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[pmcd9]

I don't know why I did this.  It's not like I don't have better more important things to do.  I don't even find these updates very entertaining.

Nonetheless here are all of the Baby/Toddler/Kid updates (at least the ones reported on this board) all gathered together in a single three post for your convenience.

Baby/Toddler/Kid Updates

Baby Updates:

8/5/2005: The gleeful preadolescent who sprinted toward the stroller with outstretched hand was clotheslined by his teacher.

8/8/2005: The baby did all the right things and was popular at the party.

8/11/2005:  We drove the baby through the office park where I used to work and while she slept I got pissed at the memories.

8/14/2005: It was the baby's five-month birthday, so she was given a green chair.

8/15/2005: The baby was furious when a ruined piece of paper was taken from her.

8/17/2005: If a baby does not look ready to feature on a line of hip greeting cards, put little sunglasses on that baby.

8/18/2005: The baby is dressed like Roddy Radiation today, complete with tiny shiny white shoes and Bing Crosby hat.

8/23: Today I showed the baby how to polish off a tasty corned beef on rye.

8/25/2005: Today the baby and I tricked a shop clerk and ran off into the fields with purloined horehound.

8/30/2005: Still no conscience.

8/31/2005: Wore a pink hat and slapped the side of the dog's head

9/1/2005: Tonight we got calzones and in hers the baby got “Lactoni! The Semisoft Breast Milk Pepperoni Alternative For Kids” (charged as 293 toppings)

9/7/2005: The baby is one week shy of being halfway done with being a baby.

9/9/2005: The baby looked on as the local nutty old lady who wears only a long white t-shirt and flip-flops nearly got killed while wandering across a busy street.

9/12/2005: Picture of Baby

9/16/2005: The waitress who said "hi" to the baby sixteen different squealy ways did not, in the end, curry favor with anyone at the table.

9/19/2005: The baby ate a form of porridge

9/20/2005:  To-day we donned our frock coats and merkins and fed the baby a thin gruel.

9/22/2005: At the Millbrae Pancake House the baby threw her foam "#8" bath toy onto the floor. The waitress with the thick Jersey accent and wet hair had a slug-shaped bruise on her tricep area.

9/23/2005: The baby was enormously displeased with our a cappella bathtime rendition of "Particle Man."

9/24/2005: The baby wore a helmet of suds during the bathtime rendition of "Birdhouse In Your Soul."

9/25/2005: The baby killed a man in Reno.

9/26/2005: Like a person with a metal plate in their head, the baby is mad at her own teeth.

9/28/2005: The wireless baby monitor is on the same frequency as my wireless keyboard and so [sound of small fuzzy worm playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star]

10/01/2005: The little baby watched an old woman with a cane hobble by while Simon and Garfunkel music seemed to make a point that none could ignore.

10/03/2005: The baby was proud of herself due to a cute accomplishment.

10/04/2005: The baby slept for over seven minutes in a row, but in the end we paid the price for such a lavish respite

10/09/2005: The baby went to a wedding where a spiritual man with body odor played enormous Paiste gongs for a long time before anyone was allowed to eat.

10/12/2005: Another enormous plastic containment / entertainment device was purchased for the purpose of quelling baby's tears for an additional six minutes each day. 

10/17/2005: Babies are like little vampires, except all they want is to eat and know that they are safe.

10/21/2005: I didn't see much of the baby today, because she squeezed my eyeballs until they popped. She is seven months!

10/22/2005: Today the baby said "ambo," which is not a real word, so I gave her a gently reproachful look.

10/24/2005: Tonight the baby yelled so much that we skipped the bath and went directly to the yelling.

10/27/2005: Today the baby practiced watching me eat ratatouille. Much room for improvement.

10/28/2005: Today we had the big "drug talk" that every parent dreads. Thankfully, she agreed not to pass judgment on my lifestyle.

10/30/2005: The baby ate her first french fry at Frytz today! Or, at least, a mashed-up bit from the eviscerated interior of a french fry. She was confused, but fed.

11/01/2005: She had a sneeze in her nose. 

