First Vlog for the Blog. Am I just making words up now?

Elizabeth's Easter

Howdy gang,

                UGH! A few weeks ago, I was in the process of working on two different blog posts when I committed a cardinal sin of being nerdy…I didn’t save them. My computer crashed and I didn’t save either one beforehand. What a dumb ass. I will give you the short and sweet version of both of those posts.

                Post 1: Teething and work suck.

                Post 2: The Minnesota Wild game was a blast and Elizabeth loved swimming in the hotel pool.

                There was more of course, but that is the gist of both. So, now on to the new post! This last weekend we had Easter dinner at my in-laws which also doubled as Elizabeth’s birthday party. We opted for a very low-key affair with limited family and no friends. It was perhaps a strange and unpopular choice, but we stand by it. We’ve been so damn busy lately that the very thought of having to prepare for, entertain, and clean-up a birthday party sounds like as much fun as allowing Elizabeth to shit directly in to my open mouth. We love our friends and our extended family, but we frankly just didn’t have the energy to do the full shindig.

                Elizabeth still managed to have fun though. Of course, she giggles at her own toes, so it isn’t very hard to entertain her. She had a wonderful cake that was baked and decorated by my sister-in-law, she received many books, a few stuffed animals, a name sign that my Uncle/Godfather made for her; in short, she made out like a freaking bandit. The books are more appreciated by my wife and I than by Elizabeth though. We’ve read her existing books so many times that we kind of dread reading time. I’ve taken to making up my own stories since Elizabeth doesn’t know what the hell I am really saying anyway. My Father of the Year Award is most likely in the mail already.

                Over the weekend we had amazingly nice weather. Sun was out, wasn’t too hot, wind wasn’t terrible, etc. We spent a good chunk of Sunday outside enjoying the swing set that my in-laws got for Ewok, playing in the grass, going for a walk, and just generally enjoying NOT being stuck inside. Elizabeth had never really felt grass until last weekend. Last summer she was “too little” to play in the grass. I put that in quotations because I call bullshit. My wife had a wee bit of First Time Parent Syndrome and was/is a touch overprotective. That being said, I don’t buck it too much because generally speaking my wife is far smarter than I am and as a general rule I also know jack-shit about raising a child. So I do my best to just go with the flow.

                Anyway, back to my initial thought/story. She loved pulling out the grass and examining it with the same look of confusion and intensity that I usually reserve for when I encounter a salad. She loved getting the fresh air and going for a walk in her stroller. The more interesting part of the day was her reaction to her swing. At first we weren’t sure that she liked it. We put her in and gave her a push and the look on her face was one of utter boredom. A little dismayed, we pulled her out of it and she proceeded to point at the swing, make a grunt sound, and then point or hit her own chest. It seemed like she was trying to tell us to put her back in the swing. We obliged and the cycle continued. When we went inside the house, she went to the porch window and pointed at her swing and then pounded on the glass. Now, we’ve been making an extra effort to go outside and get some fresh air before we do our dinner and bedtime routine. Out of nowhere this evening, she started just giggling and smiling the whole time she is in the swing. I’m not sure I will ever figure this damn kid out.

                My wife has been trying to pound in a legit bedtime routine and she has made some great headway. She is really good about letting us know that she is tired right around that 7:15 mark. She gets to pick out 3 books, they read them, they move in to Elizabeth’s bedroom, Elizabeth turns off her bedroom light, and they rock for a bit before my wife attempts to lay her down in the crib. She has had limited success with this routine. Most nights, I would say a solid 60% of the time, she puts herself to sleep in her crib and is OUT by 7:45 or 8. Then there is the other 40% that is not as successful. For instance, tonight it was 10:00 before my wife was able to get her out. She kept trying to play even though she was obviously tired. The great accomplishment that my wife has is that, for the most part, we are down to only 2 wake-ups a night and she is great about just going back to sleep by herself. That is a great improvement from the 1,248,372 times she was getting up every night. This though has lead to an interesting conundrum…

