Category: Parenting

Warning: Everyone who is tired of reading stories about how insufferably cute my daughter is, feel free to close this window. You have been warned.

Katherine is wandering around with an empty bag that previously held little Butterfinger candies, and is reaching in and offering them to people. She will also accept them if you do the same for her.

Okay, this is incredibly cute. But it’s also the first outward sign we have of her imagination actually doing something.

That’s so incredibly cool

I’ve commented before on how Katherine has, to put it mildly, cut into our free time. One place that’s visible, to me at least, as in the traditions that Margie and I had begun B.K. (Before Katherine).

Take Halloween. We’ve a box or two of Halloween decor — little pumpkins to hang from the now-bare tree branches, a wreath, bits of decor for the interior. Come the Night, we’d replace (at least some) of the light bulbs in front of the house and in the living room with cheesy candelabra-style “flickering” lights. We’d light candles all over, put the Scary Tape in the boom box, and have a nice time scaring little kids.

Not this year. No decorations. No music. Two uncarved pumpkins on the doorstep. Katherine got a costume, but that’s it.

Problem is, there’s plenty of disincentive to doing decorating (it takes time and effort, scarce commodities), and no incentive (Katherine won’t appreciate it).

My hope is that, over the next few years, we’ll start building new traditions, with Katherine able to appreciate them (incenting us to do them) and not prone to destroying them (not disincenting us to do them). I look forward to it. Ditto Christmas, birthdays, etc.

In the meantime, kids … just be thankful we bought candy to throw in your bags.

Last year we had Katherine (five months old) in the obligatory Pumpkin costume. Propped up on the bed, balance the cap, snap the shot.

This year … Winged Unicorn. (Or, Margie opines, Monohorned Pegasus.) White and fluffy and irridescent and a cute blue-and-purple mane and tale. Too, too, too cute. Toddled around to the neighbors, picked up candy and plopped in the bag. Cuteness to the point of insanity.

Jake the Dog thought so, too, which is why he tore off the leg of the table he was tied to. Hilarity ensued.

Pictures (of Katherine) to follow.

Margie was guest-lecturing a class over at Red Rocks Community College (the importance of statistics to medical folks). The timeframe conflicted with a bunch of IT Honchos visiting the office, so I couldn’t afford just to work from home. So at 9:30 a.m., Margie dropped off Kitten with me and drove off, leaving me to walk around the Denver West complex for a few hours with her.

It’s really a pretty business complex. The buildings are spread far apart. There are lawns, lakes, waterfalls, lots of trees. Almost bucolic.

Lots of geese around. Denver is a cross-over area. Geese from the north come down here for the winter. Other geese that winter further south come back here during the summer. But we get more of the former. Sure, they leave goose shit everywhere. But they’re still fun to see waddling around, and it’s really neat seeing them swoop in for landing, honking all the way, on the lakes.

“Duck! Duck! Duck!” quoth Katherine.

We found a little park next to the northeast corner of the complex. Katherine climbed up onto the high slide — and slid down with me. She enjoyed the merry-go-round (especially when Daddy ran to intercept her no matter which direction she ran on it). The sandy gravel was a particular favorite.

Swings are still on the no-go list.

I had to drag her away, kicking and screaming.

She recovered, as we continued on our way. We strolled hither and thither, enjoying the geese, enjoying the fresh air, enjoying the capital improvements DW Management has been doing since they were unable to sell the place. The latter improvements include some bronze statuary which Katherine found particularly fascinating.

We continued along our way, Daddy singing silly songs which do not bear repetition here.

As it turnedout, Margie’s class was a two hour one, not a one hour one, so it was a little bit longer time with Squiggy than I’d expected. But, y’know, it was good time.

Well, the baby gate night before last didn’t do anything execpt make her keenly aware of any noise we were making. Margie spent a couple of hours trying to get her to go down — and then was back up with her at 2 a.m., sitting in the chair in her room, trying to settle her down — or, once settled, to get her back into her crib.

When I came downstairs yesterday morning at 5:15 a.m., they were both fitfully sacked out on the couch in the family room.

So last night we put her down with the door closed. She screamed bloody murder for about 25 minutes, then crashed. Margie went to bed around 8. I followed at about 10. Katherine woke up around 4 a.m. — I went in, sat with her for about 15 minutes, then put her back down. She strongly dissented from that course of action, but was sound asleep by the time I got up at 5.

Thus … some improvement. Margie’s taking her in to the clinic this a.m. to see if they can find any sort of problem, or if it’s all just a phase.

Well, we consulted the parents on What To Do About Katherine.

Both suggested leaving her door open, but putting a baby gate up.

So we sat downstairs eating dinner and listening to her scream for 45 minutes. Much louder than before, of course, because the door was open (which also meant she heard any noise we made).

Margie’s up there now …

Katherine is slowly but surely improving her communication.

She can understand basic things. Like, “Time to go,” she’ll run over to the back door (and then to the van if possible). If you ask her if she needs her diaper changed, she’ll toddle over to the downstairs diaper station (i.e., the dryer).

