Month: April 2005

M’s nine-month check up was Monday. She measured in as follows:
20 lbs., 6 ounces, 75th percentile
26.5 inches, 25th percentile
90th percentile on head size

Still need to get the girl to lengthen out.  The pediatrician I share a mortgage with tells me you can estimate a person’s adult height by doubling their height when they are two.  So not time to panic yet.  And her mom did quite well for herself in life despite barely getting past five feet in case M. indeed stays on the short side.

Oh, and we have some friends here with a girl that is 2 1/2. She weighs 28 pounds.; She’s lived over three times as long as M. and only has eight pounds on her! If M. could just stand up, she would totally make that girl her bitch. I kid, I kid!

Friday afternoon was a little intense. One of S’s med school friends was in town and he stopped by with his girlfriend, who is originally from Nebraska. They were preparing to leave around 5:00 and as we opened the door to let them out, pea-sized hail starts falling. They decided to wait out the hail, so we went back inside and continued to talk. A couple minutes later, I thought I heard something and shushed everyone. Sure enough, the tornado sirens were going off. Astute readers may recall that as I learned in our first week in Indiana two years ago, sometimes they turn the sirens on here even if there’s no hint of a tornado. So I flipped the TV on and sure enough, there’s a tornado warning for our county. The four Indiana natives (plus one baby) head for the basement. The Nebraskan and the Kansan (that would be me) rush to the windows to start looking for funnel clouds. Maybe I am a nerd.

It was raining and blowing far too hard for a tornado to be in the neighborhood, so as soon as the hail passed, our guests left. We were still in a warning, and according to the weather people speaking breathlessly on TV, the offending storm was within a few miles of our house and headed right towards us. Terrific! I dig storms and all, but now that I own a house, I’d prefer if they avoided my neighborhood.

The whole tornado thing ended up being a dud. Nothing was ever spotted on the ground, and although the worst of the storm indeed went right through our neighborhood, there was never any need to head for cover. What we did get, however, was the most intense hail storm I’ve ever been in. I’ve been in some hail storms that dropped massive stones for 30 seconds, or a minute. Friday we got quarter-sized hail, non-stop, for between five and ten minutes. Along with it, massive, tropical-storm like rain fell straight down in sheets. At one point, we couldn’t see the houses next to ours it was raining so hard.

When the hail finally abated, the ground was completely covered with the stones. As I write this on Saturday night, there is still a pile of it outside my office window. Our deck had so much hail on it that not only could I not open the back door, but all the seams in the deck wood were sealed with it and the rain was just pooled on top of it. With all the bright green leaves floating in the mess, our deck looked like a particularly offensive mint julep.

We had another round of heavy rain and winds later in the evening, then Saturday the weather turned frigid. We had snow flurries throughout the day and even snow covering some surfaces Sunday morning. All after over a week of near-80 degree weather. As always, when it comes to weather, the midwest sucks.

Or maybe in this case, it should be nerds, since I proudly call myself a geek at times. Anyway, Celebration III, the George Lucas-backed Star Wars convention, is in town. 25,000 nerds, most dressed as their favorite Star Wars character, have descended on downtown Indianapolis. Never have I been so proud to live in the suburbs.

Listen, like most males (and some females) of my generation, Star Wars had a profound effect on me. When I was seven. In fact, I recall being so overwhelmed after seeing the movie for the first time that I couldn’t talk for hours afterwards. I remember the next day still being in a state of shock and sitting on our front porch, propping my head on my knees as I tried to make sense of what I had seen the night before. For the next three years, arguably nothing other than the Dallas Cowboys demanded as much devotion from me as Star Wars. I had action figures, comic books, pajamas, sheets, t-shirts. You name it, I had it when it came to Star Wars gear.

