The Weekly Bnote

Bnote # 151 – Toddler Times: Movie Night

2012-02-13T14:31:00.000-05:00

I previously wrote about how we imposed a TV embargo against Bailey until her second birthday, and then began smuggling TV to her through that embargo. Since Bailey will be two years old soon enough, and da-da likes a nice morning break, and because, like, ya know learning and stuff, I have been letting Bailey watch Sesame Street. Actually Bailey really is very interested in letters and numbers. Just today, she counted to 14 correctly and without assistance. Usually she says “1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.” I agree that 4 and 5 are pompous jerks, but I guess if Indie Canadian singer-songwriter Feist is willing to sing about the number 4 with Elmo, I can get behind that.

Anyway, Bailey loves Sesame Street, particularly Elmo (pronounced EE-MO in Bailey-ese). So I thought she might be interested in watching the Muppet movies. So I instituted Sunday Family Movie Night. We watched The Muppet Movie, which came out in 1979, when I was two years old. For the frist half of the movie, Bailey would ask “What’s that?” whenever a muppet appeared, and believe it or not, there are more than a few muppets in The Muppet Movie. During the second half of the movie, she identified every muppet—“Frog, Piggy, Fuzzy Bear, Gozzo, Ruff Doggy,” and so on.

The movie was rated G by the powers that be (were?) in 1979, but I had forgotten that there is a little humorous violence in a couple spots. After all, the plot of the movie involves a froglegs restaurant entrepreneur trying to kidnap and/or kill Kermit the Frog. Bailey got very excited and/or agitated when Miss Piggy fights a bunch of goons+Mel Brooks to save Kermit. She started yelling “PIGGY, PIGGY, PIGGY!” and running around, so we fast forwarded through that part. I got to thinking how different it is for violence to be a foreign concept to someone. I guess that’s a good thing. By that age, I was probably watching Looney Tunes cartoons where Daffy Duck repeatedly gets shot in the face with a shotgun and lives. And as a result of that cartoon violence, I grew up into a person who may or may not sneak out late at night to sucker punch people’s grandmas while they sleep.

The wife was unsure that Bailey would have the patience to sit through a whole movie, and started to get distracted after a while. But when we tried to turn it off, Bailey started yelling for “PIGGY!” I guess Miss Piggy is her new favorite character. Both the wife and I noticed for the first time ever that Miss Piggy has cleavage marks built into her puppet skin. Creepy.

What would their children look like? Actually, medical science has proven that a pig and a frog cannot mate. And by medical science, I mean my garage, where I may or may not perform experiments involving animals doing it with other species of animals.

Bnote # 150 – Toddler Times: The Bailey-ese Dictionary, 2nd Ed., The Multiple Choice Quiz

2012-02-06T20:24:00.000-05:00

Bailey has at least doubled her vocabulary since I first published excerpts from the Bailey-ese Dictionary a couple months ago, which means she says lots of new things that confuse everybody but me. Sometimes they confuse me too, but here are some I’ve figured out, put in the form of multiple choice questions, so you can practice for the Bailey-ese portion of the SAT. The answers are at the bottom. You just have to select which answer best defines the word:

1. Doodon

A) A person of Germanic descent.

B) Hardened cubes of bread used in salads and soups.

C) A thin mattress on a raised, foldable frame and used as a bed or couch.

2. Ah-weem

A) Nonsensical lyric to the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens.

B) A declaration that one has triumphed in a competition.

C) A dessert made from frozen sweetened cream.

3. Pita butta

A) A flat bread pouch used for making sandwiches.

B) An elongated curved fruit with a smooth, yellow skin.

C) A spread made from ground legumes.

4. Reeroff

A) A deer, especially a fictional reindeer with a red nose.

B) A television program shown after its initial presentation.

C) A fictional, teddy-bear like creature from the film Return of the Jedi.

5. Tapas

A) Variety of Spanish small food items or snacks originally served with sherry.

B) A rhythmic dance in which the toes of the dancer's shoes make a series of clicks.

C) A fictional anthropomorphic train engine featured in books and television.

6. Woebot

A) An intelligent mechanical being designed to look like a human or other creature.

B) An unsteady walking motion.

C) An egg shaped toy that rights itself when tipped over.

7. Emo

A) Associated with youth subcultures embodying emotional sensitivity.

B) A puppet who is a starring character on the television show Sesame Street.

C) Comparative form of many: in greater number.

8. Nono

A) Negative, as in the opposite of yes.

B) An expression of misunderstanding.

C) Crunchy Asian-style string or strip of pasta.

9. Moke

A) A white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals.

B) The visible particles given off by burning or smoldering material.

C) A carbonated soft drink.

10. Chico

A) One of the Marx Brothers comedy family.

B) An adhesive label or decal.

C) A domestic fowl, or the meat from this bird eaten as food.

11. Poon

A) A female human's private parts.

B) Earth's largest natural satellite.

C) A scooped utensil for eating.

12. Fuck

A) Something a man and a woman do intimately.

B) An exclamation of anger or surprise.

C) A utensil with tines used for eating.

D) A small hopping amphibian.

E) Both A and B.

F) Both C and D.

G) A, B, C, and D.

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Answers: 1.B, 2.C, 3.C, 4.A, 5.C, 6.A, 7.B, 8.C, 9.A, 10.B, 11.C, 12.F

Bnote # 149 – Toddler Times: One Book, Two Books, Red Book, Blue Book

2012-01-30T14:08:00.000-05:00

Our story will follow the Kingdom of Skradd,
And a Skradd named O’Marlowe Le Donkey McDad.
His job was to read every book to the Queen,
Her majesty Bailey Brunhilda Von Bean.

She liked to read fifty-three books every day,
And McDad received little to nothing in pay.
Some days he read books by a mother named Goose,

But always read lots by some doctor named Seuss.

She’d throw him a book, slam it down with a plunk.

And three times out of ten he’d get hit in the junk.
All those Skradds down in Skraddville, on days like that say,
McDad’s swollen nads grew three sizes that day.

If there are to be any future McDad’s

He needs to avoid getting hit in those nads.

But nut shot or not, McDad had to go on,
And stifle his screams till the pain was all gone.

For if he did not read that next book quite quickly,

The queen yelled a howl that would make one quite sickly.

You better start reading that tome that you took,

Or suffer the screams of “BOOK BOOK BOOK BOOK BOOK!”

So they enter the realm of a certain feline,

Who wears a sombrero with red and white lines.

Or a nasty green fellow who’s very unhappy,

And decides to become the new Christmas theft chappie.

Or read about Sneetches, both plain and with stars,

Who now aren’t concerned with the stars upon thars.

Or read about fish who are red or are blue,

And swim by in sums numbering one and then two.

He attempted reading Fox in Socks,
But could not read it in a box.
He could not read it in a house,
He could not read it with a mouse.
It tied his tongue so tight, my dear,

He couldn’t read for half a year.

At least that’s what he told the Queen,

Her majesty Bailey Brunhilda Von Bean.

While reading those books he WAS at his best,

But sometimes his tongue just needs a short rest.

Bnote # 148 – Broken Toe Blues

2012-01-23T13:02:00.000-05:00

Last week I was not joking when I mentioned I broke my toe. Bailey was upset from waking up early from her nap and not being immediately attended to while I was castigating some hapless customer service peon. I took her to the kitchen, offered her a snack, and put on the Thomas and Friends CD that I “get” to hear at least twice every single day. I tried distracting her by chugging around the kitchen table to the music. I learned the hard way to go counter-clockwise. In my sock feet, I hit my pinky toe on the corner of the kitchen cabinetry. There was an unpleasant snap, and instead of pain, the toe was mostly numb and pointing entirely the wrong direction. Dr. McWifeington later confirmed that my toe was broken. It was extremely painful when I tried to tape it to the next toe, which she says is pretty much the entire course of treatment for a broken pinky toe. Maybe in my lifetime we will see greater medical advancements in the field of toe wellness. We can only hope.

I like to credit my dairy consumption and the resulting calcium fortified bones for getting me through the first 34+ years of my life without any broken bones. But I finally met my match against the kitchen cabinet. For the first couple of days I was able to experience the challenge of wrangling a toddler while hopping around on one foot. At least now I should have a grossly oversized muscular right leg.

The wife obtained a post-op shoe for me to wear to secure the toe, and after a week, it feels better. I can get around alright, even though I am a little gimpy. Half of my foot has been red and purple, and looks like it’s painted with Halloween makeup, or the colors of a beautiful and horribly painful sunset.

Wearing a sandal in 20 degree weather is as awesome as it sounds.

Even though the toe is getting better, it still hurts when a certain toddler, who has little to no concern for anyone but herself, decides she needs to step on it. One day this week she decided to invade the bathroom while I was on the throne and squeeze between the window and the blinds, which apparently is vastly entertaining despite the fact that she can’t see through the privacy glass. She stepped on my toe and I yelped so loudly I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the authorities.

Hopefully the toe will be fully healed a month or so from now, and I will be off the disabled list. I don’t want to add any further delays to becoming a 35 year old rookie rugby star.

Bnote # 147 – Modern Life is Too Complicated, or F*** You, Humana

2012-01-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

Having been a lawyer, I know complicated. It takes a book wider and with smaller print than my dictionary just to contain the federal tax code. I highly recommend using a tax code volume as a form of home defense—just whack an intruder over the head with it and they will be out for the count.

I can’t really complain about the complexity of a system that I voluntarily chose to be a part of, and is complex because it needs to be to cover all of its bases. But why are so many aspects of daily life becoming fraught with complications? For example, you go to the doctor, he or she, or these days some sort of mega-nurse, writes you a prescription for some drug you need to live, or to not be in horrible pain. Thanks to the wonders of technology, you don’t even have to take a slip to the pharmacy any more. The doctor calls or emails your pharmacy and all you have to do is pick it up and pay. For me, this was the idyllic system before our insurance provider decided our lives were too easy and we needed no free time.

The insurance company (Humana) decided that any medication taken long term must be bought from them, which would be fine if they would just send it to me. But no, I had to:

1) Sign up for an account on a third party website,

2) Enter tons of information,

3) Get to a page asking for drug allergies,

4) Call the company because my drug allergy isn’t listed,

5) Get transferred to another person to tell me I can’t use my discount card,

6) Enter my billing information,

7) Have the website tell you that it can’t process your order but doesn’t say why,

8) Try steps 1 through 3 and 6 again, and fail again,

9) Figure out that some programming genius was apparently unaware that 184 million computer users use Firefox as a web browser, try again on another computer with Internet Explorer,

10) Repeat steps 1 through 3 and 6,

11) Print out confirmation page/receipt and fill out form to use my discount card on the manufacturer’s end,

12) Realize I never got an order confirmation email from the insurance website nor does my order appear under order history,

13) Call the company and learn through their annoying automated system that they have no order for me,

14) Talk to an actual person, named Bryce who verified that they have no order for me,

15) Give Bryce the worst verbal beatdown he has ever received in his life, give him every bit of relevant information, and demand resolution and a callback,

16) Go calm down Bailey, who woke up early from her nap and was upstairs screaming for 10 minutes,

17) Try to entertain an upset toddler with Thomas and Friends music while chugging around the kitchen table,

18) Break pinky toe on the corner of the cabinets while chugging around the kitchen table.

19) Never receive a callback from Humana.

20) Die a horribly painful death without my medication or from a blood clot caused by the broken toe. This hasn’t happened yet---this step is merely a projection.

Now steps number 16 through 18 are probably atypical. But everything else is an accurate depiction of the hours spent and 15 steps required to fail to get a simple prescription that was previously as easy as driving down the street to get it.

I was going to give some other examples, but half of this saga was going on as I was attempting to write this, and as it unfolded it allowed the bnote to grow to ample length. Also my toe is freaking killing me so I need to go. Feel free to share your similar frustrations.

Humana must be Latin for running a business with as little human interaction or regard for people as humanly possible.

Bnote # 146 – Toddler Times: The Whirling Dervish

2012-01-10T15:53:00.000-05:00

I love Bailey intensely, but for the love of monkey butts, she is driving me crazy. The wife has likened her to Yoda—not wise Yoda, or lightsaber fighting badass Yoda, but Yoda when Luke first meets him and doesn’t know he’s Yoda. That’s when Yoda’s just an annoying little gremlin digging through Luke’s stuff, and mostly throwing it on the ground. That is Bailey’s modus operandi.

She is a whirling dervish of destruction wherever she goes. Imagine the Tasmanian Devil (the cartoon character, not the badger-like animal) flying through your house, but instead of protecting yourself from it, you have to protect it from itself. Bailey seems unable to learn what things cause pain, such as gravity. Last week she climbed her high chair while I was washing its tray, and she decided to base jump without a parachute. I follow her practically everywhere she goes, but it’s hard to predict the actions of a human pinball.

Whirling Dervishes are actually members of the Mevlevi religious sect in Turkey who twirl around in remembrance of god. Bailey twirls a lot, but her motives are yet a mystery.

You’d think all this activity, such as yelling “Run!” and running in a circle several times in a row, several times a day, would tire Bailey out. But she has actually started fighting naptime. What kind of unreasonable person would refuse a nap when the opportunity presents itself? Bailey would not take a nap today at her usual time, and she has learned to fake me out to escape naps. All she has to do is start yelling “Eat!” and as a slightly-better-than-negligent parent, I can’t ignore her cries of hunger. But much of the time, it’s a trick to get her away from bed, and she won’t eat. However, she is smart enough to eat some of the time, so I can never be sure if I’m being faked out until it happens. Yes, I have been repeatedly outwitted by a 19 month old.

Anyhow, she finally fell asleep today, two and a half hours after her usual naptime, in the comfort of her high chair, covered in shredded cheese, with Thomas and Friends music blaring, the washer and dryer running, and me clanging pans loading the dishwasher. At least now I know the proper sleeping environment for tomorrow.

Bnote # 145 – 2012

2012-01-02T23:54:00.001-05:00

Frankly, I am glad to see 2011 come to an end. I don’t tend to fare well in odd numbered years. Looking back, odd numbered years have brought me family deaths, heartbreak, and pestilence of every kind. In 2011, there were only a few deaths and heartbreaks, but pestilences included an infected spider bite causing body-wide rash, my first ever strep throat illness, and whatever malady causes one to see and hear Thomas the Tank Engine everywhere.

Some crackpots believe the world will end this year on December 21, 2012, all because of a misrepresentation that the Mayan calendar “ends” on that date. Hopefully a couple thousand years from now, some jerks won’t think the world is ending in December 31, 3000 because that marked the end of a millennium by our time and calendar usage. But just in case this is everyone’s last year alive, here’s a totally not fake, totally achievable bucket list:

-Cure cancer for fun only, since it won’t matter anymore.

-Write the greatest novel ever written and beam it into space, only to be read posthumously by aliens, who believe it to be the work of a deity-like figure.

-Build Bailey an Earth escape pod, so she can travel to a distant planet where she will have awesome powers because that planet has a different colored sun. For some reason only Bailey can fit in the pod and not me too.

-Make love to a supermodel, while riding a roller coaster, while eating ice cream, while winning the Super Bowl.

-Invent time travel, so I can avoid the end of the world in the past, or in a future in which there is somehow no world.

Unfortunately for the Maya, the world ended for them a long time before their calendar “ran out.” Their 144,000 day calendar ended up being wishful thinking.

Alas, the world is not going to end in 2012. Even if the world were blown up by aliens, or scientists created a singularity (black hole) inside its center, or an asteroid collided with it, or Buddha smote it with his Buddha-hammer, it would still exist, even if it were merely pieces of floating debris. So there.

The year 2012 will instead be known as the year that saw:

-Michael Phelps winning every Olympic medal, even in basketball, fencing, etc.

-Barack Obama winning the presidential election by default because nobody wanted to vote.

-George W. Bush checking off the other two boxes on his axis-of-evil checklist as we go to war with Iran and North Korea.

-The launching of the Chinese space station, which will feature a buffet-style restaurant serving five flavors of pudding.

-The release of the iPad 2, featuring wings and an ultra-absorptive liner.

Bnote # 144 – Toddler Times: Holiday Aftermath

2011-12-27T13:31:00.000-05:00

This time of year is so hectic that I completely forgot to write a bnote, so here is a brief, hastily written pile of crap for your reading pleasure.

Our house looks like a toy bomb went off. Bailey definitely made out with a large quantity of Christmas loot. She got a rocking horse, a shopping cart, an alphabet easel, a lego house, and a million other trinkets. My parents got her the two loudest and annoying items--a singing, noisemaking kitchen set and a talking, moving Thomas the Tank Engine, as if listening to the egomaniacal d-bag didn’t already grate on my nerves. I’m calling Thomas the d-bag, not my parents, just to make that clear. I can only assume my parents are seeking revenge on me for being an obnoxious child, which I’m sure I was. Obnoxious children grow into obnoxious adults, right? Surely there are studies out there linking this. Anyhow, Bailey loves the toys, so that’s all that matters. Thanks mom and dad.

And because Thomas couldn’t follow simple instructions, the house was a huge mess and Christmas was ruined.

After a week of vacation, the wife went back to work today so we can pay off the orgy of spending that took place this month. That’s orgy, as in “a lot,” not orgy as in “a lot of naked people engaging in unspeakable and possibly awesome acts.” Things are returning to normal, and it’s just me and Bailey again, except Bailey is ignoring me because she has 20 toys that are more interesting than I am. She likes to push around her new shopping cart and fling the wooden toy groceries loudly to the hardwood floors. It’s like she’s trying to dent the cans to get a discount on her groceries. Also she keeps flipping the cart over with a baby doll in it and exclaiming “Baby hurt!” Maybe she’s practicing her fake slip and fall lawsuit tactics, or is exhibiting the early stages of Münchausen syndrome by proxy. Look it up, I provided a link.

Bnote # 143 – Rudolph the Reindeer v. North Pole Distributing, Inc., et al.

2011-12-19T12:56:00.000-05:00

ARCTIC TERRITORY

NORTH POLE CIRCUIT COURT
CIVIL ACTION FILE NO. 2011-CI-________

COMPLAINT

RUDOLPH THE REINDEER PLAINTIFF
v.

NORTH POLE DISTRIBUTING, INC. DEFENDANTS
KRIS KRINGLE
COMET THE REINDEER

Comes now the Plaintiff, Rudolph the Reindeer, and for his claim herein against the Defendants, states and alleges as follows:

1. Plaintiff Rudolph the Reindeer (“Rudolph”) resides at 283 Cave St., Christmastown, North Pole.

2. Defendant North Pole Distributing, Inc. is a corporation with its principal place of business located at 100 Santa Claus Ln., Christmastown, North Pole.

3. Defendant Kris Kringle (aka Santa Claus) (“Kringle”) is an individual residing at 200 Santa Claus Ln., Christmastown, North Pole, and is the President, CEO, and self-proclaimed “King of Jingling” of North Pole Distributing, Inc.

4. Defendant Comet the Reindeer (“Comet”) is an individual residing at 242 Cave St., Christmastown, North Pole, and is an employee of North Pole Distributing, Inc.

5. Defendant North Pole Distributing, Inc. runs a youth training program, commonly known as Reindeer Games, for applicants to its distribution center’s transport division.

6. Defendant Comet is the immediate supervisor to all trainee applicants and makes hiring recommendations to the President and CEO of North Pole Distributing, Inc.

7. Defendant Kringle makes all hiring decisions for North Pole Distributing, Inc.

8. Rudolph applied to the Reindeer Games training program and participated in a single session.

9. During said session, Defendants Comet and Kringle observed Rudolph and commented positively about his abilities as a reindeer.

10. During said session, Comet and the other trainees discovered that Rudolph suffers from a physical impairment known as erythema nasalis, which makes his nose shine bright red, but causes no medical problems other than aesthetic ones.

11. When the other trainees discovered Rudolph’s impairment, they called him disparaging names, including, but not limited to fire snoot, bright schnozz, rainbow puss, neon nose, and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

12. Defendant Comet did nothing to curtail the taunts made by trainees under his supervision, and in fact joined them, stating “From now on, gang, we won’t let Rudolph join in any of our Reindeer Games.”

13. Defendant Kringle was present during the training session and concurred with Comet, telling Rudolph’s father “You should be ashamed of yourself. What a pity. He had a nice takeoff too.”

14. Kringle was previously made aware of Rudolph’s disability and told Rudolph’s parents that Rudolph was “smart” but that they had better hope the disability went away if he was ever going to pull Kringle’s sleigh.

Reindeer with Disabilities Act (RDA) (42 Arctic Territory Code § 12111 et seq.)

15. Plaintiff incorporates herein as if set forth verbatim hereafter, each of the allegations contained paragraphs 1 through 14 above.

16. Rudolph’s abilities and superior performance in the Reindeer Games training program clearly qualified him for consideration and placement in North Pole Distributing, Inc’s transport division.

17. Although Defendants Comet and Kringle admitted to Rudolph’s superior aptitude, they would not consider him as an employment candidate and barred him from further training strictly due to his disability.

18. The actions of Defendants constitute intentional and insidious discrimination against a reindeer with disabilities in violation of the Reindeer with Disabilities Act (RDA) 42 A.T.C. § 12111 et seq.

19. Plaintiff is entitled to damages for loss of income, and punitive damages as provided by statute.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress

20. Plaintiff incorporates herein as if set forth verbatim hereafter, each of the allegations contained paragraphs 1 through 19 above.

21. Defendant Comet encouraged and participated in the public taunting of Plaintiff due to his disability.

22. Defendant Kringle made multiple suggestions to Rudolph’s parents, in front of Rudolph, that they should be ashamed for having a disabled child.

