No, That Drool Didn't Come From My Mouth!

When the little one turned 6 weeks old, I remember a co-worker telling me that there would come a day when the baby would drool in my mouth. At the time, I remember thinking that it didn't make any sense. He's on his fourth kid as opposed to my one, but surely his experience was a fluke. There are times when the young and inexperienced should simply heed the words of the more weathered and wise. I tend to have a hard time recognizing those times, often to my own peril.

For several days, the little one's drool machine has been working overtime because she just popped her first tooth (as described in the last post). On top of this liquid phenomenon, she has really come to despise lying down or doing anything that doesn't involve interaction and lots of movement. There we were sitting on the couch playing a normal game of airplane, and now you can see how the conditions come together. Much like weather fronts right before a tornado.

As I lifted her up above my head, near the apex of her ascent, I noticed a glimmer. Not the glimmer of admiration and love of father from her eye, but the glimmer of a drool pellet meeting gravity and light for the first and last time. Out it came. What had appeared at first to be only a drop turned out to be a generous stream, and down it went. Due to my cat like reflexes, I was able to deflect some, but not all of it. Something about the drool in my mouth - perhaps because it was not my own - make me squirm like a cat going into the bath. I purged my mouth of this foreign substance as if it were radioactive dog poop with a combination of spitting and wiping my tongue on her bib. Yeah, I know the bib is saturated with drool.

So, like I said before, there are just times when a young parent should listen to the old. The things that seem least likely to happen surely will, and I just need to accept that it's all going to happen to me too.

And Now...On to Teething!

Really?! Can we not get a break from new things for just a week so we can get into a rhythm?! Apparently, that's a ridiculous expectation, so after working through the early stages of crib training, which is actually going much better, the little one decided to push a little tooth out. Guess that explains to whining we've been enjoying for the past few days.

So, teething is a pretty fun experience, what with the excessive drooling, constant chewing of everything within arms reach, and random whining (which always seems to happen right around bed time). We were wondering why she went from a solid eight hours of sleep to just over a cat nap blended with frantic crying, and I guess we'll give her this one. All this time, I just thought the kid was nuts. That may still be the case, but who wouldn't be a little upset about a tooth pushing through their gums for the first time?

My greater concern is that things are moving along a little fast. Perhaps I just lack the capacity to process change, but it takes me a hot minute to get accustomed to new things. Last week, it was crib training. Earlier this week, the little one started making these soul-wrenching girl shrieks that could wake the dead, and now there's a tooth. Great. I feel like next week will be unfinished calculus homework, driving lessons, and college applications.

Crib Training Round 1: FAIL

We've just hit the 4 month mark, and decided it was time to transition the little one from her co-sleeper into her own bedroom. Seems easy enough, so we started last night. She has a fairly predictable schedule each night: go for a walk, finish a bottle, change into sleepy clothes, and then go to sleep. The only diference now is that she would be twenty feet away in her crib rather than next to our bed in a co-sleeper. Shouldn't make a difference, right?

As with most of my stories, I was wrong. Something about moving twenty feet into a separate bedroom triggered my daughter's insomnia and vocal chords. We all went to bed at 10pm, which is normal for us. Well, she normally sleeps until 5am, but not this time. She work up the first time at midnight, then again at 1am, and I finally caved and put her back in our room when she woke up at 3am. Too late, she was done with trying to sleep, even if I wasn't.

One of the issues we have with her sleep is that she's a flailer. I think of the comic book villain Dr. Octopus because it's like no matter what my daughter's body is doing, her arms have a separate agenda. I've watched her go from a dead sleep to crying instantly because she punches herself in the eye or knocks her pacifier out of her mouth. So, we swaddle, and that generally works, but now she's become Houdini. At one point, I waasn't even able to get her from the bed where I swaddled her into her crib before her arms were free and flying around. After a half dozen attempts, I said a few select bad words that I save in my special occasions arsenal and debated using duct tape instead of a blanket.

Long story short, this is harder than I imagined, and we've been up since 3am. She seems happy as can be since she's had my full attention for hours. It's like a few extra hours of playtime for her as I sit in drone state staring at an empty coffee cup. Perhaps tonight will be better, or maybe I should invest in another set of earplugs since the wife stole mine.

Backseat Demon Spawn (Florida Vacation 1 of 2)

Let me preface this post by saying that I do sincerely love the primary characters of this story. From this point on, I will refer to my daughter as Scout (literary, not a military reference) and my niece as Munchkin.

At the end of June my sister, her nearly 4 year old daughter Munchkin, the wife, Scout, and I took a last minute trip to Florida to visit our family. For me, it was the first return since 2002, and it was the first time any of my extended family had the opportunity to meet Scout. Plus, I would get a chance to see a beach that doesn't require dry suits in the middle of summer, so spirits were high. This is all merely background, the inspiration for the title came on Friday, the third day of our visit.

As we were returning from visiting one set of my grandparents and returning to visit the other side of the family, Munchkin reached a peak in her play but fought sleep to the point of mental exhaustion. As we neared a McDonalds, her spidey sense kicked in and she voiced a need for McNuggets. I've learned that when Munchkin needs McNuggets, you get McNuggets, so I pulled into the drive thru and ordered McNuggets. Well, it turns out she didn't want the drink that accompanies a kid's meal, and asking for a Sprite was apparently the worst offense possible at the time. Meltdown begins. All questions directed at Munchkin from this point on were answered with a shriek, a wail, or a command to "ZIP IT!"

Luckily, I thought to myself, Scout is still sleeping...until I ran over a curb trying to speed out of the parking lot. Super. So, Scout begins crying crying because she's been jostled from a deep sleep. Munchkin is not interested in the crying competition, so she kicks up the volume to ensure her pleas and agony are heard. Scout responds in kind, mainly because she's under 4 months old and trying to figure why the Jeep is bouncing and people are screaming. The wife, meanwhile, is nestled in the backseat of the Jeep with Scout in a carseat on one side and Munchkin in a booster on the other side.

Thinking things must begin improving at some point, we continue onto the highway. We hit construction traffic. Normally, the drive would have taken 15 minutes, but as chance and misfortune would have it, it took 45. At some point, around the 20 minute mark, the wife put in ear plugs and we all (minus the little ones) started laughing. That really didn't help matters, but we had already fought through stress to irritation and settled in a comfy place of defeat.

I assumed that once we got home, the chaos would stop, but I was wrong. Munchkin continued the hysterics in the house, which involved some spitting, screaming, and streaking down the driveway in her birthday suit. Scout just continued to cry because that's all she can do, but she did so with fervor. My sister started recording the hysterics on her iPhone about 10 minutes in and forgot to turn it off, so she had half an hour of the ordeal in an audio file. It was great for proving to our families that the little girls were not always angels and our exhaustion was warranted.

At this point it was time to get dinner, and being the noble person I am, I bolted and praised the slow performance of the restaurant staff. Personally, I was hoping there might have been a Catholic church and a doctor's office nearby, because I was convinced that the two kids needed a priest and a pediatrician to rid them of whatever demons had taken hold.