11/04/2005: The only song the baby will fall asleep to is Magazine's "Don Quixote," which has put a great strain on our family.

11/05/2005: She ate guacamole today, something I didn't do until I was about 19. 

11/08: The baby's little Parkour routine consisted of pulling herself up to the crib rail and then needing a hug.

11/11: The baby is throwing an empty can of Hansen's at the keyboard so this baby update will be short.

11/14: The baby turned eight months old at 9:41am today while we were walking past the weird pizza restaurant that went out of business after only one week.

11/16: Wensleydale The Sleep Sheep choked at bedtime, but in a clutch, Constantine The Small Sock I Brought In From The Living Room did a fine job of guiding her into the kingdom if seven-minute dreams.

11/21: The baby did not know why I was mad (it was because the dog threw up on the bed).

11/22: The baby can now go from lying on her stomach to standing on our bladders with almost no assistance.

11/23: A tiny bowl of cinnamon-apple oat-mush was upended onto the dog's head in a comical fashion, yet Shoebox Greetings failed to design a greeting card around the resulting imagery.

11/24: The baby laughed so much that she got scared and cried.

11/28: Scientific test: if Emeril Lagasse is on the TV, a baby will crawl any direction but at Emeril.

12/04: 11AM: The baby, while on her way to a friend's baby shower, saw a killed motorcyclist gushing blood out of his head on the side of highway 280, just south of San Francisco, before 19th Street. There is no appropriate followup sentence.

12/04: A professional musician sang customized Elvis songs to the baby while she took a bath.

12/06: The baby is in the other room getting aggro with something called a "Giggle Ball."

12/08: The baby did not care that the walrus was Paul.

12/09: I wish I'd worked things out such that I could just sit around and read Pat The Bunny with no ****** on. 

12/11: The baby got earth-friendly diapers that can be flushed. You stir them around in the bowl with this little plastic saber to help them dissolve. This update is factual.

12/14: We have grand plans to make our own zweiback out of wheatless bread. Meanwhile, on the moon, Richard Branson drinks an 1817 Ardbeg out of Uma Thurman's cupped hands.

12/18: The baby crawled three crawls and then dispensed with the activity altogether.

12/19: The baby hates  Santa Claus, hates  him to hell

12/21: The baby does real action in the diaper now, not just that cute stuff like you get with McNuggets

12/25: The baby literally got her two front teeth for Christmas — hell of creepy   

2/29: The baby's band, "Tiny Baby and the Practice People," released their first U.S. single: There Is Nothing In My Diaper But My Butt.

2006:

1/4: The baby's band, "Tiny Baby and the Practice People," released their second U.S. single: Oh No, Yeah Yeah, Can't Digest Peas.


1/5: The baby's band, "Tiny Baby and the Practice People," released their third U.S. single: Fell Over And Hit My Head On Ruth Reichl's New Book Blues.

1/9: The baby had a doctor visit, to help a sad doctor be happy and laugh again.

1/11: The baby starred in the sequel, "Cute Baby II: The Cute Baby Is At My House."

1/16: The baby played with my teeth for a while, then slapped me on the face.

1/18: She tossed a sock out of her stroller on the morning walk, so we took a car trip to locate it (it was on Rockabilly Row, behind the '58 Imperial)

1/19: The baby met a different baby named Henry and we had Chinese food with his parents. I had a cocktail with an egg white in it. The texture of the beverage was entirely remarkable.

1/20: The feverish baby napped on my chest while a snowy, black-and-white Mario Batali silently poached a rare sausage on TV.

1/22: Having a baby makes it extremely not fun to watch Law & Order episodes about babies being abandoned in dumpsters.

1/25: The baby is starting to look more like me. I slipped her a dollar.

1/28: Dave Barry got to meet the baby today, at his book signing in Palo Alto. I am not making this up: he said she was cute.

1/31: At bathtime, we combed the baby's hair so that she looked like a young Joseph Cotten.

2/2: The baby had her first sushi tonight! Part of sushi, anyway. Well, a couple bits of sticky rice. Actually, she threw the rice on the floor. Wait, no — the rice landed on the dog. Now it looks like the dog has "maggots."

