Babyproofing

"Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it."

- Adam and Eve, after eldest son Cain finally learned to crawl

Now that Kate can crawl around like a little speed demon, I realize the truth of what everyone has been telling me: its not so bad when they're relatively immobile. Now she's turned into a human wrecking ball, leaving a trail of destruction and mayhem wherever she goes. She's fascinated with all wires, including stereo cables and lamp electrical cords, and loves to pull on them until the heavy (and sometimes expensive) objects they're attached to come hurtling down toward her soft head. When she sees a carpet or a tile floor, she is of course drawn to everything that stands out from the background: bits of food, dead spiders, oil stains, discarded needles, etc. And of course, everything that she can grasp with her hands goes directly into her mouth. I think she thinks its a great game entitled "What Can I Get In My Mouth Before Mom or Dad Stops Me?" Unfortunately, sometimes Dad gets tired of playing and just says, "You win, Kate!" Gulp.

Devoted Wife has been after me to fix our stair railing because there is a gap between the bottom of the railing and the floor that is large enough for a baby to fit through, or at least get her head stuck. Here's what the stairs looked like when we bought the house:

Because the same railing surrounds the second floor landing, we didn't want Baby Kate to try to wriggle under the railing on the second floor and end up on the first floor. And we didn't really love the style of the stairs anyway -- the way the carpet wrapped around the ends of the stair treads and risers was a constant eyesore to my designer mother-in-law.

So I once again put my trusty miter saw to work and started to redo the stairs today. The trimwork carpentry book I bought last year had a section on stairs, which was pretty helpful, and I quickly got the hang of how to really improve the look. Here are a few shots of my first day's efforts:

So now that you've finished oohing and aahing over what an accomplished carpenter I am, I'll come clean and admit that we actually hired a contractor for this. Yes, I just wanted someone to think -- if even for a few seconds -- that I was a master builder. I can handle baseboards, chair rails and crown molding, but this was a bit beyond my appetite for experimentation. I also think Devoted Wife is hoping to have the project finished before she needs to take a picture in front of the stairs of Kate and her senior prom date.

If you weren't fooled when you read what I typed above and immediately thought, "No way he's telling the truth, he could never do that in a million years" then you must be one of my brothers.

We're going to stain the trim wood dark and add iron balusters that go all the way to the bottom (no dangerous gap!), and the carpet will run down the center of the stairs like a runner. I think that not only will it be much safer but it should really look nice. With each upgrade we make in the house, the formica-over-particle-board topped wet bar right in the middle of the first floor looks more and more out of place. Eventually we'll have to tear it out whether or not we can afford to replace it with something more attractive.

Last weekend when I was working on my latest home improvement project, Kate never even lifted a finger to help. She just plopped down in the hammock and read a book the whole time:

Looks like we're going to have to talk with her about her work ethic. On the other hand, at least she chose something educational.

I have all of next week off, so we'll see what home improvement mischief I can get into. I could put those little locks on all of the kitchen cabinets , but that's not very exciting. Devoted Wife told me the other day that when she was at Costco she bought a new bathroom cabinet / vanity for our downstairs guest bathroom (she hadn't). When I answered "Great, I'll put it in next week!" without blinking an eye, I think she wished she really had bought it.

And I wished I really knew how to install it.

Once we get the stairs finished, I'll post a few pictures. At that time hopefully Devoted Wife and I will have smiles on our faces like this one.

Motivation

We've now learned that Baby Kate is motivated by one of the same fundamental motivations that has been spurring man to action since the dawn of time: the desire to see a critic eat his or her words.

Devoted Wife has been hassling me lately for my "criticisms" of Baby Kate's crawling ability (or lack thereof). Until very recently, when placed on her stomach in view of an object she wanted, Kate would attempt to crawl but would find herself moving away from her goal as she pushed herself backward with her hands. She had the strength to get to her hands and knees, but no coordination to control the direction of her movement.

Devoted Wife tried to convince me that Kate was doing advanced yoga moves, but I knew the truth: she was a lousy crawler. I started telling people Kate was in the "remedial crawling class." Devoted Wife didn't like my comments and told me that I was going to hurt Kate's feelings.

Well, Kate must have heard me. But she proved she was no shrinking violet.

A few days after I started talking about her remedial class, she'd had enough of dad's abuse and decided it was time to start crawling. On a field trip to my office, she impressed my co-workers with her first actual motion forward. By the next day she was able to consistently army-crawl forward, and the day after that she pretty much had it down:

And by the day after that (yesterday) she was folding origami swans, diagramming sentences and popping and locking while watching "So You Think You Can Dance!" It's amazing how quickly children pick things up.

It's good to know that we can bring out the best in Kate with some simple criticism and humiliation. I learned the eternal truth of that principle of motivation in little league football. Once she heard my criticism, she set out to prove that her old man was wrong and that he was an old windbag who couldn't crawl very far himself.

She was apparently right on both accounts. Nice work, Kate!

Summer Lovin'

Kate has a boyfriend. I knew it was only a matter of time.

His name is Cade and he's an older boy . . . he was born one day before Kate. I know he's going to be trouble. Just look at that devious look on his face!

