Stinkbutt.
Cute-zilla.
Princess Poopy Pants.

I’ve got lots of names for my little girl. But tonight I’m rocking her to sleep on my shoulder and little baby fingers play sweetly, carelessly on the back of my neck sending an emotional electricity shivering up my spine. Tonight she’s my little angel.

But I’m still pretty sure she’ll have a poopy present for me come morning.

do you have babies?  do you have friends who have babies?  are you a baby?

if you answered yes to any of the above, you need these.

rockabye baby are CD compilations of rock songs transformed into beautiful, kid-friendly instrumentals.  the range of artists covered is pretty extensive - radiohead to the stones to tool to smashing pumpkins to metallica.  you can preview the tracks or buy them as single mp3s at amazon and some of them are nothing short of amazing - ethereal and gorgeous.

i already have quite a few i want to purchase for my own hypothetical future offspring, not to mention those hypothetical future offspring of my friends, as super-creepy as i realize that sounds.

tripp's babies will get rockabye baby U2, michelle's will get rockabye baby led zeppelin, and dutton's, will of course, get rockabye baby NIN.

who wouldn't want to put their babies to bed to such quality?

You might be a parent if, when dripping with chunky vomit that is not your own, it isn’t even your primary concern.

Or, I suppose, you might just be really drunk.

Yep, we got a visit from the Vomit Fairy again. I really hate that guy. Rebekah’s been going all Linda Blair everywhere. I must say that I’m really impressed with the spread she manages to get out of what must logically—if not by appearance—be only a couple of ounces. Poor little thing just looks so stunned when it happens.

Cough. Urp. BLEAAARRRRRGGHHH!!!SplOOOOshh…

That’s been my last 24 hours or so. But it does remind me of a funny travel story. And by funny, I mean horrible and nerve-wracking, but, hey, it happened a couple months ago so I can laugh about it now.

Or at least ride it for a journal entry.

So, back in November, we’re headed to Virginia for a week. Getting the kids into the car takes longer than expected (doesn’t it always? See, we even EXPECT that and STILL it takes longer) and we leave the house at 4:08 instead of 4. Relax, my wife tells me. We could have left at 4:30 and still been on time. My wife, knowing me, has lovingly lied to me about what time we needed to leave. I might have to admit that it is effective, even if duplicitous. Anyway, we’re making our way to the airport as rush hour is getting underway. Rebekah, having just woken up from a nap and it being close to dinner AND having not eaten much for lunch, is hungry. I’d grabbed the bananas on the way out the door because, face it, those suckers weren’t going to last the week. So, she eats one happily in the car seat and Reed has one. A little later, Amy starts in on one and Rebekah starts raising cane from the backseat. She saw Mommy having something and—hey—she didn’t have one! So, presuming she’s still hungry, we give her another banana. And she downs it. Like, we had to make sure she didn’t eat the peel.

We’re on the interstate exchange about ten minutes from the airport when I realize: Oh Shit. Yeah. That’s right. I capitalized it. It was that kind of Shit. We’d forgotten the car seat for the airplane.

Now, for those of you uninitiated in child air travel, ‘car’ seats are actually designed for land yachts. SUVs, minivans and such. Frankly, they’re motherfuckin’ big-ass things. I had to search to find one that would fit behind the driver’s seat rear-facing in our car, a family-sized sedan. Needless to say, these things simply will not fit in an airline seat. So, we’ve got this spare travel seat that is really minimal and fits in the airplane seats. We’d done 30+ flights with this thing without a problem.

Only, now, our problem was that it was still at home.

Shit. (See, still capitalized.)

So, I take the interstate exchange in the other direction back to our house. I am hauling. We do some mental calculations and can just make it back in time to get checked-in at the airport. I take the back, curvy way to our house, skid into the driveway, snag the seat, repack the trunk (shoving a bag on my wife’s lap so everything would fit), hop back in and peel out for the airport.

We’re slinging through the turns (here, my wife refers to me as ‘Mario Andretti’) when a curious sound comes from the seat behind me. I glance up into the baby mirror to catch the first discharge of digesting bananas roll out of her mouth, down her front and into the seat cracks like so much fruit-n-bile lava. Seriously, she only ate two bananas, but it was more like ten that came out. In hindsight, that exchange rate is really good and I might consider feeding her hundred dollar bills next time.

