Our current course of experiments is to determine the optimum methodology for persuading a human infant to independently manipulate an unattached feeding device during its own feedings. A methodology will be considered successful if the food delivery operator retains the ability to accomplish simple tasks other than feeding during the infant’s feeding period.
Primary Methodology: Physically placing the infant’s hands on the feeding device as food delivery begins
The other night, my wife and I took our son to a roadside ice cream stand after dinner. While we sat there enjoying our sundaes and the balmy night air, Sabrina tried, once again, to play peek-a-boo with him. This time, he finally got it!
Dashiell’s been laughing for months. Make a funny face, and he gargles out an “Ah-Huh”. Yelp because he pinched you or punched you in the nose, and he does the same. If a woman happens to be nearby, and gives him some attention, he will coyly turn his head aside and utter a demure “ghghghgheeee-heh”. However, none of these are in any way prolonged. They are laughs, but not ‘laughter’, if you will.
Well, the other night, he discovered laughter! The first ‘peek-a-boo’ got the usual gargle. The second got two, and an almost concerned look. The third got a sustained series of staccato “hah” sounds, and by number five, he was belly-laughing uncontrollably!
In my entire life, I’ve never actually laughed and cried simultaneously before. I did that night!
As many will remember, I posted a rather bitter rant last week about my wife’s being passed over for a teaching job she was already doing. I’m considerably less bitter now, but the further news we received today was rather telling, so I thought I’d share.
Of the two job openings (of identical description) Sabrina was up for, one went to a teacher already tenured in the district and with significant experience. This decision, while not smart, given that they took someone who already was working for them and shuffled them, leaving another opening to be filled, is at least defensible, given her resume. The other job went to the fellow who subbed for my wife’s long-term sub position when she took her eight weeks for maternity this spring. Of note? This person has no master’s degree and only provisional teaching certification, and no experience beyond a few years of day subbing, as opposed to my wife’s master’s degree and certification along with close to a decade of service to the district as sub, long-term sub (a whole different beast), and teacher’s assistant, all while waiting patiently for the chance to do the job she lives for.
I couldn’t ask for better proof of the clear stupidity that went into this decision process. My guess, given that this follows a recent trend of hiring male teachers when superior female teachers were available, is that either a) someone got chummy with the (also male) principal and politicked his way to a job, or b) there’s an actual discriminatory principle at work here whose reasons are obscure to me. In either case, a disservice was done, both to Sabrina and to the children who begged to have her back even after they’d been handed over to this fellow for eight weeks.
Remember folks, YOU are paying for this. This is the incompetence you are being forced to buy for your children’s education. I see such a bright future…
Yesterday, we decided to kill two birds with one stone by taking a long drive in the awesome weather and simultaneously visiting our recently unoccupied rental property in Rockland County. This all started out really well. We had an uneventful and quite pleasant drive down, and discovered on our arrival that the problematic former tenant had amazingly left the place spotless and in good repair!
All that changed on the way home. About an hour into the ride, we were going up a hill next to an 18-wheeler. We were in the Civic Hybrid, so going fast up hills isn’t really an option, but we had been in the process of passing when we got to the rise, so we were kinda stuck there, inching past going slightly faster than the truck. Just then, a Sprinter van with commercial plates pulled out from behind the truck into the left lane behind us, going much faster than either the truck or we were, and screamed right up to our rear bumper.
He rode there, literally less than ten feet behind us at highway speeds, for over a minute. Finally, unable to get out of this prick’s way and seeing no immediate end to the hill, I tapped the brake as gently as possible in order to a) disengage the cruise control (which wasn’t helping us get up the hill anyway) and b) tell him that we were going to slow down so we could tuck in behind the truck and let him pass. This was apparently an eventuality he had never considered, as he swerved crazily around behind us, almost side-swiping the truck, before accelerating and pulling up literally a foot or two behind our bumper while waving his hands.
I gripped the wheel and floored the accelerator to maintain speed, and just gutted out the rest of the hill. The moment things leveled out, I scooted past the truck, probably cutting him off and looking like a real asshole, just to get away from the maniac behind us. Of course, it wasn’t over. Now free to once again resume traveling at 80% of the speed of light, the Sprinter’s driver chose instead to pull up next to us and yell at us for some time before repeatedly swerving into our lane, once severely enough that I was forced to drive onto the shoulder. I was dialing 911 when finally, he opened his window and threw trash or something at us before accelerating away. I had Sabrina write down his plate. We pulled into the Modena service area to call the State Troopers and catch our breath.