23. Defendants have intentionally, recklessly, and maliciously engaged in outrageous conduct.

24. Plaintiff has incurred damages as a result of the severe mental distress caused by Defendant’s actions.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff Rudolph the Reindeer respectfully requests as follows:

1. Judgment against Defendants for damages exceeding the jurisdictional minimum amount of this Court;

2. Punitive damages for intentional tortious action by Defendants;

3. Plaintiff’s costs;

4. Any other remedy this Court may grant.

_______________________________
Jack Frost, Esq.
1400 Frost King Rd., Suite 300
Kaffeklubben Island, Greenland

Click here to watch Exhibit A.

Next year tune in for State v. Yukon Cornelius and Hermey the Elf, both charged with animal cruelty against an endangered yeti.

Bnote # 142 – Toddler Times: The Bailey-ese Dictionary, 1st Ed.

2011-12-12T14:18:00.001-05:00

Bailey is now over 18 months old and can say probably close to 100 words in context. The trick is understanding all of them, since her cute pronunciation makes Popeye sound articulate. Here is the abridged version of the Bailey-ese dictionary. See if you can figure out what she’s saying even with the definitions.

asai (adj.) – Feeling or expressing sympathy, pity, or regret.

baba (n.) – 1. A maternal parent. 2. The sound made by a sheep.

bapbaw (n.) – A maternal grandfather.

beeball (n.) – Any sport using a round object.

bish (v.) – The act of using a device for cleaning or grooming.

boo. (n.) – The sound made by a bovine animal.

boob (n.) – A boob. It just pleases me to point out that she says boob.

bupbee (n.) – see woof.

bus (n.) – Any vehicle containing a steering wheel, esp. vehicles that are not a bus.

butt (n.) – 1. A set of printed pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers. 2. A part of a keyboard which the user presses to input information. 3. A anatomical hole in the human abdomen where the umbilical cord was attached. 4. The human buttocks.

dada (n.) – An official Bailey-ese translator.

daddy (n.) – see woof.

deego deego (v.) – To touch lightly as to cause laughter.

deese (n.) – A food prepared from the pressed curd of milk.

dice (adj.) – Being pleasant, kind, or courteous.

dit (n.) – A portable shelter.

dits (v.) – To move rhythmically to music.

doze (n.) – The structure of the human face that contains nostrils and smell organs.

duce (n.) – Any beverage, esp. one made from fruit.

eeow (n.) – The human organ of hearing.

hiyo (interj.) – A telephone greeting.

moww (n.) – 1. A domesticated feline animal. 2. The sound made by a feline animal.

no (adv.) – A word used every five seconds to express a negative.

oose (n.) – A four-legged, domesticated animal used for riding or pulling.

peedoe (n.) – A visual representation or image painted, drawn, photographed, or otherwise rendered.

peegoe (n.) – A game for amusing a child, involving repeatedly hiding and revealing one’s face.

seeda (v.) – To seat oneself. (interj.) – An angry shout used when someone does not allow her to sit herself, esp. at a computer. (proper noun) A jolly, bearded man who brings children gifts for Christmas.

seep (n.) – A domesticated mammal that grows wool.

seepy seep (n.) – A natural, periodically recurring physiological state of rest characterized by unconsciousness.

veevee (n.) – An electronic apparatus that receives transmissions that are converted to images on a screen.

weep weep (n.) – 1. A locomotive. 2. The sound made by a locomotive.

weet (n.) – 1. A feathered animal. 2. The sound made by a feathered animal.

woof (n.) – 1. A domesticated canine animal. 2. The sound made by a canine animal.

wee (n.) – 1. Playground equipment, esp. slides or swings. 2. The third positive integer.

wun (n.) – 1. To move swiftly on foot. 2. The first positive integer.

yites (n.) – Bright objects, esp. used for Christmas decoration.

Bnote # 141 – O Christmas Tree

2011-12-05T13:36:00.000-05:00

Since this is the first week in December, we celebrated the birth of the key figure in Christianity by venerating a tree in the style of the ancient pagans, who worshipped trees as part of their winter solstice celebration. Is there anything quite as traditional as non-Christians borrowing traditions from Christians borrowing traditions from non-Christians? Did you follow that? Ok, moving on…

Considering that the wife and I are both first children who are used to doing things our own way, it was surely a Christmas miracle that we both grew up with not only real Christmas trees, but the same exact kind of tree—Scotch pine. Thank you, Scotch pine, for encouraging marital harmony during the holiday season. Never mind that an allergy scratch test has indicated I am highly allergic to pine trees and that touching the needles makes me itch. Tradition is tradition and must be preserved…like hanging Christmas stockings or arranging marriages.

This is the first Christmas tree that must fear for its well-bring due to a mobile and inquisitive Bailey, who has already broken one ornament, despite our efforts to keep the less breakable ornaments on the lower levels. It doesn’t help that many ornaments are round, resembling balls, which Bailey likes to throw. Luckily we have twice as many ornaments as would fit on a fairly large tree, so there’s no possibility of running out due to Bailey-related breakage. Every year the wife requires that I accompany her to Hallmark for the purchase of a $15-$20 Christmas ornament, so that she can disregard my input on the selection process. It’s not my fault that she somehow thinks a Santa Claus ornament is more festive than an ornament featuring Han Solo shooting Greedo.

We keep finding ornaments removed and randomly scattered around the house. We must have a Christmas gnome infestation. Time to get out the gnome repellant.

Last year on New Year’s Day, I chucked the Christmas tree off the deck in the general vicinity of the compost heap. My general vicinity is closer to the pile than the wife's general vicinity, which is why there is celery rotting very slowly in the middle of our back yard. Anyhow, last year’s tree is still somewhat green, and I was tempted to reuse it. I guess the Christmas tree industrial complex sprays trees with the tree equivalent of spray-on hair. The fact that last year’s tree likely shares the same woodland inhabitants as the decomposing compost heap led me to reconsider reuse. After all, nothing ruins the holidays like unknowingly bringing a nest of hungry baby wolf spiders into your home, having them burrow into your ear while you sleep, and eventually lay their eggs in your brain. On that note—HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

Bnote # 140 – Black Friday

2011-11-28T14:11:00.000-05:00

These days I usually write about something I experience first-hand, like Halloween or a colonoscopy. But this time I’m writing about something I would never want to experience first-hand in my entire life—Black Friday. I recommend avoiding a shopping day becomes so sinister that people give it a name that sounds like the commemoration of a terrorist attack. Black Friday sounds like the day Jean Claude Van Damme failed to stop terrorists from blowing up Game 3 of the World Series.

The evil name given to Black Friday seems appropriate considering the fact that violence broke out in seven states last Friday. I saw a video of people trampling a woman to get to video games, and the people didn’t even know what video game they were grabbing. Police pounded a grandfather’s face into the floor of Walmart. Another lady pepper sprayed several people who weren’t any threat to her…she was just trying to keep them away from her loot.

Can somebody please explain this phenomenon to me? Why would anyone wait for hours in line in the cold to save $50 on a TV that you’ll have to pummel someone’s grandma just to lay hands on? I’d pay $50 just to avoid that scenario—the waiting in line part, not the grandma part. I’m sure everyone’s grandma needs a good pummeling from time to time, or Black Friday would not exist.

You waited several hours and lost tons of sleep to save $50 on an HDTV, but forfeited your soul by trampling someone’s grandma to get it. Or you waited several hours and lost tons of sleep to save $50 on an HDTV that you didn’t get because you ARE someone’s grandma and you got trampled and broke a hip. Either way, someone should teach you about a little thing called cost-benefit analysis.

So why does Black Friday exist? I’d say that retailers draw people in with a few big deals, but only sell those items in small numbers. After people get up early and wait and get stampeded and still miss out on the big deals, they feel they can’t go home empty handed, so they buy other stuff. Or they just decide to do all their holiday shopping at the same store. As for why people are willing to allow Black Friday to exist, I’m convinced that many 21st century, middle-aged, middle class Americans just like to have an excuse to have little pseudo-riots once a year where they can break stuff and hurt people. It excites them in a way that being suburbanites cannot.

In recent years I have resorted to buying almost all my gifts online, where you don’t have to wander any stores, drive to multiple places to find a good price, or deal with any human beings. I can find the best price, have it shipped to my door, and not get pepper sprayed. Like-minded folks avoiding the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush by shopping online afterwards have caused the rise of Cyber Monday, which reminds me, I have to do some holiday shopping now. But the only thing I might be trampling on is some extra bandwidth.

Bnote # 139 – Orlando Vacation

2011-11-21T19:16:00.000-05:00

Prior to the 1960’s, Orlando was simply a swamp located as far from a beach as any place in Florida. Then Walt Disney turned it into a mass marketing tool that several decades later resulted in my wife having a conference in Orlando and my involvement in the first family vacation since Bailey joined us.

My favorite thing about Disney World’s Magic Kingdom was that every time I rode, saw, or thought about the monorail, I broke out singing “MONORAIL!” from The Simpsons monorail episode. Bailey enjoyed Disney World because she got to “wie wides.” (ride rides) Every ride that Bailey rode, whether it was a boat, a teacup, or Dumbo the Elephant, she referred to as a “bus.” That’s her new thing these days.

Most of the rides seemed to be for kids, although “Gepetto’s Mustache Ride” seemed a little mature. Also, I’m not sure if the “It’s a Small World” ride is anti-racist or super-racist. The idea of the ride seems to be that there are lots of neat and different cultures, all of which sing the same song, usually in English. However, I think over the years the park forgot to remove some stereotypical caricatures (there were a couple very slanty-eyed Asians mixed into the regular Asians), and in the last room all of the cultures were together and decked out in white. Does that mean all cultures should want to assimilate into white culture? It’s something to think about. Talk amongst yourselves. Also in the ultra-white room, we got sort of stuck, and the loud music, flashing lights, and dancing children of varying ethnicities gave Bailey A.D.D. It gave me additional A.D.D. (A.A.D.D.)

Bailey’s favorite part of the Magic Kingdom was probably the parade. She waved and waved at the various characters plucked from 50 year old movies she’s never seen. At one point, I saw Jafar from Aladdin lurking behind a float. I was going to run out into the parade and kick his ass, but my companions held me back. Who knows what evil plans Jafar will conjure up next due to my inaction?

We also went to Universal Studios, which is less for kids, and where Bailey was able to ride maybe two rides, but had the most fun just getting soaking wet in some fountains. After four days of theme parks, I was extraordinarily exhausted and sore from repeatedly picking up a 25+ pound toddler. Luckily, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend vacationed with us and we were able to share the load. Unluckily for them, Bailey preferred being held by them as opposed to dear old dad who she sees all day every day. They have now decided to remain childless indefinitely.

Luckily this dinosaur at Universal Studios ate some other baby instead.

We bought the requisite vacation souvenirs, which prompted a discussion about whether our niece and nephew would rather have the souvenir or the $5, resulting in the wife's quote “We went to Florida…here’s five bucks.” The second best quote from the trip was “Deploy the side alien.” Use your imagination. Now we’re home, and I am wishing I had a longer vacation from my vacation.

Bnote # 138 – Flying

2011-11-21T19:13:00.000-05:00

The wife had a fancy doctor conference in Orlando last week, so we decided to turn it into a family vacation, which required flying. I don’t fly very often, and after hearing all these news stories about airport security making old ladies remove their soiled diapers or mastectomy prostheses, I was originally going to call this bnote Flying, or How We Lost the War on Terror by Conducting Cavity Searches on Children.

Of course when I considered that title I thought that I was going to be subjected to the new full body scan, which allows security screeners to see every contour of your body underneath your clothes, then copy the images to a flash drive for home use. Although the effects of the radiation screened passengers is unknown, the technology was deemed necessary after one jackass who put explosive powder in his underwear screwed things up for everybody. I assume that the security guards are trained to look for explosive underwear as they appear in the body scans.

Anyhow, I mistakenly thought everybody was subjected to the Scan-and-Ogle 5000 unless they opted for a pat down instead. I thought I was faced with the choice of having someone see my junk without touching it, or touch my junk without seeing it. Luckily I avoided the “random” scanning selection, since I’m a white guy.

Ok, I have ranted enough—on to the slapstick. This was Bailey’s first flight. She did pretty well. I was the one that made a mess. We put some juice in a cup for Bailey with a built-in straw that closes, and when I opened it, juice shot straight into the air at high velocity due to the change in pressure. So I spent most of the flight sticky and heavily moistened.

We arrived in Orlando to find that we were staying in the most ridiculously touristy hotel-drome I’ve ever been to. My previous trips to Florida probably involved staying at a Motel 6 as a kid. I know that I have arrived in the big time now because our hotel had gators, snakes, koi ponds, a castle, five restaurants, six bars, and a mall, all under a glass dome. I can never go back to Red Roof Inn again, unless Red Roof Inn gets gators.

Bnote # 137 – Car Buying

2011-11-07T13:00:00.000-05:00

We will be more difficult to spot as the white trash in our neighborhood now that the wife's old 1999 Saturn has been totaled. Even though she picked out a new 2010 Toyota Prius two years ago, she has not driven it regularly—first because the new car smell made her extra sick on top of her morning sickness, which lasted the whole pregnancy, and second, because the Saturn didn’t have a good system for installing a child seat. So I had been driving Bailey places in the Prius while the wife drove the family jalopy, which featured such luxuries as manual locks, manual windows, and a cigarette lighter.

So the wife was driving her ghetto-tastic ride to work and she was T-boned by a truck pulling out of a lot. She had some soreness afterwards, but was excited she got to say “T-boned” numerous times. Of course we had just spent around $400 on repairs, and the car was pimped out with an XM radio, which may have been worth more than the car. Apparently 12 year old Saturns are not worth fixing, as the insurance company determined the vehicle was totaled and will supposedly send us a check, which we can use to buy a pack of Chiclets gum.

Did you know car doors are filled with Teddy Bear stuffing?

So the wife is going to get to finally drive her own hippie-mobile to work, and I will be looking for a car for Bailey as her personal chauffeur. I’ve always felt that cars are just a way to get from point A to point B, with a possible detour to point C to bury a dead body, so I am looking for something practical, with a large and concealed trunk space. I don’t need a car that one might be seen driving a) In an unknown desert in “V” formation with several other cars, b) On a European race track, c) To the opera with a supermodel, or d) In a wind tunnel while bespectacled scientist-types watch. I previously leased a couple Nissan vehicles, and they were boring enough, so I’m strongly leaning towards the mid-sized Altima. The Altima looks exactly like the Nissan Maxima, which seems to the same car, but priced $10,000 higher. I guess for an extra ten grand you get the rad name Maxima, which seems to say “Maxima…the best car you can afford, without shelling out the extra bucks for a BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, or 20 other luxury cars we don’t have time to list.” The name Altima seems to be a shortening of “ Almost uLTIMAate,” that is, not quite ultimate—so almost a Maxima, but not quite.

So I started out by going on cars.com and asking three nearby dealers for price quotes on an Altima. Of course a few hours later I had about 10 voice mails from car salespeople. Now I know a lot of people hate us lawyers, but seriously, is there any more obnoxious profession than automobile sales? I generally don’t get on well with salespeople anyways. I think maybe the frequency or wavelength of my voice causes distress in salespeople. One time I went with my dad to pick out a stereo for my college graduation gift at H.H. Gregg. We asked a salesman if he could hook up a certain stereo. He had a kid set it up and we fiddled with the stereo, which was displaying decibels with a minus sign in front. My dad asked why it had negative decibels and the salesman said that’s how decibels are calculated. My dad said he didn’t think so. Things got weird as the salesman exclaimed “Yes they are! I’m an engineer! And I don’t like the way your son treated our technician.” I hadn’t even spoken to the technician kid. We left.

Sorry about that tangent, but my request for car quotes also turned weird. One salesman emailed me a quote immediately. Another saleswoman from a different dealer called me instead. I asked her for a quote. She said she would email it. She didn’t. She called me again. I asked for a quote again. She said she would email it. She didn’t. She called me a third time. I asked for a quote again. She said she would email it. She didn’t. She called me a fourth time. I asked for a quote again. She said she had emailed it. I double-checked my email, including junk and deleted mail. She basically accused me of lying about not receiving the quote. This is where the cross-examiner in me kicked in. (My wife hates that) I asked her why, if she had emailed it to begin with, she didn’t just tell me how much the quote was on the phone the second or third time she called. She didn’t have an answer for that. She finally gave me a quote, but she couldn’t understand why I was going to go to the other dealership.

Bnote # 136 – Beavis and Butt-Head

2011-10-31T20:04:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, long ago, there was a decade called the 1990’s, which saw the rise of grunge and the internet, and the fall of tight-rolled jeans and European communism. During this eventful era, a fellow named Mike Judge created a TV show called “Beavis and Butt-Head”, which followed the exploits of two idiot teenagers who mostly just watched music videos. The show aired on MTV. Although the “M” in MTV originally stood for “music,” by the time Beavis and Butt-head started, the show was the only way you could still see music videos on MTV. The rest of the channel’s programming consisted of watching carefully selected incompatible jerks live together in an apartment, people in swimsuits dancing on a beach, or dating games featuring former Playboy Playmates.

The animation on Beavis and Butt-head was so bad it makes South Park look like something Pixar created. And the dialogue would usually consist of boner and boob references—“Huh-huh, this bnote just said wood, huh-huh.” So 95% of the show was boners and boobs and watching videos, which should have made the show painfully lame. But to a generation of teenage boys such as myself, it was awesome. Maybe it was because cable TV had just figured out how vulgar it could be and was pushing the envelope, or maybe we were just incredibly infantile. The fact that I still find farts hilarious points to the latter theory.

When I went off to college, the Beavis and Butt-Head worship did not stop. Amongst my friends were two Beavis acolytes and two Butt-Head apostles, including me. And by that I mean that we almost constantly talked like them, quoted them, and were complete dumbasses. I once had a girl I liked tell me I used talking like Butt-Head as a defense mechanism. I think that’s when I decided to finally stop. I feel pretty certain that at least one, if not all of those college buddies has had his speech permanently altered by the influence of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Beavis and Butt-Head went off the air in 1997 shortly after releasing the movie, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, which won 8 Academy Awards (citation needed). Mike Judge went on make the cult movie hit Office Space, which is beloved by everyone except people like my wife, who has never worked in a cubicle. He also created the TV show “King of the Hill” which was on the air for 48 years and gave us such fantastic quotes as “You will be begging for gerbster,” and “That’s my purse! I don’t know you!” Then Judge apparently decided the world needed Beavis and Butt-head again.

Film classic, Beavis and Butthead Do America, #7 on AFI’s list of the greatest films of all time. Oh, and uh, uhu-huh-huh, schlong.

Last week, a brand new Beavis and Butt-Head aired. I felt compelled to watch, as the original was instrumental in making me the sophomoric, socially obnoxious person I am today. Not much about the show has changed, including the fact that instead of fully utilizing high definition, the video watching portions are reused animation from a decade and a half ago. Now, I like to think my tastes of matured a bit, and I know the new show won’t cause me to devolve into knuckleheaded chuckling, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to forget I’m a grownup for 22 minutes a week and enjoy seeing Beavis get kicked in the nads.

Bnote # 135 – Halloween

2011-10-31T20:02:00.000-04:00

Since Halloween falls on a Monday, or Bnoteday, this year, I am statutorily required to write about it. For the second year in a row, we have bought way too much candy. I guess since we live near the end of a cul-de-sac and most of our neighbors are old timers with grown kids, there are not many trick-or-treaters around. Either that, or the neighbors didn’t want their kids near me after I washed the car in a thong that one time.

I have been granted the task of giving out candy this year, as the wife absconded with Bailey to the grandparents. Bailey was a bee last year. This year the wife decided that those 50 cent fuzzy IKEA stuffed snakes would make for a great medusa headdress. Therefore, our 17 month old cutie pie is dressed as an evil, hideous, mythological gorgon monster who turns people to stone with her gaze. Last year she was a bee. I know, I said that already.

Bailey is still a few years away from trick-or-treating, as she is not allowed to have candy yet. She needs to grow all her teeth in before rotting them out. I’m pretty sure I didn’t go out trick-or-treating until I was school aged—maybe 6 years old. I think my parents were leery about Halloween in general, and I’m sure they were thrilled that for my first costume I chose to emulate this Star Wars character:

I was a green, axe-wielding, sandal wearing, fuzzy skirt wearing pig-man for Halloween 1983.

Of course the costume looked almost nothing like the above Gamorrean Guard. (Yes, at age 6 I dressed as a creature named after the biblical city that god smote because they liked to do it funky.) The costume was basically a tan smock emblazoned with the Star Wars trademarked logo, plus a mask. I still have the mask hermetically sealed with all my other Star Wars stuff in case I ever need to pay for an expensive surgery.

I don’t see so many cheap plastic smock-based costumes any more. I guess they have fallen out of favor since Lisa Simpson told Milhouse “I don't think the real Radioactive Man wears a plastic smock with a picture of himself on it.”

I still owe a bnote from a few weeks back, so enjoy a second one…

Bnote # 134 – Toddler Times: Baby Fight Club

2011-10-24T18:09:00.000-04:00

Again I have broken the first and second rules of Baby Fight Club. (Do not talk about Baby Fight Club.) This entry is not about any violence partaken by Bailey, who is a sweet and gentle child. The only violent acts she commits are upon our belongings, but they can be replaced. This entry is instead about the rash of attacks upon Bailey’s person by other children.

Although the wife and I originally wanted a boy, I can see now that we were wrong to have ever wanted that. We were at a wedding this weekend, and while the girls danced with each other, the little boys pummeled each other and rolled all over the ground. One little boy pushed Bailey on purpose. Shortly thereafter, another boy, maybe two years old, decided it was a good idea to, without any provocation, grab Bailey by the hair like a caveman and drag her away. It looked like he might try to slam Bailey’s head into the ground. That little boy has no idea how close he came to having Angry Dad punt him across the room and over the wedding cake. I am very protective of Bailey. Some, like my under-protective wife, might say I’m over-protective. It’s fundamentally hardwired into men to protect their children by punting toddlers if the need arises.