Cade's parents, Matt and Mindy, invited us over today along with some other friends to hang out in their amazingly large backyard (you could seriously play a soccer game in their field behind the house . . . especially if you didn't mind the ball always rolling to one end). Most of the kids played on the giant inflatible waterslide, but Kate plopped down on the ground next to Cade and immediately started making eyes at him.

I then learned that Devoted Wife and Mindy have been masterminding the whole thing since before the two youngsters were born. Am I alone in my vigilance??!!! Kate really needs to know the rule about boys: she can date once she turns 20 (and date alone, without me along to chaperone, at 30).

In my effort to distract her, we let Kate try a few solid foods today for the first time. Prior to today, she'd had only a few graham crackers and a few tasteless puffed cereal baby snacks; mostly she sticks to her bottles and to the delicious concoction of baby oatmeal cereal mixed with baby formula and fruit or vegetable baby food (verdict: squash good, peas disgusting). But today she tried gnawing on some Papa John's pizza crust (Hawaiian, I think) and a big hunk of watermelon:

I'm not sure, but I think she must have really loved it:

When faced with the question of whether to console your crying child or to continue to shoot pictures, I take my cue from the photographers of Natural Geographic: the good that comes from the perfect picture will outweigh the comfort you can render to one child. That's tough love.

(Note: these photos were shot on my new Nikon SLR -- I finally DID buy it! To Devoted Wife's chagrin, we now have two cameras and zero video cameras . . . )

Bathtime

As I was watching Game 4 of the NBA Finals tonight, Devoted Wife suggested I give Kate her bath during halftime. I agreed, figuring that I could easily get her bathed and dressed for bed and be back in front of the TV before the second half started. After all, if its one thing I want my children to learn, its to have priorities.

Kate recently outgrew the plastic bathtub that fits into the kitchen sink, so she now gets her baths in a real tub, just like Mom and Dad. Well, except that unlike with Mom and Dad, inside her tub is a giant inflatible duck (Mom is a meanie and won't let Dad try the duck). Another notable difference is that neither Mom nor Dad actually take baths, because showers don't involve sitting in your dirty body-water and also because in order to get any part of your torso covered in water in our bathtub, you have to slide down so far into the tub that your legs stick up out the other end. Imagine a mouse trying to bathe in a saucer: its big enough to get wet, its just not deep enough for a good soak. But our tub is, it turns out, quite effective for holding a giant inflatable duck with a small girl in its center.

As I got the water running and the bath gear together (there's rather a lot of it for a baby bath, I've learned), I started looking at my watch. After all, I was sure that Kate would want to make it back before the second half started, because she's a Celtics fan. She claims its their scrappy defense but I think its something else:

As I was trying to figure out how to get the duck far enough under the faucet so that the water landed inside the duck rather than "rolling off its back" (hint: keep the duck slightly deflated so its pliable), Kate reached up from her seated position on the floor next to me and grabbed the top of the tub to try to pull herself up so she could see into the tub and watch whatever I was doing to the duck. I grabbed Kate and stood her on her feet, leaning her against the tub next to me with her hands on the tub to balance her. I guess her balance was not as good as I had counted on, because after 10-15 seconds she tilted sideways, fell backward, landed on her rear end, bumped her head on the wall and then tipped over and bumped it again on the tile floor. I knelt there holding a giant yellow duck as Kate burst into tears, convinced that I loved this duck more than I loved her. Luckily she was more scared than she was hurt, and as soon as I stripped off her diaper and plopped her down into the duck she forgot her plans to contact child protective services. She was instantly in heaven.

As you can see, she nearly came out of the tub to try to pull me in with her. I made it a point not to notice whether she peed in her bath, because, as I mentioned, the NBA Finals were on and I wasn't about to go through this process twice.

At one point I shouted for Devoted Wife to bring the camera to capture a few pics, since I recall from growing up that a few bathtime photos of a child are a perfect way to later humiliate that child when he or she is about 10 or 11 years old (or, in my case, freshman year in college). While I recently decided to get a new camera and a camcorder (I nearly pulled the trigger today!), our old brick-sized PowerShot once again proved to be reliable. I thought I saw Devoted Wife out of the corner of my eye look as if she was contemplating dropping it into the bath to accelerate my decision-making process on the new cameras, but she must have thought better of it.

Kate enjoyed the rest of her bath and we were soon watching the Celtics pull out one of the most impressive come-from-behind victories ever seen in the NBA Finals. Kate celebrated the night by donning a green headband and kicking the tar Boston-style out of the yellow duck, which she claimed looked suspiciously like Luke Walton.

Coming Soon ("Soon" is relative . . . )

Since I don't like to post without new photos or video, and since I no longer like taking photos and videos with our current camera, I have committed myself to upgrading our still camera and to buying a video camera. After all, I've got some Fathers Day credit coming my way.

I somehow need to do this without spending $2000, and I also need to accept the fact that its OK to buy new equipment before I've finished reading every possible camera review in print or on the internet (the tough ones are the ones in Korean or Japanese that I have to run through the translation software . . . ).

If I get this done in time for Fathers Day, keep your eyes peeled for other signs of the Apocalypse.