Let the blogrecord reflect

That Bug said "Mama" on the morning of Election Day 2008.

TV

The kid eated her first bit of media Sunday.

It was a Baby Einstein DVD, which I had assumed was designed to mold her from a sub-mediocre student with a speech impediment into a rebel who would 1) lead a mutiny against the rote regimen of the municipal school system, 2) renounce her citizenship in order to avoid military service and join the disaffected intellectual class, 3) embrace authority late in life by throwing herself into government-backed research program that will contribute to the creation of a doomsday weapon.

But no, Baby Einstein is actually a couple of puppets that say BAH BAH and FAH FAH. They also offer:

• The the forcefed commercials preceding the feature presentation that all DVDs open with. The viewing sensation is particularly nauseating when you've opted your daughter into it.
• From there, we learn that the producers of Baby Einstein understand the need to acclimate the next generation to the necessity of the opening credits sequence. The Baby Einsten Puppet Ensemble and the Baby Einstein Orchestra both get their due, which I guess satisfied the requirements of the union.
• From there, imagine a Fozzie Bear routine in which, in addition to his own insecurities, Fozzie labors under the effects of a morning toke at his local opium den. Imagine it took this drugged out muppet half an hour to say "Wokka" three times. Now you have it.
  

Bug, bless her heart, was only halfway interested.

Whether or not she goes in for these, there will be other videos to come, as I am dead set on getting the kid ahead of the culture. We live in a fractured culture already, where nobody reads the same books, and thus nobody talks about them. The best you can hope for today is to find someone watching the cable drama that you watch.

Now, imagine what 20 years of internet populism will do. If we don't get her into a literary commune or the Peace Corps, she'll end up hanging with people who think that quoting Ralphie Wiggum is a sign of elitist tastes.

The Nightly Ritual

Dad: "Take the bottle."

Bug: "Mmmm ... milk."

"Good girl."

[Pushes bottle from mouth] "Wuzzat?"

"That's mom shifting in her seat. Focus on the nipple."

"Is she okay?"

"She's okay. Drink your milk."

"My what?"

[Shoves bottle] "Suck."

[Sucking] "Mmmm ... wuzzat."

"No."

"But whatizzat?"

"It's a flyer for an event no one here is attending."

"That's a party. And it's being held by friends of mom's."

"Drink."

"The theme is a wake for Astroland. You're obsessed with the place."

"Was. Drink."

"What?"

"Was. It's gone now. Drink."

"But the party's on Friday night. And I have to be in bed by 8:30 on Friday."

"Indeed. One more ounce and then we'll burp."

"Maybe we could go. I could stay up late and you could leave me in the ball put while you go and enjoy free beer."

[Lays baby on shoulder facing flyer, slaps baby's back rhythmically] "Burp."

"Say, isn't this taking place at that new bar you wanted to see? The one from the folks who own your favorite bar in the nieghborhood?"

"Drink again."

"What is Live Burlesque?"

"..."

"'Mother do ya think they'll drop the bomb ...'"

"What?"

"You let out a big sigh. It reminded me of the beginning of the song."

[Carries baby the way a sabretooth tiger carriers Fred Flintstone out the front door of his own house, depositing her in the crib] "Goodnight."

[Burps.] "Later."

First word.

At some point on Saturday, a mouse ran across the room. At some point on Sunday, this became an intolerable situation, and Damn Wifus and I spent the evening plugging holes in the ceiling and floor, washing surfaces, vacuuming floors, boiling some plastic toys and dropping the others in sheep dip. We got to bed early Monday morning, and came home to the news Monday night that Bug had cut her first tooth: right up front on the bottom. You can ping it with a spoon.

So we were all plenty exhausted but it was a good night when I was tieing up a pile of books to sell and Damn Wifus looked at the kid in her exersaucer and asked if she was ready to go to bed because dammit, mommy and daddy fucking were.

"Da da," said the kid.

Whaaaaaa?