2/6: God gives babies mullets, but I take them away.

2/8: I didn't see the baby much today. We had different tasks.

2/12: The baby ate so much tortellini at dinner that I at first became proud, then concerned, then nervous and tense

2/17: We left the baby to her own devices this afternoon (puffy book and small, plastic Noah's ark)

2/19: You might think that a ninja is amazing, and has incredible physical abilities, but I bet even ninjas can't get ****** or diapers onto their babies once they learn to crawl.

2/23: The baby got intelligence and now she won't sleep.

2/26: The old Jump Out Of The Bathroom With Shaving Cream On trick did not help the baby to think that she had a good dad.

3/1: The baby is so cute, Bobby Flay actually stepped out of the TV screen and played with her—until he noticed that his mango-dusted quail confit empanadas were burning.

3/6: The dog is acting out because the baby plays with her food and water bowls. The dog is being kind of an ass about the whole thing, if you ask me.

3/8: 51 weeks old.

3/12: she is freestyling the phonemes and morphemes at all times

Current Baby Status, 3/14:

Current Baby Status, 3/14:

3/21: Do you read tea leaves or chicken giblets? Let me know if the baby’s future husband was born today. I have this weird feeling.

3/22:The baby, using fingers, turned my computer off unexpectedly and caused me to lose a lot of Jeep drawings.

3/23: The baby was a giggle factory. She sourced raw giggles, processed them, and turned them into finished giggles for the marketplace.

3/26: Here is how to describe teething: Just when it got worse, it got horrible again


3/28: The baby's first word is, Hi.

4/2: The baby drank water out of a plant coaster, so I worried about giardia for six hours.

4/5: The baby has entered Tiny Thug phase. Faces are slapped hard on the diagonal, plates are furiously upturned. Egg is everywhere, yogurt dots the ceiling. The dog was slapped so hard that she almost lost it.

4/6: Parenting, which is difficult, means that you only order restaurant dishes which can be eaten with one hand and no cutting.

4/7: We learned that the reason the baby slaps is because she either wants attention or does not want attention.

4/10: The baby is starting to imitate our words, so it is time to not have a temper anymore.

4/12: The baby dances to music now. It is a simple, binary dance, and requires three points of contact with stationary objects, but it's more than I can do.

4/14: We were sitting on the floor watching Jeopardy. After we turned off the TV, the baby looked at us with a smile, rose up, and then stood unassisted for ten seconds. I immediately put Also Sprach Zarathustra on WinAmp and gave her a NERF femur.

4/17: The baby's dad just paid all his taxes and is now acting like he has a finger-gun that he can point all over the place.

4/23: The baby knows to say Hi to approaching dogs.

4/24: The baby did not eat anything that she could not scream at first. The baby forgot that it is the job of enzymes, not screams, to break down the food.

4/27: Turns out I was wrong. The baby screamed at a piece of radiatore until it turned back into individual trenette.

4/30: The baby was going to get to play with her great-grandfather's ukulele, but it turns out it's made from really valuable extinct koa wood, so now we all just feel really bad about what man has done to the planet in the name of ukuleles.

5/4: Teething is proof that God hates us and wants us to hit ourselves on the head a trowel.

5/9: The police came and arrested the baby for being so cute. They read her the Cut It Out act.

5/14: The baby got a ukulele from George Harrison's favorite Hawaiian ukulele shop. Tablature for Bathtub Sonata to follow.

5/15: The baby has sixteen words now. I am bragging - this is what it's like when I brag. The words: hi, shoe, ducky, doggie, daddy, food, eat, clock, dirt, water, ball, piggy, owl, bird, bubble, and helicopter (only we recognize helicopter, which sounds like eh'-cop-ta).

[pmcd9]

Toddler Updates:
2006

5/16: First steps!

5/22: Surprisingly, the slurping-up of long, single strands of spaghetti seems to be a primal instinct. My baby is a comedy guido in shiny black Robeez.

5/23: She was taken to Chuck E. Cheese's, the only kid-themed restaurant chain honest enough to have a rat as a mascot.