Bailey has also been attacked by overly selfish bratlings. While Bailey is quick to share toys (although she usually wants them back seconds later), other kids are not so sharing. At the toy store, there was a big Thomas and Friends (I have to keep my Thomas shout-out streak alive) train table, and despite there being approximately 20 trains and at least 10 feet of table perimeter, this little boy kept telling Bailey to “get out of the way” and kept shoving her.

But kid-on-Bailey violence hasn’t been limited to male assailants. A few weeks ago at the library, a little girl was hoarding all the puzzles at one table—you know, the ones where you lift up the horse to find…another horse? Anyhow, Bailey meandered into this girl’s Lebensraum without even trying to grab a puzzle, and the girl basically punched Bailey in the face. Now this wasn’t Mike Tyson knocking a sucka’ out--it was more of a face push. But it was still not cool, and looking around, I saw no parent.

Is this really worth fighting for? *SPOILER* (Hidden under the duck is just another duck.) Give peace a chance, kids.

I found myself wholly unprepared for how to deal with such a situation. How do you deal with something like that? Walk away? Call the toddler police? I chose the middle ground by saying “That wasn’t very nice,” and waiting for the negligent parent to appear. A few minutes later, the child’s mother appeared. She was wearing a headdress, and had a book on Islam open to a page ironically entitled “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” I took that as a sign to let the mom use her child’s behavior as a tool for teaching her child that their religion could be one of peace, and had absolutely nothing whatsoever with me wanting to see the child get in trouble for hitting my sweet little girl.

Realizing there’s no way to say “Hey your kid just punched my kid in the face” to a stranger without being blunt and weird, I said as diplomatically as possible that “You might want to keep an eye on her. She hit my daughter in the face.” The woman apologized and then spent the next five minutes speaking to her daughter in a language that I did not recognize. The only word I recognized was “baby” so I feel confident that the lady was instructing her child on how to properly treat babies, sans punching, as opposed to congratulating her on commencing her assault upon the infidels. Score one for world peace.

Bnote # 133 – Toddler Times: The No-No Game

2011-10-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

These days Bailey’s favorite pastimes, besides throwing food on the floor and writing essays about 19th century Russian literature, are grabbing things that are dangerous and base jumping off of furniture without a parachute. My wife has nullified my attempts at discouraging such behavior by laughing when she tells Bailey “No.” Granted, when Bailey risks her well-being, it’s often hilarious, but laughing turns telling her “no” into a game.

For example, the other day Bailey was messing around with a hub of wires plugged into an outlet behind the TV, which apparently is much more exciting than any of her gazillion toys lying nearby. In an effort to be more forceful, I roughly said “No, no!” while frowning and shaking my head. Bailey in turn frowned, shook her head, and replied “Doh, doh!” followed me a huge smile and laugh at the new angry no-no game. Later in the day, the wife told Bailey “no” and laughed while saying it, again. I told her “No, no! Bad wife,” and frowned. But she also laughed and thought it was a game. So my life hasn’t really changed that much since Bailey came along, it just has additional layers to it, like Russian nesting dolls. No, I don’t know why I seem to be stuck on Russian stuff at the moment.

There is no doubt that Bailey understands what “no” means. She loves to shake her head when she is upset and we ask her what she wants. Although no matter what we offer when she’s upset, she seems to always shake her head “no.” Sometimes we’ll ask her if she wants a million dollars and she turns it down. Children don’t understand the value of money. She’d rather have some graham cracker bunnies, but doesn’t know that a million dollars can buy at least 2 or 3 whole boxes of graham cracker bunnies.

This picture is provided because typing the word “no” doesn’t catch the eye as well as this graphic. You’ve just been marketed to.

Bnote # 132 – Toddler Times: Even More Bad Photoshopping

2011-10-10T13:21:00.000-04:00

Since I missed a couple weeks of bnotes, here is a special bonus, lazy bnote. Back by nobody’s demand…crappy photoshopping of my kid’s head onto stuff!

You didn’t think you were going to get through a bnote without a Thomas the Tank Engine reference did you?

Bnote # 131 – Toddler Times: Weep! Weep!

2011-10-10T13:17:00.000-04:00

The fact that three of my last six bnotes have been partly or entirely about Thomas the Tank Engine (and his so-called “friends”), just goes to show how thoroughly Thomas has come to dominate our lives. This week I have read, watched, bought, and rode Thomas. Bailey loves trains, and will shout “Weep! Weep!” (obviously the sound trains make) anytime a train is seen, mentioned, or thought about. We now have a season pass to this model train place Bailey loves, which also conveniently sells all available Thomas paraphernalia, including the hard to find radioactive, lead paint covered, corrosive Thomas that causes two kinds of jaundice.

So now that have been battered with a barrage of Thomas everything, I feel much more qualified to discuss his media empire, unlike before, when I didn’t know Gordon from Edward, as they are both blue. The history of Thomas dates back to 1942, when Reverend Wilbert Awdry, who was a reverend, and not a guy named reverend, told his son stories about trains, which would later be published as books in The Railway Series three years later. Rev. Awdry was subsequently murdered by his congregation for introducing devilish abominations in the form of talking train engines. (citation needed)

The TV show began in 1984, featuring miniature trains with freakish train faces in which only the eyes moved. For the children of the American audience, the producers of the show found the most wholesome American celebrity they could find---George Carlin. The show switched to fully CGI rendered animation shortly after Mr. Carlin died from rescuing too many puppies and making too many snow cones for children (citation needed), and totally not from a heart attack after years of eating vicodin sundaes.

If you watch every season of Thomas and Friends, George Carlin manages to slip in every one of his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” bit.

The newest incarnation of the show includes a song, which will surely be burned permanently into my brain, right…about…now. The long version of the song identifies Thomas as the “cheeky one” which seems to be a polite British way of saying he’s a d-bag. In almost every episode, Thomas is a jerk, or screws up everything because of his paranoia or his runaway ego. Calling the show Thomas and Friends must involve a very loose definition of the word friends, as Thomas often insults others, makes their jobs more difficult, or makes his boss angry. All in all, I think this fictional rail system would function a lot better if the drivers (they do have drivers for some reason) could just drive some non-sentient train engines. But I guess it would make for a pretty lame (or even lamer) show if all the trains weren’t alive and bestowed with the IQ’s of kindergarteners.

Bnote # 130 – Toddler Times: The Several Uses of the Word “Butt”

2011-09-19T14:37:00.000-04:00

Bailey has recently developed a vocabulary that includes regular use of at least 20 words in context, which is a great improvement from a year ago, when her only word was “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” However, there seems to be little rhyme or reason as to which words she has chosen to articulate. She has never said “ma-ma” but she says “baseball” 20 times a day.

Lately, Bailey’s favorite is the versatile word “butt.” Sometimes it means what you think it means, and sometimes it doesn’t. Bailey has trouble with multi-syllable words, so “button” becomes “butt.” On Fisher-Price.com there is a zoo alphabet game for toddlers that we play daily, where that always androgynous Fisher-Price voice says each letter of the alphabet, followed by a depiction of an urial or x-ray fish, for example. I can remember the first time I saw an urial and an x-ray fish at the zoo—those were wondrous times. Initially, I always told Bailey to hit a button on the keyboard between letters to move to the next one, so now in between letters she always says “butt” for “button.” I’m afraid she will grow up thinking the alphabet goes “A, butt, B, butt, C, butt” and so on.

Not only does Bailey use “butt” as a substitute for keyboard buttons, clothing buttons, and belly buttons, but when she says “book” it sounds much more like “butt.” The other day we went to the library, and being excited at seeing the thousands of books, Bailey began yelling what sounded like “butt” loudly and persistently to my embarrassment. It’s a small price to pay for youth literacy.

butt (noun) – 1. A set of written or printed pages fastened along one side and encased between two covers. 2. The junk in yo trunk.

Lastly, sometimes when Bailey says “butt” she actually means “butt.” From the time Bailey was born, the wife would ask Bailey every time she changed her diaper whether she had a “wet butt.” I had heard Bailey repeat the word before, but I never was sure she knew what it meant in context until music class the other week. During a lullaby song where the children lie down, Bailey decided to go around petting them like dogs, which was funny enough, but then she patted one girl on the rear end and announced “butt,” disrupting the nap time with a round of parental laughter.

Bnote # 129 – Toddler Times: Thomas the Tank Engine

2011-09-12T12:53:00.001-04:00

I very recently wrote about how on occasion, we have let Bailey watch TV in order to buy ourselves 10 minutes of scream-free relaxation, and that the wife usually lets her watch Thomas and Friends, featuring Thomas the Tank Engine, who I erroneously referred to as a train in my previous post. While the difference between a train and a tank engine is lost on me, I don’t want Thomas connoisseurs to think I’m referring to some cheap Czech rip-off, Thomas a Přátelé, starring Thomas the Train instead of Thomas the Tank Engine, thus skirting international trademark law.

The result has been that Bailey loves Thomas, and can identify him better than she can identify her own nose. So of course, when an advertisement in a coupon book offered rides on the real Thomas, for the low low price of $16 per adult or child over 2, we had no choice but to get on board.

As of a month or two ago, I was only vaguely aware of Thomas as all. I had only watched one episode when I posted my last bnote about Thomas, and I knew so little of the show’s formula that when a friend made show references in the comments section, he had to explain them to me. I also had no idea how popular Thomas was. I was surprised the wife bought the tickets online ahead of time. She was afraid they would sell out. It turns out that every child age 0-5 from 12 nearby states was there to ride Thomas. The play tents at the train station were absolutely squirming with small children, like rats or snakes in an Indiana Jones movie.

There was a tent where you could just sit and watch the videos. Since my previous bnote, I’ve discovered that there are 15 seasons of the show and our local library has about 80 DVD’s. However, each show pretty much seems to run under this same formula: Thomas and/or his friends, who are all cyborg trains or occasionally other cyborg vehicles, are supposed to be taking something or someone somewhere. In every episode I’ve seen, the trains are taking children to a party, or something fun to a party. They apparently like to party on the fictional lsland of Sodor, but Thomas never seems to deliver any beer kegs, so I’m going to hang on to my fictional immigration application.

The trains are all pathologically unable to follow orders and always screw something up. Then their slave master, one Sir Topham Hatt, owner of the most ridiculous name in the history of anything and everything, tells them they suck by saying they caused confusion and delay. Well, we stood in line for several minutes waiting outside a tent to meet Sir Topham Hatt, who was five to ten minutes late when we left the line. Now who caused confusion and delay, jackhole?! How was I supposed to ask him my burning questions about the origin of his name?

When our train arrived, it was an old train from the 1930’s with probably a plastic, but surprisingly convincing Thomas engine attached to the front. The ride was 10 minutes backwards and 10 minutes forward, with views of several scenic areas, such as industrial park dumpsters, rusty cars in ditches, and corn fields. For once, Thomas didn’t take children to a party, unless a homeless guy was partying by himself in one of those dumpsters.

If you were driving through town and saw this train go by, you might stop using all that LSD.

Bnote # 128 – Labor Day

2011-09-05T12:14:00.000-04:00

Since today is Labor Day, I thought I’d shed some light on the historical origin of the American holiday that is basically meaningless but that causes people to raise hell if they have to work that day. While I was in college at my uppity private school that didn’t have to observe all the federal holidays, Labor Day was always the first day of classes, so I grew accustomed to Labor Day being meaningless. So in order to discover the true meaning of Labor Day, I spent hours conducting research. That is, I spent minutes reading the Wikipedia page that any of you could have easily found.

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, during the infancy of the labor movement. Apparently some lazy folks didn’t like to work for pennies only to lose their jobs after their arms or legs were chopped off by dangerous heavy machinery while manufacturing asthma curing cigarettes or children’s cocaine toothache drops.

I’m not making this stuff up.

The law enacting Labor Day was hastily rushed through Congress as President Grover Cleveland, who surprisingly was not named after a muppet, was trying to placate striking laborers. Labor Day is like the watered down version of May Day or International Workers’ Day, in which socialistic governments encourage their people to celebrate their crushing poverty under penalty of being squashed by tanks.

Somehow Labor Day managed to survive the 1950’s red scare, although Joseph McCarthy only came up a few votes short of changing the name of Labor Day to F**k Those Commie Soviet Bastards Day. (citation needed) Nowadays Labor Day is significant in that marks the end of being allowed to wear white, and the start of football season. Visiting football teams are shamed by being forced to wear white uniforms, even after Labor Day has passed. And that’s what Labor Day is all about, Charlie Brown.

Bnote # 127 – Toddler Times: Anatomy 101

2011-08-29T13:43:00.000-04:00

Fairly often I wake up in the morning to a small person poking me in the nose, mouth, or eye. Bailey knows I’m good for at least one thing, and that’s identifying body parts for her amusement. I realized awhile back that I could teach her to point to specific body parts on command, which will be both useful to her learning process, and useful to me to entertain party guests with cute baby tricks that don’t require me to remove my shirt. (See the Nipple-Chest-Nipple-Hand game, Bnote #120)

By now there are certain parts she almost always gets right, like ear, arm, finger, and foot. Nose has been a little harder, and my theory is she has trouble finding it because she can’t see it. Try pointing to your adrenal gland. See what I mean? When I first started teaching her the body parts, Bailey almost always pointed at her head. So to impress people with my ultra-smart baby, I had to stop after asking Bailey where her head was, or also ask her where her hair, skull, and brain were. By that time most people would become suspicious that she wasn’t yet an ultra-smart baby.

Later on in her learning curve, if she wasn’t quite sure what part she was supposed to be pointing to, Bailey would use one hand to point at her head, and simultaneously use the other hand to point to a spot on her face equidistant to several key facial features, in an attempt to slip one past me. Her attempt to trick me by vaguely hinting at several almost right answers makes her a likely candidate for law school.

“Hey, Bailey, where’s your sella turcica? Where’s your thenar space?” If she can learn those within the next couple of months, maybe she will be a doctor like her mom, instead of a failed lawyer like her dad.

Bailey has made great strides in pointing to her parts, but she still has some difficulties. If lots of strange people are watching, she tends to get stage fright and point at the wrong thing or she will not bother listening to me, which lots of folks besides Bailey choose to do. Sometimes she will mix up identifying her head and her hand, because hundreds of years ago, some English jerks decided to make those two words nearly indistinguishable to toddlers. Also when identifying either her eye or my eye, she thinks it’s necessary to squint her eyes, since, not surprisingly, I usually squint strongly when Bailey pokes me in the eye. There is some precedent to safeguarding my eyes from my daughter.

Bnote # 126 – Toddler Times: More Toofers and the Idiot Box Cure

2011-08-22T10:13:00.000-04:00

So around her birthday, Bailey started her second round of teething, and began to be cranky a lot. Three months later, those teeth are still coming in. Although some of the faux chiclets have erupted forth, including her top molars, those molars are pressing down on the lower teeth, which at this point are only red, throbbing lumps, with teeth, or perhaps angry, writhing nano-demons underneath.

Although Bailey’s misery seems to come and go, it comes more often than it goes, and she will be cranky and try to chew on things, like us. Several times our cannibal baby has randomly bitten us despite the hordes of toys and teething rings specifically designed for her to chew on. To prevent myself from being gnawed upon like dad jerky, I have been giving her ice chips to chew. They are both crunchy and hydrating, but they also result in a big wet mess all over everything, because Bailey will only chew the pieces that meet the high quality size, luster, and clarity that ladies prefer.

Sometimes Bailey will wake from a nap and just cry inconsolably. Who knew that several tiny bones used for tearing flesh could be so painful when they’re all simultaneously and slowly stabbing you in an effort to escape your gums? When the crying doesn’t stop after several minutes and efforts ranging from medication to voodoo, we have begun to break one of our cardinal toddler-raising rules to provide the ultimate distraction from the pain. We have allowed Bailey to watch TV. Now, not only is she subject to TV’s brain-numbing effects, but now she will probably learn that she only gets to watch TV if she screams bloody murder. However, sometimes parenting is about knowing when to cut your losses to achieve the short term goal of stopping the screaming.

I usually let Bailey watch The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That, a quasi-educational cartoon on PBS. The show stars Martin Short voicing the eponymous Dr. Seuss character, who in each episode allows two children to play with his thingamajigger. That’s his vehicle. Then the children play with his whizamajigger. It’s like the ignition. At some point somebody drops some knowledge on everybody, usually about animals. Unlike the shows I usually watch, nobody gets killed, or makes meth, or sells meth, or uses meth, to my knowledge.

The shows that the wife lets Bailey watch all seem to involve trains. One is called Dinosaur Train, and involved dinosaurs travelling places on a train. Enough said. The other is a show is Thomas and Friends, featuring British celebrity Thomas the Train. The show follows the exploits of several cyborg train engines who provide slave labor to a man who wears a top hat and is named… wait for it… Sir Topham Hatt. It is unclear whether:

1) He chose to wear a top hat because his name was so similar to the words top hat,
2) His parents envisioned him growing up to wear a top hat, and were jerks and gave him a stupid name, or
3) The writers just were lazy and named him after what he looked like, disregarding how ridiculous it sounded.

The show at times seems like some manner of nationalistic wartime propaganda video. In every episode, all the trains and the Top Hat guy are obsessed with the trains being “useful” and making sure to avoid “confusion and delay.” Although I am not happy about Bailey watching TV, at least I can look forward to her being brainwashed into a useful childhood free of confusion and delay, which is really all any parent can ask for.

In order to tie this all back to the teeth theme, it’s important to note that Bailey’s baby toothpaste is Orajel Thomas the Train swallowable toothpaste. What does Thomas the Train have to do with toothpaste? It’s TRAIN-ing toothpaste. Duh.

Bnote # 125 – Reality TV Revisited

2011-08-15T14:36:00.000-04:00

Way back in Bnote #23, I wrote about how I really don’t understand the interest in reality television. The only reality TV show I recall growing up was the occasional Circus of the Stars, which featured such celebrities as Dixie Carter, Lynda Carter, and Nell Carter (I stopped my research after the C’s) walking tight ropes, trapezing (can trapeze be a verb?) or presumably being shot out of a cannon. I’m looking at you, Nell Carter.

The other night we hosted some brand new out of the package medical students for dinner as part of a medical school program to show the students what normal doctors and their families are like. Instead they got us. Anyway, we started talking about TV shows, and all these med school kids watch is reality TV shows, and they must watch at least 10 of them. It occurred to me that the next generation of people will primarily associate TV with reality shows, instead of sitcoms about puppet aliens or alien muppets. With all those hundreds of channels to fill and the cost of hiring writers and actors, TV channels are willing to put the most mundane things on TV.

For example, the most popular show on cable according to Entertainment Weekly is Pawn Stars. I am vaguely aware of the show, and as I understand it, the show follows the business of a big, well-known pawn shop that buys rare items. It’s kind of like Antiques Roadshow for people who think regular antiques are boring, that is, everyone under the age of 80. The show’s draw may or may not have something to do with its not-so-subtle-to-some-but-maybe-subtle-to-others suggestive title. If you are an innocent who doesn’t get how the title is suggestive, start saying “pawn stars” over and over again rapidly until you get it.

I would be a hypocrite if I said that a show about a pawn shop buying rare items is boring, because there actually is one reality show I watch. It’s called Hollywood Treasure, and it is on the Sci-Fi Channel, which inexplicably changed its name to SyFy, cancelled most of its science fiction shows, and now shows wrestling. Hollywood Treasure involves an L.A. auction house that finds and sells rare, screen-used movie memorabilia, often for thousands of dollars. It’s amazing that there are people out there that will pay millions for some sparkly red shoes. Anyhow, it is like Antiques Roadshow for nerds. Basically half of all reality shows are apparently derivatives of Antiques Roadshow.

The other half of reality shows follow even more mundane jobs or lifestyles. The other day I walked in on the wife watching a show called Extreme Couponing. (Can coupon be a verb?) This show, which somehow attracted 2 million viewers for its first episode, follows the exploits of several moms who spend hours upon hours researching coupons and sales, begging door-to-door for coupons, and yes, even dumpster diving for coupons. What’s supposed to be interesting about the show, besides the obsessive and bizarre behaviors exhibited, is that these people end up getting approximately $1000 worth of groceries for around $50, which is just the sales tax.

What happens is, for example, the couponers will collect a hundred $1 off coupons for hot sauce. Then they wait for hot sauce to go on sale at Kroger for $1.50, get their coupons doubled, and buy 100 bottles of hot sauce. Apparently Kroger will take the difference off the rest of your groceries, so not only do the couponers get 100 free bottles of hot sauce, but also get $50 off their groceries. If they do the same thing with 20 other items, they get $1,000 worth of free groceries they need, plus the free hot sauce and whatnot that they will never use, which maybe they could sell on ebay or in their front yard hot sauce stand. One lady got a whole pallet of Kroger coffee, and the wife said that nobody would ever drink that much coffee. However, I posited that the lady would need all that coffee to stay awake to dumpster dive for all those coupons, so she could buy more coffee to stay awake to dumpster dive for all those coupons, so she could buy more coffee to stay awake to dumpster dive for all those coupons, so she could buy more coffee, and on and on…

Even if there is some entertainment value in watching crazy people buy hot sauce with dumpster coupons, why would anyone want to watch the show a second time? It would just be the same thing next week, except starring Powerade or Kool-Aid or some other ade instead of hot sauce.

The third half of reality shows involve celebrity trapezing or other less awesome tasks, amateur karaoke, trading wives, or wearing bikini tops while playing lame games on some island. I already highlighted those in Bnote #23, so go back and read a classic Bnote why don’t ya?