                You see, I can sleep through anything. And I mean ANYTHING. I’ve literally slept through a tornado. My wife on the other hand is an incredibly light sleeper. In theory, this actually shouldn’t be a huge issue because I am also a night owl while she is the proverbial early bird. So again in theory, one would think that I would just stay up with Elizabeth (since I am up anyway) and then my wife would take over from about 5am onward. But here comes the wrench, if Elizabeth is being fussy (like she is currently due to teething) my wife will wake up for every single sniffle. So what we end up with, is my wife staying up all night taking care of Elizabeth, since she won’t be able to sleep anyway and Elizabeth tends to prefer Mom for comfort, while I stay awake all night playing video games, surfing the internet, and reading. Before any of you co-parents out there start getting our torches and pitchforks ready, make sure you read the part where I strongly imply that I would LIKE to help out. We are going to attempt a solution that is far from perfect, but that we hope will help. We will start having me be on the night watch and my wife will start sleeping in our downstairs guestroom so that she won’t hear Elizabeth fuss or cry. My prediction though… my wife will attempt this, but will find herself lying in bed and will keep herself awake because she doesn’t hear anything. I got $20 on that right now. We will see.

                I will have another post up very soon as I have one in the works and I have saved it this time. As always, thanks for reading, checkout Fatterhood on Facebook, and check back soon. Prost!

March Madness

Howdy gang,

                Holy shit…little lady is almost 11 months old already! I seriously have NO idea where the hell this time has gone. I remember when I set out on this endeavor; I honestly was shooting for at least one post a week, then it turned in to every 2 weeks and now I am thrilled if I can squeeze it in once a month. Little lady has been keeping us extremely busy. We are on our third ear infection in less than 3 months, which means that ear tubes are most likely in our future. These damn ear infections are yet another genetic gift that I bestowed upon my little Ewok. For the most part though, it doesn’t really seem to be bothering her too much. Actually, it seems that for this last leg of the infection, she has been even goofier and more happy-go-lucky than usual even. Daycare said that for the last 2 weeks that she has been a giant ham and super playful. The diaper rash caused by the diarrhea which is caused by the antibiotic though, can go away any damn time now…

                It has been a busy month since my last post. I won’t bore you with how work is still trying to kill me, but it has been trying very hard it seems. I’ve managed to stow my bad attitude that I had acquired regarding the division of labor in our home. I’m not sure how much progress I’ve actually made, but my wife seems much happier lately and to tell you the truth…so do I. We’ve gotten much better about just letting some shit go. The dishes will still be there tomorrow, as will the laundry, ditto for the vacuuming, etc. We’ve just been trying to focus on the stuff that has to be done on a nightly basis, pecking away when and where we can on the other stuff, and really just trying to get in as much family time as possible. That has been easier said than done of course the last few weeks with all of the visitors that my little lady has had.

                2 weeks ago, some friends of ours drove up to spend the weekend with us and mostly to see Ewok. For the purposes of this story, we will call them Bill and Polly. Bill and Polly are the type of friends that we really only get to see once or twice a year, but we always pick up right where we left off the time before. When they arrived at our house, it was just Ewok and I. Little lady had actually just woken up from a nap and was highly confused at the 2 new people that seemed very excited to see her. It took quite a bit longer than normal for her to warm up to them, which I found strange as she is normally very good with meeting new people. Once my wife came home though and Uncle Bill and Aunt Polly gave Ewok a present (what a greedy little turd), her normal personality came out again. She loved the DC Superhero Little People that they got her and went ape for them for pretty much the entire weekend. We couldn’t leave the house without Batman and Batgirl and I was fine with it as it kept her very entertained. We ended up taking a baby to the local winery/distillery and to a local brewery/beer hall. Got some mixed reactions, but we did find that if you show up with a baby, you tend to get A) quick service and B) A reasonable amount of free samples. 10/10, would bring baby again. We did a lot of be lazy around the house, talking, catching up and playing with Elizabeth. Elizabeth really liked her visitors, but ended up being a little cranky by the time they left due to the changes in her routine. Ended up being round 2 of her ear infection. Yay!

                This last weekend, we had another old friend come and visit with his 6 year old daughter. We’ll call him Ken and his daughter Lucy. Elizabeth didn’t really seem to care for Ken. Not even a little bit actually. Ken is one of the kindest people you will ever meet in your entire life. He may be the best father that has ever lived (more on that in a minute), but he is also a former semi-pro weightlifter/strongman. So it goes without saying that he is a big dude that looks like he could kill The Hulk. Elizabeth just didn’t know what to do with him. She spent the majority of the weekend just mean mugging him even though he was trying his hardest to get her to warm up. The silver lining though is that Elizabeth LOVED Lucy. It was ridiculous. We couldn’t keep Ewok away from her. Lucy has seven (if my memory serves me) step and half siblings so she has grown used to having babies crawling on her. She was sooooo good with Elizabeth. Lucy even got Elizabeth to give her a hug and several kisses! This is the first time that she’s done that! For the record, Elizabeth’s version of ‘kiss’ means that she opens her mouth wide, places it somewhere on your face (sometimes directly over the other person’s mouth), drools, and then pulls off and smiles. It was easily the cutest thing I had ever seen.