Did I mention that out infant son was in the back seat for all this? I am now quite certain that I am capable of torture, murder, and a number of other dastardly acts I would not have considered likely before parenthood…
We thought the day’s excitement was over, but we were so wrong! As we pulled out of the service area, I realized I had gotten a voicemail while talking with the troopers. I discovered that there were actually two. The first was from the Troy police dispatcher, telling me that “if I was still responsible for” our home address, I needed to call back. The second was from our neighbor and City Councilman, telling me that our burglar alarm was going off, and that the police were there. Trying not to drive madly, we quickly learned that a) the police had ‘cleared’ the house, b) our lovely neighbor from two houses down was standing guard until we returned, and c) the alarm was still going off, even though it’s programmed to reset after 30 minutes.
Long story short, nothing was stolen, and while a door was open, no damage was done, so perhaps we left it unlocked? Moose, our big bull mastiff, panicked and broke out of his crate at some point during the foofaraw, but was unharmed and happily waiting for us next to his food-bowl. The Troy police officers who investigated have my undying thanks, because having entered our home and found 120 pounds of anxious, muscular, black-brindle bull mastiff waiting for them, they did *NOT* shoot him dead, as seems to have become the nationwide norm in recent news!
We’ve narrowed down the sequence of events to one of the following possible narratives:
So, all in all, just another day in Why-does-all-the-weird-shit-happen-to-us-land!
My wife Sabrina is dedicated to her work. Despite numerous instances of mistreatment (lied to about job status and pay, tricked into giving up a job by an unscrupulous HR person with an axe to grind, nickle-and-dimed out of weeks of pay after the birth of our child, etc), she really wants to teach in our district! She loves these kids, and they love her. She’s been taking teacher-assistant and long term subbing jobs in our district for SEVEN years, applying for every opportunity that came along.
Today, we found out that she’d been turned down for another position, but this time was different. You see, last Fall, a teacher in the district took a leave. Sabrina, being probably the most educated and experienced substitute teacher in existence, was asked to fill the position as a long term sub for the remainder of the year. Eager to do her thing, my wife jumped at the chance, and spent countless unnecessary extra hours reworking curricula and connecting with this new group of students. She got them excited about their work, and they loved her to the point that they threw her their own baby shower, and even actually took up a petition to keep her instead of getting their regular teacher back.
When the term ended, it was discovered that their regular teacher would not be coming back, and that another teacher in the English department was retiring, so there were two permanent openings. Of course Sabrina applied, because she was already doing the job, and clearly doing an amazing job at it. Her fellow teachers asked why they were even bothering to put her through the interview process.
Well, today, after weeks of foot-dragging, and with only weeks to the beginning of the new school year, they finally told her that both jobs, including the one she’d already been doing amazingly well for seven months, had been given to someone else.
I’m sick at heart, and disgusted. The people in charge of educating our children are clearly incompetent, and I have no hope left. At this point, I would not send my child to the Troy public schools if you PAID me to do it. So even more of my tax money will go to waste, squandered by mental defects who have no business saying they are educators. If you are listening, Troy Board Of Education (I know you aren’t, as you seem quite incompetent yourselves), crap like THIS is why everyone is clamoring to get their child into a charter or private school, not because you need to get your after-school sports program a little stronger! I’m surprised you aren’t teaching creationism in your science classes…
I currently have zero faith in humanity, and will be exceedingly grumpy for the foreseeable future. Also, I’m considering putting the house up for sale. Any takers? If you have no kids that need an education, I highly recommend Troy!
Last week, we went for our yearly big camping trip with friends. Dashiell went with us last year, but this was his first time outside the womb!
We were at Thompson’s Lake State Park, on the Helderberg Escarpment. We used to camp there regularly, years ago, but the facilities (bathhouse, toilets, etc) had become foul, and after a bad experience with overzealous ‘rangers’, we finally stopped going. However, the facilities were completely rebuilt last year, and the beach was calling, so we decided to give it another try!
Day one was dedicated to travel and making camp. Given that it was a state park, I had concerns about fitting the camper into our site, but by the luck of the draw, we got the single largest campsite in the park, nearly 70 feet wide by 50 feet deep. We pulled in at 2 PM, and were set up by 3. The rest of our group arrived a couple of hours later.
We came prepared!
They were unfortunately separated from our campsite by a few hundred yards, but we came prepared with camp-wagon, off-road baby-lugging gear, and other toys, so we were prepared for some long distance food preparation and campfiring! There was a great camp-food feast (spicy mac-and-cheese and fajitas). There was beer (because ‘you ain’t campin’ if you ain’t got a beer in your hand!’). There was rain (also because ‘you ain’t campin’ if it ain’t rainin’). There was also an early bedtime! Dashiell, sad to say, was not impressed by any of these things, but he did enjoy being handed around and complimented by a stack of new people.
