The Learning Curve

Is really a curve. A curveball to be precise. I just visited some friends who are of similar vintage as I and who just had their first 10 days ago. Teeny little peanut hardly able to keep her eyes open but apparently she has a healthy set of lungs. I walked in the door and I saw what must have looked like me a year and a half ago. A new set of parents trying to trudge through the complete shittyness of a newborn. Yeah, I'm not one to get stuck on ceremony. I didn't like it one bit, and apparently neither do these folks. I saw frustration in the father's eyes and fear in the mother's, and fatigue in both. We spoke about the first few months, what happens, how do deal with this and that. But mostly we spoke of survival. I was in the mother's shoes not long ago. She is now saying to me what I thought and said not that long ago. It's like I was looking in the mirror. Of course, she looked better than I did, I'm sure. But there I was right in front of my face. It was so familiar, it was almost banal. I mean, it was like discussing tying your shoes. So mundane, so engrained in me, I almost wanted to brush it aside as not worth even discussing. With all the importance and excitement of last year's superbowl. Who won? Who knows? Who cares? Who remembers? It's not important anymore.

That was not the correct response. This was indeed not me looking at me. This was someone else. A friend. A friend in need. I'm quite certain soon she will read this and recognize herself and I hope this is met in the spirit it was delivered. With a touch of humor and a little sarcasm, and a lot of good intent. I feel a strong desire to help; I wish there were a way for me to tell them both to just be cool, don't sweat what you don't know, go with it, and everything will be fine. I wonder how many people told me that a year or so ago. They will be fine, and I am going to help. But the most important thing is, they will be fine; they're good folks.

It's been awhile since I've posted anything. Joy is now just about 18 months old; she will be in 5 days. She is also sliding into her "terrible twos". She is anything but a terrible child. She has several words in her vocabulary, some are even used correctly. She is almost running too. Still a little wobbly at the walk, but she is getting better and better and faster and faster every day. We go to the rec center so daddy can work out, and she can play with the other kids. We have a bicycle trailer for babies that I strap her into and can ride around. My biggest tour so far is to the grocery store and back. The trailer has a little "trunk" area, and as long as I don't try to bring home 4 gallons of milk and 100 cans of soup, I can carry it. 6 1/2 miles round trip! Joy sleeps most of the time. We go to the post office, the Staples (or maybe Office Max who cares what it is), the toy store, the library, and sometimes the ice cream store! I'm back to losing weight again, and feeling better. I think for the first time in a long time, I feel as if I have a life. I feel as if I'm somehow in control of some portion of me. Maybe that's the key, control. If you lose all control (like when you have a newborn), you lose everything. I feel like I'm getting some of that back. I might be wrong, but it doesn't feel that way. Fascinating.

Walk The Line

Joy is now 16 months old. Pretty soon she will be 2, and soon thereafter 18. She is growing more and more every day. She is learning sounds, making them words and we can actually communicate with her using intelligent language. She does not have a very wide range of words at her disposal but she knows the basics, like "eat, milk, more, done" and maybe even "sleep", although we're not 100% certain of that one. We started teaching her sign language, assigning physical motions to words. How fascinating it is to see a person who has only been alive (and by that I mean out of the womb, I'm not trying to start an argument about when life begins) for exactly 441 days, 20 hours, 2 minutes and 32 seconds, give or take learn language. The ability to communicate in an intelligent manner is, in my opinion, one of the things that separates us from primordial ooze.

I can tell when she is trying to tell me something but doesn't know how. I can see in her eyes as she gestures toward something or someone and babbles something that has meaning only to her. I so want to know what's on her mind. I want to hear what she has to say because I'm assuming it's profound. She is curious, eager to learn, and will stop at nothing to touch, to see and to do. Her brain is a sponge, soaking in every little detail of every little thing and every experience, for better or worse.

Sometimes learning can be painful, and sometimes that is good. Joy had a painful experience recently that stands out in my mind. She got too close to one of those oil filled electric radiator space heaters recently. By "she got too close" I really mean "I let her get too close". She actually touched it. Those things are meant to be used around the home, so they are fairly safe, as in they don't get excessively hot. But they do get hot. She did not sustain any injury of any sort but she felt enough heat to sting her hand, and cause pain. There were a few tears, and the event was over almost before it began, but it left a mark on my heart and her Grandfather's also, who was also there. I know the grown ups hurt much more than she did.

It is my job as a parent to protect. It is also my job to teach. How is she going to learn "hot" without experiencing it? How can someone lean the color blue who has only seen red? the answer is the same for both. Not very effectively. At some point, she will have to take my word for it, that something is bad for her or she should stay away or what have you. Caustic chemicals come to mind as something she is going to have to trust me on. I'm not going to let her touch battery acid to learn it's not a good thing, but then again, she won't come into contact with battery acid very much at least for the next several years. But she is close to heat sources every day, and we have to draw the line somewhere.

