man for himself. Family functions, to me, are the worst part, especially if it isn't my family. In general, I am a pretty anti-social guy and talking to distant relatives who I don't really know makes me feel very uncomfortable. Believe it or not, talking and being around little kids makes me even more uncomfortable.

The family parties never actually turn out to be as bad as I think they will, but I have had enough isolated bad experiences to keep me from remembering that until it is over. Like last year when I was welcomed by the grandfather of my still-pregnant girlfriend with the statement 'Congratulations, or whatever you want to say about it.' and then forced to participate in a family singing of the 12 Days of Christmas. I have been scarred by a lot of things in my 26 years, this day is at or near the top of the list.

I would actually say that Av has already made this season a little bit more fun for me, as I have been assigned to buy her toys for Christmas while Monica buys the clothes. This means that I essentially get to go to toy departments and pick out whatever it is I would be interested in playing with. Lets be real here, when we spend the whole day together every day the toys are just as important to me as they are to her, if not more.

So far we have a kitchen set, a shopping cart filled with plastic toys and some sort of moving education train but far and away the coolest gift has to be a bin of 10 jumbo rubber bath toys. I am already a big fan of the bath toys we have, there is an octopus, a crab, frog, alligator, marlin, dolphin and dragon (yes, dragon. Do not ask my how a dragon made it in to the sea creatures bath toy bag), but the new toys have a polar bear, seal, otter and turtle- and those are just the ones I can see in the bin. Yes. I have been reduced to being excited over bath toys.

So, I suppose we have a small gap before the real holiday fun begins now, but not much. We are taking the baby on her first long road trip, out to Western Mass to visit my family next weekend, and I am sure the holiday stress will really begin when the baby wakes up around hour two of the trip and wants to get out of the car seat. From there it will be on to all of the fun and games that come with the month of December. I don't want to make it seem like I am completely miserable and negative about Christmas, there are things that I like, too. But the things that I like seem to come in small doses and I never seem to get to spend enough time with the people I actually want to see. My advice would be to buy stock in Budweiser, because memories start early and kid toys are a lot more fun with a buzz.

Episode 31- Baby kiting

Many days I am faced with a simple choice: To blog or to nap? Lately, sleep has been winning that battle more often than not. Sorry. Also, I wish there was another word for 'blog' because when people talk about me 'blogging' makes me feel like a euro kid at a coffee shop with a stupid hat and tight jeans. I guess I could go with 'Internet journal' instead. Nope. Still dumb. Anyway, that is not the point of this post.

Last week the baby and I were faced for the first time with what has been my biggest fear since taking this job. Bad weather. Living in New England for all of my almost 26 years I can say with confidence that there is nothing in life that ruins my day more than winter. Usually from about mid-November to the beginning of May I am completely miserable. Depressed, cold, tired- just miserable.

I despise winter. I hate it. Snow sucks. It is cold and wet and it makes everything more difficult. You can't drive, and if you can you risk getting run in to by the other morons on the road. You have to move your car for snow emergencies, spend a stupid amount of money to heat the apartment, wear sweaters, scrape ice and did I mention that it is cold? I am not even sure why I still live here. I think it is because it is a hell of a lot easier- and cheaper- than uprooting and moving elsewhere.

Anyway, toward the end of last week the baby woke me up at the usual 6:15 and I looked outside to see driving, pouring rain. I took a peek out on to the porch to see what the temperature was like and sure enough, it was freezing, too.

Bad weather with the baby scares me because so much of our day is spent going back and forth from places, either in the car or in the stroller. Winter means less driving, no walks, no parks and lower motivation to take trips to places like the animal shelter. Winter means we are stuck inside.

Now, in my child free days, being stuck inside would just give me an excuse to get drunk during the day and probably allow me to watch a lot of bad TV. With a baby it means that I have to somehow keep her entertained and keep myself from going stir crazy. This is a frightening prospect and I am woefully under prepared for it.

Luckily for us, the weather cleared up the other day but it got me thinking a lot, too, because I know Old Man Winter has already mapped out his route and programmed his GPS for Salem, MA. It won't be long at all. Thus, I am soliciting ideas for what to do with a baby all day when you can't leave the house. Some have suggested fantastic ideas already, like the baby kite above, submitted by my friend Joe. Joe will have kids soon, too, I am sure. We can go baby kiting together. I look forward to that.

Other than that, I don't have much. We have plenty of toys and videos, but those only go so far. Maybe I can use this time to develop some sort of talent or hobby. We shall see how that goes. Perhaps woodworking.