When the Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980, I remember waiting in a line that wrapped around the block to see it at the old Midland Theater in Kansas City. But by then, especially with living in the city, I had other things on my mind. The Royals. Little League. KU basketball. Later, Dungeons & Dragons. The other 1000 things that I was interested in over the course of a calendar year. Upon Return of the Jedi’s release, I was excited, and saw it the second day it was out, but ultimately let down. Even at 12, I could tell Lucas had sold out and made a kids movie rather than something that broke conventions, established genres, and would stand the test of time. I was supposed to see The Phantom Menace the night it came out. Had a ticket and everything. But I got stuck at work and missed the show. I still haven’t seen it, nor did I see The Attack of the Clones. Don’t have any desire to see either of those or episode three when it is released. I’ve moved on. Now, Star Wars seems pretty cheesy to me, although it does still make something deep inside me tingle at the memory of how it dominated my life, and the lives of all my friends back in the late 70s. I’ll watch Empire every now-and-then, and still think it’s a phenomenal movie. Jedi still sucks. The brilliant social critic Chuck Klosterman, in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, has a great section on the effects of Star Wars on our generation. I found this line very telling, "Any normal child was going to be drawn to Skywalker more than Solo." See, I always wanted to be Han Solo. I’m not sure what that explains more: my personality quirks or my ability to leave the fantasies of a seven year old behind. Maybe both.

Anyway, the majority of the people who are at the convention remind me of people who take The Da Vinci Code a little too seriously. Remember, folks, works of fiction aren’t real.

Things will continue to be a little slower than usual here for the next couple weeks.  I’m working diligently on my final project for school, and expect the next week to be extremely busy for that alone.  Immediately after I submit my project, I’ll start working on my formal application for graduate school, so I’m pulling together some information for that already.  Finally, we’re having some work done around the house this week, so I’m spending some of the time I’m usually stuck to the computer outside consulting with people to make sure the right things are accomplished.  I beg for your patience in the coming weeks.  I may surprise you with some traditional, long posts here-and-there, but for the most part expect shorter works for the time being.

Friday: Tooth number 3 pushed its way through the gums. She also ate her first ever macaroni and cheese while her parents ate at a local barbecue joint, then some ice cream with dessert.

Saturday: First time in a real swing. There’s a cool little park close to our house called Carmelot (get it Carmel + Camelot?) that we walked M. over to. They have two swings that you can securely place a little one into, so we dropped her in and started swinging away. She thought it was great! Screamed, laughed, drooled. She would lean over the front and watch the ground go back-and-forth.

Sunday: Gorgeous day, but S. was working. I took M. for a walk through the neighborhood this afternoon. Each time a car approached us, she threw her hands up, bounced in her seat, and started laughing. Hopefully this doesn’t mean she’s going to enjoy playing in traffic one day. Because of her rather large cranium, we had to buy her a sun hat that’s more for four-year-olds than nine-month-olds. The brim is so big that you can hardly see any of her face when she has it on. Cracks me up, because when she sees something that’s above ground level that is of interest, she leans her head way back so she can see out from under the hat. She was up, with only a 30 minute nap, from 10:00 AM until 8:00 PM tonight. Hopefully that means she sleeps until about 8:00 tomorrow morning now.

My wife called one of her coworkers this morning. The phone was picked up by a boy that’s not quite three years old.
“Hi, what’s your name?”
“S., is this Mitchell?”
“Hi, I miss you!”
“I miss you too.”
“I’m playing my Nemo game, can you come over and play it with me?”
“Not today but maybe some other time. Is your mommy home?”
“Yes.”
He then sat the phone down next to him and continued to play without calling his mom. S. waited on the line 30 seconds before giving up.

Memo to selves: we need to break M. of her obsession with the phone before it’s too late. Last week she was happily playing with S.’s cell phone. I said, “Call your Grammy.” Somehow, she managed to hit the right combination of buttons to pull up S.’s step-mother’s number and have it dial through.

Kids have it made. Examples: today, we took M. to the library and then to a baby clothes store. She got carried around by her parents the entire time. Sales ladies flirted with her. When we got home, she got to sit in her exersaucer, eat, and poop all at the same time. After a new diaper, she sat on my lap in front of the TV for about ten minutes until her eyelids got heavy, her head tipped forward, and she fell asleep. That’s when mom picked her up and took her to her crib for a nap. Not a bad life.

What else is M. doing? She’s crawling more consistently, but still settles for the army crawl way too often. She’ll take three or four crawl “steps”, then get overly excited and drop her backside down and start pulling her body along with her arms. It cracks me up when she gets all worked up but can’t take that first step. Eventually, her body moves forward, but her hands stay planted. She ends up crashing into the floor, face first, like an Imperial AT-AT. Then she laughs.