Where is that line? Its probably different for every parent. For us, we want her to experience everything in life she can without getting hurt. Too badly.

That's Why They Pay You For It

A quickie today because I don't have loads of time. I got a job. Like the kind where you do things for people and someone pays you. This job is a 3 month contract gig. In other words, I'm a temp. A scab. I am there to perform a menial task for a short time and go away. The good thing is, I can do this from home. The bad thing is, I have to do it a 2:00 am. I'm working for a company that is installing wireless data infrastructure (Wi-Fi stuff) in a grocery store chain on the East coast. There are teams of installers and my job is to get them started, and wait... wait... wait... until they're done and then I log into stuff remotely and turn everything on, perform a coverage test, and tell them goodbye. Its work a reasonably intelligent monkey could do, but maybe that suits since it is happening in the middle of the night. Of course it has to happen in the middle of the night because if it were a day job, I would have had too much competition for the job and would still be complaining about something else.

So, we've worked out a schedule where I can sleep in a bit and my wife can still do what she needs to do for her job. Tonight is the end of my "training", for which I actually had to appear at the company's local office at 7:00 pm for 4 days, err, nights. After tonight, I will actually be staying home to do this. I have my temporary office set up in the basement with a network connection and everything else I need to do this, like the TV and popcorn. I'm going to have to steer clear of the beer unfortunately.

It's making me feel better to contribute to the family's cashflow but the demands on my sleep schedule are high. They say when you're sleep deprived, you eat junkfood. I say when you're me, you eat junkfood, and when you're me and tired you eat TONS of it. I'm a little worried that all the progress I've made on my body weight will be diminished, possibly significantly. Our house, as in everyone in it, has just gotten over about a month or more of colds, flus, etc etc. Just passing some damn bug between us for weeks on end. So, I haven't been to the gym in a few weeks and now with my new schedule, I might not now either.

We will see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I swept the garage floor today, which was amazingly therapeutic. Who knew?

2013 and 40 or 41

No, this isn't some unintelligible Chicago song. It's 2013, I'm 40 and am going to be 41 soon. I would have thought that once you hit 40, 41 isn't so bad. Truth is, I'm a little freaked. 41. That's like one more than 40. One year. One entire year. Joy woke  up this morning saying "bobby" or something that sounded like it. Over and over again, bobby; bobby; bobby... It could have been some sort of pronunciation of "baby" or hell even "daddy". We were working on "ball" the other day; it could have been that too. "Book" seems to have returned to the murky depths of her mind for now. We haven't seen it in awhile. She is still all about "hi" and "wow" though. She's learning to sign, or at least imitate. We give her the sign for "hungry" which is a motion like you're putting a raisin or something small in your mouth and we say "do you want to eat?". She nods her head, makes the sign right back at us and we go eat. I was so proud of her (and myself if I'm honest) the day she did that. I thought I was getting through. I thought my little girl was learning to communicate. It turns out imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm not certain if she has associated any signs or words with eating, or any indications meaning "yes" or "no". My wife asked her the other day if she had twin dragons. She of course smiled and nodded. For the record, she does not indeed have any dragons, twins or otherwise.

I am still proud of my little peanut. She is learning more and more every day. I am saying "no - no" more and more every day too. Coincidence? I don't know. If I'm telling her no more often that means she is exploring more often. Reaching for previously unattainable goals; straining at invisible chains (I stole a Rush lyric there). Her papa has been raging at unreachable glory (sorry did it again) recently too. Except that the glory I'm raging towards is apparently reachable. The whole weight thing. Yeah here we go again, right? Well maybe this time there will be a durable success, time will tell. I've been down this road so many times I've even jaded myself. As of this morning I've dropped 30 pounds off my frame. I'm kind of bursting about my reduced bursting. I'm using a revolutionary, not-sold-in-stores, scientific method called ...  (Ready?) Put The Fork Down and Get In The Gym. Also a little help with my doctor in the form of an appetite suppressant and a sleep aid. So I'm cheating a little. I don't care, I'm weighing less. It's is also total loss across the holiday season too, so I'm proud of that. So there, we all have something to be proud about. I'm getting closer to re-taking a test I failed this summer too. That's going to be a stark reality soon, one that I will not be able to put off, and face. The problem with setting goals is that sometimes you achieve them. So, so far, we are starting the year off right. Pretty soon Joys little babbles will be words I can understand, I will have attained my tecky-geeky goal, and wouldn't it be nice to drop another 30 by summer? Maybe then when my brother comes out to ride dirt bikes with me, I'll stand a chance of keeping up with him. Life is good.