Episode 30: Captive animals: bringing joy and disapointment to children everywhere

I remember my Mom telling me once that she had to take my sister to a birthday party for one of her friends that was taking place at the local animal shelter. To me, this seemed like the absolute worst, most depressing birthday in history. Imagine, 'happy birthday! you can come play with these sad, lonely, homeless animals. AND YOU CAN'T TAKE ANY HOME!!! YAY! Awful. Happy Birthday, kid. Here's a kick in the knee for good measure.

I think the purpose of the animal shelter is great, keeping adorable pets alive and finding good homes for them. However, going to the shelter has always made me sad. This is still the case, but now that I have a baby who needs to be entertained it is an incredible time-killing resource.

This baby, like I am sure most babies do, thinks that animals are the funniest thing in the world. She loves ducks and puppies and birds and cats. They are like living, moving toys. We do have two cats here at the house, as I have mentioned (and you'll all get to meet them as soon as I get enough motivation to put all of the multi-media involved with that blog post up here) , but LC and Nug tend to bolt in the other direction, with good reason, whenever the baby is around.

So, as part of our Tuesday Time Killing we decided that we would take a trip to the shelter and gawk at some homeless animals, hopefully get a few laughs out of the girl.

We arrived at the shelter to find it bustling, which always makes me happy, with at least four or five different pairs of interested folks walking dogs around and petting cats. Of course, as is always the case wherever we go, the place was also crawling with the elderly. Many of them just killing time by petting captive animals. This made me sad.

We went to see the puppies first, because these tend to make her laugh the most, but for some reason she didn't seem to interested in them, too loud maybe, so we chose the cats instead. What I learned is that the puppy section of the animal shelter is exponentially more depressing than the kitten section. Cats at the shelter lead essentially the same lives they would in your home, only in a cage. They sleep, play, eat, mess around, play some more, cause trouble and the like. Sure, they are happy to see humans and to get out of the cage- it can't be fun in there- but they are no where near as depressed about it as dogs.

Walking through the dog section was like walking down death row. Every cage, all the way down the line, the dogs were sitting in front of the bars looking out. Excited every time someone walked by, waiting to get out of there. No one was playing, no one was sleeping, no one was pooping, they were just staring at us. I am decidedly not a dog person, but even I felt bad enough to want to take them home.

(On a side note, I find that I get a lot of back lash for not being a dog person. It isn't that I don't like dogs, I just think they are annoying. I am not going to do the dog vs. cats debate here, all I will say is that dogs have to go outside to poop- which you then have to pick up in some sort of weird reverse baggy move-, they bark, and they always smell. Not to mention dog people are WAY too weird with their pets. Cats, on the other hand, poop in a neat little box, smell only rarely, and don't make all that much noise. Plus, they are more fun to mess with and you can play with them inside of a small apartment without worrying about tearing up everything that you own).

The cats provided at least 45 minutes of solid entertainment for the both of us, and there were at least three that we considered taking home before coming to our senses. I could tell the baby liked the cats because she screamed the entire time. This is not a cry scream or an afraid scream, this is a high-pitched, top of her lungs, excited scream. This is what she does when she is super happy. Which is cute, I guess, unless you are in public or have a headache.

So, the shelter trip was fun and I am sure there are more to follow. One final story I have to tell before we go. We were in the cat room looking at some furry little guys when I heard a loud bang and a thump. I look over to find a dazed and embarrassed old man picking himself up off the ground with a little help from one of the volunteers. Like a bird, he had mistook a glass window panel for a door. Walked flush in to it and nearly knocked himself out. Ahhhh old people.

Episode 29: Sleep schemes

Since the day Av was born getting her to take a nap during the day has been a constant battle. She is just too active, too interested in what you are doing and too stubborn to go down without a fight. This has created some problems, most notably in the sense that if she doesn't nap, then I don't get to nap. If I don't get to nap, I get grouchy, and no one wants that. (On a less important note, I would say her lack of sleep is the number one reason this blog isn't updated more frequently, but the number two reason is my own laziness so we'll give her a pass).

This also means that I will occasionally randomly fall asleep in inappropriate places. Like on the floor while we are playing. Or at the kitchen table when I try to feed her. I always remember as a kid wondering why my dad had to 'rest his eyes' every day in the afternoon. Now I get it.

To make matters worse, anyone and everyone that we know, with or without children, seem to think that they are experts on this sort of thing. First it is the 'oh my, she should be sleeping more than that!' followed by some useless, know it all advice that never works. Other parents are the worst at giving advice, because for some reason, they fail to realize that every kid is different and think that just because their precious little loser did something one way our child has to do it the same.