At this point, I pined for the knowledge and skill to pull one of those high-speed, 180 degree turns. We went straight back to the house and dived out of the car. I handed Rebekah to Amy, who sprinted inside, stripped her, hosed her down and re-dressed her. Meanwhile, I began feebly trying to FIND the car seat under that mountain of puked produce while simultaneously trying not to vomit myself. I gave it up as a bad job, yanked the entire car seat out, set it in the garage ("That'll be nice after a week!" I thought aloud), fished out the travel car seat and snapped it in just as Amy was coming out with the clean-if-still-a-bit-damp daughter.

All the while, I’m pretty sure we’re boned regarding our flight. Which is, pretty much, the only flight that will get us to Virginia in time for my Dad’s wedding. Didn’t I mention that part? Yeah. He kind of postponed it from it’s original date especially so we could be there.

As I navigate the traffic, Amy prepares me that we, in fact, might not make our flight. Fortunately, I’m outdriving the feeling of screwed-ness for the moment at least. We, being the engineering types, strategize our attack for arriving at the airport. There’s no way we can all go to long term parking, get out shit on the bus, then get to the terminal, check our bags and make the flight. We decided to go directly to the terminal, drop off everything and I’ll take all the bags and the two kids in, drop off the bags and make my way to the gate/plane while Amy parks the car and hopefully gets to the gate in time, unencumbered by any bags at all and aided by all kinds of uber-traveler first class status.

Though, in retrospect I’m thinking she was secretly hoping to get to fly solo.

Anyhoo, even though it’s about 40 minutes before departure, I’m able to check my bags curbside, whisk the kids through security (and, seriously, my 18-month-old is not a terrorist; why must I take off her shoes? All the dangerous stuff is in the diaper, anyway.), meet Amy and make it to the gate just as they begin boarding.

Oh. And Reed? He slept through the entire ordeal.
 

Rocking my daughter to sleep tonight, she gave me a wonderful present. Not the warm, stinky kind she gave me when she awoke this morning. No, this was really quite sweet. Rocking in the dark with her in my arms, she started making these little lip-popping and squeaking sounds—gentle, quiet, cute noises. I made a few sounds back to her and soon we were engaged in this lengthy conversation of just pops and squeaks in the pitch-black room.

It was beautiful.

At roughly thirty pounds, she’s starting to get a little big to lay in my arms and rock. Amy cleared out the dresser of little blankets and clothes too small. She’s just moved to a booster over the old, reliable highchair tray. I know all too well that soon all the remaining vestiges of babyhood will be gone as she grows up. But tonight she was my little baby girl, rocking in my arms.

Thank you, Rebekah, for that wonderful gift.

The good: We’re on the road this morning when out of the blue, Reed pipes up with this beauty: “Two, to, and too are homophones!” I had to pause for a second to figure out what he was telling me before telling him, yes, he’s right. Then we started talking about the misty rain we were driving through. “It’s sprinkling,” I say. “No, Daddy! There’s no hose!”  “Buddy, clouds can sprinkle, too. You don’t always need a hose.” “Oh. So sprinkles are from…(pause)…rain, the hose, and muffins.”

I just loved the tie in with sprinkling rain to sprinkles on a cupcake.

The bad: At lunch, Rebekah was happily nibbling on some banana bread I’d made when I stride over with a container of baby yogurt. She smiles and greedily slurps down the first spoonful. She takes a second spoonful and then a look of abject horror crosses her little, cherubic face. Was it too cold? What’s going on. She shakes her head a little side to side, then starts flailing her hands. She looks up with a wide open screaming mouth, face red, and no sound coming out. Oh shit. She’s choking. I stand up to yank her from the high chair, fumble with the clasps, get her out, flip her over face down and pound on her back. The first slap knocks it all loose and there in the pool of yogurt is the little clump of hastily swallowed banana bread that was the problem.

She sucked in air and let out a fierce cry; it was the best sound I could have heard right then.

