Life's a Zoo

Sometimes you just need a break, so I took one for 2 weeks. A break from pretty much everything except family. I had two big revelations, the first one is that I am programmed to remain busy. Even if I don't have work to do, I fill my time with some other form of work rendering me completely incapable of relaxing. That's why I never book a massage, I'd rather just rub my own shoulders so I feel like I'm accomplishing something.

The 2nd revelation is that every day I go to work, I am completely missing the sweetspot of Benjamin play time. I see him in the morning when he can't wait to eat breakfast, and then I see him at night when he can't wait to eat dinner, mess around a little bit and then go to sleep. I had two weeks of seeing him in his element and doing things that I didn't know he was able to do, like play piano. I kid.

(3rd revelation is how are all of these other people at Target at 2PM on a Tuesday??)

One treat is that my folks came in to town from TN to stay for about a week. They hadn't seen Benjamin since we was 2 weeks old, and Benjamin really has never seen them. They just looked like black and white polka dots to him. He had a blast, they had a blast, we all had a blast. They marveled at Benjamin's ability to do some things that are just kind of commonplace to us now. It was a great experience to see their joy from our little bundle of joy.

I did plan a family outing to the Ft. Worth Zoo while they were in town, which was the inaugural expedition for everyone. I thought that Benjamin at 16 months would be able to understand that there were exotic animals running around him, I was wrong. Let me set the stage a little bit with these three words - Texas, June, Hot.

We got there right when it opened to hopefully catch the animals in the midst of wrapping up their breakfast before they start running and swinging and breaking into dance in order to entertain the patrons. What we saw were animals submerged in water, huddled under any shade they can find or buried in a hole somewhere. To me, the looks on their faces read, "Please, send me back to Africa where it's cooler"

The animals that did play ball weren't interesting enough to pull Benjamin's attention away from people watching everyone around him. "Oh Benjamin, look at the huge gorilla right in front of your face... orrrr keep trying to touch that girl's barrettes in front of you" All in all we got to see about 1/3 of the park before we called it quits to find sweet relief in a room piping super cold A/C. And unfortunately there were no penguins to be found.

Spoonman

Benjamin's favorite appliance in our house is the dishwasher, sorry rice cooker. And the other day I was doing my household duty of emptying the dishwasher and Benjamin did something outside of his usual routine of trying to climb into the dishwasher.

He pulled out two spoons from the utensil caddy and trotted out of the kitchen. A few seconds later he came back to the dishwasher empty handed and pulled out two more spoons. I assumed he was playing a little game where he grabs the spoons, hoping that I chase him, and then tosses them into the dogbed like he does every other one of his toys (sorry Schmax).

I let him do it a couple more times until I realized he had taken every spoon we have and put them somewhere (these were clean by the way, so it also hit me that I have to watched all of the flippin spoons again). Curiosity finally won out and I followed him on his final spoon heist, only to discover that he has arranged (not thrown) all of the spoons on the window sill in our office.

Clearly, I know that he is not an artist in-residence with high-level cognitive thinking, but it was amazing to see how he was actually evaluating the current structure to determine where best to place the next spoon. It was a neat moment, and then a creepy moment. It reminded me of the Matrix where that little psychic girl is bending spoons with her mind.

Ultimately, it was one of those instances where you wish you could peek into someone's mind to see exactly what's going on in that noggin. There is, however, one thing I knew for certain - how Benjamin would react when I gathered up the spoons. Let's just say I'm glad they weren't knives.

It's Summer Baby!

(insert excuse for not posting stuff in nearly two months, but it involves saving orphans from fires and helping to topple the Taliban)

Since last we met Benjamin has gone through a bit of a renaissance progressing from "baby" to "toddler". It is amazing that in less time than a pro

motional period for free Time Warner cable a life form can go from craw

ling with little

understanding of language to a bi-ped that can communicate through sign language and remedial mutterings of english.

It is also a relief to my biceps now that I don't have to lug around 27lbs of dead weight everywhere. In fact, if I try and hold him too long he wants to bust loose and explore his house. He actually kind of struts a bit when he cruises around the living room and kitchen, like this is his joint. But then you get him in some of the other bedrooms and he is tentative like he is creeping around a haunted mansion with no flashlight. His eyes go wide

not knowing what lurks behind every nook and cranny. He also issues out a "Hmmpf..." sound almost like it is a sonar ping.

The decibel level in our house has also increased. He is definitely... finding his voice, not crying just doing his best impression of a caveman. Before I would get nervous if I heard him making noise, now I get nervous when he's not making noise. A sure sign that he is up to no good.

That's the other part of his renaissance, he dabbles in the arts of mischief. I call it mischief because he knows that he's not supposed to do something but he tests the boundaries anyway. Like turning on our bathtub faucet - he'll go over to it, look my way, and then turn it on and quickly turn it off and scurry away. I'll warn him with a timeout, and you can see him pondering the repercussions and still do it anyway. And he

takes the punishment like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape - he sits in his room and does his time with smile about how he tested "The Man".

There are a dozen other things to go on about, but I will stop here so I have more topics readily available to write about in the near future. Thanks for coming back to check this out, you're making sure that the terrorists don't win.

Sick of Being Sick

This is more of a pamphlet entry instead of a full-fledged slice of life, but I am so ready for March to be over. Sickness has ping-ponged between Benjamin and I all month, I think we've made it through though.

This past month has been riddled with co-pays and empty medicine bottles. Good riddance March, we'll reluctantly see you next year.

I think this picture says a thousand words of sick baby misery.

Down with the Sickness

I remember being sick as a kid as a somewhat enjoyable experience. People give you lots of attention, you get to lay around, watch TV and hot soup is yours for the asking. Now, being sick as an adult with responsibilities is terrible. Because you can't not (nice double negative) take care of some things - key work assignments, life obligations and helping care for your child. It is exhausting.