5/28: When bringing a toddler to a large family party, sit strategically: occupy a corner of lawn which affords no proper seating. This will dramatically reduce the number of aunties who come over to ask when you plan on having your next child.

5/30: She went in her little pool today, dressed like Esther Williams.

6/1: When we left the farmer's market, she was holding a CitiBank balloon. What?

6/5: She gorged so messily on capellini with tomato sauce that our dinner guest literally flipped his plate, stormed out the door, and peeled his car tires out in the driveway as he left.

6/9: She and I (mostly the latter) got yelled at when she played with my special book-signing fountain pen and got ink all over her hands, her fancy shirt, and Cornelius Bear's forehead.

6/13: She hid the TiVo remote in the trunk of her toy car, and it was actually kind of a problem for a few hours.

6/15: On Saturday we are going to see Otto the Clown 'Copter, who apparently has a 75 lb. functioning yo-yo.

6/20: She is sleeping! Please close your browser very gently.

6/25: I went on a plane trip and realized that pretty soon I need to start getting her little souvenirs.

6/26: She played at her sand-and-water table while I hit ripe plums with a nine-iron. A good day.

7/03: She accidentally overheard me confiding in a friend that my dog has been acting like a real asshole lately.

7/05: My little girl has, without human interference, grown the hairstyle of Gene Clark circa 1965. Maybe there is a God.

7/09: A little girl in clogs and barrettes danced gaily to the Teletubbies theme song while her food-poisoned dad sat on the couch, shivering and clutching a pillow to his chest.

/10: The little girl's father is feeling better; he braved some chicken soup and toast today. They also practiced walking again (him, not her).

7/16: She doesn’t crawl anymore, so it is time to get the house ready for Hot Lava.

7/18: Grandma came to babysit today! My big self-indulgence was that I finally had time to scoop dog shit off the lawn, fix the sprinkler system, and renew our AAA membership.

7/21: Oh man, tomorrow she is totally going to dance to the Gnarls Barkley website. Later we will explain that Gnarls Barkley is a tiny French Bulldog the size of a Coke can, and that he can get on an airplane without showing any identification to anyone.

7/24: I was preoccupied during the small amount of time we spent together today. Later, this made me sad. I'm talking Radiohead sad.

7/29: Today was the first day she wanted to hold my hand while walking. If you think that sounds cheesy, you can go fuck yourself.

7/30: Today she got up at five because she thought piano practice started then. Piano practice went until six-thirty.

7/31: Are you the kind of dad that gets embarrassed when his toddler sees him naked, or just clothed? Because I’m both.

8/2: She had her first personal restaurant dish today, instead of sharing off of our plates. It was penne with butter. It was three dollars. Fifteen dollar ravioli had nothing on it.

8/3: She walked straight to bed from the couch where we have bedtime stories, and climbed in! Next thing you know she will drive a car to college and marry a man named Clue Bucket. I do not miss the future.

8/8. Teething, revisited: just when it couldn't get any worse, it got horrible again. (Molars edition)

8/9: When bathtime is over, she starts humming the first few notes of Road Movie To Berlin, and looks at us unsurely

8/9: When bathtime is over, she starts humming the first few notes of Road Movie To Berlin.

8/14: We went to a birthday party for another toddler and everybody got confused and danced to something called Mega Frog.

8/20: We took a plane ride to Los Angeles, and she added the word Bogus to her vocabulary.

8/20: We took a plane ride to Los Angeles, and she added the word Bogus to her vocabulary.

8/27: Half an hour of topless peek-a-boo couldn't help but bring back bitter memories of why I lost my last job.

8/29: We joined a little pre-school thing that meets once a week, and we are in charge of the Play-Doh station.

8/30: If, in the next five months, I find myself on the way home from IKEA with yet another full truckload of bright plastic crap, I'm going to shut my hand in a drawer until I die.

9/4: I'm learning to sing while playing the guitar during bathtime. So far all my rhymes are about a Bear in his Underwear. I really have to concentrate pretty hard just to hit the chord changes, so lyrical content takes a backseat.

9/10: Unsuccessfully piloted pink plastic trike car down deck steps (scraped nose, forehead), wore hand-me-down Princess dress with missing velcro wings. If you are directing a music video please commission these visuals.