                Like I said, Ken is honestly the gold standard for dads. I’ve spoken quite highly of my father-in-law (and he deserves every word of it), but Ken might be even better. Ken and Lucy’s mom are not together any more, but he has 50/50 custody and you will be hard pressed to find a more attentive and loving parent. Period. He has raised such a great kid. Lucy is smart, funny, nerdy, well behaved, and is great with kids and adults. As an example, 2 years ago my wife and I went up and visited Lucy and Ken and we went to the Mall of America. We took a 4 year old in to the Disney Store and the Lego store without having to buy anything and without a temper tantrum! She let us talk while she played. She was and is a delight to be around. If Elizabeth ends up half as awesome as Lucy, then I will call myself a successful parent. Ken even does hair! That is something that I know I will have to learn sooner rather than later, but this dickhead makes the rest of us dads look bad because he took the time to learn how to do a French braid! When The Force Awakens came out, he saw Rey’s hair and learned how to do the triple pony tail braid that she wears because he knew Lucy would love it. It was seriously great to catch up with him and do a little learning from him as well.

                Tomorrow night I will be out of town for work, but I am planning on picking up Ewok early so that I can get a little Daddy/Daughter time in before I have to leave. I especially want to squeeze in some extra time since we will be busy this weekend yet again. We are heading up with Doc, Ginger and a few other couples to go see a Minnesota Wild game. We will be spending Saturday night evening after the game in the cities so that we can hopefully get Elizabeth in bed at a halfway decent time. I’m looking forward to it, but it will still be a long and “interesting” weekend. I just hope that we don’t throw the little lady off too much from her routine. I will have to update you all afterwards so we can see how it goes I guess.

                This last Sunday would have been my Ma’s birthday. Since her passing, I have usually “celebrated” by getting wildly drunk by myself, much in the same way that I remember her on the date of her death. Usually my wife and I like to do something the day off, like go out to dinner or see a movie and THEN I get drunk. It was nice having the visitors this last weekend as a type of pleasant distraction. My sister-in-law and her husband still came over after Ken and Lucy left so that my wife and I could go do something in the afternoon. We opted out of the normal dinner and/or movie and we just did some light shopping and got out of the house. It was actually really strange to be baby-free like that. I didn’t have my 25 pound potato sack hanging on my arm like I normally do which left me with two free hands to pester my wife just like the good old days. It was indescribably weird though. It’s not like I don’t go places alone, but I realized that my wife and I rarely go anywhere together any more without Elizabeth. My wife held my hand as we walked through the local mall and I almost had forgotten what it had felt like. Maybe we need to try to do a little more baby-free time?

                I have more…but it is getting late and my drink is gone. So I will try to get another post up later this week yet. In the meantime, I thank you for reading as always. Keep up with some of the daily fun with Fatterhood on Facebook. Until next time…PROST!

Cat's in the cradle

Howdy gang,

                So, I am thoroughly drunk. I was a mere one sheet to the wind when I finished up my other post, but now I am a full 3 sheets to the wind. I have an overall theme/topic for this post, but before I jump in to that I did want to finally update you on my little lady. 1^st off, I can’t believe that she is 10 months old already! Holy shit, when the hell did that happen? She is working on teeth 9 and 10 currently, which blows. Doc said that her early teeth are genetic and that she took after Daddy on this one. Yay! I had all of my teeth before I was 1 and it caused quite a few problems once I got older. Can’t wait for that bullshit. I find it a little hard to believe that she seems to be expressing ONLY my genetics so far. She still has my goofy ass proportions as well. She has moved up to 12 month size shirts, but due to her long torso (just like Daddy) even the 12 month shirts are pretty much belly shirts. She also managed to get my short, stubby legs so she is still in 6-9 month pants, many of which we have to roll up to accommodate her Hobbit-like legs. She also had the misfortune of getting my wide feet, so shoes are just a huge pain in the ass right now.

