Here’s to you Lainey. I can’t wait until we don’t have to change diapers anymore.

It was a painful first leg in the long journey of low grade fevers, drooling, gnawing and chomping on anything she can get her hands on. All these things have become a normal part of most days, but now we are over that first hurdle and well on our way to a mouth full of chompers.

For my wife, seeing Lainey do things like graduate from bottles to sippy cups and straws and from mush to actual food is sad but for me, its great. The more self reliant Lainey gets, the easier life is. I still remember one of the first times I saw Lainey hold up a bottle on her own and feed herself. It was a small moment of celebration for me. And now we have a tooth; a small promise that some day soon, Lainey will eat whatever I throw her way.

Getting a picture of this tooth has been tough. I had to get about 25 feet back with a zoom lens to get a shot of a smile with the little pearly white present.

Now this entire tooth situation has got me thinking, what is the going rate from the tooth fairy these days? By now all the spoiled little brats of the world are probably getting $10 a tooth. Kids probably think losing a tooth is like winning the Publisher’s Clearinghouse or something. I used to get a dollar. I remember ripping the teeth out of my head to get at a measly buck. I used to take butter knives and pivot the end between my molars trying to work, wiggle and wedge them out of my skull. I am not sure why my parents never told me to cut it out and quit being an idiot. It was just a dollar, though back then you could buy some pretty cool stuff with a dollar. A quarter, nickle and dime would get you an ice cream sandwich at lunch. So maybe the pain of ripping a tooth out of my head was worth a buck if it got me two and a half ice cream sandwiches.

Anyway, here’s to Lainey being one step closer to being able to eat her first apple and me not having to remember not to feed her food she can choke on!

Cheers!

It was a particularly tough holiday season this last year. 2009 seemed like a mostly rotten year all around, but the last few months of the year were especially bad. Nearly half of my friends are unemployed and can not find work right now, one of my close friends and racquet ball partner, Joe Coviello committed suicide a few weeks before Christmas, and while I have been able to retain my job, it hasn’t been smooth sailing. Poor management decisions at the top propagates down to all levels of an organization.

And family is no easier. Christmas was plagued with endless tugging and fighting. People denying the past and pointing fingers at each other senselessly. My sister in law even made a point of reminding me that she does not like me nor want me around for family gatherings. But that’s alright, I’ll be an outsider to stand by my principles.

Then there is school. Last week was the first week of my graduate studies. Most of the people in class are unemployed. Many folks even have an unemployment spiel they use when introducing themselves:

“Hi, my name is (insert name here) and I am a (insert job title here). Do you know anyone who is hiring!”

The seasoned veterans ring the spiel off with a smile. No one likes a whiny baby.

And then there is Lainey…

I’m going to write the rest of this post directly to Lainey since she is the one I write for anyway (I hope this blog will somehow survive to her adulthood and maybe she might enjoy reading about who her father really was as an unsure, young man.)

Lainey, you’re a challenge. Last night you kept trying to pull the coax cable out of the back of the TV. Your mother and I would take you away from the TV and scold you and you’d look back at us, grin, and go tug the cable again. Then I’d pop your little hand. You’d clap yours together and bark, “NO” back at us, almost like you were mocking us.

Next we tried a little timeout. You sat in the corner and stared at me. You would stand up, I’d sit you back down. We did it over and over again. You just didn’t understand. Eventually, we had to put you to bed.

Yesterday I had to buy soundproof earmuffs so I can study with you in the house. Right now you are into these really annoying toys that sing and chirp all the time. You enjoy digging in the trash, attempting to break my keyboard and mouse and ripping pages out of books (books used to be made out of paper. By the time you read this, they’ll all be digital).

Being a dad is hard. Being a grad student is hard. Being a dad with a full time job, doing freelance web design on the side and a grad student at the same time is impossible.But don’t worry, I feel really awesome for attempting it all at once.

But even as I face tough economic times, have crazy sister in laws to deal with, impossible loads of work to do (both professionally and academically), life is still very much worth getting up every morning for, even if not for anything else but to watch you take a whole banana and devour it!

Bright things are on the horizon though. Maybe someday soon you’ll learn to poop in the toilet, feed yourself without getting it all over the wall and even tell me when you want something instead of screaming and crying at me!  Ah… those will be the days.

Before the first birthday bash we had a pretty handsome assortment of toys, but after this party we now officially give Toys R Us a run for their money. In our possession as of now are 32 baby books, 17 stuffed animals, five baby dolls, three elmos and a single cookie monster to keep them company, three whirling and buzzing baby walker thingamajigs, two inflatable baby walker thingamabobs, two whistles, a drum and a set of drum sticks, a set of sound emitting kitchen magnets and easily three dozen other random assorted goodies that Lainey can slam, throw, chew on and scatter all around the house.

Today was the last straw. Last week we came down with Strep Throat and I have basically been quarantined in the house for a week strait. I can’t take the clutter and mess of a gazillion baby clinkity clanks littering the house any longer.