9/11: Television raised the child while I paid a few bills and made a sandwich. After that, the Magna Doodle raised her while I wrote to some friends. I can't figure out who's raising her now; I can't see her.

9/14: This might sound entirely cheesy and made-up, but today we literally went side-by-side down a great big wide slide together.

9/18: She goes to a little school now, 2 hours a week, including snack break. This is the same schedule I used to make Stanford bearable.

9/19: Her favorite new activity: beating on the bathroom door like a rowdy gang of Ecuadorean soccer fans when all you want in the world is some peace and quiet with an improving book.

9/24: I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die but also, he had taken the last two TMX Elmo dolls, and I'd driven six hours.

9/25: I know exactly where I was when Kurt Cobain died. Where will she be when Justin Timberlake is crushed by a giant hog dropped from a crane? Probably right by my side, in our family crane, holding the camera.

10/01: Did you know that if you are working on a sprinkler head, and it starts spraying the kid while your head is down, the kid will just stand there in the spray and cry?

10/02: It’s been a long time (well, maybe six years) since I spent a lazy afternoon just “getting” carpet.

10/06: We finally had the big “******” fight.

10/11: I let her play with an opened-up old junker computer. Is that bad? I figured the capacitors were all leaked out by now.

10/15: There was this family thing where we were at an IHOP in San Luis Obispo this morning, and they let us have the Speech Room where the Lions hold their AA or whatever. It was great because all the kids could run around and bounce off of lecterns and throw milk at chairs.

10/23: If a painter had come to our house and made a painting of what was going on after bathtime, he would have titled it, “Tiny Nude With Red Galoshes.”

10/25: To her, playing soccer means yelling “SOCCER!” at a soccer ball. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

10/29: "Mr.Creative" still hasn't come up with a good Halloween costume for his daughter.  Perhaps... Achewood Volume III? I just don't know.

10/31: We watched YouTube and learned about Cyndi Lauper.

11/1: For Halloween she was a grumpy bee who refused to leave the house.

11/7:   We have successfully taught her to call a man's chest hair his "macho."

11/12: Slowly ruining the gears of the motorized “James” train engine. Used the toilet again. In all, a draw.

11/13: She Caddyshacked the tub.

11/19: She got hugged by some anonymous boy-toddler at the park. Even at this age, dads instinctively start to find fault with the little fellow.

11/25: Saturday: We went to a beer garden at 11:30am and it turned out to be a great parenting decision.

11/27:   Tights: 0
   Carseat Temper Tantrum: 1

12/02  We scored a plastic play-house thing the size of a cubicle. It will sit in the yard and get worse until we have to feel terrible about throwing it in a landfill.

2/04:  At her direction, the little advent cupboard is now full of Weebles, Weeble furniture, and large pieces of cereal.

12/10:  She is trying her hardest to concoct sentences, but most of the time the undertaking strains and rattles so hard that it collapses into a heap of nouns and bruised infinitives.

12/15:  I've always dreaded sitting on Santa's lap. Why must we subject her to it? He's doing nothing more than collecting market data for his host mall, anyways. Bah.

12/21:  When parenting, remember not to yell, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SCREAMING ABOUT?! STOP IT!"

12/25:  Her favorite gift: little wind-up mailman Jeep. My favorite gift of hers: a small hand-puppet bear in a sleeping bag, whom you can pretend has had too much Keystone and would give anything not to have to get up and take a searing pee.

12/29:  he said "I love you!" to me for the first time! Then she said it to the chair, a ball, and half a packet of Halls Mentho-Lyptus cough drops.

2007:

1/5:  Were Bert and Ernie's bodies always this big? I thought they used to be smaller.

1/7:  Dammit, I just caught her ghost riding the whip.

1/9:  Childhood Vomit Management Tip No. 28: Do not vomit on a dog. Dogs move around a lot, and are unpleasant to bathe.

1/15:  I cannot find the light-activated toy that makes a rooster noise every time I turn the light off in her room. It’s getting to be a problem.