                Once you negate her goofy ass proportions, she really is such a pretty little girl. Her eyes are currently blue, but they seem to be shifting to more of a green color. In case you were wondering, my wife has Hazel-ish eyes and mine are more of a gray color. Her hair is still a mix of red, blonde, and brunette depending on what light you catch it in. I am pretty sure she will be a little blondie, but I am unsure. If she ends up a ginger then I think Uncle Thad has some explaining to do. Table foods have been all the rage at our house lately. She doesn’t seem to give two shits about fruits or other fun foods. My girl loves green beans. That or anything with strong flavoring. She loved the garlic pesto pasta that my wife made, but couldn’t have been less thrilled with a damn banana. I’m unsure where this is coming from since I was a VERY picky eater until probably 12 years ago. My wife was average for pickiness while growing up, but very adventurous once she got older. Not sure where Elizabeth picked this shit up from though.

                Her personality is starting to become more apparent every day. She loves music, being tickled, and teasing daddy. As it turns out, Karma is real and our constant picking on our niece about her love of “sock hands” has come back to bite us in the ass. She is known as “The Sock Kid” at daycare now. Most of the time she can be found pulling off the other kids’ socks, her own socks, or patrolling the room looking for any unattended sock. Now at home, she has taken to carrying a sock with her wherever she goes. Her new game is to act like she is handing the sock to me and then quickly pulling it away and giggling. She also mimics every damn thing that I do. It managed to even become a problem at daycare and I started playing a game with her where I pretended to eat one of her toys and then pretend to puke it back up. While at daycare they thought she was gagging because she was making the “bleck” fake vomit sound that daddy did. That one took some explaining at daycare…

                I think you are pretty much caught up on my little lady now. I have found myself recently thinking about the past and the present almost simultaneously. I think back to when she was a newborn and how I wished she would start crawling. Now that she is crawling, I long for the days of her being stationary. If you read my last post, I was starting to come up with ways to pay her back once she got older. My number one idea so far, is to wait until she gets a car and then shit in it. Anyways I was mentioning that idea to my father in law when he said, “You just wait until she turns 16. By then you will be wishing your only problem with her was poop.” That got me thinking. Perhaps the grass is always greener in the future only to realize that your grass was pretty green before. As I’ve made mention before, I greatly respect and admire my father in law. He has a way of delivering a profound message with humor that is truly inspiring. This got me thinking though more about my own past and my own future, especially after my 4^th brandy and coke.

                I talked early on in my Fatterhood writings about my own father. To say that he and I are estranged might be putting it lightly. From about 1997-2004, I honestly couldn’t’ have told you if he was alive or dead. We have slowly been trying to start a new relationship, mainly through Facebook at this point. As apprehensive as I still am, I have to admit that he really has been fantastic throughout the whole process thus far. This has really gotten me thinking am I punishing Elizabeth by holding on to my anger? He wants to be a part of her life, he hasn’t explicitly said so, but he has made it clear enough. At this point though, I am not ready for it. But am I denying her the opportunity to get to know her grandfather because I am holding on to a 26ish year old grudge?

Following the death of my mother, but before my father and I started to reconcile, I had promised myself that my future child would be told that their paternal grandparents were both dead. This thought came with the best of intentions. I wanted to shield my child from any of the pain, anger, or weight that I had growing up, but looking at it now, I think that my idea may in fact cause those things. Whenever the though crosses my mind, I think back to what my grandmother had told me. While sitting at her dinner table I had told her that I received a letter from my dad and that I didn’t want to open it. I told her that I didn’t care what he had to say. That’s when she told me, “You’re dad had a lot of problems. I don’t think your Ma has told me about all of the problems he’s had. But I do know one thing Brian…your dad has always loved you. He may not being showing it the way you or anybody else would like, but I know he loves you. With all of the problems that he’s had, maybe the best thing he could do is to stay away, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.” Hearing that from an “outsider” was very refreshing. My Ma had always said pretty much the same thing, but I had the sense that it was something she felt compelled to say not something that she believed. Hearing it from Grandma though, carried a lot of weight.

