Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

• Alex is starting to mimic.
• He seems to have understood the sign for milk for a while now. He also seems to understand the sign for “food”, and the word “no” now. He seems to understand the combined gesturing / tone of “come here”.
• First bandage. He misjudged the distance between the couch and the coffee table. He fell over, as he has dozens of times before. This time he hit his face on one of his toy blocks. Small cut. I think we were more worried than he was.
• If you get down on your hands and knees and crawl backwards, he’ll start chasing you. It’s so cool that he’s that interactive.
• Scheduling things that don’t involve Alex around Alex is hard. Interviewing is much more difficult than I thought it would be. On the other hand, after a bit of a rough start, I think I’ve got my groove back… cobwebs are swept away, and brain’s in gear.

A B C

Ay, bee, see, dee
eee, eff, gee
you dad-dy sings
tyou off key
queue, arr, ess
tee, you, vee
double-you, ecks
why and zed
Now I know my ay, bee, sees.
Next time won’t you sing with me.

P.S. Our baby gate seems to also be adult-proof.

Alex should be eating a couple of jars of baby food a day. He normally eats less than one. As a result, we have a stockpile of baby food jars in our pantry that we thought we’d've gone through a while ago.

Turns out that some of his food has been recalled due to potential botulism contamination. Thankfully, we hadn’t fed him any.

• Alex brings toys up to whatever he’s pulling up on to play with. He’ll put toys on top of other things (such as big boxes).
• He recognizes the Cheerio box.
• I have two interviews this week. Interviewing while having to manage child care is very challenging.
• Made 7 mason jars of pasta sauce. Simmered it both Sunday and Monday. Don’t think I’ve ever done a 2-day sauce before, but my memory may just be flaky. Used goat, lamb, and marrow bones. Very tasty. I skimmed most of the oil off the top, and though it’s the right thing to do health-wise, I felt like I should’ve put it to good use. Part of the problem with having Alex around is that I now cut corners around the house… I didn’t remove the bones before bottling the sauce. I figure I’ll do that when I cook the pasta.
• This was going to be one long post, but I’m too tired of the situation, so here’s the synopsis: our landlord replaced our broken fridge and stove last Tuesday. The doorway was to small to fit the fridge. To get the fridge through, landlord removed the moulding, as well as decent size chunks of the wall. Horse hair plaster dust everywhere in the living room and kitchen. We store all of Alex’s toys in the living room. I was pissed. Landlord didn’t understand why. I spent about 6 hours cleaning on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he claims that it’ll take 2 hours to fix. I leave the house with instructions that he call me if he won’t be done in 3 hours so that I can keep Alex away. No call, but the job isn’t done after 4.5 hours. Another hour of cleaning for me. On Thursday, he claims that it’ll take about 2 more hours. It takes about 3.5. Despite the promises of no dust, there’s more dust, and another hour of cleaning for me. All this time, much of our kitchen and living room stuff is in the back bedroom. Our garbage can was ½ broken… if you stepped on the foot just right it would open. At some point, landlord broke it. Landlord also dropped our clock and broke it. The battery fell out, and he was nice enough to put another one in it. Thankfully, Alex found the missing battery by grabbing it and putting it in his mouth. Landlord says that telling us about the clock and battery slipped his mind, he says it’s OK since he wasn’t intentionally a danger to Alex. On Friday, some more work. Little dust this time, so only a ½ hour of cleaning. On Monday, some painting. Overall, an utterly crappy job. We have a new (bigger) fridge and (crappier) stove. We have a slightly wider doorway. We have a broken garbage can, and a broken clock. We have a crappy looking doorway. I got to enjoy the heart-stopping visual of my kid with a battery in his mouth. I spent about 9 hours cleaning the apartment to make it usable. We had take-out 2 nights. We didn’t really have use of our living room and kitchen for 3 days.
• Our landlord doesn’t understand why we’re mad. He didn’t intend to make a mess of the apartment. He doesn’t seem to get that we were put out for days. He didn’t intend to be a danger to Alex. Alex just ended up gumming a battery. Our landlord doesn’t understand why we’ve told him that we prefer that he tell us when he’s coming into our apartment because we’d like to supervise him. He seems to think that good intentions are enough. He doesn’t seem to get that we won’t tolerate having our schedules disrupted, or more importantly, our child’s life put in danger. The excuse “I didn’t intend to” doesn’t cut it. If he intended to, the full force of the law would be falling down on his head. Since he doesn’t intend to, we’re just keeping him away from us as much as we can.

Goal

Put sugar (well, Splenda) in my coffee.

Plan

1. Get packet
2. Tear open packet
3. Empty packet into coffee
4. Throw away empty packet

Reality

1. Get packet
2. Tear open packet
3. Open garbage can
4. Empty packet into garbage can
5. Stare dumbfounded into garbage and wonder, “Why the heck did I just do that?!? What is wrong with me?”
6. Get another packet
7. Tear open packet
8. Empty packet into coffee
9. Throw away empty packet
10. Blog

• 2 days ago: Alex puked all over our bed. Not baby spit up. Puke.
• He’s learned to bang objects held in each hand together (he’s been banging held objects against floors / tables / etc. for a while now). Better yet, it seems like he’s learned this by imitating us. It’s amazing how much coordination it takes to make noise with two objects. I guess I take it for granted.
• Why am I snacking on Cheerios all day?
• My breakfast these days seems to consist of: coffee, cereal, yogurt, Alex’s leftovers (mushed fruit and plain yogurt).
• Along with learning to pull up and crawl, Alex needs to learn to fall. He’s not doing too well at it. He keeps bonking his head. I’m getting a bit worried at the frequency of it. Dina noted that we should put up a sign: “One Zero days without Alex bonking his head.” Part of me knows he’ll eventually learn to fall in a controlled fashion, and eventually not fall at all. Part of me worries that each time he falls and hits his head, he kills the poor brain cells that have learned how to deal with falling and has to start all over again. Mind you, today he showed marked improvement.
• He’s a fan of physical humour. Us falling down on our bed makes him smile and laugh.
• He smiles and sits / stands up a bit straighter as if proud when we applaud one of his little accomplishments.
• He crawled to Dina from across the room when she beckoned him.
• He deleted one of my iTunes playlists by mashing on my keyboard. This involved hitting the Delete key and subsequently hitting the Enter key in order to acknowledge the confirmation dialog that appeared.
• He appears not to want any siblings. As I was sitting on the couch, he crawled onto my lap and proceeded to punch me square in the groin. o.u.c.h.