1/16:  Lady and the Tramp continuity error, scene one: the newspaper that Jim Dear places next to Lady’s bed-basket is omitted from all subsequent depictions of her bed-basket.

1/22:  Schrödinger's Free Sample: the free soup sample at the store which your child simultaneously must have, yet absolutely hates and throws to the ground, only to scream for it once more.

1/25:  She tells small stories now. Did you know that at the zoo, OWL...SLEEPING...TIRED?

2/1:  When pressed into service for a twenty-five minute bedtime narrative, the generative technique of “free association” proves far superior to the traditional storytelling methods of plot development, resolution, and moral allegory."

2/7:  Lady and the Tramp continuity error no. 2: in the classic meatball/spaghetti sequence, Tramp has a 3cm lipoma that is not present in the rest of the film.

2/12:  I sat in at her little preschool and I was the only male parent and nobody talked to me except a kid named Joshie who had a truck.

2/15:  As I type this, she is in the other room, watching Mr. Noodle (Michael Jeter, 1952-2003) and carefully coloring her knees with sidewalk chalk.

2/20:  My idea of parenting: "Go watch the bear movie. Stop playing with that ink." [turns head, reads same news website for 38th time that morning]

2/23:  Lady and the Tramp continuity error no. 3: When Lady goes to buy the cigarettes for Tramp, she gets him a pack of Newports. This brand was not introduced to the market until 1957, two years after the release of this film.

3/1:  "Terrible Twos" is a diplomatic understatement. Even the dog wants to sell her to the gypsies ("RUFF RUFF RYPSIES?!").

3/6:  We spent the better part of the morning eating toothpaste and clipping our toenails.

3/9:  She went to stay with her grandparents for the evening and, wouldn't you know, I watched a Law & Order episode about toddlers getting iced. Hooray for a way bad-shitty TV call.

3/11:  Freezepop came to visit, and she offered to knock over a block tower with her butt.

3/12:  In the stroller, we walked past one of those older women who act like they hate that you point out their "cute doggie" to your child.

3/14:  She is two today. My gift to her? No more cussing around the house unless my arm is absolutely on fire.

3/18:  Saaay, time to throw a birthday party! [hemorrhages money]

3/21:  Dressed as a princess, she surprised everyone by eating calamari.

3/23:  When her hair is slicked back in the bath, her profile looks kind of sweet and Eisenhower-y.

3/26:  There is something to this Zodiac stuff. As a Pisces, she spends at least three hours a day at or in the sink, fountains, water tables, the tub, pools, creeks, puddles, and any water-bearing Italian restaurant statuary we happen to pass.

3/30:  She has a crush on Christopher Robin. If I see that guy prowling around here, I'll shoot him with rock salt until he tastes different.

4/3:  I went to a Major League Baseball game and spent $16.50 of her inheritance on a hot dog and a beer. The same deal in Vegas is only $2, and the bathroom floors are still conveniently covered with carroty vomit.

4/9:  We had a father-daughter squabble about how I needed to work and couldn't play with markers. She ran out of my office crying. A minute later she ran in, put a little gift bag with a plastic CUNT in it on my desk, and then ran out again, still sniffling. Already, a black belt in guilt.

4/15:  The plan was to go to the San Francisco Zoo, but it was too crowded, so we went to the beach, where I worried about the seething old drunk with the heavy cane who wouldn't stop staring at my car.

4/19:  Slowly, surely, day by day, we are learning not to rock the dog's head with a length of BRIO track.

4/23:  She likes to scribble with a Sharpie while sitting in my lap as I write, and I am innocently becoming a huffer.

4/25:  She is out with my parents, buying fancy new rocks.

4/30:  Yeah, I just spent money on tickets to ride Thomas the Tank Engine this summer. See you in the roiling sea of Kelty and sippy-cup mayhem.

5/1:  If the pope falls in the woods, does he only cry if someone sees him?

5/9:  She won't let us brush her hair, so just picture a tiny Janis Joplin with chocolate milk instead of Southern Comfort and you're ninety percent there.

5/16:  Lady and the Tramp continuity error no. 4: In the sequence where they sell the muzzle to the beaver with the speech impediment, Tramp is wearing a wristwatch.

