A Story About Poop.

Today we all went out for a bit, did some grocery shopping, and then came home.

Upon our arrival at home, we immediately fed Piper and unloaded groceries.

After feeding Piper, we let her down to have run of the house. This is nothing new, we've child proofed stuff and gated off unsafe stuff. She headed off toward the short hall at the front of the house where her nursery is. I could see her, and I wondered out loud if I'd left her nursery door open. It is (oddly) not childproofed yet, and there's tons of stuff she could get into in there. So I followed after her, and caught her just inside the doorway having a great time pulling burp cloths from their place just inside the door. I began to herd her back into the living area when I noticed in the semi dark, as neither the hall light or the nursery light was on, that there was something on the tile floor. It was something small and roundish and dark in color, it could have been a rock or a small hunk of mud.. or poop. I touched it (yes, folks, when you have a baby, you too will get to touch poop. It is *awesome*), and yes, it was definitely not mud or a rock. It was almost certainly poop, though I had not ruled out cat vomit. My primary concern now was trying to make sure that Piper had not also noticed it and ended up with it in her hands/hair/mouth. No sign of any suspicious substances on her hands or feet or anything. I herded her back to the living area, and went back to clean up the small mess.

Perhaps two minutes later, after I'd washed my hands, and as I was standing in the kitchen, Krissi, who was standing with a clear view down that hallway to the nursery, where Piper was playing again, said "Oh my god, I know where the poop is." I semi-panicked, assuming of course that Piper had discovered the poop motherload, and was in the process of decorating her hands, face, mouth, clothing, walls, etc. "Oh crap, where is it?" I responded, hurrying around the counter. "It's on her." was Krissi's reply.

Folks,

Imagine a chocolate frostee from Wendy's. Imaging taking the lid off of the that frostee and gripping it solidly near the bottom, and then gently squeezing your hand. Getting a mental image?

That's what Piper's diaper was doing. There was shit flowing over the top of the back of her diaper.

Aren't you glad I shared this with you?

We briefly scrambled to change her and her clothes, but then quickly changed gears, and carried her directly to the bathroom, where we stripped her, cleaned off (most of) the poop, and put her into the bathtub, where she was thoroughly washed. Twice.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeee'res Johnny!

Model: NIKON D3000
ISO: 200
Exposure: 1/60 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 55mm
Flash Used: Yes
Shot on auto

Belief (Another Cart-Before-The-Horse Post)

I don't keep close tabs on who reads this blog, I know a few gaming dudes do, and a few close friends do.

I'm a somewhat hard-core atheist.  My parents, though divorced, are both pretty fundamental (southern baptist style) Christians.

For the record, I don't have a problem with Christians, my problems are with some of the more binary and closed minded parts of the faith.

Since I like to think about shit way ahead of time, I've tried to figure out how to approach religion and such with my daughter, and managed to raise more questions than I have answered.

It is worth mentioning that I'm not "out of the closet" to my parents.  Maybe they're more clever than I give them credit for, but as best as I can tell, they figure I'm a god-fearing, non-church-going sort of christian.  Heck, "Christian" is my middle name - seriously - but that's another story.

So I assume that at some point something is going to give.  Either Mom will want to take Piper to church, or something similar.  Maybe I'm wrong though - could be that Piper will be three or four years old before she catches wind of religion.

I take a pretty skeptical view of religion, but I try to be pretty tolerant.  I figure if you choose to follow a religious path, it is certainly your choice, and I'm not going to knock you for it.  At some point, religion is going to come up, and I'm going to have to offer some opinions or explanations or options to a young girl.  I don't mind if she goes to church, though I'd plan to go with her.  One of my big gripes against the "mainstream christian church" is its dogma, and how binary things are.  I'm open to Piper forming her own opinions about things and such, but I will have serious issue with the "heaven or hell" approach.

In fact, we've discussed doing Religion 101 with her... when she becomes aware of religion, helping her to attend a christian service, a  muslim service, a buddhist service, etc.  I think that religion is a matter of personal choice, and anyone who advertises it differently is dangerous.