One night this week I put her in front of a Baby Einstein DVD with a pile of toys so I could make my dinner. I could see her from the kitchen, and would peek in to check on her every few minutes. She loves, like all fearless babies, to end up either next to our armoire/entertainment center, the fireplace hearth, or at the coffee table, all of which have numerous dangerous corners and edges. I checked on her, and she was turned towards the coffee table, but on her belly, so I assumed all was well. Ten seconds later, I hear screaming. I tear into the living room to see her laying under the coffee table, still belly-down, but with her head wedged under the edge. There was more than enough room for her to move, but when she tried to raise her head, she whacked it on the under side, and apparently panicked, causing the screaming. There was no damage and 20 seconds later she was laughing and crawling again. It took considerably longer for my heart rate to return to normal. I quickly blocked the opening under the table with cushions from the couch.

M.’s vocabulary is expanding. She says “MAMAMAMAMAMA” and “BABABABABABA” a lot, although never directed at her mom or her bottle. No “DADADADA” yet, which is sad. She has also developed this particularly awful screech. It’s loud, horrible, and she apparently loves it so she does it over-and-over.

The most impressive development has been in both her size and demeanor. She doesn’t seem like a baby anymore, but rather like a little person. Her personality is more up-front. She’s more independent both in her ability to move around and sit up on her own. She occupies herself for long stretches with toys and books. Although she obviously still needs our help to do the basics of life, she’s rapidly building up a repertoire of things she can do on her own. Sadly, one of those things is sleeping on her own. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to put her down for naps and to have her sleep through the night most of the time. But she’s taken maybe one nap on me in the last two months. I already miss those moments during her first six months of life when she got weary, laid her head against my chest, and didn’t move for 90 minutes. My little girl is growing up!

Oh yes, one other thing that will amuse our friends. Her hair has suddenly become wildly wavy this week. There was no question it would happen, thanks to both of her parents’ hair. But we secretly hoped she would take more after me, who had thick but straight hair until puberty hit. It doesn’t look like she’s going to be that lucky and will no doubt curse us for giving her our hair genetics at her first opportunity. I’ll try to get some pictures posted of her new do next week.

I slept what seemed to be about 90% of the weekend. That may sound like great fun to many of you, but this wasn’t leisurely, comfortable sleep. This was sleep because my body couldn’t stay awake. There were many factors that could have caused this:

1) M. continued to teeth last week, with the added burden of fighting her first cold. She was up anywhere from 1-3 hours every night last week, in addition to just needing someone to come find her binky an additional 4-5 times a night.

2) Between M.’s issues and my own insomnia, I averaged about 3.5 hours of sleep last week. One night, when S. was working, M. went down quietly at 8:00. I went to bed at 9:00, thinking I would read until I got tired then try to steal some sleep before M.’s meds wore off. Naturally, it was 2:00 AM before I started to even feel a little tired, and the first time I slept into a light sleep was the moment M. started crying.

3) I started having flu-like symptoms Friday afternoon. They got worse Saturday through Sunday. Still haven’t been awake long enough to figure out how I feel today.

I slept something like 11 hours Friday night, with some interruptions from M., ten hours Saturday night, and another ten-plus hours last night. I took a two-hour nap Saturday. I took three naps Sunday. Why am I telling you all of this? Because I’ve got nothing to offer you this morning. Hopefully I’ll wake up in awhile and realize I feel better. Going to class on another 70+ day may help too. I’m avoiding tonight’s basketball game, so I’ll try to get something decent posted this evening.

One other note for my non-Indiana readers. We’re back on the equivalent of Central time now (Actually we’re still on Eastern Standard Time while most everyone else is on Daylight time). Keep that in mind when calling from Kansas City bars late at night. If the legislature and governor act as promised, we could be changing our clocks here in Indiana on June 5, and then every October and April as civilized societies should. More on that when it happens.

Royals-Tigers at noon on the Deuce!

My alma mater jumping the Nike ship for Adidas, errr, adidas? How does this affect the lifetime contract I signed with Nike when I was seven? Would Nike not adhere to the new blue rules at KU? Is it just a crazy coincidence that a few weeks ago I actually tried on a few pairs of adidas that didn’t look too horrible? (To be honest, I’ve been shopping for some new running shoes as my current Nikes are tearing my feet up. So rumors of this deal had nothing to do with my possible free agent status.) Will there at least be Nike KU shirts still, as with the Pacers who are a Reebok team but Nike gear is easy enough to find?So many questions. As if I wasn’t having enough trouble sleeping, I now how to deal with all of these.