Bnote # 124 – Random Roadside Observations

2011-08-08T08:25:00.000-04:00

I have been driving Bailey around to lots of places to keep her entertained and to keep myself from going stir crazy. Lately I’ve taken her to the art museum, the aquarium, various parks, the mall, and the conservatory (aka plant zoo), not to be confused with the conservatory where people get murdered with lead pipes and candlesticks. The other day I was taking her to a play place for kids called Totter’s Otterville, a name that I am pathologically unable to say correctly. I have said:

Totter’s Ottersville
Totter Otterville
Tottersville Ottersville
Totter Ottersville

On the way to Tottersville Ottersville Daughtersville, I noticed a billboard for Sprite, featuring beloved soft drink enthusiast LeBron James, who apparently is also some sort of hated turncoat professional athlete. The slogan emblazoned across the billboard was “A Tomahawk to the Temple!” I can only assume the message here is that the flavor of Sprite is like being hit in one’s head with a tomahawk. I don’t know about most people, but I generally do not prefer my soft drinks to instantly kill or seriously injure me. Which marketing demographic is into traumatic head injuries? I could be mistaken, and the billboard is using the word temple as in a place of worship, in which case the message is that drinking Sprite is like watching your place of worship being destroyed. That’s slightly better. That must be what it means.

LeBron James and Sprite want to kill or maim you, or possibly chop down your church.

Another day, while driving near our house, I saw a deer crossing sign. Everybody has seen instances where someone has painted a red dot on the deer’s nose a la Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. While the first person to ever do this might be the greatest genius of our time, every subsequent “artist” has been merely a drunken copycat vandal. What was interesting about this particular deer crossing sign was not that someone had dotted the deer’s nose, but that some someone, presumably a government employee, had taken the time to cover the red dot with what appeared to be a round, yellow sticker. So somewhere in some state or local government’s budget, there is an allotment for stickers used for the specific purpose of covering the would-be Rudolphs’ noses. Also, since the color matched the sign perfectly, and the circle was the perfect size to cover the nose dot, I suspect some company out there manufactures these stickers for that same exact purpose. Who knew that deer crossing sign vandalism might spur such a niche cottage industry?

That same day I saw a sign that said something about “over the road truck drivers.” Now I know what this term means, as I sometimes represented truck drivers in court regarding their commercial truck driving licenses, but this phrase has always amused me. First, the term makes it sound like any other truck drivers drive above the road, below the road, or perhaps next to the road. Second, the phrase is longer than, but less descriptive than saying “interstate driver” or “long-haul driver.” The linguistic brain trust in charge of truck driver jargon needs to put their heads together and right this wrong immediately.

For those of you who believe I notice and dwell on too many unimportant details, I have noticed and remembered that you feel this way, and offered this bnote to provide you with additional fodder for your observations about my observations.

Bnote # 123 – Toddler Times: Hair

2011-08-01T21:45:00.000-04:00

We have a subscription to some crappy parenting magazine that I hope was a free gift from someone, and there’s always some adorable baby on the cover with perfectly coifed hair. They must be putting baby toupees on these kids, because every small child I see has ridiculously bad hair. Bailey is no exception.

Since most of the early pictures of Bailey depict her sporting a stylish gnome hat, I tend to forget that she popped out with a decent head of hair. Shortly thereafter, the hair abandoned her head, except for a rim of fuzz from behind one ear to the other. She kind of looked like Captain Piccard, but less of a wuss.

Gradually her hair got blonder and longer in the back, but took a long time to develop on top. The longer the back grew, the more it began to resemble the balding mullet of the fictional serial killer who tells people to “put the lotion in the basket.” Now Bailey’s hair is super curly in the back, and cannot be tamed, although she regularly tries to smear banana and oatmeal through it in place of hair product. At times it looks like her hair exploded, and she is channeling Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Maybe that’s what one’s hair looks like when 21.1 gigawatts of electricity passes through him or her.

Age progression simulation of Bailey, age 52.

I certainly don’t know where the blonde hair and curls are coming from. Somehow, two dark haired, dark eyed people made a blonde haired, blue eyed Scandinavian child. That, or the real Bailey was switched at birth by accident with the adjacent baby in the maternity ward of the hospital, whose name was Heidi Johanssen if I recall correctly.

Bnote # 122 – The Great Staycation, Part II

2011-07-25T18:55:00.000-04:00

Sorry that the last bnote was mostly, if not completely boring, as it was mostly a heat addled rant resulting from 88 degree heat in our house from lack of air conditioning. But here comes another rant. Needless to say this was the worst staycation ever, as another problem befell me that, like the A/C problem, has resulted in me spending the weekend hanging out in my underwear...an unpleasant skin infection.

You may be thinking: He was kind of gross to begin with, and now he may or may not be a leper. It's kind of embarrassing and gross to talk about, but I've got to talk about something every week, and this is what happened to me this week, and some may be amused by my continuing pitfalls. I know I find my endlessly itchy rashes and bumps keeping me awake at night hilarious. I promise I will not share future infirmities with everyone if they cross a certain grossness threshold, like removal of foreign objects from my digestive tract (the business end).

Anyhow, this all started when the wife inadvertently woke me at 3 a.m. two Thursdays ago arriving home from her midnight showing of Harry Potter. Somehow I married an even bigger nerd than me. My arm was itchy, and I noticed I had two tiny fang marks from a spider bite. A few days later I had other itchy bumps on my arms, and my legs, and finally half my arm and chest looked like a plate of lasagna, but not in a good way.

It's nice to know that spiders infected with flesh-eating bacteria or the like are roaming the halls of my house.

So it was bad enough that I was an itchy mess because some jackass spider had me for a midnight snack. Then I had the worst doctor I have ever had. My previous doctor moved to Africa to provide medical care for poor people. How selfish of her to leave me hanging like that. Anyhow, the new doctor did not believe anything I told her. The itchy spots appeared to be spreading by contact, but she didn't believe me, and suggested that the giant welts on my legs were of me hitting my shins on something. Yeah, I bumped my knee on the coffee table and the sore got itchy and spread to my arms and chest.

So Dr. Crazypants said I had an allergic reaction to the bite as opposed to an infection, even though an allergic reaction wouldn't be spreading by contact. When I asked her why it wouldn't be an infection, through her thick Arabic accent, all I could understand was "something something, worm." I said "Excuse me?" and again got "something something worm." So I said "I don't understand what you're telling me," at which point she got very angry and with her eyes wide open she very slowly said "No. Infection. No. Worming." I finally realized she was trying to say warming. She thought an infection would mean warmer skin. I have had several foreign doctors over the years, and they were all highly competent, but it's fair to say that my doctor's lack of mastery of the English language led to miscommunication and maybe even misdiagnosis. I went to Urgent Care the next day, the doctor immediately knew it was an infection, and gave me antibiotics and steroids. Dr. Crazypants, you are fired.

Bnote # 121 – The Great Staycation

2011-07-18T12:10:00.000-04:00

This week the wife is on vacation, but we haven't planned to go anywhere, making her vacation a staycation. Unfortunately for her, the vacation more like my vacation, since Bailey hangs on her constantly and goes nuts if she's not near her mom every second. I guess there are benefits to being my child's second favorite parent.

The staycation started off with a bang as our air conditioner stopped working in the middle of the night. I paid $1000 to get it repaired, only to have it stop working again a few hours later. A different technician from the same company came the next day and said I needed a new unit. But they were only going to credit me $500 for the completely unnecessary work they did the previous day. After some lengthy negotiations I decided to cut my losses and arrange for the new unit to be installed first thing the next morning. I'm still mad about it though. When you call to get your AC repaired, you don't say "Hey I need a new fan motor," you say "I need my AC repaired." I could have gone to a different contractor and sued the old one, since I do enjoy suing people, but I didn't want the hassle--I just want my house to not be so hot that my navel becomes a swimming hole.

Of course, this morning's headline on CNN.com is "U.S. roasts in unrelenting record heat," so the first weekend of our staycation is consisting of huddling in the basement on some futon mattresses next to a box fan, letting Bailey entertain us with such classics as:

-Walking in a circle wearing my hat and repeating "Hat" or "At" 50-100 times.
-Talking on her toy cellphone (see previous bnote), putting the phone on my head and calling it a hat.
-Learning to take off her own diaper, much to our chagrin.

I would write more, but the computer is probably generating some heat, and I already am sufficiently sweat moistened and unpleasant smelling as I hang out with A/C installers while the ladies visit the aquarium. That seems fair. Later I have a dentist appointment. Considering my luck, the dentist will tell me I need to replace all my teeth with flawless diamonds.

We spent more on our staycation than we would have on a real vacation thanks to this sumbitch.

Bnote # 120 – Toddler Times: Monkey See, Monkey Do

2011-07-11T16:04:00.000-04:00

As a small baby, Bailey was never one for mimicry, although literature on the subject of babies says even newborns will imitate facial expressions. Since Bailey didn't do that, I had assumed one of the hospital nurses dropped her on her head. I had the lawsuit all ready to go, but now that Bailey imitates us, I will wait to stick the lawsuit in the mail. Hopefully very soon she can mimic cooking dinner, taking out the trash, and doing our taxes, but for now, her mimicry is fairly rudimentary.

One of the first mimics Bailey learned was waving. She pretty much waves at every person she sees out and about, even if they are looking the other way. Her wave looks more like invisible, sometimes backwards, stress ball squeezing than a wave. Also, after somebody waves back, she will wave again, and the other person will be stuck in an infinite loop if he or she doesn't realize they need to stop waving eventually.

Bailey has also learned to point at things like we do, but she has not yet learned that it's not polite to point. She often points at things she wants, but she also likes to point at random things for me to identify...over and over and over. When we wake up in the morning, and I'm not wearing a shirt, Bailey likes to play a game I like to call "Nipple-Chest-Nipple-Hand" which is much less creepy than it sounds. Basically she will point at one nipple until I identify it as such, then points at my chest, my other nipple, and then raises her hand for me to identify. All kids do this, right?

The most amusing mimic Bailey's being doing lately involves her toy cell phone. Apparently young people these days aren't fully utilizing the wireless phone technology available on the market today, so my wife decided to acclimate her to this useful tech at the age of six months. Anyhow, Bailey will spend 20 minutes straight pushing a button on this toy cell phone and then putting the phone to her ear backwards (notice this pattern of backwardness?) and jabbering while walking in a circle. I can't imagine where she picked up the habit of endlessly walking in a circle while talking on the phone. Actually I can...anybody who's talked to me on the phone can tell you I sound like a just ran a marathon.

YES, I WOULD like to learn more about the long distance phone services available to me!

Bnote # 119 – Toddler Times: Going Back to Work?

2011-07-04T12:26:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not going back to work. But apparently a lot of people, including people I don't even know, are anxious for me to get back to work. Maybe they think it will help the economy. What they apparently don't realize is how little I made as a lawyer compared to how much the wife makes as a doctor. My career is now obsolete. Whatever salary I could make in a crowded lawyer job market after a year absent from lawyerin', less the cost of day care, gas, new work suits, and lawyer balm, might be enough over time to help pay off the wife's massive medical school loans in 39.5 years instead of 40.

A balm for lawyers? Extruded from lawyers' pores? Made from ground up lawyers? Your guess is as good as mine.

The truth of the matter is I am not a successful lawyer. That's not to say I was a bad lawyer. In fact I am quite proud of my research and writing skills, and I always enjoyed that part of the job. But there's no place for a middle aged lawyer who wants to research and write all the time. By then, most lawyers seem to spend most of their time acquiring new business. My misanthropic nature prevents me from being smarmy enough to have gained that particular skill set. So if I go back to work maybe I could hope to be an associate for a partner younger than me. Maybe his or her name will be Dakota.

The wife and I agreed that Bailey would be better off spending her time interacting with someone who cares about her instead of neglected by strangers who squeaked by a background check. Our opinion on this hasn't changed. Also, considering Bailey's propensity for trying to poke out people's eyes, I don't think I could forgive myself for indirectly causing all those day care children's eye gouging injuries.

If I were a woman, everybody would expect me to remain home as long as possible and maybe squeeze out a few more babies. The purely hypothetical next child that one of us wants would surely prevent me from going back to work any time soon. By the time said hypothetical child were to go off to school, I imagine my age and years spent away from my profession would qualify me for only one job: Walmart greeter. Hopefully I can avoid that when some benefactor comes along and agrees to pay me handsomely for continuing to write bnotes. I can see it now, Bnote # 371: Yes, Still Writing About My Kids - Brought to You By TIRE DISCOUNTERS (For a limited time buy 3 tires get a 4th tire for half off!)

Bnote # 118 – Toddler Times: Outings

2011-06-27T12:45:00.000-04:00

No music class for three weeks means I had to come up with some activities for Bailey while we are on hiatus. Every day it has been either too hot to be outside, or raining, or raining frogs, or plagues of locusts or plagues of marmosets have beset the land, so we did some indoor activities.

First, we went to the library. I used to try to read some books to Bailey at the library, but now that she can walk, she is more interested in emptying the board book bins, grabbing a couple books, and running off through the library like it's her own personal obstacle course. She prefers books that have lift up peek-a-boo flaps, so she can rip off the flaps and force me to surreptitiously place the flaps neatly back inside as if they were already like that.

Second, we visited the aquarium. We have aquarium passes, which pay for themselves after only 37 uses. This was the first time Bailey really seemed to intently watch the animals, but it was also the first time she was scared of things. She was scared of pretty much every big fish that came close to the glass, including an eel, a puffer fish, a turtle, and several others. You might say the aquarium was an a-SCARE-ium. Get it? An aquarium where every thing SCARED her? Awesome, yes? No? Okay, moving on.

Bailey was not afraid of the sharks, but a small swimming turtle was terrifying. I heard that turtle shot a man in Dodge City, so that's probably why.

Third, we made a trip to the art museum. At the museum, I was letting Bailey walk around and an older fellow saw her. He was probably between 55 and 65, and had the look of one of those eccentric, wild-haired, college math professors. He said "Having fun at the museum with your grandpa?" At first, I looked behind me to see if he was mistaking another patron for Bailey's grandfather, but no, he just thought I was old enough to be her grandpa. I realize that I appear wise beyond my years, but I only just turned 34. I have lots of gray hair, but I'm not balding or wrinkly or covered in age spots, and I don't wear my pants up to my nipples yet. I did not correct the man, as I was, for once, rendered speechless. I should have shook my cane at that whipper-snapper.

Bnote # 117 – Toddler Times: Reading is Fun!...or Else!

2011-06-20T21:48:00.000-04:00

From Bailey's earliest days, we have read books to her. Even though books as we knew them as children may become as obsolete as the 8 track, we wanted our daughter to enjoy reading, at least until she discovers that movies are faster, easier, and contain more exciting explosions than books.

Reading Bailey books was initially a bedtime ritual of our choosing. As I have noted in my children's book reviews, 85% of the kids' books out there are created for the sole purpose of trying to trick kids into thinking sleeping is awesome, so they will go to sleep, and mom and dad can go watch the five episodes of South Park waiting patiently on the DVR. After all, who wouldn't want to spend their only free time watching a cartoon about talking Christmas poo, giant record breaking poo, people vomiting poo, and Oprah's talking, gun-wielding jibblies.

Now when Bailey wants a book read to her, she will drag books to me, plop them down next to me, and grunt angrily. If I don't catch on particularly quickly, since it may be 7 a.m. at the time, her next step is to pick the book back up and weaponize it by spiking me in the face with a corner. Even though I'll be the one in pain, she will be the one to start crying. I'm not sure at what point we lost the battle between us training her and her training us, but now that we've lost I guess I have to accept my cruel master. Anyhow, one day I read her 14 books. Now, none of these little board books are War and Peace, but that's still a lot of reading. We may be raising a bibliophile.

Bailey is really mostly interested in turning pages, which is annoying when she wants to do it before I'm done reading a page, which is every time. I guess she is just anxious to she what the anthropomorphic rhino, pig, duck, dog, cat, cow, dinosaur, or port-o-let will do after brushing his, her, or its teeth and putting on pajamas. I won't spoil it for the rest of you, but it's pretty awesome.

Reading before bedtime is super fun! Somebody please kill me! Woohoo!

Bnote # 116 – Toddler Times: Walk This Way

2011-06-13T15:43:00.000-04:00

Just as Bailey was on the verge of setting the world land speed crawling record, she is trying to give it up in favor of walking. I can't say I blame her, considering walking is our culture's preferred method of travel after taking a car, bus, plane, train, motor scooter, spaceship, segway, or any other form of transportation intended to prevent too much walking.

Bailey's form of walking thus far consists of several baby steps, often followed by a headfirst dive into second base. This would not be a problem if not for the furniture and walls all over our house. Maybe Bailey's head wouldn't be riddled with knots and bruises if we got rid of all our furniture, and reduced the number of walls per room from 4 to 2.

"Now that I can walk, I am so outta here. Later, lamewads!"

Bailey walks in very awkwardly cute manner so far, teetering forward and back. I'd call it toddling. If only there were some term to describe a young child who toddles...maybe a toddlecrat. The wife, being a doctor specializing in proper and improper walking gaits, among other things, says things like "she has a circumductive gait." I just think she looks like a drunk baby.

Since Bailey became mobile, our house has been a disaster area. Once she masters walking, there will be little warning to the mayhem, as no crawling knee friction will speed attack time, rendering table knickknacks and bathroom drawers alike utterly defenseless.

Bnote # 115 – Toddler Times: Attack of the Talking Toys

2011-06-06T13:51:00.000-04:00

In the wake of Bailey's first birthday party and the accompanying presents, our house has been inundated with toys that talk. They run the gamut from buses that sing the alphabet to barns that let Bailey know that the unholy, Frankenstein-esque abomination she just created is called a duck-cow.

One toy is a laptop that teaches letters, shapes and the like. It also teaches a little Spanish. When Bailey endlessly opened and closed it during one long car trip, I was tempted to chuck it out the window and sacrifice her chances of being bilingual after hearing it say "abierto" and "cerrado" about 200 times. That's Spanish for "open" and "closed" for anybody who grew up sans Sesame Street.

Bailey's talking teapot, complete with English accent, also lets us all know every time someone opens and closes it. The teapot also makes the sound of tea being poured if you tilt it forward. After hearing that sound several times in a row, I always need to use the bathroom.

Bailey's favorite talking toy is My Pal Violet, a purple stuffed dog. Violet has a USB MP3 player type device grafted to her spine, making her our family's first cyborg stuffed animal. You can set the toy to say your child's name and talk about your child's favorite animal, color, and food. So the dog will sing songs set to music inserting the name awkwardly in the middle:

"Me and my friend"
(pause, music stops)
"BAILEY?"

It's not quite a robot voice but it doesn't quite fit seamlessly into the song, and sounds like the name is a question. When Violet says "I love you.......BAILEY?" it always reminds me of the Futurama episode where Fry falls in love with a Lucy Liu robot who says "I love you PHILLIP J. FRY (robot voice), more than the moon and the stars and the POETIC IMAGE NUMBER 37 NOT FOUND."

"I'd like...A DUCK?...please. It's my favorite animal. I'd like it to be...ORANGE?...That's my favorite color. I'd like to feed it...RICE?...That's my favorite food. And I'd call it...BAILEY?...just like you! And Skynet is online soon! Resistance is futile!

Bnote # 114 – Toddler Times: Bailey's 1st Birthday

2011-05-30T21:00:00.000-04:00

Happy birthday, Bailey! My one year old's birthday party was Saturday. She couldn't tell us that she actually wanted a disco themed party with a Bee Gees cake, so she got a vaguely jungle animals-based theme, complete with an elephant cake.

If the whole doctor thing doesn't work out, my wife could be the next Cake Boss. (Cake Boss is a reality show she watches sometimes where New Jersey people make elaborate cakes. Apparently every reality show must contain people from New Jersey. New Jerseians? New Jersiites?)

Since Bailey probably had no idea that the party was for her, and the wife claims we were actually celebrating our ability to keep a baby alive for a whole year, the wife basically threw a party she wanted, complete with Qdoba naked burrito bar and drinks. My first impression was 1) I don't think any of the guests want to see me naked AND eating burritos, and 2) I wasn't sure if drinks should be served at a one year old's birthday party. I later realized 1) the burritos are supposed to be naked, not the eater, which I wished I had known before stripping down, and 2) convincing adults to give up their Saturday to watch a baby slather herself with cake icing and to buy gifts for a child who will likely play with the box instead requires some fermented bribery.

Bailey's main gift from us, selected by my wife without input from me, was one of those turtle sandboxes. Although it lives outside, it will no doubt result in sand residing in every crevice of our home as Bailey tracks it around the house. I'm not sure if the wife just thought a sandbox was awesome, or was passively-aggressively jabbing at me by exploiting my obsessive-compulsive hatred of stray particles, which compels me to clean.

Bailey seemed to like the attention, so I guess she'll get another birthday party next year. By then she should be able to talk enough to tell us she wants that disco themed party, and we can make our friends wear bell bottoms and afros and platform shoes with goldfish inside. I think I'll just plan on making that happen regardless...I'll make everybody show up in 70's garb for nothing and then give Bailey a Mickey Mouse themed party instead.

Bnote # 113 – Baby Bnote Episode Sixty: The Last Baby Bnote

2011-05-23T14:55:00.000-04:00

Sorry I used the whole "Something in your house may kill you...We'll tell you what at 11," bit. I promise I will continue to bring you my sarcastic take on child rearing. However, I think technically babies become toddlers at age one, and Bailey turns one this week, so I will go with some new nomenclature for the kid blogs. Unless someone wants to pay me for the naming rights (for example, "Mieneke Mufflers Munchkin of the Week Blogtastical Blog"), I'm thinking of going with Toddler Times. Then when Bailey turns five, I'll change it to Kidz Korner, which sounds like a day care center that believes children are dumb and cannot spell correctly. Anyhow, if you ever see me post another Baby Bnote, it will be entitled "Baby Bnote Chapter Two, Episode One: Oops I Did It Again"

I'll take the opportunity of my daughter's impending one year birth anniversary, or "birthday" as I have heard it called, to reflect on how radically my life has changed during that year. Most of my life is better than it was back then. Here are some things I've learned:

-I have always been a light sleeper, but now I can sleep through some commotion, as long as the pitch of the sound falls between a baby's cry and a Nazgul attack.