(OK, maybe calling their children 'losers' was out of line, but prior to becoming a father I hated children and having a baby did little to change this. Sure, I love my own kid, but I still can't really stand being around or hearing about anyone else's)

The fact of the matter is that, for whatever reason, Av is just too excited and high strung most days to put in any significant sleep. She will nap for 15-30 min at a time, and about once a week her body will force her in to taking an epic two-hour break, but even getting those naps started is a challenge.

So, with this essentially becoming a way of life for me, I now find myself in a battle with an infant over sleep on a daily basis. Taking a ride in the car is always the most effective method, as the baby is lulled to sleep by the motion and vibrations of the road. This is a bad habit to get in to, however, as going for a drive is not always appropriate, and she is growing out of her snap-in car seat very fast. (Part of Av's many wonderful resistances to sleep also includes an inability to remain sleeping if she is moved from one area to another. Thus, I cannot take her out of the car seat and bring her upstairs without ruining the nap).

As for non car naps, they are essentially non existent. On occasion, if she is tired enough and I feed her a warm bottle she will fall asleep in my arms, but again, if I try to move her anywhere she is up right away.

So, over time I have learned that the key to naps is to make her as tired as humanly possible and force her body in to passing out.

This was our plan yesterday.

After a failed morning nap (ruined by our incredibly annoying and inconsiderate neighbors- more on them below),we set out for a few errands in the hope that she would take a car seat nap and be half way pleasant for the rest of the day.

We had a fun little trip to the pet store and the animal shelter (she likes to laugh at the captive pets), but she failed to sleep in the car at any point during the trip, so I was forced to improvise. What followed was an attempt to tire her out by making her visit anyone and everyone that I could think of. First, it was a stop at the old store I used to work at, Athlete's Corner (home to some loyal bog readers), where we spent about a half hour socializing, something that I thought would wear her out, but did not.

Next, it was off for a little walk to the liqueur store and grocery store to kill some time. Still no dice. Finally, I decided to drag her back to Salem and in to my current place of employment, the Beer Works, where I knew my friend was bar tending. At the very least, I thought, the 15 minute drive would be enough to put her over the top. It wasn't. We spent another half hour there where she was fawned over by waitresses and Brazilian cooks alike. This did a lot to stroke her little ego (you can't blame them, I mean, she is adorable) but little to tire her out.

So, with my failed mission behind me we returned home and waited for Monica, who always seems better at this sleep thing than I am. The one good thing about the lack of naps is that she does sleep much better at night, pretty much straight through now, but unlike her, Mom and Dad don't go to bet at 6:30, so the early morning wake up calls are tougher for us to handle.

This brings me to my neighbors. After another day of not napping today the tired, grouchy feeling that both of us had finally came to a head around 1:30. With both of us irritated, a play session in the living room turned in to a tear-filled fit and a hasty carry down to the car for a sleep ride. Just one trip around the block did the trick, she was passed out like she had been under aged drinking on prom night.

I carried her upstairs in the car seat, put her in her room and quietly closed the door. I had just settled in on the couch, ready to nap myself, when the McSlammerson family that lives downstairs came home.

There are only four of them, Mom, her boyfriend and two middle-school aged girls, but whenever they come home it sounds like a stampede of rhinos. I don't even think it is the girls that make the most noise, either.

I have particular disdain for the mother because she does nothing with her life and she appears to be very mean to her kids. She has no job and seemingly no life. She just sits around all day listening to music and not taking down her Halloween decorations three weeks later.

Now, I understand that I, too, am around all day, but I have a baby with me. She is alone. Her kids are 10 and 8. Get a job. And don't give me that 'art school' BS either because I know that you only go at night. The boyfriend is a nice guy, but I am not sure what he does, either. He is back and forth during the day, and spends most nice evenings skateboarding in the street in front of the house. Yes. Adult skateboarding. Unless you're getting paid adults should never skateboard. I like playing basketball. Do you know when the last time I had a chance to play basketball was? Again. Your kids are in middle school. Get a job.

The problem, I suppose, is not with their seemingly useless lives, it is more with the amount of noise they make in the process of doing nothing. Every time they leave or come home the doors are slammed. I mean SLAMMED, to the point where they shake the house. This is totally un called for. We share a back door that requires some extra effort to close, sure, but when they leave it sounds like they attach a boulder to the door knob by a string and let it roll down the street until the door is slammed through the frame.

To make a long rant shorter, the Slam Family decided to come home about ten minutes after I put Av down. Not only did they slam all of the doors, but Mean Mom was also yelling at one of her poor children ,and their dog was barking to go out. Thus, to add to the noise, my baby started crying. Thanks, idiots. I live my life like an old person, maybe we should move to an old person apartment building, too. They never make noise. Well, except for when the ambulance comes.