I all but elbowed Wife out of the way and plopped Indian-style in front of her and told her to say it again. She just gave a look like she'd just laid down four of a kind and knew she didn't have to say ish.

"If you say that again you can stay up all night and eat Ben & Jerry's."

She grins.

"Say da da."

She laughs and screams.

"Say da da."

She doesn't, and Damn Wifus wipes away a tear and carries her off screaming toward the nursery. She puts the kid down, turns off the light. Bug continues to lay on her side and run a tight circle and sing whoopwhoopwhoop Curly-style.

"Do you have the monitor on?" Damn Wifus asks as she emerges from the nursery to find me on the couch. I give her a spousal look because the folks out on the street can hear every half-gobbled word Bug sends bouncing across the crooked walls of our apartment. Unless we're in deep sleep, a monitor is redundant. Wife blows past me and turns on the monitor in the bedroom.

"Yes, by all means, less get this in stereo," I say to my book.

The book has no answer, but the baby lies in her crib and says, "Aaaaaaaah dah. Dah. Da da da da da da da da da da." Coming from Bug's mouth to the left of the couch and the piped in speaker on the right. Da da da da da da da.

Win.

But Hugs

As I walk in, the Bug uncorks herself from her before bed bottle and tosses her head back at me. "Don't you worry," says Damn Wifus. "You're going to your father in two shakes of a duck's ass."

I'm home late again, as the workday continues to sprawls out backwards; I get up earlier and earlier in an attempt to get ahead of things. Staying later is not an option with our schedule.

But still, by the time I get home, the kid -- her hair shoots straight out in 270 degrees of static electricity whether she's upside down or not -- is winding down. I read her a book and give her hug, because she can now squeeze my neck back. She also claws at my eyeball, so this whole ritual may be in fact be her nightly attempt to mangle me.

And then she has to get to bed. I basically have the same conundrum as the parents from D.A.R.Y.L., in that my kid is a robot and no one told us she was goddamn robot preternaturally well-behaved. When bedtime comes, she cries in her crib for about three minutes, and then pulls her blanket over her head like a sleepmask. If I come home late and miss my window, I've missed it.

And My Other Blog Is a Beer

Hell of a day.

I forgot something off my desk at work, and I had to get it before the 8AM watchin' the kid shift started, so I drove into Manhattan and got back before the Times hit our stoop.

Almost done with the day. Happy weekend to y'all, and another 'Thank You doesn't really say it' to Miss G.

Coming Home Way Too Motherfucking Late

Left home at 6:45.

Came home at 9:30.

By the time I see the kid she's grumpy and we're both rubbing our eyes and when I rub my eyes she looks like John McCain and when she's rubbing her eyes nothing looks good but the back seat of a moving car she can fall asleep in.

So we drive home from the grandparents and she never moves a muscle as I slip her into the crib.

Bullshit.

My friend and ex-boss Jamie, who I've only met in person twice, has welcomed his new daughter into the world.

As my own daughter is now almost seven months old -- old enough to bedstomp her dad's testicle, as I learned on Saturday -- it occurred to me that I would like to tell him what's coming. But the only non-obvious phenomenon I came up with (besides blah blah feces down your sleeve blah blah piss on the wall blah) was:

• Random people from your past will reappear: You're so desperate for information during those first few weeks, and other recently minted parents are the quickest to email you, that you have a string of strangely meaningful conversations with minor figures from your past. Enjoy these random connections, as your paths will not cross with any of these folks again. Because you'll be busy.
  

Everything else is obvious. Vacations matter more than they ever did before, whether you love your job or hate it. Some couples are deliriously happy, others go into therapy. Some people get fat, some people take better care of themselves than they ever did. Regardless, welcome to the Terrordome, motherfucker.


(This is 1000th post on this blog.)

The Family Is Back

While we were out:

• Bug went on blogging hiatus as she tried to recover from the depression brought on by the Fantasy Sports Girls.
  