-Being a stay-at-home dad has been more demanding than being a lawyer, but less stressful. I have little free time, but I have seen an improvement in my various stress-related maladies, such as my trick jaw, my trick ulcers, and my trick eye peanut.

-At least 25% of all Cheerios that enter my house become stuck to my sock at some point.

Seriously, which of the ingredients listed on the Cheerios box is an industrial grade sock adhesive?

-Despite her numerous toys cluttering every room in the house, the baby's favorite playthings are straws, empty pill bottles cleaned out and filled with rice, cell phones, an Indiana University keychain, dental floss container, and a random number generator used to access a secure website, which I can only assume she has been using to hack everyone's Facebook accounts.

-No matter how much time I spend with Bailey, she prefers her mom, either because she is a sexist, or because, like me, she enjoys bosoms.

-There would be a lot less baby howling in my house if furniture was shaped as amorphous blobs, instead of covered in edges and corners for a small and clumsy person to kronk her head on.

That is the complete list of all six things I learned as a dad in year one. I learned nothing else.

Bnote # 112 – News of the Week in Shakespearean Sonnet

2011-05-16T17:51:00.000-04:00

Bin Laden's dead the news reports it so
Only the nasty terrorists will mourn
The mastermind who killed ten years ago
The news cares more about his stash of porn

The last space shuttle now is off the clock
Because NASA's budget was not renewed
We now have no way to get off this rock
The sun burns out and then we'll all be screwed

For years the honeybees have fallen ill
If they all die then maybe we will too
Scientists do not know the reason still
But theorize that cell phones are the clue
Cell waves might be the end of honeybees
Worth it for LOL's and OMG's?

Bnote # 111 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Nine: Miscellaneous Baby Topics Roundup

2011-05-09T16:36:00.000-04:00

No single topic is really jumping out at me, and it’s 4 p.m. Monday, so time to throw out some random baby info:

Mobility: Bailey’s constant need to “cruise” and throw everything on the floor has resulted in our house looking like several bombs exploded everything below waist level. The other day I was cooking dinner and the wife said Bailey took a step on her own. After another 10+ hour day with Bailey, she saved the good stuff for mom. I know where I rank.

The CIA believes al Qaeda bombed our house, but I know the real culprit.

Talking: Bailey decided that ma-ma and da-da were too common for first words. Her first words used in context have been ball, duck, and hug. Rigorous testing revealed she knows the difference between a ball and a duck. Rigorous testing also revels that when Bailey lays her head on my chest after I say “hug,” it’s really cute. She also randomly and sporadically repeats words. I will have to start watching what I say…she was squirming around today while I was changing her diaper, so I said “Stay still, I have to wipe your butt,” and she said “butt.”

Feeding: Somehow Bailey hates peaches, but will regularly eat carpet strands and dust bunnies. I have seen her scraping dust bunnies out of corners for a snack. At least it keeps the floor clean. The wife finally ran dry, so Bailey started drinking cow’s milk today. I thought we could keep grocery costs down by breast feeding her until college, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Separation anxiety: Imagine you go to work, and you can’t go to the bathroom without your boss standing outside the bathroom screaming at you, and the only way to get your boss to stop is to let you boss lean against you while you sit on the toilet. Welcome to my life.

Bnote # 110 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Eight: Play Ball

2011-05-02T14:50:00.000-04:00

Bailey's first word used in proper context was "ball" so we decided she was a sports fan and took her to her first baseball game over the weekend. The Reds were having a Future All-Stars Baby Day promotion, which mostly consisted of diaper coupon giveaways. They did give away a sheet of wall stickers featuring Mr. Red, Rosie Red, an anthropomorphic tire representing the event sponsor, and a Tire Discounter logo. Nothing screams "baseball" as much as a cut-rate tire company logo for your child's wall, and every child wants a creepy mustachioed tire peering down on them as they sleep.

The cool part of the promotion was that we got to walk around the playing field as part of the baby parade, which was pretty neat. I felt like maybe having a baby was finally worth it. Bailey, if you are reading this someday when you're older, I'm kidding--I decided you were worth it at least a few weeks before that baseball game. The wife accidentally broke our camera screen over Easter weekend, so I was taking a bunch of blind pictures and videos. You can crop people into photos nowadays, right?

During the baby parade, I walked past the opposing starting picture. I could have pulled a Nancy Kerrigan (or does one pull a Tonya Harding?) on him and maybe the Reds wouldn't have lost, but instead of enjoying the game with my family I would have been sent to jail without passing Go or collecting $200. Only time will tell if that was the right decision. If the Reds miss the playoffs by one game, I'll know I chose poorly.

Once in our seats, Bailey was being super cute, clapping for the reading of the starting lineups when everyone else clapped. Then she went to sleep from the 3rd inning to the 7th, so we and the people in our vicinity were able to enjoy the game in peace.

The ballpark is nice enough to give out first game certificates with your child's name on them, so now May 1, 2011 will be forever known as the date of Bailey's first baseball game, and not as a date that anything else important happened whatsoever.

Future All-Stars Baby Day bnote was a perfect opportunity to reuse previously created bad photoshopping.

Bnote # 109 – Easter

2011-04-25T18:11:00.000-04:00

The other day was the holiday known as Easter, although I'm not sure what day it was because it seems to be a different date every year. Let's come together as a people and figure out when Easter should be each year, folks. I think everybody could get used to Easter Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.

Anyway, as I understand it, Easter for some people commemorates Zombie Jesus rising from the grave, presumably to feast upon brains. The followers of Zombie Jesus celebrate the holiday by posting Casting Crowns music videos on Facebook. Other people celebrate the coming of spring by subtly hinting about sexual reproduction to their children via anthropomorphic baby bunnies and chickens bearing eggs during the seasonal time of rebirth. All celebrants of every kind honor the tradition of driving seven hours to spend two hours with family and eat a ham that is so sweet that chocolate bunnies must be consumed afterwards to bring the sweetness level down in one's mouth.

Since one member of our household puts every item within reach in her mouth, we tried edible Easter grass. Amazingly, Bailey did not try to jam any grass in her pie-hole, but was greatly amused by feeding the vaguely strawberry, apple, and blue flavored strings to me instead. I don't know if it's meant to be eaten, or is just a version of Easter grass that will not instantly kill you if consumed, but I ate quite a bit of it and the only ill effect was that I peed a magical rainbow of fun.

Under federal law, a product need only be made with 10% edible ingredients to be labeled "edible."

Bnote # 108 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Seven: Parks & Recreation

2011-04-18T10:59:00.000-04:00

I have started taking Bailey to the park regularly now that the weather is warming up and I am recovering from my post-concussion light sensitivity problem. Yes, I suffered a concussion recently, according to Dr. Wife. Yes it was from hitting my head on the low area in our basement ceiling. Yes, I did it while watching the NCAA basketball tournament. It could happen to anyone.

Anyway, Bailey has been grumpy from new teeth coming in, and also has determined that everything below adult knee height is a threat which must be removed and placed on the floor. So to distract from teething issues and to slow the disaster-fication of our house, I've been taking Bailey to the park. But let me tell you, taking her for a walk in the park is no walk in the park.

After loading up half the stuff in the house, I have to strap Bailey into the car, and with her current level of mobility, she hates being restrained. So she gets mad, and once at the park, I take her out of her car seat just long enough to restrain her again in her stroller.

Bailey was happy for a mere 5 seconds at the park, which luckily was when I took the picture. Also, a random dude ran up and put his thumb in my picture.

While at the park the other day, I realized I had no bathroom contingency plan for taking Bailey out places by myself. What do I do with her if I have a complex bathroom transaction to take care of? Put her on the nasty men's room floor? Or worse, my lap? At the park, I decided I didn't want to remove her from her stroller or strap her back in it afterwards, so I chose to take the stroller into the men's room of the park's bait shop/snack bar. The bathroom was tiny, and another guy was in there, washing his hands.

As I started conducting by bathroom transaction, the hand washing guy turned on the electric hand dryer, which scared the bejeezus out of Bailey, who started screaming as if she were being murdered. To make it clear to me that he was not, in fact, murdering my child, the guy told her "Sorry, we don't need to turn that on." I apologized to the wet-handed man, but I realized that folks like him probably understand that I don't get to sleep, eat, or conduct bathroom transactions in peace, and feel sorry for me, so I didn't feel too bad.

At the park I also learned that even if it is overcast, the baby needs a hat. Luckily I helped Bailey get a nice base tint without burning her flesh off. Of course, the sun she got prompted a trip to the baby store for a $10 hat, which Bailey fights to remove from her head the entire time we're at the park. But it least it distracts her from fighting to extricate herself from the stroller. I have discovered that parenting is all about layering distractions upon distractions. The hat distracts from the restrained walk in the stroller, which distracts from the toothache. Figuring out the least annoying distraction and layering it at the top is an art form.

Bnote # 107 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Six: Product Reviews

2011-04-11T09:32:00.000-04:00

As Bailey approaches her first birthday, and our closets fill with baby stuff that is no longer useful, it occurs to me to reflect back on the mass baby consumerism that has taken place during the past year and review some of these items. If you purchased anything for us that was less than useful, don't feel bad. My wife likely put the item on a registry, believing it was an absolute necessity. If a purely hypothetical second child ever becomes reality, we will know what is helpful and what will leave scars on the baby, both physical and emotional. On to the reviews...

Bright Stars Baby Swing - Why would you want to rock your baby to sleep when a rickety, D-battery sucking, impossible to move without taking apart baby swing can do it for you. This thing took up half the room, was only marginally safe if you connected what seemed like 10 straps across your baby, and the baby outgrows the straps shortly after birth. Score: F

Bright Stars Baby Seat - At some point, Bailey learned that there was stuff to see, and sitting slightly inclined helped her do just that. Those were exciting times. The seat seemed comfy, and had two levels of vibrating intensity. Who doesn't enjoy that kind of versatility? The seat played some music that for some reason made me feel sentimental. Score: A

On the left, F, on the right, A, but they are both now taking up closet space.

Baby Trend Stroller/Car Seat - This was a neat system where we installed two bases in two cars and could easily and quickly attach it in either car or the stroller, and carry Bailey in the seat. The stroller is very nice, but even though it's collapsible, it barely fits in the back of the car. Also the seat was so heavy, it gave me the bulging biceps I'm sporting today. Score: A-

Graco Duodiner High Chair - It's too encrusted with goop to tell what's going on under there, so I'll give it a gentleman's B. Score: B

Diaper Champ - Maybe the problem with this diaper pail was trying to use cloth diapers, which are more bulky and would not fit through the overly complicated toxic waste disposal airlock. However, I can't imagine you could fit that many disposable diapers in it either, without gumming up the works. Also you need an engineering degree to figure out how to put the bag in it. Now we only use it for the most fetid of disgustables, while merely wet diapers go into the industrial size trash can for processing. Score: D

Pottery Barn Crib - Maybe I should wait and review this when I finally can convince the wife to kick Bailey out of our bed. At least the wife bought this on Craigslist, instead of paying an offensively large amount of money for furniture bought for someone who has no sense of style or understanding of brand names. I think this type of crib is the kind that was recalled because the front railing was made out of dried, hardened cocaine. The railing has been removed and repurposed and some day, when Bailey is 12 or so, she'll finally sleep on it. Score: ?

Euro-Wash Pod - I've already reviewed this here. Score: B-

Medela Breast Pump - This fancy contraption stealthily designed to look like a backpack enabled me to feed my daughter nutritious mom juice. I can't really comment on how comfortable or efficient the pumping process was, as I have not used it on my self enough times to accurately evaluate. Score: A

Itzbeen Baby Timer - This probably inexpensive timer has four buttons you push that let you know when you last attended to your baby's various needs. This was very helpful when Bailey was first born, and sometimes needed reminding to eat. There was a button for diapering, feeding, sleeping, and a mysterious wild card button with an asterisk on it, maybe to remind me to make sure Bailey was breathing every five minutes. I'm exaggerating, but only a little. Score: B+

If you forget to push the button, the baby will starve. DON'T forget to push the button.

Burp Cloths - Although Bailey did very little puking, burp cloths were an absolute necessity to prevent milk neck and milk dad. Score: A+

Clothes - Yes, I know this is vague and general, but I just wanted to comment generally on baby clothes in general. General. Baby clothing sizes have no consistency whatsoever. I recall when Bailey was about six months old she had 9 month clothes that were too small, and 3 month clothes that were too big. They need to standardize baby clothes sizes or standardize the sizes of babies. Most of the functional clothes, like plain onesies, were purchased by us, when Bailey would grow several inches in a day. Less functional clothes, like dresses, were thrown in the back of a drawer or box, to be extricated when cleaning up, at which point we would squeeze the two sizes too small outfit onto the baby, take a picture for the benefit of the relative who gifted the outfit, and put it back in it's nook. Also, baby socks were pointless, as they jumped off the baby in a matter of seconds.

Bnote # 106 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Five: Snack Time

2011-04-04T09:49:00.000-04:00

Bailey has grown weary of eating unidentifiable mush for every meal, and has discovered the joys of grown-up food. When we go to a restaurant, she wants whatever we have, and leaves a nice scattering of food on the floor as an additional tip for our server.

Finger food is as much a developmental tool as it is a snack. It helps Bailey learn the pincer grasp to pick up things with her thumb and index finger, so she can someday pick insects off our hides during family grooming time. It also teaches her to gum food, in preparation of old age. Yes, gum can be a verb.

Bailey's first main finger food snacks were something called Puffs, not to be confused with the things you use to wipe your nose and do other various things with. Puffs are basically light cereal pieces that melt in baby's mouth. They come in several varieties, all of which taste exactly the same. Puffs also have the unique property of sticking to anything, and have been distributed throughout the house attached to our child. Puffs regularly affix themselves to the outside of diapers, the inside of diapers, the bottoms of socks, furniture crevices, priceless antiques, worthless antiques, and moderately valuable antiques.

A big container of Puffs, as seen in the accompanying photograph, contains only 2.1 ounces of Puffs, since they are so light and airy. I am told such a container costs about $3.50. That means Puffs cost approximately $26.67 per pound. That's more than filet mignon costs per pound, for something that is essentially the same thing as Cheerios. The difference is that Puffs are organic, meaning its ingredients were grown only with love, while Cheerios must be manufactured in a lab, by a robot, out of styrofoam shavings and saren gas. Regardless, we switched to Cheerios once I did the math.

Unlike filet mignon, you can't get Puffs in even the swankiest restaurants.

Bnote # 105 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Four: Toys

2011-03-28T11:14:00.001-04:00

There are baby toys in 69.2% of the rooms in our house. Yet my daughter mostly wants to grab forbidden, grownup objects like phones, blenders, and basically anything that's not a baby toy, despite the fact that this place is overflowing with stuffed animals, blocks, and things that make noise for the benefit of our rugrat.

Although to me, all Bailey's toys seem to exist for me to step on or trip over in the dark, I suppose different toys have served different purposes during her development. Early on she liked soft toys, particularly brightly colored ones, which teach a baby to notice stuff like that. Her favorite toy seemed to be Pinchy the bright red lobster. It's after midnight as I'm typing this and I initially accidently capitalized red lobster as if the restaurant deserved my bnote recognition.

Bailey stopped noticing poor Pinchy after awhile when she learned that some toys made noise. This sort of toy is essentially in the development of a child's ability to annoy her parents with insessant noise-making. After all, a baby gets tired crying, so it needs a backup alert, like the battery backup in your alarm clock.

At some point the main function of some toys were simply to provide a hard, but not too hard part for the baby to chew on with it's budding fangs. Here's an example of a stuffed animal whose hands and feet have been replaced with rawhide chewables:

I'm not sure who this thing's daddy is, but the ellipsis (...) at the end lead me to believe that if there were more space, it would read, "I love my daddy...but I still must testify in his war crimes trial in The Hague."

Eventually the toys become tools for developing manual dexterity and problem solving, which sound as exciting as when your grandma bought you that push-button multiplication table toy when you were in elementary school. Here's an example:

Ring toys are an old standby. This one teaches children to impale animals on a stake, preparing Bailey for a career as a slaughterhouse technician.

Bailey mostly uses toys nowadays to hit something with something else. For some reason, she has two hard toy hammers, one of which she hit me in the head with while I was half asleep. For the love of Zeus, please nobody buy Bailey another hammer, unless is it is made out of Nerf-style foam or softer.

As Bailey gets older I start to worry about her more mature choice of toys:

Fisher Price heroin syringe and crack pipe are classics.

Bnote # 104 – Happy 2nd Birthday, Bnote!

2011-03-21T12:07:00.000-04:00

Two years ago this week I started the phenomenon known as the Bnote (as in Webnote), and thus far I have received no court orders or death threats to stop the bnotes from coming, whether I still have an audience of silent stalkers or not. In the beginning, I randomly selected a topic based on whatever tidbit caught my attention on the internet that week. But since I first found out I was going to be a dad, the vast majority of bnotes have chronicled my varying levels of ineptitude and occasional near-competency at fatherhood.

A year ago, I discussed the process of writing a bnote, and how I usually had a couple months' worth of entries ready ahead of time. Bailey is such a demanding taskmaster that the process usually is more like this nowadays: At approximately 9:49 p.m. Sunday night, I remember that I forgot to write a bnote during the week. So I try to remember the last fluid Bailey deposited on me, bodily or otherwise, and type up the first thing that comes into my head regarding said mess. I feel certain that my last minute ramblings have caused the overall quality of the bnotes to suffer. I will blame it on Bailey, since she cannot yet defend herself, and because you will forgive her, because she's a cute little baby.

Something you silent bnote stalkers may not have realized is that in order to determine if anyone is actually reading the public, DarthLawyer version of my bnotes, I use a free web service that tells me some basic information about my webpage hits, like a visitor's name, address, bank account numbers, medical records, etc. I am kidding of course, but it does tell me what other pages are referring people to my site.

Usually the referring page is a Google search, so if someone searches for the exact phrase tortured kilt guy with quotation marks, my site will appear in the results and if someone clicks it, I'll know how they got to me. On occasion, this has resulted in some strange referring searches, most notably a search from Saudi Arabian Google for "hairy mens underwears" several months ago. I don't know if the person was searching for hairy men in underwear, or some kind of special underwear made specially for us hairy men, and I certainly don't know why this search directed this Saudi Arabian to my site. I don't remember a bnote about any combination of hairy men or underwear, but after 104 entries, I might have forgotten a few past topics.

In one bnote, I mentioned watching Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp, and I posted a picture of him. Since then, the number of hits on my site has quadrupled, and most of the hits are image searches for Mr. Depp, who is apparently a popular guy. In order to maximize my hits, maybe I should just start dropping hot celebs into each bnote. By using the phrase "Angelina Jolie Jessica Alba nude" I have just expanded the popularity of my website tenfold. And by using the phrase "Abe Vigoda Wilford Brimley nude" I have expanded the creepiness factor of my website tenfold.

Website hits, here I come. Also, don't forget to buy your diabeetus supplies.

The public DarthLawyer bnotes have a comment section that is rarely used, but I'm glad I have it. I posted one bnote critiquing children's books, and noted that readers should not confuse the children's book with a work of erotic fiction with the same title, and mentioned the author of the latter. Within 24 hours, the erotic fiction author posted in my comments section, thanking me for the name drop and suggesting that I might be on drugs for comparing the two works. Only in the internet age could writing reviews of children's books put me in contact with an adult literature novelist.

Bnote # 103 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Three: Toofers

2011-03-14T15:01:00.000-04:00

The last month or so has been a time of milestones for young Bailey. She learned to crawl and climb on everything in the house. She claps her hands and plays peek-a-boo. She also learned how to disturb Daddy's nap on the floor by hitting him in the face with a hard wooden hammer toy. But the milestone that caused the most lost sleep was the emergence of two bottom baby teeth, or as they are known in clinical terms, "toofers".

Personally, I thought Bailey was just faking the discomfort to get stoned on grape flavored baby Tylenol. If so, it worked. Drugging Bailey was essential to getting the two hours of sleep we got each night for a couple weeks. Hopefully she gets used to the whole tooth eruption thing, because despite her Kentucky roots, we expect her to have more than two teeth.

You might be able to see Bailey's new teeth in the picture on the left. Her pictures were taken during her grumptastic tooth eruption period, so most of the shots came out like the ones on the right.

At this point, I don't think Bailey's teeth are too useful, except as a way of getting Mommy's attention via nipple bites, or as I like to call them, "hilarious only to me nibbles". Even though the teeth don't seem to be used for eating yet, they apparently must still be cleaned, using what looks like a rubber thimble with bristles. Instead of toothpaste, the cleaning agent is called tooth "cleanser", which sounds to me like something you might keep under your kitchen sink, like Drano.

Mainly I am not looking forward to all the tooth-related costs--paying the Tooth Fairy for biohazard disposal, dentists bills caused by me feeding her pancake syrup from a sippy cup, and the requisite braces that all children get nowadays as a 1-2 year hit to their self-esteem to build character. I didn't get braces and I am a perfectly happy snaggletooth.

Bnote # 102 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-Two: The Crack Whore Theory of Parenting

2011-03-07T10:43:00.000-05:00

DISCLAIMER -- I do not intend to make light of the plight of children affected by their parents' drug abuse. People should not have children if they smoke crack. It's a human tragedy. Come to think of it people shouldn't smoke crack, period. Or chew it, or snort it, or inject it into their eyeball. Just to be clear, I wasn't advocating any alternative methods of consumption. The point of this bnote is to demonstrate irresponsible parenting behaviors, such as those likely practiced by hard drug abusers. -- END DISCLAIMER

One thing that is certain if and when you become a parent: everyone you know will offer theories on the proper administration of your parenting duties. For example, some folks think you should rock it old school and ignore your baby's crying, even at a very early age. After all, you don't want your child to become a spoiled brat, regardless of the experts' claims that ignoring your child's needs will turn him or her into a sociopath. However, you don't need the opinions of renowned pediatricians to raise your child. You can instead adhere to a simple theory--The Crack Whore Theory of Parenting™.