Episode 28: New stuff.

You know how almost every time you see a band play live there is always that time when the singer walks up to the microphone and says 'Now we're gonna play some new stuff!' and then everybody cheers? I hate that. Drives me nuts. First, hearing the new song is useless to me. I have never heard it before so I can't be excited about it, and I sure as hell can't decide if I like it when it is being blasted out of amps that are turned up to 11 and I have no idea what the singer is actually saying. Second, if by chance I do like it, there is no way I am going to remember that song even 10 minutes later, let alone the next day or when the new album comes out in three weeks. Just wait until the album comes out, guys. We're already at your show, we already like you, we will all probably buy it anyway.

With that preface, I am gonna break my own rule in a way and 'hit you with some new stuff' today, as my kid has developed quite a bit in the last few weeks, and it is pretty humorous.

Aside from being able to eat real foods, like noodles, bananas, olives and cheerios, she is also able to stand up on her own. albeit for a few seconds at a time. This makes for some entertaining moments, and a few dangerous incidents (she nearly knocked herself out with a three hole punch the other day), and means that she is always about to discover something she has never seen before. Among her favorite new things are, plastic bottles, plastic kitchen utensils, anything in the refrigerator and pens.

Honestly, I know it seems like a cliche' parental thing to say, but there really is something new that she does ever day. The picture above shows her with her new 'pet'- one of those $10 remote control puppies they sell at Walgreens. This would be a pretty crappy toy if she were any older, but for all intents and purposes it seems to be a success.

She is pretty funny with it, even though she knows it isn't a real dog. Instead of actually playing with the dog, she spends most of her time trying to use the bone-shaped remote control that comes with it. She even tries to press the buttons, but her little fingers aren't quite strong enough yet.

She has been around dogs and cats most of her life, but I had the pleasure of witnessing what I believe to be the first time that she has ever noticed a bird. Sure, we go see the ducks at the park a few times a week but, for the most part, ducks stay in the water and if they fly, it is usually like 6 inches off of the ground. Yesterday she discovered the magic of high, soaring sea gulls, and it was absolutely hysterical.

With the weather uncharacteristically beautiful for November yesterday we took a walk around the neighborhood and eventually ended up on a bench next to the Palmer Cove Yacht Club. We sat and watched the boats and socialized with the neighbors (Spanish women, for some reason, are magnetically drawn to Av. Everywhere we go if there is a Spanish woman there, she will come talk to us. And there are a lot of Spanish women in Palmer Cove).

In any event, as we were sitting on the bench some woman came along and decided to feed the seagulls some stale hamburger rolls. Naturally, we were swarmed by birds and this kid could not have been happier. She must have laughed for 10 minutes straight, but the real moment of the day was when she noticed them flying above her head. Her face went from laughter to awe instantly as they soared above her. She tried desperately to follow them with her eyes without tumbling over, but could never quite get that balance down. Yes, the miracle of flight finally realized by an infant. Nice.

Being an Old person- revisited

As I have mentioned in  previous posts, Av and I lead the same lives as old people, further evidenced by out afternoon sitting on a bench looking at birds yesterday. Today, again, this was reinforced for us when I had a moment in the Walmart parking lot.

Now, shopping at Walmart at 9 a.m. is definitely an old person thing to do, and I am OK with that. We walk around slowly and wait forever at the check out and dodge clueless drivers in the parking lot, but I guess that is to be expected. We don't have anywhere to go anyway. But today was extra disturbing for me because  realized as I looked through the parking lot that the car I used to feel cool for driving is actually an old person ride. Damn it.

When we had the baby I was forced to trade in my 2-door Saturn for something more practical, so I went to the dealer and ended up with a good old American made Chevy Impala.

Now, my Impala doesn't exactly look like this.

Or this.

 or this.

In fact, it looks exactly like this.

But I still feel kind of cool when I drive it because it has a big engine and it's fast. Unfortunately, today killed any cool feelings I had about my car. Walking around Walmart was a disaster, as the elderly were everywhere, more so than usual, and were doing extra-old things, like arguing about prices with the cashiers  (it is my fault, really, I now go to the Walmart on 114 in Danvers, which is right next to an elderly and assisted living complex). When I walked out of the store I looked around and noticed that there were Chevy Impalas like mine every where. Red ones, blue ones, white, gray, and every old person's favorite- gold.

Demoralized, I packed up the baby int he car, put on my left hand turn signal and drove 15 mph all the way home.