So I crawled up to the attic and dug out an empty plastic container, labeled it BABY CRAP appropriately and began stuffing it full of toys. I also lugged the three whirling and buzzing baby walker thingamajigs upstairs too. Lainey is walking on her own now, I think we can spare my sanity and put these things away.

And now comes Christmas. More toys. Yay…

But what is the point of all this excess? Lainey already has so much and I am really growing tired of all the junk. I am running out of room in the attic for all the baby stuff I continually accumulate too.Its time to make a change.

So I have decided to be a little proactive this holiday season. In lieu of excessive gift giving this year, I am setting up a 529 College Savings plan for Lainey. These plans are great. They basically work as a targeted index fund, automatically scaling back the fund’s exposure to the market as Lainey’s target date for entering college approaches with the added bonus of being tax sheltered.

At the rate college tuition continues to rise year after year, it might be an opportunity only the mega rich or heavily indebted get to enjoy by the time Lainey is grown. Lets give her a head start and maybe teach her some good saving habits as she gets older too.

If any of you care to contribute, get with Sara or I and I’ll get you the info. And please take the hint, no more baby toys! They are only inevitably going to end up in a daft attic in some sealed off container labeled BABY JUNK!

Lainey is sprouting into a feisty little fireball. “No” is currently the most repeated word in the house. Nearly every waking moment of the day her little fingers are darting towards light sockets and Xbox On/Off switches and her miniature palms are constantly smacking on keyboard, remote controls and anything else with a button. All Sara and I do anymore is follow the kid around picking up her messes and pulling her away from things she shouldn’t be in.

Lainey almost reminds me of a little pup who doesn’t realize she’s isn’t a big dog. She never hesitates to turn around and look me dead in the face as I scold her and bark back, “Oh, Oh” in her own little attempt at saying “no” back to me.

Last week we held her first birthday party. She was fearless, trotting around with all the bigger kids, grabbing at the little circles of pepperoni on their slices of pizza and attempting to steal sips of their sodas and cool-aid. The little pup definitely thought she was a big dog that night.

Earlier tonight we laid in the bed together and I watched her grab the remote control yet again. I was just about to steal it away before she had a chance to toss it off the bed or smash it against the wall, only this time she held it up, pointed it at the TV and shook it. And over the weekend I watched her grab one of my Wii-motes, hold it up to her ear and pretend to have a conversation!

She really is just a little pup who thinks she’s a big dog. Copying everything we do, taking in everything she hears and sees and trying to play it back to us.

This weekend I’m going to make her watch me fold laundry for an entire day strait. Think she’ll learn to copy that behavior?

But, no matter how tough or busy life gets, you can never forget to enjoy the little things… like Lainey sticking her tongue in the end of a vacuum hose.

So a few weekends ago when we put Lainey down and she started her ranting, we didn’t think anything of it. I closed the door behind me and went about my mopping of all the dried up slobber trails Lainey had created by dragging her tongue across the floor in our living room.

Eventually Sara went to check on the frantic child and to our delight we had a wonderful chocolate surprise! Lainey had ripped her diaper off, grabbed a turd like it was a giant chunk of sidewalk chalk and went wild, painting her crib and face in the filth.

These pictures are going in the vault for the first time she brings home a boy I don’t really care for!

“Hey buddy, did you know your girlfriend there used to eat poop? I’d think twice before swapping spit with this one!”

I also decided to take a few days that week and have the inside of the house painted. It turns out that even when hiring people to paint for you, painting the inside of your home is one of the single most stressful jobs you can undertake. All furniture has to be stacked in the center of the rooms, and everything was ripped from the walls. Window treatments that nearly drove you to insanity the first time you hung them are now being taken down and will soon be hung all over again. Shelves and pictures that you spent hours aligning and leveling once already are being removed and soon enough will also have to be remounted on the walls. It’s a horrible ordeal.

Then there was Lainey. Lainey is used to spending all day with other little critters just like her. There is always someone’s hair to pull, a toy to steal or a hand to gnaw on when Lainey is at the sitters. Sadly, I’m just not that entertaining and being at home with dad all day must be a horrible drag for her.

All week I watched Lainey weasel her way into anything that could burn, cut, smother, poison, crush, mash, choke, electrocute or completely obliterate her. That week I watched her get stuck inside our TV stand and get lost behind the couch. I freaked out as she took a few tumbles off the bed, chomped on a mangled beetle she found on the floor next to the washer and sucked on the shoelaces of my stinky tennis shoes.

Lainey has so much energy that no one seems to be able to keep up with her. Her own grandparents seem hesitant to watch her at times. My wife has always marveled at the unparalleled amount of energy I have, but my child has me beat. I have no problem grabbing five hours of sleep a night, getting up bright and early and working the day away, but this kid even wipes me out. I need a vacation from my baby. Thank God I’m back at work.

Check out these pics of Lainey playing with sharp things near poisons, sucking on a video game and struggling with all her might to get to heavy things that could smash her bundled in plastic bags that could smother her!

Check out the picasa album.