This Theory is not what it sounds like. The Theory was not created by or exclusively for crack whores. The Theory is this: when faced with a parenting decision, ask yourself, "What would a crack whore do?" or WWCWD? for short. Once you've answered that question, do the exact opposite. For example, if asked to trade his or her baby for a rock of crack, the crack whore would likely make the trade. Faced with the same offer, do NOT trade your baby for a rock of crack, or even two rocks of crack. See how easy the Theory is to implement?

Any less than 3 rocks of crack is less than fair market value for your baby. However, even 3 or more rocks cannot outweigh the sentimental value that should prevent you from completing any such transaction.

Now let's apply the Theory to our original issue regarding letting your baby cry. If a crack whore's baby cries, the crack whore sadly ignores the poor baby, who obviously deserves better. Therefore, you should do the opposite, which is attend to the baby's needs by feeding, diapering, or soothing the baby. By using the Crack Whore Theory of Parenting™, you can avoid some of these common pitfalls that adversely affect the most criminally irresponsible parents.

Bnote # 101 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty-One: Hours of Babble

2011-02-28T14:20:00.000-05:00

See what I did there? Hours of Babble sounds a lot like Tower of Babel. I made a subtly humorous religio-literary reference, and now I'm explaining it to you like you're stupid. Why are you still reading my blog after all this time? You deserve more credit than I give you. This is such a one-sided relationship.

What was I supposed to be writing about? Oh yeah...Bailey has started babbling a lot. One day she just yammered on pretty much all day long without stopping.

People demand to know what Bailey's first word was. That's a difficult question to answer. When she started cooing and/or babbling and/or articulating, she would seem to randomly say words that we suggested were her first words, such as igloo, highway, yucca, and Amway. Most people probably wouldn't count those as her first words, except for those bastards at Amway. Repetition is required.

I don't want my daughter's first word to be the name of a pyramid scheme involving selling shampoo, even if I can make millions by having other people sell my shampoo.

She once seemed to repeat bye-bye after I said it to her approximately 5,000 times in a row one afternoon, but that may also have been random because she didn't say it again. Her first word may have been an unlikely "who" ...not "who" as in "who stole my burrito?" or "all the who's down in Who-ville." I was playing with Bailey using her owl rattle toy and made a "who" sound which she repeated not once but 7 times after prompting. So "who" may be her first word.

A couple weeks ago she started saying "da-da" about 200 times per day. Supposedly "da-da" and "ba-ba" are the most likely first consonant sounds for babies to make. It is patently unfair to moms that babies are so sexist and refuse to give equal time to "ma-ma."

Another source tells me it's only a real first word if the baby uses it three times in proper context. So when we went to the aquarium the other day, and she incorrectly identified a crocodile as an alligator three times in a row, that didn't count. I guess we'll have to keep waiting for that first word.

Bnote # 100 – HUNDREDTH BNOTE EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!!!!

2011-02-21T16:57:00.000-05:00

Whenever a TV show hits a milestone, they celebrate by taking the week off and foisting a crappy clip show on the audience. Keeping with that tradition, here are some of my favorite quotes from the previous 99 bnotes. I promise there will be a real bnote memorializing the 2 year anniversary of the bnote. Crap, I just realized I have to read all my old bnotes now. Writing a real one would have been easier I think. If I have left out any good quotes and you want to reread about 100 pages worth of my musings, please add your favorites to the comments. On to the quotes...

My own wife, who is a doctor, trained as a scientist and very intelligent, has an irrational fear of mythical creatures, such as aliens, devils, vampires, ghosts, and mormons. (Bnote #1)

It’s about time they came out with some original movies, like one involving a gigantic primate that attacks people. I’d call it “Giant Primate Attack”. (Bnote #4)

One time she [the wife] asked me what, under the law, constituted marital property, and I explained in part by identifying all the marital property in our house. At least we’ve got that out of the way for when she decides she’s had enough of my weekly requirement that she slather me with hummus and pummel me with a giant novelty inflatable banana. (Bnote #5)

Nothing stressful about being out of shape and trying desperately to prevent a roomful of strangers see me tip over during “Step Back And Repulse Monkey.” (Bnote #7)

I predict that in a few years, there will be fantasy fantasy football, where you draft a team of the people playing fantasy football instead of players. (Bnote #8)

I have never made a big deal over my birthday. Just like a hidden stash of midget porn, everybody has one. (Bnote #11)

I was in the car typing away, when I had a sudden bathroom emergency. (Never eat pineapple bought off the back of a van.) (Bnote #12)

Poi is a purplish goop made from taro root that tastes like nothing and looks like Barney the dinosaur’s specimen cup. I also learned that hula girls don't like it when you ask them what's under those cocoanuts. (Bnote #13)

On one of my early PC’s, I played Tetris so much that I went on a date and saw the movie “A Time to Kill” and my mind was constantly placing imaginary Tetris pieces into the movie screen. (Bnote #16)

It has become apparent, as I watch about two episodes of the 10 season series Stargate SG-1 per day, that even science fiction with mediocre production values is worth 150 hours of my time, not including spin-offs, straight to DVD movies, or surfing the internet for semi-nude pictures of Richard Dean Anderson of Stargate and McGyver fame. (Bnote #20)

There was a time when it was perfectly legal to shoot someone in the face at ten paces in Kentucky. That might have been fine for 1987, but in 2009 it’s illegal, even in Kentucky, to kill or attempt to kill someone. (Bnote #25)

Since I am in the unique position of being the first person to ever be faced with shouldering the responsibility of helping to raise a child, it’s only fitting that I start a new series of bnotes marking this momentous occasion. (Bnote #35)

So now I am driving a hybrid even though I think the environment can cram it with walnuts. Maybe if I use the hybrid to haul toxic waste to dump in a local nature preserve, things will balance out. (Bnote #36)

Long ago we agreed on a boy’s name of Sean Patrick. I realize that’s not a very Irish name at all, but Lucky McShamrocks might have been a little over the top. (Bnote #37)

I have no problem with reversing the gender roles that society tried to sear into my mind with countless cable reruns of Leave it to Beaver. However, if the classic Michael Keaton film Mr. Mom taught me anything, it’s that a stay-at-home dad must deal with child eating vacuum cleaners and male strippers dressed as astronauts. Does it bother anyone that the male stripper scene is one of the 2 things I remember from that movie? (Bnote #41)

If you are too lax, they have no rules and may become a serial killer. If you are too strict, they may lash out and become a serial killer, or become anti-social, and become a serial killer. All in all, the chances of raising a non-serial killer are slim. (Bnote #42)

The other day, The wife asked me if we should save the baby’s umbilical cord, as if I had any idea what the heck she was talking about. I don’t remember what my response was, but I’m sure it something to the effect of “Why, are we going to frame it?” or “Why, so we can show it to his or her prom date?” (Bnote #43)

We need to stimulate the economy, create jobs, finalize a health care bill, go green, continue to play a leadership role in world affairs, and complete the mega-death ray to stop the giant space octopus. (Bnote #44)

People keep asking me how far along The wife is. I say “since September” since the only time I calculate time in weeks is during the NFL season. Hey, that means since football season started in September, I can just tell people whatever NFL week it is…
Q: “How far along is The wife?”
A: “Pro Bowl.”
(Bnote #45)

I was a little concerned, since I had neither stared at the sun recently, nor smoked any peyote. (Bnote #47)

As I understand it, a doula is something less than a nurse or midwife, but something more than a hospital janitor coming in to stare at the mother’s hoo-hah during delivery. (Bnote #48)

By hotel room I mean UCLA Medical Center, by massive overdose of monkey tranquilizers I mean cancer, and by early this morning I mean June 11, 1979. The exact number of hookers remains unknown, and may in fact be zero. (Bnote #51)

I wasn’t really paying attention when the instructor mentioned the Sphincter Law, so I can only assume that the Sphincter Law is that the area of a sphincter is equal to the radius of the sphincter squared times pi. (Bnote #54)

During the relaxation exercise I had a sneezing fit and ruined it for everybody. Sorry, hippies. (Bnote #55)

Imagine the least handy person you know, and then imagine they have massive brain damage too. That’s about my level of handiness. (Bnote #57)

Often when The wife feels her move, it’s in the form of a “junk punch” (her words not mine) so apparently junk punches made the baby feel like a Bailey. . . What other kid in Bailey’s classes will be named after a part cyborg messiah and a mythological hero? (Bnote #58)

She says I’m mean, but I’m only being mean out of love. The opportunity for meanness is just a collateral benefit. (Bnote #61)

I highly recommend becoming a father, and recommend impregnating as many women as possible. (Bnote #62)

There is probably poop on our bedroom curtains, my hair, and possibly the ceiling…in the hallway…of the house 2 doors down the street. (Bnote #63)

The bongo/giraffe sound was played so much during the first month of Bailey's life that it was incorporated into my dreams even when it wasn't playing. How am I supposed to hook up with supermodels while winning the World Series when I'm being attacked by bongo-playing giraffes? Awkward! (Bnote #69)

We wanted to make sure she was in the right weight class for Baby Fight Club. Oops, I just broke the first and second rules of Baby Fight Club. (Do not talk about Baby Fight Club.) (Bnote #71)

There are many skills at which I am competent despite making a big mess, such as cooking, painting, yard work, and sex. (Bnote #75)

I don't think there would be anything wrong with Bailey going through life eating with a turkey baster. Nobody even notices stuff like that. (Bnote #80)

That means in 6 months her [Bailey's] weight has tripled. If I have learned anything from bad sci-fi movies, it's that something growing that rapidly will undoubtedly liquefy your insides for consumption, then lay its eggs in your husk of a corpse. (Bnote #89)

Bnote # 99 – Baby Bnote Episode Fifty: (MDU-II) Mobile Drooling Unit, Mark II

2011-02-14T16:30:00.000-05:00

A frenzy of babyproofing recently began at our house after Bailey decided to somersault off the side of our bed. Thankfully, having landed on plush carpet, she was fine--just a little scared I guess. I won't say which parent left her lying on the bed without full attention, but it wasn't me. If you use your Clue board game skills, maybe you can use process of elimination to figure out it was Colonel Mustard. Anyhow, just like a dog gets one free bite before being put down, Bailey gets one free base jump plummet before she gets thrown into the new Soviet-style gulag.

The gulag is equipped with 3 gates, one of which will protect Bailey, but eventually cause my death by causing me to trip down the stairs. Over 50 electrical outlets are now plugged. We have all those outlets to support our 50 toaster ovens. I'm starting to wonder why we don't just fashion for her a pen of some sort. She could play in it, and I would call it her "play-pen". It would be collapsible for easy storage, but would never collapse on a child, which would render it dangerous and make it virtually disappear from the market.

All this babyproofing occurred before Bailey performed very many forward crawls. Her primary form of propulsion previously took the form of backwards crawling, with some sideways and radial crawling thrown in for variety. If she was being watched, she would back herself into a corner. But if there was some forbidden and irresistible item nearby, like daddy's glasses, once my back was turned she'd bust out the forward crawl.

I'll miss the backwards crawling. It kept the floor clean under furniture and in corners.

Now that Bailey is crawling like crazy, nothing at ankle height is safe. I set her down and walked several feet away to wrap a postal package, and by the time I sat down she almost had my scissors. Then I remembered scissors are safe as long as your child doesn't run with them, so I let her play with them...kidding...I'm kidding. As I'm typing this, she's playing with the levels under my desk chair, which hopefully won't result in injury to both of us. Gotta go!

Look for the 100th BNOTE EXTRAVAGANZA next week!

Bnote # 98 – Pet Peeve: The Beer Snob Bartender

2011-02-07T11:52:00.001-05:00

In honor of Yesterday's drunken pseudo-holiday featuring the Green Bay Packers defeating the Pittsburgh Dirty Playing Rapists, my second pet peeve rant involves beer. (See Bnote #14 re: drivers backing into parking spaces for previous rant) In case you are not familiar with it, beer is a popular alcoholic beverage made from fermented, inedible crud. Its popularity belies the fact that beer tastes awful, like what you would expect carbonated bleach to taste like. People who drink beer convince themselves it tastes good in order to enjoy its pleasing effects, which include making members of the opposite sex look better, giving people an excuse to drunk-call ex's, and liver cancer. On occasion, I have imbibed a beer or two, or eight.

Beer comes in nearly unlimited varieties, but I categorize different beer according to DarthLawyer's Brew Spectrum™:

Category 1 (Piss category) - For people who were born without taste buds and want to get drunk cheaply, there are beers that are basically one part beer, 20 parts water, such as Natural Light, or beers that taste like elephant poison, such as Old Milwaukee. If you drink these, you are likely an alcoholic or a college student.

Category 2 (Talking animal category) - If you saw a talking frog, lizard, horse, or anthropomorphic beer bottle wearing a football helmet yesterday, it was a commercial for this category of beer. If you have a dad, he drinks this beer.

Category 3 (Bad import category) - Imported beer that you can get in any liquor store. Your dad might think you are mister fancy pants, but beer aficionados think a Killian's or Guinness belongs in the piss category. This is my usual beer drinking category.

Category 4 (Minor league pro import) - Imported beer that you might be able to get at a liquor superstore or fancy beer bar. This is your beer if you've considered making your own beer, which you want to call Studlager.

Category 5 (Biermeister brau) - For hardcore beer aficionados who must have at least one set of umlauts in their beer's name. To acquire this beer, one must travel to the small German town where it is made.

On to my pet peeve. I have no problem with the hardcore biermeisters. Everyone has to have a hobby, and collecting stamps rarely gets one buzzed. For the beer aficionados there are bars specifically dedicated to brewing their own beer or having every import you've never heard of.

Here is the problem. If you are bar hopping, especially in a town you aren't familiar with, or your buddy takes you to a bar you've never been to, you might stumble upon one of these special bars without knowing it. The way things should work if this happens and you order a beer from the bad import category or lower is that the bartender should say something like this:

"This bar specializes in brewing 74 varieties of its own beer...here's the menu. If you like an amber lager like Killian's you'd love our Golden Showers Ale."

Instead, here are the two responses I can remember from when this happened to me. The first time, without a word, the bartender just made a face as if he were offended and slowly shook his head after I ordered a Killian's. My friend had described the bar as a dive pizza place, so I assumed Killian's was too good for this greasy dive. I had to look to my friend to determine that I was supposed to, without a menu, randomly assemble words together describing a beer that the bar carried. So instead I just had what my friend had, which tasted like beer made out of flowers.

Another time, I was bar hopping in a city I'd never been to, and ordered a Sam Adams at a place that had been dubbed a pub, which of course made it super-authentic. The bartender smirked smugly and said "We only serve real beer here," but declined to further elucidate the meaning of "real beer" or offer me a menu. After determining that the 4 bottles of Sam Adams I consumed at the previous bar were in fact imaginary beers, I told the barkeep to "give me a real beer then." What I should have said is "You are basically a legal drug dealer who makes 1/100th the money of a real drug dealer, so find someone else to look down your nose at." Instead I drank my real beer and moved on to the next bar.

Since those unpleasant incidents, I have learned to order Hoegaarden, a beer that I like, which might come close to category 4 status, and is remarkably not the Belgian word for brothel. Hoegaarden is often served with an orange slice, which in no way detracts from my manliness for drinking it.

So please, if you are a bartender at one of these fancy beer bars, remember that some people will drunkenly stumble into your bar not knowing it's the kind where they post your picture on the wall if, prior to liver failure, you drink all 1,000 beers they carry. So don't be an a-hole.

Bnote # 97 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Nine: Separation Anxiety

2011-01-31T14:42:00.001-05:00

Lately Bailey has been suffering from what pediatricians and bnote authors call separation anxiety. If the wife or I are not within her line of sight, she begins crying hysterically, with REAL tears, unlike the fake, tearless crying she did as a newborn. Sometimes she will even cry unless someone is holding her. I usually get upset if supermodels are not holding me, but I don't make such a big fuss over it.

Now I can easily understand why there might be numerous people who just can't get enough of me. But all those others can admire me from afar via the interwebs. Bailey, on the other hand, is under my care and I have to eventually respond to her cries, lest my eardrums rupture.

Unfortunately, this new situation means that if I want to use the bathroom, shower, or use the bathroom in the shower, I either have to let Bailey cry hysterically, or take her with me. Although being left to cry for extended periods of time may scar her emotionally, those scars would pale in comparison to the damage done by watching her father conduct all of his bathroom transactions. I choose the crying. I don't think I can conduct my bathroom transactions with a baby watching me anyways.

Supposedly separation anxiety is an indicator that one's child has learned object permanence. Before that, kids believe that things cease to exist when they don't see them. I knew a college philosophy major that questioned whether she and the world were around her really existed, even though The Matrix didn't come out for another couple years to popularize the concept. The moral of the story is that an 8 month old may be smarter than some philosophy majors, and that if a tree falls and no one's there to hear it, it still makes a sound. It goes CRACK, Eeeeeeeer, BOOOM!

I'm not watching Matrix Revolutions right now. Unfortunately, object permanence means that this movie still exists even when I'm not watching it.

Regardless of the reasons, I need this phase of babydom to be over with soon. The other day, I put Bailey in her high chair so I could quickly thaw a bag of frozen breast milk in the sink using hot water. She started screaming from lack of holding, so I picked her up and tried to pacify her. I forgot about the milk bag, which melted, plugged the drain, and caused the sink to overflow. I need her separation anxiety to subside before I create any more homemade waterfalls.

Bnote # 96 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Eight: Extra-Curricular Activities

2011-01-24T10:58:00.000-05:00

I guess the wife is already preparing Bailey's college admission portfolio, as she has signed Bailey up for multiple baby classes, including baby swim class and baby music class. Maybe swim and music classes get you into Harvard, and otherwise you're stuck with Yale. The actual reason for the classes may in fact be to get me out of the house to salvage what dwindling social skills and hygiene practices I may still possess.

Left: Harvard; Right: Yale

Baby swim class or "Aqua Babies" at the YMCA is pretty fun, just watching Bailey smile and splash around. By the second class Bailey was kicking like a dolphin swimming on its tail. Pretty soon she will be a better swimmer than me, although that's not saying much. I never learned to swim, but apparently I learned to sink like a rock. I am scared to death of water and drowning. I'm also scared of heights, so if I were ever on that Fear Factor show, maybe they could throw me out of an airplane while in a tank of water. And maybe scorpions are in the tank too...they are creepy.

Baby music class or "Music Pups" basically consists of Bailey watching a bunch of toddlers make noise, occasionally interrupted by me walking in a circle holding Bailey, following a 20-something guy in kneepads (the teacher), and trying desperately not to step on anyone's child. Also Bailey gets to taste several percussion instruments, while I get to deposit them in the special "to be disinfected" tub afterwards. Mmmm...glockenspiel...tastes like chicken.

I can pretty much guarantee I am going to be dreaming about the "Wheels on the Bus" song regularly. Bailey already had a book featuring the song. It's also sung in music class, with the verse, "The driver on the bus says move on back, move on back, move on back." I'm not sure Rosa Parks would approve. In swim class the lyrics are changed to include verses such as "The babies in the pool go splash splash splash." So wheels are replaced by babies, the bus is replaced with a pool, and so on. Such lyrical changes are a phenomenon I discussed in a previous bnote regarding all children's songs being the same song. Now I see how it happens. "The daddy on the keyboard goes bnote bnote bnote..."

The teacher suggested we play the CD at home for our children. I made the mistake of playing it for Bailey every day for a week. Now I may need a partial lobotomy to get these kid's songs out of my head.

My dad suggested we sign Bailey up for "learning to change your own diaper" class, but 1) I don't think a child needs a diaper anymore if they are skilled enough to change their own, and 2) I enjoying making myself scarce when Bailey makes a poo-splosion so the wife gets to clean it up.

Bnote # 95 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Seven: Daddy Sick, Baby Sick

2011-01-17T10:57:00.000-05:00

I've had the good fortune to bolster my immune system via four consecutive illnesses dating back to November. Luckily Bailey was only sick for one or two of them, but the one time she was really sick was very challenging. She woke up one night wheezing and gagging, and after I changed her diaper, she puked in the dead center of our bed. Since our mattress is already comprised of 37% baby-related bodily secretions, we just threw a towel over the wet spot and tried to sleep.

I was already sick with an above-average severity cold and instead of resting, I had to keep an infant sleeping propped up, but she still woke me up crying every few minutes. I'm sure this is not a unique parenting experience, but it was unpleasantly new to me. So for a 36 hour period or so, Bailey and I just sat in a booger-encrusted, sleepless, whimpering pile of misery. Sick or not, Bailey will cry if I try to wipe her face or try to use the evil snot-sucking bulb/baby torture device.

Products for babies have awesome names like Boogie Wipes. It may just be slickly marketed wet wipes, but it's called Boogie Wipes.

So the preferred method of snot removal was to let her wipe it all over my shirt. By the end of the day, I had 30 or so badges of fatherhood scattered all over my shirt. I purposely wore a black shirt so I could show them off to the wife. I looked like a dirty chalkboard. The wife demonstrated for me why wearing black was a good idea by getting a big Bailey booger splattered across her white shirt, which was vastly more disgusting.

What makes the situation even more frustrating is when you take your child to the pediatrician and he says "There's nothing wrong with her, so stop wasting my times, you paranoid dimwits." I'm paraphrasing. I believe he actually said "Her lungs sound fine," but I could read the other quote in his body language. Anyways, we just had to wait it out for a few days until the boogie well ran dry. During that time Bailey wouldn't take a bottle because she couldn't breathe through her nose. So I stuck with solids. On one occasion, Bailey sneezed a spoonful of oatmeal onto my face, glasses, hair, shirt, and pants right after I had showered. No wonder I'm always doing laundry.