Episode 27: Blogger's notebook

Today I will be doing a blog version of what was once my favorite thing to do as a journalist: The reporter's notebook. It sounds all fancy and official, 'reporter's notebook,' like my notebook is filled with so many inside tidbits that the public is lucky to have me share with them. In reality, it is just a bunch of crap that  A. I am too lazy to make in to a larger story, B. Is something that I feel is entirely unimportant but know I will catch shit for if I don't mention, and C. something that someone I begrudgingly had to keep a good relationship with in order to get information from 'suggested' that I write about.

Well, with this blog it is no different. Only this and future 'blogger's notebook's' will be done purely out of laziness. I'm running out of good ideas to write about, it seems, and the baby has slept a total of about 10 minutes this week, so I am dragging ass and slacking on the 'blog site,' as my Dad calls it. Sorry, folks. Think of it as seeing your favorite band live on a night where they are really hungover and uninspired.

 ...

Today I took the next step toward being a full on dad (you know, aside from fathering a child, spending half of my paycheck to feed her and bitching about the heat being turned up) when I woke up this morning, walked over to my closet and for the first time in my life put on a bathrobe. I have owned this robe for several years, a very soft, fleecy Christmas present from when my dad used to manage the warehouse at some yuppie LL Bean rip-off type company, but I wore it sparingly as up until this point I have never been much of a robe guy.

Aside from initially feeling like a sex offender (Monica told me I looked like Grover's tall, creepy cousin who had to knock on doors before he moved in to the neighborhood) I took a liking to the robe and wore it most of the morning. I also confirmed my suspicion that the Snuggie is nothing more than a reverse bath robe without a little cloth belt. Scam.

...

I have never been the type of guy to take pictures, in fact, I have never owned a camera until about three weeks ago when I accidentally broke Monica's and bought her a new one only to find out that she had a protection plan on it. Long story short, we couldn't scam Staples and we now have two identical cameras. In any event, I wish I had one of those cameras with me this morning.

For about two months a trash bag filled with old clothes has been kicking around the house, and I decided today was the day that I get off my lazy ass and take it to the Planet Aid drop box. The nearest one to my house is located in a parking lot in between a sub shop and a transmission repair garage that looks more like a place where teenagers go to be murdered on prom night by a cult of the undead. There are two drop boxes in the back of the lot and both have very large, very intimidating warnings on them that say 'NOTICE: THIS BOX PROTECTED BY CLOSED CIRCUIT CAMERA. NO DUMPING ALLOWED' (That's what she said).

Under the warning label it listed what was restricted from being dumped. Furniture, rubbish, metal and 'waste'. (If someone can explain the difference between rubbish and waste you are a smarter person than I). Next to said sign sat a broken folding chair, two recycle bins filled with what appeared to be old gym bags, broken CD cases and what looked like a portable air compressor, one broken window blind and a filthy pair of black sneakers. I am pretty sure all of those restrictions were violated, and I am willing to bet, unless it was mounted on a tree, the closed circuit surveillance camera did little to catch the perpetrator.

...

When I was between the ages of 19-21 I did my fair share of scamming people in to giving me beer. I can remember one night where a bunch of us went around to different liquor stores saying that we left our ID's in the car in the hopes that someone would just say 'don't worry about it.' It took an hour or so, but eventually it worked.

Last night at the bar I encountered the single most pathetic attempt to drink under aged in history. Around 11 p.m. about 6 kids walked in and ordered beer, four guys and two girls. All four guys had ID's that were either real or real enough that I couldn't tell, and all had just turned 21 in the past few months. The two girls, however, were only 20. I know this because they told me in the following ways.

The first girl pulls out her ID and hands it to me. DOB 6/20/89. Really?

'I was hoping you would just look at my picture and ignore the date. If I tip you really well, can I still drink?'

 'Um. No.'

So, not the best effort I have ever seen, but her friend topped it with this gem.

'What if I have an ID that says I'm 21, but I'm really not. Would you confiscate it?'

'Um. No. But I'm also not going to serve you.'

'But, it says I'm 21.'

'But you're not.'

'So.'

'So I can't serve you.'

'What if I have my friend go to the store and I bring in my own beer.'

'Seriously?'

'Yeah. Just give me a glass.'

'Not a chance.'

Wow. Just wow.

...

So I mentioned before that Av hasn't been sleeping much, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that she has started to eat real food and I think it makes her gassy and constipated. She has an outrageous amount of teeth for a child her age, six with more on the way, therefore, we have decided that it is time to introduce her to foods that are not just unidentifiable mush.

She likes bananas, sweet potato fries and cheerios, but one thing she is going to town on a lot lately is oatmeal. It doesn't even matter what kind of oatmeal, or what is in it, she loves it. As a result, there have been a multitude of poop incidents. In fact, almost every morning I wake up to a steaming load in her diaper. When she has been keeping me up all night as it is, that is not a good way to start the day.

