Babe-O's on the Move

Babe-O had been taking her time learning to walk, but we had a feeling that she would be about ready to take off around Thanksgiving. I had been working with her in her playroom, pretty much just holding her at arm's length and letting her take the three or four steps it took to stumble over to me.

She got pretty good at that and was eventually able to navigate about ten excited steps in a row to get all the way across the room. In our experience so far, she makes huge developmental leaps when we're travelling, so we were expecting to be able to unveil her walking skills while we were in Kentucky for the holiday.

Sure enough, it was even more straightforward than we imagined.

When we got to my aunt and uncle's place, we placed her on her two feet on the floor and she immediately took off. That was that, she was off and running.

What was odd is that there wasn't really any intermediate stage. Once she took those first dozen steps in a row, she took the house over, going wherever she wanted and following the rest of us around. It was impressive.

She's been getting better and better ever since.

Tonight we played hide and seek. I would scamper down the hall on my hands and knees while Babe-O shrieked and chased after me with surprising speed. When I pop out around the corner she'll scream and laugh. It's a lot of fun.

So anyway, now when we're in a grocery store or someplace, she's quick and confident enough to toddle along, provided we aren't in any great hurry.

On the downside, she can get into anything, has no fear of stairs and our cat is a bit of an asshole, taking obvious delight in knocking her over every chance he gets.

The moral of the story is that our girl finally got her wheels. And she rules.

How to Fix a Wet Cell Phone (Really!)

So this is the last photo I took using my BlackBerry. It might not be obvious at a glance, but it shows a glorious moment in time as the phone traveled from my hand to the bottom of Babe-O's bath.

She was being damn adorable in the tub and I pulled my phone out to grab a picture. Babe-O, seeing the phone, decided to show off her latest trick, where she spreads her arms out to each side and flings herself backwards: cute in a big cushy bed, not so much in a full bathtub.

My arms shot out and grabbed her before she went under the water and/or smacked her head, apparently letting the phone fly along the way. It sank to the bottom and sat there for a good ten or fifteen seconds before I got the little one straightened out and sitting upright again.

Not sure what the odds of this are, but just the other day, I saw a commercial for some new quiz show type deal. The question they showed asked how to save a cell phone that's been soaked. The answer was to put it in a bowl of dry white rice.

So I did. I took the back off, pulled the battery out, and put all the pieces into a bowl of rice. The next morning I turned the phone on. It struggled for about two minutes with the little hourglass spinning around and then fired right up.

There's a little condensation still on the inside of the glass, but other than that, good as new. (And, to be honest, it already had condensation under the glass from a few weeks ago when I spilled my water bottle all over it in the middle of the night.)

Yesterday was a really crummy day for me and the phone thing was the icing on the cake. Can't tell you what a good feeling it is to catch a goofy break and not be shelling out of a new one right now.

Dad's Night In

It’s just me at the house tonight, which is rare. 

Amy and Babe-O are out visiting an old friend of Amy’s and I’m here with the dogs.

I kicked it off by making a feast of turkey dinner leftovers and now I’m stuffed silly sitting in front of the computer.  The whole thing is pretty cathartic, since I was super stressed all day at work.  After unwinding a little bit now I’m getting down to work, trying to accomplish some things while I’ve got the place to myself: caught up on some client correspondence, set up interviews with contacts for a couple of magazine articles I’m working on, and dug through my webmail to get some files together in the wake up my PC crash.

(Did I mention I had a PC crash?  A bad one.  It sucked.)

So now I’m in the super quiet house flying through work and decompressing at the same time.  One more work day this week and I’m on the road for Thanksgiving travels.  Tomorrow will be rough – more frantic work at the office and a bunch of freelance stuff that is just coming together ahead of deadline, but once on the road all should be will.

Wish me luck.  This time tomorrow night I should be in the home stretch.

Three Slices of Bread

I'm pretty good about my standing lunch date with Babe-O. Almost on par with the bathtime thing, I probably only miss lunch with her for whatever reason about once a month.

Today I was making our usual: peanut butter and jelly for me and just peanut butter for her.

Between plopping the stuff on the counter, giving Babe-O a high five, and walking over to get a knife, I noticed something.

It was the little stack of bread waiting to become sandwiches. Three slices. Two for my sandwich and one for Babe-O's half sandwich.

Someday, she'll eat a whole sandwich by herself. Then the stack will grow to four slices. After that, she'll probably start eating at school or something and our lunchtimes will be few and far between.

But right now, she's my little girl who eats half a sandwich.

And I know that any time I ever see three slices of bread, I'll smile.

Democracy!