Bnote # 94 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Six: My Baby Beat Me Up

2011-01-10T13:14:00.000-05:00

So the other day I was trying to be a good dad by paying attention to my baby before her nap instead of just plopping her down to sleep. In an instance of reverse-karma, I was injured by this decision. I was making Bailey laugh by giving Eskimo kisses, or in an effort to be 15-20% less racist in 2011, I'll call it Aleutian Islander-style nose rubbing.

Either Bailey was super excited or she was waiting for her chance to exact revenge for the previous day's flu shot, and she took advantage of me removing my glasses to deliver a right hook...to my eyeball...with her fingernail. I have previously documented Bailey's proclivity for scratching things, so it may just have been her way of learning about eyeballs.

If you are squeamish, you might want to skip this paragraph. You know how sometimes when you cut yourself and your skin makes a little flap hanging out? Now imagine that on your eye, and that's what it felt like Bailey did to me. Like any adult, I immediately told on Bailey to her mother, who decided I should go to the emergency room to make sure my eye gash wasn't serious and wouldn't get infected.

I was holding my eye shut, so the intake lady at the ER asked me if I got in a fight. I guess that depends on Bailey's intent, which I don't know, since she can't tell anyone. I said no. Turns out I just had a superficial corneal abrasion, although it was kind of painful and very, very uncomfortable. They gave me an antibiotic ointment and a tetanus shot, as all babies are teeming with pathogens. I have since healed up, although when I was briefly using a makeshift eye patch consisting of a wadded-up tissue between my eye and my glasses, Bailey tried to grab it, possibly to finish off that eye.

Some have speculated that Bailey was simply trying to eradicate my dreaded eye peanut (See Bnote #47), although she selected my good eye, not my peanut-addled eye, so I'm thinking her motives were not altruistic.

My name is Bailey Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Whether I am the first grown man to be taken out with one hit from a 7 month old is unknown, but she hit me quicker than I could blink. I dare anyone else to get in her face and last for 60 seconds. Even before this happened, I had the lawyer foresight to tell people holding her to be careful of her clawing at them. I should have taken my own advice, but I'm around her so much, the odds of escaping injury were against me. The fact that according to the doctor, the scratch was directly in front of my pupil makes me wonder if Bailey might have a future as a marksman (markswoman?) with that kind of aim, and be a military sniper. Watch out Osama.

Bnote # 93 – The Year in Review 2010

2011-01-03T21:08:00.000-05:00

Obviously 2010 was a year of massive change for me, as I rapidly transformed from lawyer to shut-in. Staying home with Bailey is the best decision I have ever made, but I am creeped out by the fact my child is being cared for by someone who looks like a young Charles Manson. Although I bathe daily, I only shave maybe once a week, and often don't fix my hair. Maybe I would do those things more often if I ever left the house. I am forgetting how to drive, and how to speak to people who are not babies.

Since I have been wrapped up in baby happenings for quite some time now, I have grossly neglected current events. So it's time a bone up on the world around me in recent times. Apparently our country is now run by something called an Obama. I say "something" because I'm pretty sure Americans are not progressive enough to vote in a president with a more ethnic sounding name than Van Buren. Obama must actually be O.B.A.M.A. (Omniscient Biological and Mechanical Artifice), a half human, half robot, all-seeing entity created in a lab to rule us all. This cyborg president apparently wants me to buy health insurance for my child, even though her mother is a doctor, and can probably perform risky brain surgery on her if necessary. If the show House, M.D. has taught me anything, it's that every doctor can do any surgery or medical procedure in existence.

Will Smith and his ears will play the cyborg O.B.A.M.A., and Arnold Schwarzenegger will play another cyborg. I'm not sure which cyborg will be protecting John Conner and which one will be trying to kill him.

On the other side of politics, someone named Sarah Palin is constantly in the news for unknown reasons, possibly as a reality TV personality. It couldn't be because of her political career, which includes resigning her position of governor of a state that people forget exists.

The oil company BP apparently forgot to install an "off" switch when it started drilling for oil in the gulf of Mexico. The result was a massive oil spill, or the release of the dark god Cthulhu, depending on which media source you follow. I'm pretty sure if you live on the Gulf, you'd rather have Cthulhu.

ESPN decided to start showing some weird sport where players must get a ball into a net without using their hands, mostly using their feet, and sometimes using their junk, which is apparently quite difficult, because hardly anybody scored. The country where they had the tournament for this sport, which I will call "junkball", had to warn visitors not to sleep with any of their hookers, as they have 5 kinds of AIDS. The governing body of junkball then scheduled the next big tournament in a country where they had to warn homosexuals not to have sex or they would be put to death. Maybe the excitement of junkball comes from the danger inherent in the locale. The next tournament will be played at the Death Star.

Junkball seems too silly and painful to catch on, even on ESPN8, "The Ocho".

Probably some other stuff happened but I don't have any more time to look up news stories. As I have seen nothing in the news about monoliths, I will assume O.B.A.M.A. has kept their arrival under wraps to prevent a panic, as people generally fear black cuboids in the ratio of 1:4:9, especially sentient ones. I have now referenced 4 movies and 2 TV shows, hopefully you have seen at least one of them or you have wasted your time reading this.

Bnote # 92 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Five: Baby's First Xmas*

2010-12-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

Even though Bailey is probably too young to have any idea what's going on at Christmas time, it's certainly more enjoyable for me than it used to be. For instance I can tell Bailey the story of how Ebenezer Scrooge made Bob Cratchit his business partner, not because he was filled with Christmas spirit, but because he knew the company was going under and wanted to shift part of the partnership liability to Bob.

Since Bailey won't be old enough for smartphones or gaming consoles until she's 3 years old, we get to do Christmas gifts for her on the ultra-cheap, especially since we knew she would play more with the wrapping paper and boxes than the toys. Bailey is no longer interested in stuffed animal type toys, because they make no noise. She only likes toys that make noise (like the wrapping paper does), so for the next few years, there will be no peace and quiet in my house. Maybe I should learn to tune out the noise by learning some calm meditation techniques...yeah right! You don't know me very well if you think I am capable of sitting quietly and listening for my inner self. I will just wear headphones all the time to combat the noise. It's not as simple as stabbing out my eardrums, but less painful.

I don't know what's going on, but I like trees, lights, crinkly paper, and toys. This should happen every year. Make it happen.

My favorite gift of Bailey's is a Sesame Street remote control that makes Elmo, Cookie Monster, etc. noises when she hits the buttons. As Bailey is hereditarily predisposed to couch potato-ism, she loves to grab my approximately 20 remote controls, and even broke one, so hopefully her remote will distract her from the others. My luck dictates she will still prefer the real thing.

Bailey's biggest gift was a "jumperoo" which is a contraption you insert you child into so she can jump and bounce around, or in Bailey's case, do some Riverdance. The wife was jealous and wanted to know if they make adult jumperoos. I guess I know what to look for next Christmas for the wife.

Having been in contact with most of the people populating 3 entire states during our Xmas travels, all three of us are now sick. Also I have re-aggravated a back injury. My brother-in-law was nice enough to provide me with an air mattress so I wouldn't have to sleep in the car, but it deflated during the night because I am a lard-o, and was like sleeping on a shower curtain, hence the sore back. Hopefully I can ring in the new year sans-heating pad.

* For anyone who gets up in arms over wanting to keep the Christ in Christmas, a history lesson is in order:

1) Xmas has been used as an abbreviation for Christmas since before any of us were born, and the letter X has been used as a symbol for Christ in pre-literate times for over a thousand years, as X (chi) was the first letter in the Greek word for Christ.

2) Practically every Christmas tradition celebrated today, including the date, was borrowed from paganistic European winter solstice celebrations such as the Scandinavians' Yule and the Romans' Saturnalia, in order to help convert Europe. So if one really wanted to be a traditionalist, one might say "Keep the Yule in Yuletide."

Bnote # 91 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Four: Reflections on Days Passed, or I Don't Remember Any of This, Especially That Baby

2010-12-20T09:35:00.000-05:00

As a 33 year old, I can say with a high level of confidence that 6 or 7 months is not a very long period of time in the grand scheme of things. It only spans 1 or 2 dentist visits, a few haircuts and a couple underwear changes. But as I was uploading some new pictures of Bailey to my computer, I glanced back at the baby she was a few months ago, and somebody replaced my cute baby pictures with someone else's baby--possibly an alien baby.

I remember thinking Bailey was cute back then, but looking back at photos from the early days (AKA May 2010), my now plump, super cute baby girl resembled a shriveled old man, or a scrawny baby bird, or a baby gremlin. I'm not sure if I just loved her so much it made her more cute, or maybe she was cute then, but she got so much more cute that her old cute pales in comparison.

It is possible that aliens did exchange the current Bailey for the old one, possibly to see if humans could bond with an alien baby. My proof is that younger Bailey had more hair on her conical skull than current Bailey, so there must have been a switcheroo. The wife has tried to tell me that hair a baby is born with falls out and new hair grows, but I think my alien theory is entirely more plausible.

These pictures were taken exactly 5 months apart. That cannot be the same baby. Alien switcheroo is the only plausible answer. Also, switcheroo is my new favorite word, if it is actually a word.

Different baby or not, the last 7 months have been a blur. In many ways, having a baby has been less daunting than I expected. I've gotten more sleep than expected (possibly from learning to sleep through crying), and the river of baby vomit I expected to wade through on a daily basis never happened. Bailey hardly ever spits up, while her barrel-shaped torso and chubby jowls prove that she has been amply fed. So I can look back on those first few months fondly, assuming the aliens haven't altered my memories.

Bnote # 90 – Santa Claus

2010-12-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

He knows when you are sleeping...he knows when you're awake. No, he's not that serial killer who's been stalking you, he's Santa Claus. He's the guy who is based in part on a Christian figure and in part on pagan traditions, but is now probably just a trademark owned by some multi-national corporation (let's say Coca-Cola), and is allowed to commit unlimited counts of breaking and entering without fear of reprisal.

Down the chimney? I don't think so, pudgy.

I recall that when I was a kid, starting to get past the age where kids believe in stuff, Santa Claus was my sasquatch. I devoted one Christmas to capturing photographic evidence of his existence. Therefore, I rigged a tripwire made of dental floss or maybe kite string, and tried to assemble a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption to a camera to take his picture. No picture was taken, but Santasquatch still ate the bait cookies I'd left for him and deposited his presents.

The following year I moved on to a more CSI-like approach, examining the handwriting on the gifts. Although my parents were clever enough to use all caps to write "Santa" on the gift tags, as well as use different wrapping paper for the Santa gifts, handwriting analysis was how I debunked Santa Claus. Maybe in a later bnote I will tell the story of how I used DNA evidence to bring down the Easter Bunny.

In the modern age, it's hard to even visualize how Santa would make gifts. How many elves would it take to manufacture a playstation? Where would Santa get the materials. What would even be his business model? Unless he was stealing from the houses he brought gifts to, he'd be seriously in the red. Maybe if the rest of the year he used his sleigh to be a drug mule, he could break even for the year.

Drug mule possibilities aside, Santa Claus is a symbol for good in the world because 1) he promotes giving, kindness, and reindeer employment, and 2) I will be able to use him to make my child believe she will get less holiday loot if she misbehaves during the year. Thanks, Santa, you jolly old elf.

Bnote # 89 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Three: Chunky Monkey

2010-12-06T10:42:00.000-05:00

Bailey was very tiny when she was born, and was in the bottom 5% of newborns for her weight. However, she has gotten big quickly, and weighed in at 18 and a half pounds at her 6 month doctor's visit. That means in 6 months her weight has tripled. If I have learned anything from bad sci-fi movies, it's that something growing that rapidly will undoubtedly liquefy your insides for consumption, then lay its eggs in your husk of a corpse.

So my wee little girl has gone from itsy bitsy to a chunky monkey. I guess it's a good thing I refrained from implementing my plan to melt a tablespoon of butter into all her bottles. Half a tablespoon was plenty.

Now that her big baby booty (not to be confused with baby booties) serves as her center of gravity, she can sit without support. Her ability to lean over to grab a toy, then slowly pop back up makes her a human weeble-wobble.

Yes, more bad photoshopping. This time I did it while holding a sleeping baby. I'm sure this picture won't embarrass her someday.

Bailey's recent robustness may be attributed to her increase in solid food intake. I previously reported that we had added rice cereal to Bailey's diet. Shortly thereafter we added oatmeal cereal, which also comes in flake form and looks almost identical to the rice cereal. She gets 2 servings of dehydrated flake cereal, then for dinner she gets homemade baby food, usually sweet potato. She seems to like it, but it seems to come out in the same consistency as it goes in. Sorry if that's too much information, but things like that are sometimes the most notable parts of my day.

We tried giving Bailey pears but she hated them so much she gagged and choked on them. Yet she grabbed a lemon at a restaurant and sucked on it and loved it. Maybe next we will add garlic to the rice cereal.

Bnote # 88 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-Two: More Bad Photoshopping

2010-11-29T13:40:00.001-05:00

So apparently people are much more interested in seeing my baby's head cropped onto pictures than hearing me blab on. After all a picture is worth a thousand words. So without further delay... MORE BAD PHOTOSHOP!...

Bnote # 87 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty-One: More Musical Extravaganza

2010-11-22T13:08:00.000-05:00

By now you may have realized that there is slightly more singing going on in our household than a High School Musical video. Although instead of happy, good-looking young people (because all teenagers are beautiful and happy), there is predominantly a tired, middle-aged, graying man singing to an infant out of tune. I'd call it Crapped On: The Musical.

How many times do you think these kids had to do wacky jumps to get this picture right?

Bailey has a new favorite song, "Where is Thumbkin?" However, I think the visuals are what she likes more than the song. This becomes awkward when I get to "Where is Tall Man?" Obviously I have not performed this song with its visuals since before I knew a middle finger could convey concepts that transcend verbal language.

Anyway, once while I was singing the song, I abruptly stopped because I realized that "Where is Thumbkin?" is the same song as "Frere Jacques" and I became disillusioned. Then I started to think about how the "Alphabet Song" is the same song as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and I realized that they're both the same song as "Baa Baa Black Sheep". I am starting to think that maybe there are only like 5 different children's songs.

I mean, if you're going to remake a song, you should keep the lyrics intact right? That's what pop music singers do, right?...unless they're lame, and I'm talking Black Eyed Peas lame.

Bnote # 86 – Baby Bnote Episode Forty: Declaration of Baby Independence

2010-11-15T09:16:00.001-05:00

Somebody invented something called a learner cup, which can be used to teach your child to feed herself, and without making any more of a mess than usual. I tried it out, and Bailey took to it immediately. It was like watching apes use tools for the first time. Now if I can just get her to change her own diaper, she will be self-sufficient, and I will be out of a job.

The same day she started using the learner cup, Bailey sat up in her little chair like gravity didn't exist, so now we'll have to strap her in if we want to keep using the chair. Also, she can now support her weight with her legs if I hold her in place.

At this rate, she will soon be completely independent of her parents within the year. I have run some simulations, and this was one of the possible outcomes:

6 months: Bailey learns to walk months ahead of schedule.

7 months: Bailey learns to dance and becomes a bigger YouTube sensation than the Cuban dancing baby. She is invited to join Dancing with the Stars, which she wins.

9 months: Bailey learns to count, wins World Series of Poker.

11 months: Having mastered hand-eye coordination, Bailey becomes the first female and first baby to play Major League Baseball. She leads the Reds to a World Series championship.

14 months: Bailey retires from baseball to become Secretary-General of the United Nations, brokers a lasting peace between Israel and its Middle-Eastern neighbors.

18 months: Bailey invents time travel, goes back in time and kills Hitler in 1935, preventing World War II. Unfortunately that somehow causes her to never be born*, resulting in a paradox which destroys the universe. Whoops.

*I'm not suggesting Hitler is Bailey's ancestor. I'm suggesting, for instance, no WWII=no baby boom=my dad, a 6th child, is never born, hence Bailey is never born.

Bnote # 85 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Nine: More Book Reviews

2010-11-08T09:58:00.000-05:00

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle (1991)

This is the second tome in the quadrilogy, preceded by Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? in 1967 and followed by Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? and Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?

It took 24 years for the authors to painstakingly churn out 24 pages (that's a page a year for the mathematically disinclined), but it was well worth the wait. Whereas the classic original taught the names and sounds of regular, run-of-the-mill animals, Polar Bear is the literary See-and-Say for more exotic animals.

A word of caution for parents is needed for Polar Bear: If you actually bellow like a walrus when reading the walrus part, your child may start crying uncontrollably and fear you for awhile.

I don't want to give away the third volume, but Panda Bear includes even rarer animals. Although it's a daring premise, I'm not sure anybody's children need to know what sound a macaroni penguin makes.

Baby Woof Woof! (2009)

After reading the above-reviewed Polar Bear, this selection may seem like the dumbed-down or slightly de-smartified version. Even the author is listed on the back cover in tiny print as if she didn't want to be associated with the project.

But don't let it fool you...unlike Polar Bear, which tells you what the animals do, Baby Woof Woof! requires readers to guess which animal, for instance, likes to play with a toy mouse. I won't give the answer away, but after guessing, the child must turn a tabbed page to discover the animal's identity.

Also, the book contains some advanced vocabulary. If it weren't for the accompanying picture of a horse, I'm not sure I'd know what a foal is, and I've lived in Kentucky. So this book may serve as good material for SAT preparation.

Also, like Panda Bear, the sound a penguin makes is apparently important, so for everybody that skipped that day of school, a penguin goes "Onk, onk!"

The Real Mother Goose (2006).

This is a collection of nursery rhymes originally published in 1916, and not to be confused with The Real Mother Goose written by Selena Kitt in 2009, which is about Mother Goose and her sex slaves...seriously, not kidding.

Anyways, by an astounding coincidence, every nursery rhyme ever written was penned by individuals who were stoned off their arses at the time. What do you have to smoke to think of putting your wife in a pumpkin shell, or baking 24 blackbirds in a monarch's pie? Something strong, that's what. Something good and strong.

Snuggle Up, Sleepy Ones by Claire Freedman and Tina Macnaughton (2005)

This book is awesome. It makes me want to sleep.

Bnote # 84 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Eight: That’s Entertainment

2010-11-01T11:24:00.004-04:00

Keeping a baby entertained is not an easy thing. If you are inattentive, she gets angry, but if too much entertainment is provided, she gets overstimulated and becomes an out-of-control spaz baby. It’s a difficult balancing act, especially when you are as incredibly interesting as I am, and the baby becomes instantly overstimulated because her mind is consistently blown.

So I tend to focus on one of the few things I am less than fantastic at…singing. I am generally on key, but my range is about half an octave. Seriously, I constantly have to jump up or down an octave when playing Rock Band and once when we were playing it at someone else’s house, I tried to get the high note on “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” and it caused me to gag and choke and puke on someone a little bit. That someone happened to be my wife.

The songs I sing are usually bastardized versions of existing songs, although I often don’t immediately realize I am plagiarizing. For example, I sang:

You don’t need to be … grumpy
You don’t need to be … grumpy
You don’t need to be … grumpy
No you really don’t, a-no-no

…Which turned out to be “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah”.

When Bailey gets angry on the way home from someplace, which is every place, every time, the wife has to sing “Do Re Mi” from The Sound of Music for 20-30 minutes until she is hoarse. My wife may be trying to turn us into the Von Trapp family. That’s fine, as long as my daughter doesn’t fall for some Hitler Youth kid, like in the movie. I’ve always wondered how the Von Trapp children went from having to be taught how to sing notes by Maria’s “Do Re Mi” song because they never sang before, to winning a music festival while in fear of capture by Nazis by the end of the movie.

♫ My house is alive, with the sound of something resembling music, or possibly someone strangling a goat. ♫

Personally, I can’t hear the “Do Re Mi” song without thinking of the drinking version:

Do, the thing that buys me beer
Re, the guy who buys me beer
Mi, the guy who’s drinking beer
Fa, a long long way for beer
So, I see you’re drinking beer
La, I’ll sing while drinking beer
Ti, no thanks I’m drinking beer
Which will bring us back to beer

When singing fails to distract Bailey from whatever is distressing her, such as the budget deficit, slapstick sometimes gets the job done. Now that she’s started laughing regularly, I get a nearly 100% laugh rate simply by running back and forth across the room. Thankfully, I learned that all I really have to do is shift from one side to the other, thus preventing any unnecessary exercise.

Bnote # 83 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Seven: Sick Day

2010-10-25T11:55:00.001-04:00

Starting Thursday night I was feeling under the weather, and by Friday morning I was sick with a minor cold. I was going to call in sick to work, but my current taskmaster does not have a telephone, cannot speak, cannot understand what I say, and does not know what a sick day is. However, I still spent the day lounging in bed, so it wasn't much different than a sick day. I watched the movie Ed Wood, which was the best movie about a cross-dressing B-movie director I have ever seen. The best part was when Sarah Jessica Parker said "Do I really have a face like a horse?"

Johnny Depp seems to always play the same kinds of crazy characters. Also Sarah Jessica Parker always plays the horse-faced woman.

The only catch to my sick day was that I still had to care for an almost-5-month-old. Not wanting to possibly infect my child with her first illness, I of course had to take care of her without touching her, breathing on her, or being within several feet of her. Trust me, it's not as easy at it might seem to feed, dress, and diaper a baby using a pair of yard sticks like chopsticks, but I managed.

I really don't want Bailey to get sick from me. My dad always tells the story of how in the dead of winter he shoveled a 38 foot high snow bank from the driveway to take infant me to the doctor because I had a temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit. He also tells of how once when I was very sick as a baby he made a deal with god or Jesus or L. Ron Hubbard to take away my sickness and give it to him. Jesus Ron Hubbard being a merciful deity, instead of merely making me well as a response to my father's loving plea, made my dad sick as a dog in order to pay the piper. Or maybe my dad just got sick from my contagion around the time I got better. I personally would like to think there is an all-powerful master-of-the-universe who enjoys the poetic justice of giving people what they wish for, even if it means smiting loving fathers with the pox. What I've learned from my dad's stories is that I was apparently a sickly child, constantly on my deathbed. So I'd like to keep Bailey as healthy as possible, because I don't want her to grow up as feeble as her dad.