That said, even I had to laugh at the latest poop catastrophe that took place on Tuesday. Somewhere around noon she was in the bath tub getting the stink of her last oatmeal dump off of her when she instantly stopped playing and splashing around, squinted her eyes and let out what I thought was a fart. It was classic cliche' bathtub fart. There were bubbles, she let off this little giggle afterward. It was funny. Until I saw the turd float to the top of the tub. Needless to say, the bath ended then and there and the strenuous task of removing the turd without touching it, or letting it touch anything in the bath tub began.

...

So that is it. That is my time. Tonight marks my final time that I will be doing the Item a favor covering School Committee meetings. I realized that if you quit a job that you hate but still go back every two weeks to help them out, it defeats the purpose. So, I'm done. That's it. I'm out. Another year or so as a stay at home dad, then it is off to the real world again. Now if only I knew what I wanted to be when I grow up...

Episode 26: I hope DSS isn't reading this

When I was growing up my parents used to like to reminisce about all of the times that something terrible happened or almost happened to me as a baby. There was the time I got the pea suck up my nose and had to go to the hospital, or the time that I fell down a flight of stairs, bounced off of my head and was caught inches away from slamming in to the front door. This was funny to them, as I was admittedly the 'experimental child.'

Aside from a general lack of motivation, inability to do simple math and occasionally crippling anxiety (none of which can be directly blamed on the incidents listed above) I feel like I grew up to be a fairly well-adjusted, intelligent adult. Sure, some of the effects of being the experimental child still linger. I have terrible handwriting and some pretty severe cognitive confusion thanks to a decision to force me in to being right-handed, despite the fact that originally I was clearly a lefty, but for the most part I have learned to live my life as a normal, functioning human.

With this experience under my belt, I have taken a similar experimental approach to raising Av, which has resulted in my fair share of 'oh shit' moments throughout the day. The number one most frequent incident that I come across is the bumping of the head. This is something that used to freak m out a lot at first, but now after a few months has become less of a concern for me.

As she approaches 9-months, the baby is getting to the point where she can just about stand up on her own, and is not too far from being able to walk. This creates a lot of humorous 'milestone' moments, but at the same time, her lack of balance creates a lot of near-miss injuries, too.

Much of our time at home is spent playing on the floor, where I like to strategically set up some of the 257,000 pillows we have in our house to create soft landings for her. I cover up the corners of the walls, places where she could fall backwards and the area around the coffee table. Somehow, she always finds a way to fall in between the pillows and bounce her head off of the hard wood floors.

Most of the bumps are pretty mild, actually, I am never too far away, so I always have a hand on her to break the fall, but babies heads are huge, I think it is something like 98 percent of their total body weight (this number has not been researched), so much of the time she just tips over head first and takes a little bump.

Due to the pageantry of the crying that takes place after the fall, I used to take this pretty seriously, until I realized that it is just the stigma of bumping her head that makes her cry, not the actual pain. Sure, once in a while she might whack it pretty good, but mostly it is just a little bump.

The real pain comes from injuries she brings upon herself, like when she is playing with something hard and plastic, like one of those pointless baby toys that just has three spinning ducks on it, and she slams it off of her nose because she has no motor skills. Or when she uses her ridiculously sharp teeth to bite her own lip.

Th other day she was sitting in the high chair eating a cookie when she broke out in a panicked cry, you know, one of those delayed ones where she is so upset there is no noise coming out, just a purple face, squinted eyes and some tears. Turns out, she got a little too excited with the cookie and ate her own finger. She has bitten me before, trust me, those bastards are sharp.

So the lesson I have learned here is that taking care of children is less about feeding them and keeping them entertained as it is about preventing catastrophic injury at every turn, and then attempting to explain to someone who can't speak and who probably isn't sure what your saying, that trying to climb the bookshelf to grab and eat a three hole punch is not safe.

Thus, the experiment continues on a daily basis. Hopefully, her experiences will shape her in to an upstanding, successful, well adjusted adult like her father. If not, it will probably be my fault. Which I am sure will be mentioned in therapy around age 16. 

Episode 25: Babies and old people. Two peas in a very smelly pod.

Let me first start out by saying that I love old people. I think they are great. They are our country's greatest natural resource and I think we can all learn a lifetime of knowledge from them. If given the choice of having dinner with a random 25-year-old or a random 85-year-old, I would pick the 85-year-old almost every time.  (The one exception to this rule is Russian women. I am not sure that they have hearts. Then again, growing up in Soviet Russia probably wasn't all that easy so I'll give them a pass).