So, it brings me right back though. Should I let my grudge against my own father affect the possible relationship that she could have with her grandfather? I’m not sure that there is a right answer because I’m not sure there is a wrong answer. I’m unsure how I want to proceed and as a parent, that is a scary (albeit constant) thought. I seem to be able to picture both futures in my mind’s eye and both come with some serious pros and cons. In the short term, I think that my wife and I have some time to discuss it. It will be a while before she would even start to question the concept of paternal grandparents for starters. Secondly, that leaves me with some time to work things out with my father and see where it leads. One thing is for sure though, I have since softened my feelings about my father. Elizabeth will know that she has a grandfather on my side. She will know that she is loved by him even if they haven’t met. If push comes to shove and I’m not comfortable with him being in her life, then I will accept the personal consequences. I will own up to it. I won’t let her think that SHE is the reason for a lack of personal relationship. So much of the future is up in the air. Being a parent has made me question and face so many things that I never intended. I don’t think that it is a bad thing though.

Thank you for holding in with me, this was not my typical goofy post. I plan on getting back to the tee-hees with my next post. In the meantime, you can find plenty of giggles on Fatterhood’s Facebook page. Check back soon for more updates and I thank you for reading! Prost!

She works hard for the money.

Howdy gang,

                I hope you are not too restless for updates on my little Ewok and I. The last month has actually been more or less uneventful, but it has been rather busy. Before I really get in to Ewok updates (and trust me, there are plenty), I had been planning on a totally different concept for this post. I had been totally ready to launch in to some of the current frustrations that I have been having lately. I was all ready to start bitching about how the labor division at our home has been extremely one sided lately. I was ready to do that…until today. Let me start from the beginning though.

                You see, now is an extremely busy time for both my wife and I at our separate jobs. We have been working long days, getting home late, and just feeling exhausted at the end of it all. We get to the weekends and we would rather take turns napping and/or playing with Elizabeth than really do much of anything. We had yet another round of sickness (I know right?! I have no idea how at this point,) go through our family and that just added a whole different wrench into the mix. As I’ve made mention before, my wife and I always had a pretty good division of labor before Elizabeth was born and we had managed to keep it up pretty well after she was born. I usually do laundry, vacuum, take garbage out, clean the garage, split firewood and maintain the wood furnace. My wife (do to her God damn food allergies) ends up cooking every night, feeding Elizabeth, paying bills, general cleaning, etc. We have many split chores as well, I would say it is about a solid 30/70 split on dishes, we take turns on taking care of the chickens, scrubbing toilets, etc. About 3 weeks ago though, the scales seemed to shift unfavorably to my side.

                While my wife wasn’t feeling very well, she is still Elizabeth’s main food source so she became the de facto baby watcher. That left me to do, well…everything. I was doing all of the household chores, my own work, and helping to watch Ewok. It was really starting to take its toll on me. But, and there is always a “but”, today I really got a better feeling for what my wife was dealing with. Due to Elizabeth starting on teething again, (Dear Lord, I thought we were going to get more of a break. This will be teeth 9 and 10.) she had to call in to her work on Monday/Tuesday. That meant she had to go in today to get caught up and to get a few hours towards her paycheck. She woke me at 645am, which is NOT my ideal wake up time! My wife went in to work and left me with an extremely crabby 10 month old. My wife wasn’t at work long, but in that short amount of time Elizabeth managed the following:

   1)      Threw up in our bed, she was fine though.

   2)      Found my guitar and pushed it over.

   3)      Tried to wrap a cord from my jacket around her neck.

   4)      Tried to wrap my phone charger around her neck.

   5)      Took 2 nasty and “juicy” poops.

   6)      Turned on my Xbox, grabbed the game that was in it, and then threw it.

   7)      Fought every and all attempts to nap.

   8)      Did her best to stop me from eating breakfast or lunch.

   9)      In a failed attempt to eat breakfast, I left her in the crib where she chewed on the crib so much that there was varnish all over her face when I finally gave up on eating and grabbed her.

               It was a full day for a little lady I guess. By the time my wife got home, I was using Google to check on the sentence lengths for parents convicted of infanticide (only 25% serious) and was searching for Parental Stress Reduction. On a side note, I am unsure who the hell wrote the blog that I stumbled upon, but they are insane. I am stressed out to the point that I am ready to put her in a kennel and one of their suggestions was to “go on a nice walk outside with your child”. Mother fucker, I’ve been up dealing with a screaming crib midget that I am ready to let stick her finger in a light socket and you are telling me to go on a walk?! Anyways, where the hell was I? Oh yes…