She can understand a lot more than she can express — which I suppose can be terribly frustrating for her. She does have the violent head-shaking “No!” down — though she changes her mind often enough that it cannot be taken as a definitive answer. And she’s learned to climb into her high chair when she wants to eat, to climb into her stroller when she wants a walk, and to drag folks by the finger if need be to take them to where she wants them to be.

Sometimes we are the ones reduced to monosyllabic grunts. Most of which sound like, coincidentally, “No!”

Two interesting developments in the World of Katherine.

1. She’s decided that being put to bed is the greatest horror imaginable, and thus throws terrified/furious screaming fits when we attempt to do so.

2. Perhaps motivated in part by #1, she’s discovered how to climb out of her crib. And she already knows how to open the door of her room.

Hilarity ensues.

Though perhaps Margie’s stint downstairs in the family room with her until 2:30 a.m. was not so hilarious.

We’ve lowered the crib rail (so she can climb out more easily). We’ve also installed a lock on her door, so that she can’t get out. Which really sounds bad, but it’s the only thing we can think of to keep her safe until this phase passes.

(Keep saying that to yourself, Dave. “It’s a phase. It’s a phase. It’s a phase.”)

Margie feeds Katherine some pea pods. “She just ate the middle of them.”

Quoth Dave, “Ate the middle of the pea pods? Oh, shucks!”

For those of you who have not read Dante’s Inferno, please do so. I’ll wait. If you want a more approachable version (though John Ciardi’s translation is quite fine), you can read Niven and Pournelle’s novel by the same name.

Done?

Okay — then let me ask you this.

Does Dante have an appropriate bolgia (circle) for parents who let their children come into danger? Not, mind you, by accident. But by neglect. By selfishness. By a focus on only what is useful or pleasant or convenient to them, the parents (singular or plural).

How about parents who manipulate their children, not even for any possibly laudible reason like, “Well, this will be for his/her own good,” but to score points? To satisfy an internal ego-trip? To “win” against someone else? For trivial, selfish reasons?

How about just because they’re stupid, narrow-minded and petty?

The Ninth Circle, in Caina, where Traitors to Kindred are embedded in ice up to their necks for all eternity?

Seems kind of harsh. On the other hand, seems kind of lenient.

Whatever the answer is, it seriously chaps my hide. Want to see my blood pressure seriously rise? Want to watch me rant and rave? Tell me about stuff like this.

Rrg. Where’s Rorshack when you need him?

In the 1960s, Abraham Maslow revolutionized psychology by positing a hierarchy of needs. Only when the all the needs of one level were covered would a person start to worry about needs on the next level. So we have, at the bottom, Physiological Needs (food, water, air). Next we have Safety Needs. Then Love, Affection, and Belongingness needs. Then Esteem needs. Then, finally, Self-actualizing needs.

He forgot an even more fundamental layer, one that overrides the need for esteem, for belonging, for safety, or even for food and water.

Child Giftgiving needs.

I do in fact believe that this is the most fundamental instinct in humanity. Otherwise sane people will forget everything else when it comes to buying toys for a little kid.

As we grow, we do sublimate or transfer or learn to cope with this psychological drive. Teens buy music. Women buy shoes. Men buy cars. Dave buys comic books.

But give us the Real Thing, a chance to fulfill the Real Need, scratch the Real Itch, and all that goes out the window in an orgy of credit card maxxing. The monkey not only sits on our back, he grabs things off the shelves for us. Addict, meet crack. Crack, meet addict. I hope you two will be very happy together.

So we’re off to Orlando next week. Margie says, quite logically, “We should pick up something new for Katherine, to keep her occupied and happy on the plane, and in the hotel.”

“Great idea, dear.”

“There’s a toy store near your office, isn’t there?”

I should have recognized my inability to remember this as a sort of self-protective hysterical amnesia. “There is?”

“Over by Le Peep.”

“Ah. Okay, I can go over there at lunch.”

“Sure,” said Marlow. “I can just hop up the Congo and find Mr. Kurtz at lunch.”

To my credit, it was only when I opened the door to the toy store that I began to do my Night of the Living Dead imitation. “Toys … toys … toys …” I moaned, staggering zombie-like up and down the aisles.

Last thing I remember I was running for the door,
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before,
“Relax,” said the sales clerk, “Will that be cash or charge?
You can check out anytime you like, but we don’t have bags that large.”

Mercifully, the van is in the shop today. Thus, I was limited in the quantity of toys, books, puzzles, and other wonderful things for my PRECIOUS KITTEN by the weight I could carry from there back to my office.

It’s all Margie’s fault. She should have known better.

Or maybe, God forbid, Maslow was right. It’s not everyone else. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s a father/daughter thing.

In which case, we are in a lot of trouble when she gets old enough to drive.

Katherine’s finger, Katherine’s Daddy. Katherine’s Daddy, Katherine’s finger. I hope you two will be very happy wrapped around each other.

Long weekend. Looooongggg weekend.

Good. But long.

Largely because the balance between “awake” and “asleep” was unduly skewed toward the former, largely as a result of Our Little Miss Noisemaker.

More after I get some inspiration. Plenty to talk about, but not enough brain cells awake to actually make it all gel.