• The family left Windsor Terrace for La Guardia with two hours to spare, but, thanks to the singular idiocy of the drivers on the BQE and the Port Authority (padlocking the long-term parking lot, which left us scrambling to find other parking and paying $130 for five days of hourly rates) we only got to the terminal with 28 minutes to spare.
• 28 minutes to spare, I was informed, means "You missed your flight. You are required to be here 30 minutes before takeoff."
• Wife scream, dad scream, baby scream, airline cannot muster a shrug.
• Book on alternate airline for four figures. Fly to Milwaukee, which is a five hours drive from our destination. Rent car for not cheap.
  
• Try to buy meal en route from Milwaukee from this awful chain known as Cosi. I think I'm going to start calling the contents of Bug's diapers 'flatbread' in honor of the menu. The sandwich included honey mustard which was billed as 'tangy,' which is supposed to mean something different than 'vomitey'. We threw it out, abandoned healthy food, and bought two standardized Big Macs with unmelted cheese.
• Enjoyed wonderful vacation in woods. Dunked my daughter in the lake of my grandfather.
• Drove the fuck back to Milwaukee, after which the rent-a-car agency added $140 in fees to the price they originally quoted me.
  

Damn lake was worth it.

Boom

Me: "Ah, thanks for buying cherries, baby. This hits the spot."

"I didn't buy cherries. That bag has been sitting in the front of the fridge all week."

"So what's my excuse for eating shit all week?"

"You don't have one, sweetheart."

We both laughed pretty hard. We both needed a laugh, because today was the day after Bug really scared the hell out of us for the first time in a while.

We went out to eat with Damn Sisters last night, and just as the food arrived, Bug's featured melted into a mass of shrieking panic. I took her outside, and walked her up and down the avenue, but she was inconsolable. Minutes later, Damn Wifus came out and took her. Still inconsolable. After 20 minutes of trying, we abandoned dinner to get her in a moving car, which usually does the trick. Inconsolable, especially at red lights, which I began running at the end as she began choking on her slobber.

We got her home, stripped her down, turned off every light in the house and sang a few Beatles songs to her. She eventually fell asleep and we stayed up for another hour wondering what the fuck that was and whether we should call the doctor.

Instead, we just made an extra show of loving her today. Which means hanging out on the floor, which means folding open my Saturday Times and reading about how bad New York parents have gotten about not leaving their kids alone at camp:

“They’ll give their child two cellphones, so if they get caught with the first one, ‘Just give it up and you’ll have the second one to talk to me,’" he said. “That’s widespread, not isolated. I call it fading parental morality. What they’re doing is entering into delinquent behaviors with their children. And what kind of statement is that to a child?”

He and others said parents also frequently send children away without packing their prescribed medication for attention deficits or psychological problems — and without letting camp staff know.

I love the fact that these two trends have developed in concert: Breaking the rules so you can stay in constant contact with your child (thus continuing a fun part of being a parent, where you are a needed co-conspirator) and treating camp like the Betty Ford clinic (thus avoiding a harder part: saying no, breaking the child of a habit which you knowingly got him hooked on).

At least one source says this has gotten worse since 9/11, which makes about as much sense as me blaming the Taliban for the fact that I don't know where the cool bars are anymore. It sounds like people just needed an excuse to be selfish.

I can't say we're sure we won't become another pair of idiots. But we sat there on the floor and agreed that we hoped we wouldn't.

In happier news the kid is up and growing again today. Her back muscles and neck control have leaped ahead this week, and her new game is to take her head off my shoulder and get thisclose to my face.

Close enough to lick my face. She just stares.

The sensation is uncomfortable.

Send Your Queries

I will soon be rolling out the first in a series of advice columns.

If you'd like to take part, please send your questions about life, love, car repair, and proper hair care.

Please, no questions about human feces. We're trying to transcend stereotypes in this space.