                By the time my wife texted saying she was on her way home, I was all ready to give her the business when she got home. It was while Elizabeth was finally napping that I had time to really process the day. I realized that I had the day that my wife has pretty much every single weekend and most mornings. You see, as I’ve said before, my wife is a freaking saint. On weekends she lets me sleep in unless she either needs to tag out (and even then, she holds out until after 9am) or if she has something that she really needs to accomplish. During the weekdays, with very few exceptions, she is up at around 515-530sih (sometimes earlier) so that she can get herself and Elizabeth ready for work and daycare. She then works a full day, and then comes home, cooks dinner, feeds/plays/cares for Elizabeth, cleans up and then gets ready for the next day to do it all over again. I got a small taste for the last 3 weeks and today in particular. It’s not that she is being lazy, there simply isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything. When you are a parent, your priorities change immediately. Your child is now top of the list. There are dishes? Too bad, the baby is hungry. Laundry needs to be done? Tough shit, baby needs to be changed. Garbage needs to go out? Tough titty said the kitty, because Elizabeth wants to play.

                I ended up with a newfound appreciation for the shit my wife puts up with on a daily basis. While she argues that I was pulling my fair share of the weight, I found that I hadn’t been. Not really at least. I have the luxury of daycare. On days that I have “off” I am never really off because of work, so Elizabeth stays in daycare. If I end up not being needed or if I actually get caught up on my work, I GET to go pick her up early and we come home and play. By the time my wife makes it home, it is go-go-go. There are bottles to be washed, baby to be fed, dinner to made, and bedtime routine to be kept. Except for weekends, she rarely gets that “fun time” that I do. Today was really an eyeopener for me. From here on out, I plan on taking a bigger share in the workload.

                I know I said that I would be doing some Ewok updates, but I actually have a 2^nd post idea that just came to me and I think those updates are better suited for that post. In the meantime, as always, I thank you for reading. Please check out Fatterhood on Facebook. While you are there, some friends of ours are in the process of adopting a child, despite my warnings, and there is a link for a gofundme page that they have set up. My wife and I had looked in to adoption while we were having trouble conceiving and please believe me that it is an expensive and exhausting process. This couple though will make amazing parents. There are so many kids in the world that are waiting for a home, that it is kind of upsetting that they make you jump through so many hoops to adopt a child, but any asshole (including me) can have a kid. Grrr. Anyways, if you go to the link, any amount that you can spare will go a long way in their lives and in the life of a child. Thanks again and PROST!

I swear we are still alive...

Howdy gang,

                Holy hell has it been a long time or what?! If you are following my on Facebook, you already know that between work, the holidays, and the never-ending string of plagues that have been terrorizing our home…I have managed to get way behind on my postings. I’m not even sure where to begin honestly. So much has changed since my last post at the end of November. My little lady has gotten big! She is like an actual little person now. Her personality is really taking shape, she is very mobile, she is eating real foods, and she is finally back on a semi-legit sleep schedule! I guess I will backtrack a little bit to Christmas…

                So, I am not a fan of Christmas. When I was little I was, but what little kid doesn’t like presents? As I got older though, despite her best efforts, I found out what my Ma had to go through in order to put presents under the tree. She really didn’t want me to know because she wanted me to have a nice Christmas every year; but she worked extra hours, she sold plasma, she maxed out credit cards, put things on lay away, borrowed money from friends and family. All so that I could enjoy Christmas. After finding out what see was putting herself through to accomplish this, it kind of put a damper on the whole season. Mix that with my grandmother passing away just before Christmas and it makes for a young dad that doesn’t care for the season in general. BUT, now I get it. I get why Ma did all of that. When you are a parent, you have to put all of your shit aside in order to make your kid happy. So I put on my best version of Christmas cheer and did the whole thing. Put up decorations, bought and wrapped presents, traveled around to the different families, and did it all with a smile on my face. I did learn that buying presents for an infant is bullshit though. She was way more thrilled with the wrapping paper and cardboard tubes from the wrapping paper than she was with any of the gifts. We only did one large gift for her, which was a Radio Flyer wagon. I am a firm believer that every kid needs a Radio Flyer. I still have mine from when I was a kid, but there have been some pretty insane advancements in wagon technology since 1988. Mine is all metal, rusted to shit, and presumably full of tetanus. Hers is plastic, comes with cup-holders and seat belts, and has bench seating. Kid is only 9 months old and is already spoiled as shit.