Day two was the great hike! Some other friends came out to visit at the park, and we all decided to take a walk. Dashiell got hosed down with bug spray and sunscreen, Daddy got saddled, and the troop headed out, a weird, two-headed baby-man creature in the vanguard. The initial plan was just to visit the park’s nature center, which turned out to be surprisingly nice. There were models of the park, pelts and skeletons of many of its denizens, a see-through bee-hive with a living colony in it, and a bunch of live critters. After the visit, it was decided the we’d go ‘just a little further’, to an old, restored schoolhouse/museum, and then it was decided to ‘take that other trail’ back again. Our little walk turned out to be nearly a two mile hike in ninety degree weather with relative humidity of 80%. While wearing 15 pounds of baby. Dad was wishing he brought his canteen, and Dash took a three hour nap, he was so excited by the whole thing.
Day three was a complete washout. Literally (really literally, not Miriam-Webster ‘figuratively’ literally). It rained like we were in Southeast Asia during the monsoons. People had to dig drainage ditches through their campsites, to keep their gear from washing away. We didn’t do a lot, but some good books got read, and some board-games were played. Dash discovered how to make some new sounds, and proceeded to make them vociferously for the balance of the day. We decided to extend our stay another day in hopes we could enjoy another rustic day in the sun!
Day four was nice and cool, and the sun sneaked out as hoped. We initiated our second attempt at introducing Dash to swimming. When we got to the beach, it was sunny and calm, and the water was mostly devoid of swimmers. By the time we got Dash out in the ‘surf’, the sun was hiding, the wind had come up, and a dozen loud, splashy kids magically appeared, hunting the school of fish that decided to take refuge among the legs of our family. Dash did not appreciate *any* of these developments, but he was a real trooper. He never once cried, but all his time in the water was spent scowling and grunting, while clinging to Daddy with a claw-like grip (which, by the way, was particularly uncomfortable for the shirtless daddy in question!). I imagine that was what it would be like teaching a large, well-behaved cat to swim! Like the cat, I suspect Dashiell plotted our demise at least once during the adventure. We spent about an hour sneaking back into the water during bouts of agreeable weather, but eventually abandoned beach.
On day five, we packed up, broke camp, said our goodbyes, and headed for home. And a sick 120 pound bull mastiff. Can we go back to the woods now?
Last week, our son Dashiell hit four months old. He’s made amazing progress, and we’re so happy! Today was his four-month medical checkup, plus continuing vaccinations.
We came home with a clean bill of health, and great progress. At 25.25 inches and 14.5 pounds, Dash has come from the bottom third percentile to the 25th in weight and the 50th in height. He’s caught up, if a little skinny, and healthy as a horse. We’ve made it past the most likely time for virtually every serious developmental problem to have shown up, and have no signs of any. He’s twice as strong as average, and “highly engaged”, which is apparently a good thing!
The vaccinations went without incident (and just a moment of screaming), or so we thought. About three hours later, while Dash was happily playing with a toy, he suddenly stopped what he was doing, and out of the blue started screaming like he was on fire. He wanted no food, was clean, and at an appropriate temperature, so we knew he was probably in some kind of pain. After an hour of desolate wailing, we managed to get some kiddie Tylenol into him, and 20 minutes later, all was well with the world.
Ain’t he cute?
Ah, the Fourth of July, that magical time of the year when we celebrate our nation’s birth by eating too much charred meat and setting off large explosions! A day of family, friends, food, fun, and fulmination…
Our infant son’s first experience of Independence Day was spent with my wife’s family at their camp. It began, rather inauspiciously, with two days of torrential rain. This was less than ideal for much of the family, as the camp only sleeps about ten, leaving the remaining twenty or so family and friends in tents on the property (we, of course, had the camper, so we were snug and dry). There was also considerably less frolicking in the lake than most years, given the chance of instantaneous eradication via lightning bolt!
We huddled under canopies and umbrellas, willing the water to stop falling from the sky, while Dashiell’s response to all this was to nap liberally, between demands for sustenance. He got the football treatment, being passed continuously from family member to family member for hours, while Mommy and Daddy tried to act like they weren’t constantly concerned about his whereabouts and condition. All the hoping apparently worked, because the rain did, in fact, go away, just in time to barbecue dinner and start the festivities!
I should point out at this juncture that Sabrina’s family does the Fourth in a big way, and by big, I mean that the sheer tonnage of meat and explosives present at the camp each year would probably land someone in an EPA or Department of Fatherland Security rendition camp, if one of their drones happened to wander by overhead. Just the process of barbecuing takes four or five hours, and probably produces enough CO2 to be directly responsible for a fair chunk of the year’s global warming. The fireworks display goes on for literally hours, with everything from sparklers to multi-minute “cake” displays to three inch mortars that are visible for miles around. It’s a Big Freaking Deal™!