Best,
Buggsy Malone

Eat This Book

The babe is now nearly old enough to grab her first book and get down on it. At almost six months, she has outgrown her first batch of clothes, so we boxed them off to our local tomb storage center.

When we pulled up, the kid was asleep, so Damn Wifus waited in the car with her while I trundled thirty pounds of onesie over to the freight elevator. On the third floor, some bone-shouldered Trotskyite with an ill-look was getting on as I got off. Probably just got done putting another Tsarist in a box.

He lingered in my brain, so I looked out the window overlooking the parking lot. I couldn't make out our car under the awning and so I decided to just pack the boxes into our paid closet while the creepy bastard walked past my perfectly kidnappable family.

I padlocked our storage container, went back down the freight, and exited back into the parking lot where, to my relief, the Bug was still sleeping and the wife was reading the book I recommended to her.

This non-tragic evening inspired me to note the singular loveliness of my wife, who fed, changed and put to sleep an exceptional angry muffin tonight. She's got the same glow about her when she's taking care of the bug as when she's not being abducted by madmen. I should probably stop worrying about DW. I grew up sunning at the country club pool, and she grew up in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Who ya got?

Cartoon Violence

Marriage and fatherhood are, as Drew Magary has written, involve Lilliputian-style schedules that tie you down one limb at a time. So it was that I missed the midnight opening screening of Dark Knight and instead caught the 10:45 AM Sunday church-skipping showing.

I'd been waiting for this, for reasons I will make clear. I am the kind of dorkus paternus who integrates his daughter into his daily life by concocting juvenile fantasies about protecting my her amidst a gunfight, defending her from aliens, etcetera.

I've always had a borderline autistic-level obsession with the kind of action sequences that never happen in real life. But it was not until Junebug came along that I integrated a real person as a consistent character-in-distress into these things.

Before 2008, I'd had occasional thoughts about how I might jump in front of a car to save a niece or nephew. Delusional granduer, sure, but on a manageable scale. In contrast, in the week preceding TDK's release, I have gamed out the following possibilities:

• Ragezombies have infiltrated an anonymous home. I and others have made it behind a protective barrier, but someone forgot Bug. So I head out amongst the contaminated with some of the sharper kitchen appliances in hand. I grab Bug from her crib before they discover her, deliver her across the barrier as a first priority (there's like a chickenwire fence inside this residence, for some unexplained reason) and then engage in some Cutco-to-motherfucker combat. The fantasy usually loses steam before the protagonist manages to make it back to safety or get fatally bitten.
• Protagonist (this one is not me) is stuck in run of the mill gunfight when he realizes there's a baby in the mix. Protagonist takes his own Kevlar off (Why do I knows what Kevlar is? Why is it a word popular enough for Blogger to suggest I capitalize it? Why is the internet run by dorks?), swaddles it around the babe, and shoots his way out. This one runs out of steam quickly because honestly, how many different ways can one guy shoot seven guys?
  
• No, the real challenge, which my brain for some reason keeps trying to find a way to justify, is a protagonist riding on a baby carriage with a baby inside while firing at henchmen. So far, I haven't been able to justify the maneuver as a defensive act. It always comes off as a jerk looking to shield himself behind a carriage. But I have to spend a lot of time pushing a carriage in real life, and at some point a justification will come to me.
  

It's all quite mature.

I realize this emphasis on saving the cute and innocent is how the mass of humanity thinks about dramatic violence. We expect Ripley to go back after Newt.

But now when I watch The Untouchables, I expect I'll stupidly gasp every time we see the carriage rolling down the stairs. (I still will not gasp as the anonymous sailors get shot to death one after the next.)

In short, I am now stupidly biased in favor of babies. Should Galactus eat a planet, I will want to know if there were any cherubs consumed in the act.

Like Clockwork

Cripes.

Reading Ranbow

Good parents read their kid a book a night. Great parents forgo that for days at a time and then try to make it up to Bug by moving through five books in one night.