The reason that I bring this up is that I have been noticing lately, since I have been staying home with the baby, that I have been keeping the same hours as the elderly, and it is beginning to get a bit disturbing. In general, babies and the elderly are a lot alike- strange sleeping habits, an inability to control their bowel movements and a diet made up mostly of soft, pureed food- but I never expected that I would essentially be living the life of an old man at the age of 25 just because I take care of a baby.

I started to notice it a few weeks ago when the baby and I were at the park. I looked around at one point and saw nothing but elderly people all around me. Sitting on benches, slowly strolling up and down the paths, taking Polaroids of trees and boats. This phenomenon has continued every time we have gone to the park since, simply because we happen to go at about the same time that the local assisted living facility takes its daily outdoor field trip.

(This, incidentally, is how I learned that Russian women are heartless. While most of the American and other unidentified races of elderly approach me often to compliment me on the baby, reminisce about their families and make baby noises, the Russian women tend instead to glare as we walk by. They have no interest in seeing a baby. It does not remind them of their grandchildren. It does not brighten their day. In fact, it seems that nothing brightens their day. They even frown as they walk around the park on a 50 degree day in November which, if you think about it, has to be down right scorching for someone who grew up in Moscow).

In any event, once I realized that we were on schedule with the assisted living home it occurred to me that the baby and I inadvertently have been keeping old people hours. We are up at 6, I usually eat lunch by 11, nap by 2 and am ready for dinner and a stiff drink by 5. A true early bird, if you will.

The other day the baby and I had some errands to run and started out like it was a normal day. We made a few stops and got a few things done, and I found myself in the vicinity of the mall. I had little desire to go back home already, since the baby seemed content to be out, so I decided we'd kill some time and see what the place had to offer. Walk around, maybe Build a Bear, maybe a soft pretzel, Home Depot if there is time, etc. It never occurred to me that we may be at the mall too early for any of that. We had been up since 5:45. This was practically mid-day for me. We walked in the front door of the mall at 9:12 a.m. (which, to me, is not an unreasonably early time) only to realize that the only stores open were Starbucks, McDonalds and the Apple Store (because evil never sleeps). So what did we do? Joined the legions of elderly people in walking the mall loop.

'My doctor says I need to keep active to avoid arthritis and keep my blood pressure down. If I walk now I'll have the energy to play with the grand kids later.' 

Disappointed and a little disturbed, honestly, that the stores in the mall open so late (damn kids and their sleeping in can't get to Journey's to open before 10!) we returned home. The baby was asleep so I settled in to watch some kick ass daytime TV.

For those of you with jobs and lives, you may not be aware that Wayne Brady now hosts a new version of Lets Make A Deal right before the Price is Right. Yes, I enjoy this. Me and every old person in America love Wayne Brady and Drew Carey. While watching my two-hour block of fabulous cash and prizes I saw the usual commercials. Hover Round. Polident. Activia. But due to my recent experiences, by the time it was over I started to feel like my walk at the mall would have been aided by a motorized scooter, and I was looking for a way to cure my occasional irregularity, overactive bladder and moderate to severe psoriasis... ACTIVON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO WHERE IT HURTS!

I know that it will only be another few months that I am on old people hours, but it is starting to disturb me. I don't want to pick up old people tendencies. I don't want to start eating fish and mashed potatoes for lunch. I don't want to drive my car through a storefront and kill three people. I don't want BPH or an enlarged prostate. I like old people, but I don't want to be one.

With that I will leave you with one more story of the elderly. On Monday I had to go to the bank to pay my rent. Among the customers ahead of me were three old men. The first walked up to the teller with several crumbled pieces of paper.

'I need to check my balance. My account number is in here somewhere,' he said. The teller read him his balance.

'Is there anything else, sir?' she asked,

'No. That's all, thank you.'

The second man comes up to the teller.

'I need to take out $40. My account number is *******. I'd also like a balance.'

'Ok, sir. I need to see some identification, please.'

'Identification?! I jut gave you the damn account number.'

'Sir...' (a back and forth ensues, which ends with the man leaving because he didn't have his wallet).

The third old man comes up, as I am now at the teller window next to him, and begins speaking in a foreign tongue that I believe was Russian, but I cannot be sure. The American teller has no idea what he is saying. Eventually another elderly person in the office was able to translate. He wanted to withdraw $20 from his savings account.