So yeah, as an atheist, I'm not opposed to my daughter adopting a faith or religion, but I'll encourage her to apply critical thinking and free thought to it.

And back to the topic of this post:  my folks are pretty mainstream Christians.  As I said before, they may be more clever than I give them credit for, but I am anticipating some friction from them, especially my mother.  She tries to be open minded, but when she hears that her granddaughter is being raised by atheists, I wonder how her evangelical-ism will play out - whether she'll be able to respect people's opinions and philosophies, or whether we'll have a blow-up of sorts.

That's all I've got.

The best thing in the world, Ever.

The best thing in the world, Ever, is coming home from work and walking in the door, and saying hello, and having your daughter look up from all of her fun toys (or her screaming tantrum) and lock eyes with you, and smile as wide as she can and reach her hands out toward you.

Best. Ever.

Santa Claus and such things.

I have a tendency to worry about stuff. "is that enough of such-and-such?", "is that too much of so-and-so?".

Santa Claus has been high on my list of Things To Worry About When Raising A Kid. I've got tons of opinions, you might have heard some of them. I'll come right out and confess that I'm a little anti-Santa Claus. But I'm putting the cart way before the horse.

See, Santa Claus gets to go in the same boat as Pretty Unicorns and Really Awesome Faeries - both of whom I'm pretty cool with. I certainly do not yell at two year olds who like unicorns: "There's no unicorns and your parents lied to you and probably hate you!!" Yeah. Because unicorns are cool.

I'm assuming that in a couple of years, this battle won't even be in my hands, I'll be a General sitting on the couch, blissfully unaware that a battle is even being fought. And I'm not trying to call myself out as a hands-off parent, I'm just saying that Santa is pretty ingrained in our Middle-America culture, and unless I set out to make a Big Freaking Deal about it, I'm going to have to let a little Santa in.

I figure I'll be 'honest' about it and carefully sidestep issues about Santa's realism until we get to an age where that is relevant.

Look at me, taking a chill pill.

Howdy Santa. I think you're bogus, but if my little girl thinks that you're cool, I'm okay with that.

Update!

I always wondered why bloggers with babies didn't seem to post as frequently as I expected.

Now I know.

Time sure does fly. Piper is 8 months old now. She's got two teeth, and I'm sure more pretty shortly on the way. She's pulling herself up to standing, and is just on the verge of starting to try to walk a little. She smiles when you entertainer her and play with her. She is working on words, with lots of "mamama"'s and some "dadadada"'s and lots of other "boblebobleboble" here and there. Our favorite toys are some simple plastic colored 'envelopes' that came with a fisher price mailbox, and the TV remote. She turns to watch when Yo Gabba Gabba comes on. She seems to have "finished" in sign language - she's been doing it for weeks now, not especially articulated, but when she'll wave her hand around and refuse to eat more. We're still working on "hungry". She likes to clap her hands together, and sometimes to grab our hands and clap them together. She's a big fan of buttons and any small detail on something, she'll pick at it, fascinated.

We had our first big headcold-funk. She and Krissi both got it, and I had it a little bit. Piper sounded terrible, coughing and all stuffed up. We kept an eye on her and they're both doing much better now.

She's been a real champ when it comes to most foods. We've been really ambitious when it comes to giving her 'real' food to eat. I made some chicken soup from scratch the other day, and we puree'd some of it to feed to her. She's had bits of chicken, turkey, banana, avocado, beef, potato, carrot, and sweet potato.

My brain keeps yelling that I should format this post better, or gussy it up somehow, instead of just letting it be a weird list of stuff that Piper is up to. But that's all I've got. See you next time!

Catching up - September

Wow, so quick, and I'm already terrible about updates.

Piper is almost six months old.