She seems to absorb the books the way she absorbs words: in sudden bursts of recognition. Every once in a while when I tell her we're fattening her up to sell her to folks at the food co-op, she seems to well up with tears in response.

In the same way, she will suddenly focus on one page or one book.

"Goodnight Moon, please."

"We just read that one last week, Bug."

"Good. Night. Mooooooon!"

"How about Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus."

"How about Don't Let Parents Pretend Mo Willems Books Are Written For Kids."

"Blasphemy."

"Infants aren't generally into sarcastic detachment, Dad. Or cutesy wootsy crap. God, that stuff sucks rocks through a hose. We like primary colors and repetition."

"This has colors!"

"This has bleached freaking pastels. I look at this book and I feel like I'm in the courtyard of some run down tropical hotel."

"It's understated."

"You want understated, go buy another John Prine album. I want red and blue and yellow and I want a book that forces you to say Goodbye to inanimate objects again and again. That is what I want."

"Then explain why you like Shel Silverstein when he works only in black and white."

"Shel Silverstein needs to be justified to you? Really? I'll explain Shel when you explain why in the hell anyone would read as many books about genocide as you do."

"Sigh." Grabs book. "'In the great green room ...'"

"This is why Miss Gossip is going to run FanHouse better than you. She's better organized and she takes no crap."

"Amen. 'There was a telephone ... "

(Damn Wifus would like everyone to know that she reads to the kid every day.)

Everything I Sit on Is Mine!

We were busy all weekend, so I am only now seeing the best Muppet video of the past 20 years.

What was it that sucked away a four day weekend? We had to move from one set of dressers to a horrifying big box bureau -- why, I cannot remember. It was decided that I would need to buy some socks for the new job and somehow that decision snowballed.

We are now at the three quarters point. Good god, the stuff a couple amasses.

Riding the Range Once More

Hasta la vista, FanHouse.



Art by the incomparable Miss Gossip, AKA Alana, who allowed me to enjoy paternity leave without worrying about the site.

And now, a word from out sponsor.

New Skills

Now five months old, Bug gains new powers as quickly as a bygone X-Man dusted off for another run in Uncanny. As of this weekend, she can:

• Grab both feet and play Spaceship Controls with them
• Hold a bottle, tilt a bottle, drink a bottle
• Demonstrate a wider range of gurgled voice activity. In this picture, she sings me to sleep with Dirge of the Swamp Thing.
• Demand over-the-shoulder placement.The child has grown cocky and has taken to gesturing around the apartment and referring to herself as "the Yertle the Turtle of this joint. Oh marvelous me. I look up from my dad's shoulder, I own all that I see!"

I need to stop giving in on that last one.

The Sound of Clapping Scares My Daughter. So Where Do I Take Her?

To Shea during the Sub Series. No clapping/big screaming men there, that's for sure.

Thanks to Kath for the excellent invitation, apologies to baby.

Father's Day

The WiiFat we bought was making some progress on my gut, but I decided to start the momentous day with a momentous workout. So I got up early, had the usual conversation with Damn Wifus (DW: "Why is there babyshit on my towel?" Me: "Wait, I know this one.") and headed out to meet a trainer for an hour.

"I think I'm going to be sick," I told her after my fourth lunging exercise.

"I have some breathing exercises that should help you with your nausea." I tried her way for about two seconds, then went and stuck my head in the toilet. I never threw up, but I was able to cross Cradle Public Commode off my Father's Day itinerary.

The day got better from there. We cooked out in the backyard of the in-laws. Wifus and I traded the kid back and forth all day. (And without devoting 8,000 words to the subject.)

I had a nice unique moment with Bug. She had gotten overstimulated by the group and was screaming, so I through her over my shoulder and bounced her down the driveway until she calmed down. She curled up with her head in my ear, sucking on a hand and, for the first time, using her vocal chords while doing so. I can't adequately explain why making slurping noises and alternating between "Ah" and "Oh" is a revelation, but it is.