5/21:  She graduated from preschool and ate a foil-topped tub of fake grape jam at the unremarkable family restaurant.

5/25:  Lady and the Tramp continuity error No. 5: In the bistro scene, Tramp remarks on his love for tarragon, yet earlier in the film it is established that dogs cannot taste tarragon.

5/31:  Who gave her this terrible tie-dye outfit? She looks like Wavy Gravy. Two years of sleep deprivation have left me wide open to forgetting who is giving us this kind of thing.

6/1:  We watched some tennis on TV. I had never seen Serena Williams play before. I had also never spent time looking up Serena Williams videos on YouTube, after dinner.

6/7:  I fell asleep while putting her to sleep. When I awoke, she was asleep, and the dog slept across my legs.

6/11:  I was fixing the spring on her diaper pail with my fancy Swiss Army knife, and she kept patting me on the shoulder, saying "good work, daddy. Good work." She said "good work" about seventeen times. I have agreed to hire her as my manager.

6/19:  Dressed in a swimsuit, adorned with gratuitous Curious George Band-Aids, and cooling herself with my battery-operated fan, she was pushed into town in a stroller.

6/24: She missed the "wiener national" dachshund races at the county fair, but caught a Martin Yan demo and a few brand-new black baby sheep with umbilical cords like pink bucatini.

[pmcd9]

2007

Kid Status:

6/27:  You get an IRS deduction for having a child, but it should be much larger when they're two. JESUS F. H. CHRIST ON A GINGER-CANE

7/1:  We dropped some stuff off in San Francisco for an 'art show' of sorts, and she had her 83rd consecutive meal of french fries at 'Burger Joint' on Valencia.

7/9:  Her language acquisition and mimicry are really coming on strong. This is our big chance to make her Irish.

7/12:  A molar, a plan, a canal, Tylenol.

7/15: I heard her play the harmonica over a recorded phone message and damned if her one little ZWEEE didn't have me wondering what the front office at Juilliard smells like. Will the chairs be comfortable?

7/20:  She would only eat French Laundry style at the taqueria: one bean wrapped in a Band-Aid sized strip of tortilla.

7/29:  We rode Thomas the Tank Engine through the Santa Cruz mountains and freaked out a bunch of ‘shrooming dudes.

8/12:  She ate some ice cream. She tooted. What a dame.

8/19:  Our little joke is that I promise to cook some giraffe for her and she laughs.

8/28:  Who's pooping on the toilet now, Morpheus!

9/10:  As my style of parenting devolves from genuine care to endlessly restarting the Little Mermaid DVD, I experience a twinge of nostalgia.

9/18:  MFK giraffeer suggested cutting a piece of toast in the shape of a star; this has proven irresistible to even the fussiest child.

9/23:  You know how women can’t squat or kneel in modern jeans without a certain cleft showing? Welcome to the preschool ice cream social.

10/03:  Dad Cooks Breakfast:  two popsicles, fifteen crackers, four episodes of Curious George. This is steadily becoming a Cosby routine.

10/06:  This poor one year-old kid did an open-mouthed faceplant in the goat petting pen. It was the stuff of nightmares. Yes, he got some of that stuff.

10/19:  We had a little "Oktoberfest" of our own: apple slices, chocolate milk, and a fight about putting ****** on.

10/30:  She cooked me giraffe soup in a pitcher of water on the deck, using only a fork and a few decomposing tissues.

11/2:  You can unspool a roll of toilet paper all over the floor, yes, but it’s really just a waste of money.

[linnea]

awesome, Paul! Thanks for posting that. It was a good read.

[wombat]

I miss the baby. It was funnier than the toddler or the kid. I think it's time for the Onstads to have another one.

[theinevitable]

4/9:  We had a father-daughter squabble about how I needed to work and couldn't play with markers. She ran out of my office crying. A minute later she ran in, put a little gift bag with a plastic CUNT in it on my desk, and then ran out again, still sniffling. Already, a black belt in guilt.

What... what?

These are so funny. Oh my lord, so funny. I love the cutely smart things babies do, and the clever ways in which mr Onstad explains them.