Up until this year, I have only get one unseasonal summer cold each year. I typically take lots of vitamins, lay low for two days and it is gone. I have been sickly since Valentine's Day, and I blame Benjamin. He has been sickly too, so I think we keep rubbing our sickness on each other through random wrestling and smooching. Oh, and we share the same pacifier.

Dealing with a sick baby is not ideal, but doable. Dealing with a well-baby while you're sick, not fun. Both of you sick? Terrible. Combine my ear infection, which totally messes with my hearing, and Benjamin's loud wail of discomfort and you have the real March Madness. I crave some kind of hibernation technology where I can go to sleep and wake up refreshed, Benjamin is better and my biceps are stronger. I can show you some preliminary drawings I have on cocktail napkins.

One thing that is interesting about having a sick baby, is that they are still really cute. They are super-cuddly and want to be held, and they have a cute-glum look on their face that says, "I-dun-feel-soo-gud..." Benjamin sneezed the other day and he blew a little snot bubble out of his nostril. If I saw you do it, it would be so disgusting. But to see him do it, it was cute as kittens. There is nothing cute, however, about sick baby diapers. Nothing.

The one-upside to this is that Benjamin loves taking medicine, to the point where he whimpers when the eyedropper of fake-cherry serum is empty. So when he gets older we plan on giving him a bottle of 'Tussin for his birthday.

Happy Birthday Benjamin!

February 13th marked the one year mark for young master Benjamin. Being 1-years old, we was oblivious of the the significance of the date and gave no speeches that regaled his first year of life. So I wrote one for him taking some educated guesses at what he wanted to say.

"Greetings friends, and salutations to my family. Let me first thank you all for taking time out of your busy lives to celebrate me completing one of your Earth years. Why, it seems like only yesterday that I emanated from my mother's womb covered in humanity, and stared upon my gracious and extremely good looking parents. These two people, who for simplicity I will call "Mom" and "Dad", have sacrificed greatly to get me where I am today.

I look back at pictures of myself when I was first born and I hardly remember that kid, I was so young and naive. But now I'm pretty self-sufficient - except for feeding, drinking, diapering, bathing, dressing and walking. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

I would also like to thank all of my extended family and babysitters for giving me the highest level of care possible, outside of that Super Nanny woman or Mary Poppins. I cherish all of those moments that you sneak me soda pop and candy while my parents are away doing whatever it is they do. I would also like to thank Pampers - you are truly the superior diaper that lovingly cradles my bo-hiney.

I leave you with this, who's the cutest baby in the world and has two thumbs? This guy! I now realize this joke would have made more sense in person so you could see me pointing to myself with my two thumbs. I'll work on the delivery before I turn 2. Thank you for coming, drive safe and goodnight."

My personal sidenote is that I felt like Kindergarten Cop during the party to make sure kids weren't killing themselves or pulling up our hardwoods - "Dher horribull..."

Snip, Snip, Sniff

There is a first for everything and it was time for Benjamin's 1st Haircut. Emily and I had grown tired of reading in between the lines of people's comments like, "Oh, look at THAT hair..." or "Poor little guy, he's got hair in his eyes" or "He looks like a baby Blagojevich!" We actually thought his longer hair was cute and endearing, plus we had a business model put into place for creating Baby Toupees.

He is approaching his first birthday so we felt the time was now to embark on this rite of passage. After a little investigation we found three business chains that specialize in cutting kid's hair. By the way, that seems so American that we need baby salons AND that there is enough demand and profit to support three different chains. U-S-A!

The correct name of the place we picked escapes me, but it was something to the effect of "cOOl Kutz 4 Kydz" - the more mispelled the kooler, right? This place looked more like a daycare than a barbershop - video game consoles buzzing, Playskool toys strewn about and the distinct smell of bubble gum and fear filled the air. Obviously the theory goes that if your kid is distracted enough with bells and whistles, they won't shriek like a banshee during the haircut. I doubt a licensed sociologist came up with this theory, but it works.

A couple of weeks before the haircut, I posited the question to Emily, "what is it about a haircut that freaks kids out?" If it was the fear of the scissors, I recommended holding a pair of scissors in our hands while we fed Benjamin in his highchair, you know, to get him more comfortable around them. This was vetoed for reasons unknown. My other cause of our kid's fear, I think, is us. In our efforts to make it special or memorable, it looks less like a haircut and more of a coronation of the Chosen One.

Despite our own hype, Benjamin did really well during the whole process. He sat in a customized fire truck chair and was thoroughly intrigued by a comb, I think he was also wondering why there is a "b" in the word. The only part of the experience that stirred his pot was getting spritzed with water to wet his hair. After that he got back into his exploration of his comb, nearly oblivously of me taking over 120 pictures with my new camera. I think I'm turning Japanese.

After the cut was done and his hair dried, I looked at him and saw a version of myself from 1978 staring right back at me. The "Bowl Cut" was all the rage when I was kid and when you have super straight hair like myself (and Benjamin) there aren't too many cut options. Looking at him, it was evident that after a few snips he had gone from baby to little boy. Our onesie wearing baby with crazy hair had passed the baton on to this penny-loafer wearing toddler.

This moment of recognition of childhood's fleet-footedness almost got a tear out of me, luckily the $28 bill for the "1st Haircut Package" slapped me back to reality. Seriously? I could have performed the 6 scissor snips myself. It's not like they were stylish snips, it looked like she was cutting constuction paper with safety skizzors. I'm trying to talk Benjamin into starting a baby mullet trend or to become a really artsty baby whose in touch with his inner-inner child.

That or I'll just fire up the Xbox, grab a mixing bowl and start up "Dalez HaiR-Do's 4 Childrenz"