This year was no different. Colossal mounds of meat (and beer) were consumed (yes, I know a ‘mound’ of beer is an odd thing to visualize, but the coolers were stacked, at one point). Vast quantities of explosives were ignited. The sky was so full of explosions that we could see the bats chasing their evening meals pretty much continuously. It was, as always, a glorious evening. Dashiell’s reaction was… to sleep. Literally. He slept through at least two hours of pyrotechnics so intense it reminded me of the nighttime news videos from Baghdad in the first Iraq war. He didn’t wake up, or so much as flinch, the entire time. Later on, when things quieted down, he woke up and filled the silence for us for a while until fed, almost as though he missed the racket. I think we may have a mutant on our hands, or at least a demolitions technician!
We got quite an earful *after* the swimming!
The next day was much better weather. We managed to get down to the lake for a couple of hours of rather chilly swimming and sunbathing. Dashiell did not sleep through a swim in sixty-five degree lake water. He didn’t cry either. He just sort of scowled at us for fifteen minutes, occasionally growling. Maybe we’ll revisit swimming at a later date, if he doesn’t murder us in our sleep…
At any rate, since the rain had compressed the previous day’s festivities so much, there were lots of left-overs, so we all got yet another Monstrous Mound of Meat™ and another extended fireworks display. Yet again, Dashiell regarded all of this as the perfect excuse to take a long nap. I’m completely mind-boggled by this child.
In extreme counterpoint to the holiday’s start, on Sunday for the first time ever, we actually got to take down the camper while it *wasn’t* raining! It turns our it’s pretty darned easy, if you aren’t soaked to the skin and encrusted with mosquitoes! We had a small problem with our return trip, in that the keys to the car that was blocking us in had been lost, so it took several hours and a few broken tree branches more than we expected to get home, but we made it, unscathed, happy, and not too badly sunburned or bug-eaten, for once!
We’re still tracking down most of the pictures, but they’ll be in a post soon to come…
My mind is utterly boggled by the rapidity of the changes in my now three-and-a-half month old son. Three weeks ago, he was basically a small, attention-consuming machine that ate, pooped, slept and screamed. Then, everything began to change in a hurry. I wrote recently about how I suspected having observed my son think for the first time, but that was just the beginning. Now, Dashiell has a personality!
One day, laying on our bed, Dashiell made a sound. This was nothing new, in and of itself; he made lots of sounds, always just before either falling asleep or beginning to scream. This time, when we heard the sound, we looked at each other with the usual apprehension, simultaneously fearful this was the beginning of a screaming fit and hopeful he was about to take a nap. Then, he made the same sound again. As we watched, he looked up at us, smiled, and followed it up with a third happy gurgle!
We cried.
I’m sure he was very confused.
Since then, every day is something new. He giggles. He makes eye-contact, and tells you how he’s feeling with his eyebrows. When you eat, he watches, and mimics your chewing. He wakes up every morning yelling, not screaming, for someone to come and play with him, and rewards the first responder with thirty minutes or so of giggling, satisfied coos, and herculean attempts to communicate verbally. The sounds aren’t there yet, but the intonation and cadence is definitely attempted talking.
Before 8 PM, he is an unbelievably happy and attentive child (outside of when he’s demanding food). When he’s in a mood to play, he’ll hold your fingers in his hands and pull himself up to the sitting position over and over, and chatter and gurgle while he does it. Between 8 PM and whenever we get him to sleep, he is an angry god of hellfire and destruction, screaming for hours in creative new ways never seen before (for no apparent reason) until you are at the limits of your sanity (and ability to hear).
His latest addition? He flirts! In the last week, virtually every woman he’s spent more than a few minutes in the presence of has been treated to a big smile and giggle, followed by a coy turning away with half-lidded eyes. It’s like something a simpering debutante from a Victorian novel would do, and it’s unfathomably cute!
So I know this is a little late, but I just have to preen a little. Recently, I experienced my first Father’s Day as a father. I wasn’t expecting it to matter to me, since I’m not big on these artificial holidays. I feel like if you can’t be bothered to recognize your parents/secretaries/teachers/etc the other 364 days a year, this one won’t make up for it!
Then I got to walk around in public carrying my beautiful baby boy for an afternoon, and got told “congratulations” by a dozen random people. It kinda moved me! Normally, we get the odd “congratulations” when people see Dashiell, but it’s always directed toward Mommy. I got a surprising amount of warm-fuzziness out being the target of such attention.
Also, I got some really cool gear!
We didn’t do anything super-special, just went out to lunch, but I’m going to have to put this on my short-list of great days…