Never is cancer more heinous than when it comes after a child. My lovely sister, Rachel, told me about her husband's cousin's son. Shortly after being born, Tristen was diagnosed with Luekemia. Instead of getting to do all that new baby fun stuff, they're at the hospital helping Tristen fight. They change his diapers as soon as he urinates, because the pee is toxic due to the chemo. Any sores or rashes could lead to infection due his lowered immune system from the chemo, and he's just too tiny for a catheter. It's an awful, vicious cycle.

We're in that time of year where we like to think about the good things, about family, about giving. So, I ask you to give a little bit here, if you're able. Help them fight.

well, the good news is that i think this wraps up all my catch-up on personal photos. (actually, that's a lie — i have hundreds of scans now that need to go up; i am now caught up from digital pictures i have.) the whole flickr set is here.

so a couple of weeks ago, r and i went on a second vacation — we were in san diego, came back for a week and then headed back out, this time to virginia and the better part of the week in cape hatteras. the short version of the trip, for me, was that it was awesome. a thoroughly brilliant and perfect time. much of this, no doubt, had to do with not only being near my family, but also not being on painkillers, as i was in san diego.

the first day back was low-key: i sorted photos with my mother, cleaned out a few boxes of my junk and then r and i went to david's to see him and melissa and julia. it was julia's 5th birthday (i think it was her 5th — that seems not right, so maybe 4th. time is moving too quickly.) we got to see mike and david's mom as well — a bunch of people had shown up for cake and icecream. i didnt get to visit with david as much as i would have liked, but it was better than nothing.

on sunday, annalily took the train down from dc and we picked her up. we hung out at the house for a while, rode the atv and then went out to the shooting range for the afternoon. (annalily owes me the pictures from the shooting; as soon as i get them, i'll post some.) it was fun, but with 5 of us shooting and sharing the range, there was more standing around than shooting for any particular person. plus it was hot. we dropped annalily back at the train station and then headed over to matthew's house to see him, heather and winston. we had dinner and nick showed up as we were about to eat. i hadn't seen nick in years and r hadn't seen him since my leaving-richmond party. the bunch of us sat around the table until 10 or 11, at which point sleepiness overtook us all. (nick had to get up early, r and i were jet lagged and the new parents were exhausted.)

this might be the only time i know of where a baby has actually made me look small. for a newborn, i can't believe it. he makes me look tiny. and yeah, the picture of matthew and i below? he is totally licking my face. and i didn't know it at the time. hm.

on labor day, we drove down to hatteras. i hadn't been in years and had been wanting to drag r down there since we started dating. i wish i could go on and on about it, but i have only some bulletpoints and a single story to share. mainly in the effort to keep the post moderately short.

we stayed in townhouses right on the beach. my family has gone to hatteras since i was in diapers. the houses were we used to stay were washed away in isabel in 2003, so we had to stay somewhere new. turned out to be excellent — right on the water.

much wine was had and i spent most nights there scanning old family photos — old pictures of my mother and her sisters and parents, photos i had never even gotten to see. we kayaked and swam in the ocean, sunbathed and shopped. and ate. and ate. and walked the beach. and climbed the lighthouse. and then, on the way home went to the bass pro shop in newport news, which i have kindly dubbed the 'wal-mart of outdoor sports'. it was insane — more cammo and fishing rods and insanity than you can imagine. there was a big sign on the wall reading 'hunting: a virginia tradition'. just super intense.

the best thing we showed rachael all week was the brew thru, perhaps the best invention ever. (and the subject i alluded to last week with the quiz.)

for those of you unfamiliar with this marvel, it is essentially a drive through. that sells beer and wine. you drive through the center of the building and there are coolers on either side, allowing you to grab whatever beer-verage you desire before paying and going on your way. i know the ones we used to use down in hatteras had the cashier actually grab the beer for you so that you don't have to get out. i am not sure if all of them operate this way. how can you not love this?

one night, r and i decided to take a walk on the beach. the beaches there are covered with ghost crabs, esp at night. so armed with a flashlight (actually, a headmounted flashlight, thanks to my father), we set out to walk. crabs covered the beach, but they run when you get close and they also run from the light.

except for the one that ran towards rachael, instead of away from her. she jumped and squealed, trying to both climb me and jump into my arms at the same time. all of this was news to me — i was not ready to make any sort of a catch and she fell, pulling me with her onto the sand.

and from this, she decided that she now has a fear of crabs.

what a great week.