We've been doing tons of playing and laughing and jumping and such. She's nearly mastered the 'low crawl, and soon we'll be actually crawling. We laugh pretty regularly, and have gotten the hang of sleeping through the night. We did baby-food green beans the other day, and we weren't very crazy about them, though we did five or six bites. Imagine the expression you'd make if I fed you a spoon full of cold mud. Hers was much the same. Day two was much the same, Uck. But day three was completely different, and we decided that we liked green beans just fine. Piper seems to inherit the "Yes I'll eat some of that" trait from her dad. Day four of green beans went pretty well too, and soon we'll be moving on to sweet potatoes and squash.

As I keep saying, its funny to watch her develop over weeks and months. She's gone from a tiny little thing who barely opens her eyes, and does little aside from cry or squirm, to someone who sits constantly poised to grab the brightest (or least-kid-friendly) object in reach. I've joked with Maddie that there must be gravity wells around dangerous things, because if you set a bucket full of razor blades on your living room floor, your kid would surely disregard all manner of brightly colored or shiny objects, and make right for the bucket. Piper is in "grab mode", I've had to take to wearing my glasses on top of my head, or taking them off entirely, when playing with her, otherwise they end up in her grasp, and in her mouth.

She's on the very cusp of crawling, and can raise herself up on her hands and knees, and frog/bunny hop forward a bit. Or the belly-crawl that I mentioned earlier. The dogs and the cats have yet to know the terror that is being chased by a seven month old.

She likes to talk. Not all the time, but pretty regularly we get "NOM NOM BABA BABA BABA GAB GAB GAB MAM MAM MAM". Sometimes while a toy or someone's finger is in her mouth, being chewed on.

You might have seen the animals we painted on the nursery walls. Sometimes when its almost time for bed, I carry her to the bedroom and we say goodnight to Tori the Tiger and Giselle the Giraffe, and others. If I hold her close to the painted animals, she'll reach out to them, interested in the borders, her fingers reaching for their ears, or their eyes, or their smiles.

She sleeps through the night now pretty regularly. She still cries out from time to time, but if we wait, often its just a short cry or three, and she's asleep again.

I love how happy and cheerful she is when first waking, either first thing in the morning, or fresh from a nap. She'll make noise, and if we go in there, we can often see a head up in the crib, and as soon as she lays eyes on one of us, or we speak to her, she smiles really big and starts to have an absolute wiggle tantrum, often accompanied with giggles and laughs.

Oddest thing - she's CRAZY SUPER tickling on her sides, like on her ribs under her arms, and on her tummy and chest. Her sides especially. Consistently, if she's tickled on her sides, she SCREAMS OUT LOUD, and every single time we check to make sure she's not hurt or upset, just find that she's grinning with a few fingers in her mouth. She loves it.



Krissi and I still have some worries about what the future holds. We're still not 100% certain on a second child. We've still got some very serious financial hurdles, and some pretty high goals when it comes to Piper's education and such. But I feel awfully optimistic about things, which is a little odd for me.

Odd too, because I'm a worrier. I sometimes stress about things that the far future holds.... "what if she doesn't wear her seatbelt while driving?", "what if she makes terrible career choices?", etc. Which strike me as very adult middle-class things to be worried about.

She's a fairly cheerful baby, only making a fuss when she's hungry or desperate to be picked up, or very sleepy. Sucking our thumb has become a pretty regular thing, mostly when sleepy, but sometimes just because.

Driving with her in the car is.. funny.. she sits in a rear-facing carseat in the back seat in the middle... and she's reached a point that sometimes she'll crane her neck to look for us, so its fun/distracting when she looks for one of us.

Lots of things have been on our minds lately... We've been very fortunate that my mother comes by at least once a week and hangs out with Piper, and my dad comes by rather frequently as well. Krissi's parents are in Virginia, but try to visit when they can... her brother is here, and that's been a benefit. Jobs are tough in this area, and we've considered looking in other parts of the country, but we have friends that are easily as close as family, and so its hard to even consider moving away.

[why can't I end these things on a more upbeat note?]