That was three men, all seemingly over the age of 70, whose lives could have been made so much easier by simply learning to use an ATM card. I was, and still am, flabbergasted by the lack of technological advancement in the elderly. It isn't an iPod, it's an ATM card, and it will come in handy some day if you need to pick up a new pair of orthopedic shoes for your mall exercises.I am thinking about teaching a class. Banking for the elderly. It will have to be at like 4 in the afternoon, though, can't interrupt dinner at 5. Or BINGO at 6.

Episode 24: The one where Mom got the Swine

This is a classic case of Karma biting me in the ass once again.

Since the H1N1 Swine Flu 'epidemic' took the world by storm last April I have been the disease's number one critic. I was still working at the newspaper when the craze first swept through America and I was stuck doing one of the things I hated the most as a journalist, hopping on a trendy national story and trying desperately to localize it.

There was always something going on in the world that we were trying (usually poorly) to make relevant to the citizens of Lynn, and I always hated it. For example, say something tragic happened in India (I have a hazy recollection of a terrorist attack or massacre of some kind happening there last year) I would get the 'call some Indian people living in Lynn' request from my boss, meaning I had to spend my day cold-calling Indian people looking for comment on a situation they were not involved in. I hated it. The only thing worse was when someone died and I'd have to do the 'What to you remember about so and so' interview. Like they were going to say anything other than 'Dave was a great man' or 'It was such a tragic loss.'

Just once I wanted to hear someone say, 'You know, it is too bad that Dave died, but he was a real prick. I won't miss him.'

The Swine Flu story was no different, and was made worse by the fact that paranoia in schools was at an all time high. As the education reporter, it became my job to find out if there were any cases of the swine in Lynn, and to field calls from every angry parent whose student had a cough as if the school system was somehow negligent for not preventing the spread of a contagious flu.

For six months I cursed this disease and wished it would go away. 'It is just the flu' I would mutter through clenched teeth. 'Take some friggin Dayquill and get over it.' Much to my dismay, the swine never went away and, in fact, the paranoia party worsened as the school year approached again.

Fast forward to the beginning of last week. I had been under the weather for two or three days, a sore throat, headache, fatigue, you know, common cold stuff. I was just about over it on Thursday when Monica started feeling the same way. With my having to work the weekend, she packed up the baby and headed south to Dedham to stay with her parents for a few days in the hopes that she would feel a bit better and get some help taking care of Av.

As her sickness worsened and a fever ensued, she realized that maybe I had not passed along my mild cold and thought it would be best to head to a doctor. Normally in this situation they would have sent her home with an antibiotic and told her to get over it, just as doctors have been doing to people with the flu for years, but given her job as a middle school teacher/ mom and the previously mentioned H1N1 paranoia, they decided to stick a swab up her nose and test her for the Swine.

It was positive. Karma.

Now, the baby has had her swine shots, but enough time had not elapsed, so Monica was quarantined for three days meaning I was thrust in to 24-hour-dad for the first time.

(EDITORS NOTE/ PUBLIC SERVICE: Av's Swine shots were administered by a pediatrician named  Christine Tentindo of Beverly Pediatric Associates. This woman is without question the most evil, uncompassionate monster on the planet. She didn't even tell me when she was going to give the baby her shot. She just stabbed it in to her leg without warning, and then got annoyed when she started crying. So annoyed, in fact, that she left the room until she stopped. We will not return to this practice and anyone with children should stay as far away from this wench as possible. Thank You.)

I was admittedly nervous heading in to the situation, not because I didn't think I could handle it, but because I wasn't sure how Av would react to having just me around, especially at night when she is used to having Mom come in the room.

So from Monday to Wednesday it was just Av and I hanging out and, surprisingly, things went extremely well. I stayed patient and she didn't panic too much, although by Wednesday morning she was just about done with me and was clearly in search of her mom.

As for Monica, she is back to normal and back home. After her ordeal all indications are that, while she felt like crap and suffered through a three-day fever, Swine Flu is- as I have been saying from the beginning- still JUST THE DAMN FLU. Yes, people die from Swine. People also die from the seasonal flu. People also get run over by trains and crushed by falling tree limbs. It happens. If people didn't die the lines at the bank would be unmanageable.

The medical industry, as it likes to do with any disease (restless leg syndrome, anyone?) is using H1N1 as an excuse to spread paranoia and fear to the American public in an effort to collect $50 co-pays and sell more drugs to the populous. 'You have the Swine! stay home! Unless, of course, you are visiting your doctor, the ER or the pharmacy, which you will have to do several times before you are better!'

I know that the important thing is that the baby is OK, even if the medical industry is a complete sham, and it is nice to know that she now trusts me enough to spend an entire day with me without panicking, but in the end, I learned that there is still nothing like having your mom around no matter how cool your dad is. If there is a lesson to be learned here, kids, that is it. Mom's rule.