                We have also been passing around wave after wave of sickness in our house. It has been utter nonsense. I got it first, gave it to Ewok, then my wife got it, then I got it again, then my wife, then Ewok, then me again, then Ewok, and now my wife is coughing again. My wife and I also got some weird stomach bug mixed in there twice! I won’t get super graphic, but let’s just say that it was firing out of both ends. We don’t know what the freaking deal is though. We have used Lysol on everything in the house, sterilized all of her toys, washed everything article of clothing and blankets in our home, even sani-wiped all door knobs and cabinet latches in the house and we STILL keep passing this shit around. The weird thing was, that at any given time it would be either my wife or I sick when Elizabeth was, so there was always 1 healthy adult to take care of the other 2. Which was kind of nice, because I couldn’t imagine both my wife and I being sick with Elizabeth feeling spry and moving around the house struggling to keep up. But it did make for a shitty couple of days for whichever one of us was healthy since that left only 1 person to do EVERYTHING in our home. Kids are seriously just little petri dishes. I have had to call in more in the last 6 months than I have had to in the previous 4 years combined! It is insane.

                As I said, Elizabeth’s personality is truly starting to form. She is generally a goofy, happy-go-lucky, smiley, little lady. She LOVES to play peek-a-boo, hide and seek (a infant friendly version of course) and she loves to play “chase mommy” where I pick her up and we chase mommy around the house. She has become insanely ticklish in the last few weeks. She giggles and giggles when you tickle her neck and she kicks her feet and squeaks when you go after her feet. She loves to be read to. I don’t usually make it home for bed time, but my wife reads her 2 or 3 books every night before bed and she looks forward to it. She will seek out and pull out books from her book box. She does pretty well at flipping pages even!  She is super inquisitive and is always trying to figure out what Mommy and Daddy are doing. Now that she is actually crawling, she tends to follow us around the house just to see what we are doing. We do our best to always talk to her and explain what we are doing. I’m unsure what she actually picks up, but my Ma and several books that we read, claim that talking to infants about even your mundane activities builds their vocabulary. So, we figure it is worth a try.

                Speaking of vocabulary… SHE FINALLY SAID DADA! She started saying Mama a while ago. Usually she would only say it when she was fussy or tired, but she was still saying it. My wife said she started saying Dada while she was playing. Just talking to herself and saying “Dadadadadadadada”. Then we had a short stretch where we are pretty sure she was calling me “Bop”, but then we got 2 confirmed Dadas within a few days. I woke up and found Elizabeth eating breakfast , I walked up and she said clear as a bell, “Dada!” and giggled. Then just last week, I hadn’t seen her for almost 5 days when I overheard her saying Dada to herself while my wife was getting ready in the morning. I dragged my ass out of bed and went out to see her before they left. Elizabeth saw me, got super jazzed, said “Dada” and crawled faster than I can walk over to me and started tugging on my pajama bottoms until I picked her up. Seriously, that kid has me so wrapped already. My heart melted.

                So along with her legit crawling like a boss, she has also started pulling herself up on things left and right. We did end up having a small issue though two weeks ago. You see, I stayed home with Elizabeth since she was sick, but this kid was not my kid. She was possessed by some sort of shitty demon. She was awful. She would cry for NO reason, she kept biting and punching me, there was nothing I could do to console her. I had been texting my wife all day saying how awful she was and how I was ready to, and I am quoting here, “put her little ass in a kennel and leave her outside” when all of a sudden her normal personality came through and she felt like playing. She pulled herself up on one of her walker toys and got so excited that she pulled herself up all by herself that she forgot to keep holding on and fell to the side and cracked her head on the coffee table before I could swoop in. She ended up with a big old goose egg and all I could think of was, “ there is no way that my wife isn’t going to believe that I didn’t beat her!”. Of course, my wife knew as frustrated as I was, that I would never lay a hand to my daughter and we laughed about her first official goose egg. The real funny thing was that after I calmed her down she wanted to keep playing and she managed to bonk her head 3 more times while attempting to crawl under the chair and the coffee table.  She would look up at me like it was my fault and I couldn’t help but laugh at her.

                I need to get better about getting these post updates up. This has been an extremely cathartic experience for me. There are many times as a new parent that you feel kind of trapped. Sidenote: Elizabeth, if you are reading this, I love you but you are a serious time and money suck. This has allowed me to vent and so many other parent have talked to me after reading one of my posts and said how they felt the same way. So in that regard, perhaps it is just as cathartic for some of you reading to know that you aren’t alone. I still wouldn’t trade any of this for anything…except maybe a dog. I promise not to wait 2 months in between posts this time though. As always, thank you for reading, check out Fatterhood on Facebook, and PROST!