I guess you could say it began with a dream. Well, not so much a dream, as a thought. And a pretty random one at that.

It was a long time ago and Amy was holding Babe-O as she shuffled through the line forming in a small gym attached to the elementary school by our house. It was election day and I was at the office.

Inspired by the impassioned campaigns of local businesspeople competing for positions in city and county government during a congressional off-year, she and I had discussed the possibility of having me run for office one day.

Finally to the front of the line, Amy checked off the appropriate boxes on the electronic voting machine until she got to the final selection – Judge of Elections, a position for which not a single person seemed to be running.

It was at that moment that a campaign was born. Amy wrote my name on the empty line and quickly submitted her votes. The polls would be closing soon and there was work to be done.

She immediately drove home and established an impromptu call center in the house, our modestly decorated living room now a full-scale campaign war room consisting of no less than one phone and volunteers from all walks of life: Babe-O, the dogs, a reluctant cat who agreed not to interfere in exchange for political favors to be determined down the line.

Amy reached out to everyone she could think of that (A) had not already voted and (B) was a member of our immediate family. Unfortunately, that was really just me.

She called me as I drove to the polling place and let me know that I was running for office this year. Always the last to know this sort of thing, I agreed to vote for our man, er, me. And that I did.

At that point, with just hours left to vote, informal exit polling indicated that of three people polled, one was seventeen years too young to vote and the other two had voted for me.

It seems that outside of those two shoe-in votes, we had no public support. We had done our duty, though…not only did we vote for the candidates and causes that we believed in but we threw a hat in the ring ourselves.

It was a good feeling. Democracy at its best – and most local. Right away we started thinking about the next election year and the possibilities to swing for the fences with a more robust campaign. 2010 is going to be an exciting one.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Today I got a letter from the clerk of elections indicating that I won a write-in campaign for Judge of Elections, besting the competition presumably by one vote.

Looks like Babe-O is going to be the first daughter of Elections next year.

Weekend with Nana

Our house is a work in progress. That said, we have a guestroom, but at the moment it is a staging area for rooms that we are working on. Or, less kindly, it's filthy and full of junk. We know my Mom was going to be stopping by over the weekend while she was travelling for business, so our goal was to have the room together in time for the visit. Needless to say, the timing didn't cooperate, mostly due to Amy, Babe-O, and me taking turns being sick recently.

So...fast-forward because this is getting boring...we bought an air ma tress and set it up in the nursery. If we had a little more time to prepare, we probably would have bricked up the future guestroom and forgotten about it all together.

Luckily, Nana's a trooper and was fine with the plan. She showed up yesterday in time for breakfast. She brought a great present for Babe-O: a bunch of stuffed dinosaurs inside a big soft dinosaur cave. You normally wouldn't think of something like that for a little girl, but Nana like it and was note even aware that Babe-O happens to think dinosaurs are really cool. She loved the thing and did much roaring and shaking of her little pretend T-Rex arms.

We had a great multi-generational weekend together and Babe-O clearly enjoyed spending time with her Nana. Plus, I got an air mattress out of the deal, which means I have a squishy place to sleep considering that Babe-O's sickie butt is still occupying my side of the bed.

Speaking of which, I'm still a little sick and will be going to bed super early tonight in hopes of hitting the ground running on Monday morning. Oh, and my computer is completely fried and won't boot up, so I'm a little bit crippled in that respect right now, too.

Hi, I'm a PC. And I'm pissed.

The Problem with Princesshood

Babe-O has this great, insulated stainless steel cup. She loves the thing and drinks more water out of it that we could ever get her to with other cups or glasses. It’s pink, which is fine, but it also has princesses all over it.

I’m happy to say that it’s one of few princess things that she owns, because princess crap drives me up the wall.

What the hell kind of message is that to send to a little girl? First of all, it implies that the best way to be a beautiful, stylish, wealthy person is to be born into it. Second, even if that was the message we wanted our girl taking to heart, let’s face it, Babe-O clearly missed the boat on being born into fame and fortune (sorry about that, kiddo).

Even if you want to be stereotypical about things, at least boys have better messages: Become a great athlete and make a million dollars. Chew Skoal and race Nascar. Grow a mustache and become a fireman. The list goes on…but at least it’s proactive.

Girls on the other hand are told from the very beginning that they should either (A) be the daughter of someone important and flit around like a Hilton sister or (B) be born to modest means and strive to be attractive enough to marry some rich douche (and flit around like a Hilton sister).

It bugs the hell out of me. That’s why for the next 30 years I’ll consider it my job to remind Babe-O that she kicks serious ass all by herself and that I’ll be happy to tell Prince Charming where he can stick that glass slipper.