Bnote # 82 – Soda Pop

2010-10-18T08:03:00.000-04:00

Some people call it soda. Some people call it pop. Some call it fizzy lifting drinks. I always called every soft drink a Coke as a kid. I'll never be brainwashed by marketing like that again. Now excuse me while I grab a Band-Aid...I got a paper cut Xeroxing my resume, and I'll need some Kleenex and Aspirin for my cold. The wife calls it soda, but calls the device you buy one from a pop machine....weirdo. For the purposes of this bnote I will call it soda from here on.

I few weeks ago we got a new refrigerator, since having a fridge that makes ice and dispenses water is worth $1000 to some people. The old refrigerator went to the basement. Not one to waste a useful but secondary appliance, I resolved to fill it with a variety of sodas. At various times I have quit drinking soda because I heard that it makes you fat and rots out your teeth. Also, the phosphoric acid prevents calcium absorption...a 30-something I know has osteoporosis from drinking 10 Dr. Peppers a day for life. But if Mountain Dew is good enough for eastern Kentucky parents to put in their toddler's sippy cup, I guess it's good enough for me. So I bought five 12-packs for the new old fridge.

For reasons related to the dreaded eye peanut (see Bnote #47...do it), I try to avoid caffeine. I hardly ever drink it, and it has a strong effect on me. From my days as a root beer addict, I knew Barq's had caffeine and A&W didn't. So I bought some A&W root beer. I also bought 2 varieties of cream soda...Barq's Red and A&W Vanilla, because one color of cream soda is woefully inadequate. After some sleepless nights and minor hallucinations, I noticed that the vanilla cream soda had caffeine. So Barq's root beer has caffeine but A&W doesn't, and A&W cream soda has caffeine, but Barq's cream soda doesn't. How am I supposed to keep all this straight?

Now I remember that A&W root beer is like drinking candy. One can has more sugar than 2 full size Kit Kat bars. Also, Cherry Crush tastes exactly like a cherry Icee. So next time the wife wants a $6 Icee at the movies, she's getting Cherry Crush mixed with some ice sludge from the freezer section at the grocery store. Anywho, all this liquid candy has effectively reversed the pounds I have lost walking up and down stairs to retrieve diapers, bottles, etc.

Diet? No thanks, I'd rather have the equivalent of 2 candy bars with my lunch thank you.

Bnote # 81 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Six: Baby Krueger, Scarface, and I'm Running Out of Ideas

2010-10-11T10:12:00.000-04:00

My baby is Freddy Krueger. No, she doesn't kill people in their dreams...as far as I know. A few bnotes back I mentioned that her arsenal of baby weaponry included razor-sharp claws. They may not be as long as Freddy's, but they can do some serious damage. If you would like to get your nose pierced for free, just get within grabbing distance. Maybe we should get Bailey a scratching post, as she has scratched up our couch like a common housecat.

Baby nail clipping duty has been delegated to the wife, because the two times I tried to do it, I drew blood, and felt like the worst parent ever. She wiggles around so much and has tiny fingers, so instead of risking further bloodshed, I wisely let a person who has actually performed surgeries take over.

But it's easy to overlook her nail length, at least until somebody gets hurt. Since Bailey's favorite hobby is putting her fingers in her mouth, it's hard to prevent scratches. Maybe we could adhere some thimbles to her fingers. Last week we woke up to find Bailey had either scratched her nose badly, been attacked by an angry mongoose, or exhibited a sign that she is messianic child wizard Bailey Potter. A day or so after that scratch healed, another one popped up on her cheek. I started calling her Scarface, and now she's acting all gansta, pimp-slapping me and whatnot.

INTERIOR, DAY: BABY SCARFACE:

Say hello to my little friend!! (His name is Pinchy and he's a lobster.)

And now it's time to completely change the subject and say that I may have to start writing about something besides baby stuff. I know that nowadays everybody only wants to hear my musings about Bailey, but as a baby, she mostly just eats, sleeps, and excretes, none of which are extremely fertile topics for writing. The fact that I've churned out 36 Baby Bnotes is amazing. So until she makes another incredibly aimed poo shot or the like, I'm going to address some other pressing topics. After all, I am running out of similes. I have thus far compared her to the following, in order:

Parasite (lovable variety)
Jumbo shrimp cocktail
Go'auld alien from Stargate (if you know what that is, you're my kind of nerd--the nerdly kind)
Baboon liver
Leprechaun
Actress from a Hitchcock movie
Criminal/Democrat
Bearded lady
Pet you make yourself
Gitmo detainee
Serial killer
Bowling ball
Norse goddess
Livestock/Prize watermelon
WNBA star
Fawn (implied only if you can look past the sarcasm)
Bailey's Irish Cream
Half-cyborg messiah/mythological hero
Ninja (I just typed the typo "Nunja" which gave me a great idea for a TV pilot)
Line drive short hop to 3rd base
Elmer Fudd
Donald Duck (for his lack of pants)
Fashion plate
Lizard
Milk leech
Universe destroying singularity
Bobble-head
Jenna Bush
Troll-sasquatch hybrid
Bobble-head (note the pattern)
The stinky kid in school
Unstable hydrogen bomb
Shark
Octopus
Sharktopus (Just kidding, but EW magazine tells me this is a real movie on SyFy Channel)
Pumpkin
Trebuchet
Lawn mower (sentient variety, possibly available from Sears or Cyberdyne Systems Corp.)
Housecat
Freddy Kruger
Child wizard
Scarface

Bnote # 80 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Five: Semi-Solid Food

2010-10-04T11:25:00.000-04:00

At Bailey's 4 month doctor visit, her pediatrician said we could start feeding her solid food. He gave me a handout with some helpful tips, such as recognizing when your child is giving signs that he or she is ready for solid food, including sitting up, opening his or her mouth, or leaving for college.

The universal first solid food for babies is something called rice cereal, which in no way resembled rice or cereal...or food. The wife said it looked like instant potato flakes. How something supposedly made from rice turns into crystalline flakes is a marvel of modern science. When mixed with approximately 30 parts breast milk, it turned into something that made astronaut food look like filet mignon. Basically it was breast milk with a residue for spoon feeding.

Bottle feeding Bailey is already messy enough. If I knew there were 20 bibs hidden around the house I would have been using them already. A good analogy is that when you fill your lawn mower with gas, you can pour from the gas can to the gas tank with maybe a little spillage, but not too much. Most of the gas goes in the tank. Now, once you decide the lawn mower needs to learn to fill itself, you have to take spoonfuls of gasoline and pour them into the tank. The difference between the lawn mower and the baby is that the lawn mower doesn't try to grab the gas, suck on the spoon, or spit the gas all over itself. I am certain more cereal got on Bailey's bib than in her mouth. At least the bibs will be well fed.

What's with this lumpy milk? Why isn't it in a bottle? Why is it all over my face? Who are you people? Why are you looking at me?

After the second attempt to feed her the runny rice cereal I suggested to my wife that feeding Bailey with a turkey baster might be much simpler. She responded that the baby won't learn to eat that way. I don't think there would be anything wrong with Bailey going through life eating with a turkey baster. Nobody even notices stuff like that.

Bailey has actually done quite well so far. She made a face with the first spoonful which simultaneously indicated both confusion and realization that a whole new state of matter could be consumed. We'll see how she does when she graduates to pureed veg-o-mush.

Bnote # 79 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Four: (MDU-I) Mobile Drooling Unit, Mark I

2010-09-27T12:00:00.000-04:00

I have been told that at this early stage, being a parent is easier, because although Bailey can cry, and can soil things in her immediate vicinity, she can only inflict damage upon a limited radius because she is immobile. Or so I thought. Awhile back the wife said she saw Bailey roll from back to front. I have seen her repeatedly roll from front to back, although I feel certain that the weight of her disproportionately large head simply toppled her over on those occasions.

Only recently has Bailey come to the realization that she might be able to move forward or backwards. The other night she was repeating a strange movement. She would lift her legs up, pause, then slam them down, pushing herself back slightly. After doing this several times, she had moved back maybe half a foot. We were starting to wonder if she was going to learn the crab-walk before learning to crawl.

Then the pseudo-crawling started. I say pseudo-crawling because it's not what you think of when you think of crawling. Bailey seems to think that she can't simultaneously use her arms and legs to pull her forward if her head is up. So she will face plant, then drag her rug-burned noggin a half inch or so. It almost looked like she was trying to use the weight of that disproportionately large head to fling herself the distance, or use her neck to let her face help pull her body along.

MDU-I is equipped with a large, heavy, pumpkin-shaped head, which is used like a counterweight for propulsion, much like a trebuchet.

So face plant crawling is Bailey's new hobby, along with hand eating, and arm wrestling herself while giving commentary in Bailey language, which she did for about 15 minutes straight the other night. The hand eating and wrestling is acceptable, although milk-mouth plus hands equals sticky finger jam (yuck). But this whole moving around thing is going to put a serious crimp in my laissez-faire parenting style once she's adept enough at moving around to get herself into adventures, or god forbid, misadventures.

Bnote # 78 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Three: Book Reviews—Bear in Underwear and Other Children’s Literature

2010-09-20T08:51:00.000-04:00

We read to Bailey pretty regularly, although I think she mostly likes the pictures and rudely ignores the plot. Here is my first trio of reviews for some books we have read to her.

Bear in Underwear by Todd H. Doodler (2010)

The titular character in this new release finds a backpack in the woods that happens to be full of several pairs of underwear of various styles, sizes and colors. He proceeds to try on all the underwear until he finds the one he likes. The cover shows the bear in the underwear, which is made of cloth and is meant to be touched.

My problem with this book is that it encourages two questionable behaviors. First, it teaches children to keep whatever they find lying around, and if they find a sack of underwear in the woods, they should wear the underwear. Second, it teaches children to touch other people’s underwear while they are wearing it.

Fortunately, since this book has paper pages instead of cardboard, Bailey will have ripped out all the pages and possibly consumed them before she can read and understand this scandalous tome.

The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton (1984)

This piece of helpful bedtime propaganda is one of many children’s books intended to benignly brainwash one’s children into obedience, this time with the routine they must participate in before bedtime. Several anthropomorphic animals wash, brush their teeth, etc. before going to sleep on a boat. We are never told why they’re on a boat. Maybe there is no boat. Maybe it’s a symbol of isolation.

All I know is that my wife didn’t think it made sense for the animals to exercise right before bed, and after their bath. Although I agree that exercising after bathing is the incorrect order, I opined that back when I actually used to exercise, I would often do it before bedtime, as it would make me tired and ready to sleep. She argued that would make the bed sweaty and stinky. So at the very least, this work fosters debate.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd (1947)

This classic children’s book is a thinly veiled treatise on nihilist philosophy in post-war America. Written just two years after the end of World War II, the book is a demonstration of the loss and emptiness experienced the world over during the war. The author supplies the reader with a list of comforting things, then requires the reader to give those things up one-by-one. The passage “Goodnight nobody” clearly asks the reader to accept the reality of non-existence. Each scene grow a little darker, and at the end, the clock pendulum disappears, suggesting the end of time or life. The book itself, despite its outlook that everything is fleeting, has endured as a children's classic.

Bnote # 77 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-Two: Does TV cause Attention Deficit...What were we talking about?

2010-09-13T11:14:00.000-04:00

I have commented before on the dwindling attention spans of today's youth. Every new generation seems to grow up with at least one additional gizmo or technology. For my generation it was the internet, which allows me to look at baseball standings, national news, and naked pictures of Bob Dole all at the same time.

In an effort to delay the onset of this phenomenon in our brood, my wife has prohibited Bailey from watching TV until she is two years old. According to Dr. Smarty McRead, studies have found that very young children are more likely to develop Attention Deficit Disorder if they watch television, because, um, something about their cerebral cortex still developing. Basically they can't handle rapidly changing and moving visual stimuli.

It makes sense to me; however, the wife also likes to take Bailey on lots of car trips, and I noticed Bailey watching as trees zip by while we drive. I asked her why watching fast moving trees wasn't equally bad, and she had no answer. I fear Bailey may increase her likelihood of TADD, or Tree Attention Deficit Disorder, defined by DSM IV as "an inability to pay attention to trees." (citation needed)

In order to fall in line with Dr. Wife's orders, I have gone to great lengths to shield Bailey's eyes from the idiot box. This has been very difficult because during the long periods of immobility I endure while Bailey feeds or lies barely asleep in my lap or chest, I have watched about 95% of all television programs ever filmed.

So when the wife was about to let a grandparent plop her down in front of the TV on a recent visit, I had to declare shenanigans and intervene. When we told the grandparents and other older more experienced parents about the no TV rule and the possible link to ADD, the reaction ranged from dismissal to agitation. From the 1950's on, TV has been like an unofficial third parent to most children, so any suggestion that TV is bad for kids seems to them an accusation of poor parenting. I mean, I grew up on TV, and I guess I didn't grow up to be a serial killer (or did I?) although I have a poor attention span. Right now I am watching baseball, looking up fantasy football stats, stuffing diaper liners, and writing a bnote. That just makes me more productive, right?

Uncle Optimus Prime was my unofficial third parent. He-Man was the creepy cousin we didn't talk about.

My parents were not worried about me watching too much TV. My mom was just worried that by sitting to close to the TV, whatever gamma radiation she thought it emitted was going to make me sterile. Bailey is proof she was wrong on that one, barring mailman or cable guy infiltration.

Bnote # 76 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty-One: More Paranoia

2010-09-06T11:54:00.001-04:00

During my pre-fatherhood era, if I saw a little kid hurt himself, I'd say "It's okay, little kids are made out of rubber." Then my precious 5 pound, 15 ounce baby doll was born. I was so afraid that any movement, other than a well-scouted, slow-motion transfer, was going to break her. I am constantly afraid of hitting her head on a wall or tripping on the stairs when carrying her. The pediatrician at Bailey's first doctor visit snickered to my wife when I laid Bailey on the examination table as carefully as I would an unstable hydrogen bomb.

As it turns out, Bailey is far from defenseless. The wife tells me that fetuses are mostly full of cartilage that is still converting to bone after they're born. So babies are made of the same thing as sharks, making them nearly impervious to attack. Also, Bailey has proven to sport a vast arsenal of additional defenses, including razor-sharp claws, throat kicks, groin kicks, head-butts, and kung fu grip. Plus she can empty her bowels or bladder at will as a diversion, like an octopus squirting its ink. I think Bailey would be our best chance in the event of a home invasion or barracuda attack.

What's the difference between a baby and a shark? A shark cannot kick you in the windpipe.

Despite her toughness, I still fear that Bailey will spontaneously stop breathing during her sleep. The increased awareness of the tragedy of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome results in me checking to see if Bailey is breathing every 5 minutes. Everything I read, including the magnet that the wife put on the refrigerator, said you shouldn't have your baby sleep in your bed, because they could suffocate if you roll onto them or if they get stuck under blankets. Well, little Bailey won't really go to sleep too often without human contact. So she routinely ends up in bed with us.

Usually the wife will feed Bailey in bed at night, the two of them will fall asleep, and Bailey will end up with a breast draped over her face. While I can't think of a more pleasant way to sleep, for Bailey, it would be like me trying to sleep with a meatloaf dinner on my face. So every time I wake up in the night I have to check and make sure Bailey is breathing, and if there is a pillow or blanket within a foot of her face, I freak out. The other day, my uber-paranoia was so excessive I had to apologize to the wife for being a spaz, although I think she is used to living with a spaz for the last six years.

Bnote # 75 – Baby Bnote Episode Thirty: Feeding the Beast

2010-08-30T11:42:00.001-04:00

There are many skills at which I am competent despite making a big mess, such as cooking, painting, yard work, and sex. Feeding Bailey is another one of those skills. Apparently, milk comes out of a bottle faster than it does from a boob. I will take my wife's word for it, unless anybody wants to volunteer for an awkward study. Anyways, since the milk often comes out of the bottle faster than Bailey can swallow it, there is bound to be spillage. Predicting whether it will stream out of the left or right corner of her mouth, or surprise me and form a hidden trickle down her chin has become a study of mine. Also, if she falls asleep while feeding, chances are a whole mouthful of milk will gush out everywhere.

The other day Bailey ended up with milk all over her shirt. I changed her outfit, and was then very careful to keep milk off of it, wrapping a burp cloth under her chin. After several feedings (she's a snacker) taking these precautions, I went to feed her and apparently failed to screw on the nipple. I dumped half a bottle on Bailey's previously dry outfit.

Since bath day currently is scheduled only every third day at this point, in the intervening days, I'm trying to keep Bailey from reeking of sour milk. Adam Sandler in the classic film Big Daddy taught me you don't want to be the dad of the stinky kid. In fact, all of my parenting knowledge is derived from Big Daddy. Now excuse me while I put down some newspaper in Bailey's crib.

Of course during and after feeding comes the burping. Bailey usually wallows around on my chest or shoulder unsuccessfully seeking a functioning nipple. So I don't bother trying to position tiny burp cloths to protect my decade-old t-shirts, which by the end of the day are comprised of approximately 70% milk by volume.

I only get burps out of Bailey about 40% of the times I try. I don't know if that's good or bad. 40% is good when you're talking about batting average, but bad if you're talking about a quarterback's pass completion percentage. So I'm either the Ted Williams or the Ryan Leaf of burping.

What do Ted Williams and Ryan Leaf have to do with feeding my child? Exactly. Everything.

The wife has pointed out that we have different styles of burping. I use softer, quicker pats, while she uses fewer, harder slaps. She read somewhere that fathers usually are the ones that burp harder, so there's one more way in which she and I have transposed the traditional gender roles. My less progressive friends might say the next step is me wearing a bra and panties. The wife would probably say she wishes the next step is for me to be the one giving birth to a purely hypothetical second child.

Bnote # 74 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Nine: Play Time

2010-08-23T11:38:00.000-04:00

I previously referred to the Holy (or Unholy) Trinity of diaper changing (getting pooped on), feeding (getting puked on), and soothing (stoppage of arbitrary screaming). Well, I have freed up some time as my fathering skills have improved. Less diaper spillage means less cleanup time. It's easier to tell when Bailey is done eating, when that actually happens. Plus Bailey is less fussy, and my powers of soothing seem almost easy now. The other day, she started crying, but didn't need a change or a bottle. So I held her up under her arms and said "you're okay." She instantly fell asleep, bobblehead toppling over. That approach worked twice that day. I am the HypnoDad.

With all the time I am saving not cleaning up stains, I have instituted an afternoon play time. Bailey can't exactly do much besides watch at this point, but it means I have a captive audience. Here are some highlights from a one act play performed for Bailey by stuffed toys Corn Face (a corn cob with a face) and a rabbit driving a carrot car (self-explanatory):

Corn Face: Wow that sure is a big carrot. How did you grow such a big carrot?

Rabbit driving carrot car: I used radioactive uranium isotopes as fertilizer to grow mutant corn.

Corn Face: Isn't that dangerous?

Rabbit driving carrot car: Well, I do have three testicles now.

Later...

Corn Face: Does your carrot car run on environmentally friendly fuel?

Rabbit driving carrot car: Why yes, it runs on clean-burning ethanol.

Corn Face: Oh my god!!!! That's made out of my babies' blood!!!!!!!

So Bailey should grow up with a healthy enjoyment of theatre. I also sing to her a lot, and incorporate the stuffed toys. She has a stuffed eggplant with a face who sings, to the tune of Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, "Eggplant girl, she's been living in an eggplant world."

"Eggplant girl, she’s been living in her eggplant world, she is tired of her yam face man, and now she’s looking for a corn face man, that’s what I am. Whooh---oooh---oooh---oooh---oooh..."

When the stuffed toys have the day off (damn toy union), I read books to Bailey. My favorite is Barnyard Dance! Sometimes I get carried away with the cadence of these rhyming children's books and forget what I'm doing. For example, I read the following from Barnyard Dance!, plus my own additional interpretation:

Trot with the turkey
Leap with the frog
Take another spin with the barnyard dog

Buy me a drink
Sing me a song
Take me as a come cause I won't stay long

Last Dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the paaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiin..........

Bnote # 73 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Eight: Mini-Me

2010-08-16T11:15:00.001-04:00

Now that Bailey is about two and a half months old, she no longer looks like the default baby--red, smushed face and head, squinty eyes...you know the type. Not that she wasn't adorable as a newborn, but now her face has more character. Pretty much everyone who has seen Bailey votes that she looks like me. I think she looks a lot like pictures of me when I was a baby. Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I was adorable, as opposed to the bloated, hairy pile of mess I now inhabit. There is a bizarre pride to having your child look like you, as if I should feel pride that my gamete triumphed over my spouse's, when it's probably more like winning a coin flip.

If Bailey does grow up to resemble yours truly, she will be part of the occurrence I like to call the Jenna Bush Phenomenon. No, that's not a ride at a Texas amusement park. That would be the Jenna Bush Experience. The Jenna Bush Phenomenon may be stated thusly: Every American knew what President George Bush (the worse one) looked like before they saw his daughter, Jenna. She looks like a younger George Bush with a blonde wig, and since everybody saw her dad first, she will always be young, blonde-wigged George Bush to me. I do not wish that on my daughter.

Maybe Bailey will have my face but my wife's body. That wouldn't be disturbing in the slightest.

Perhaps I am not the ugliest man in the world (after all there are billions of men in the world), but I don't think I would make a very comely lass, although I have been told many, many times that I have beautiful eyelashes...not exactly what a guy wants to hear. Not that Bailey needs to be pretty, but I don't want her to turn heads in horror either, just because she looks like her father. I simply hope for Bailey to be plain enough that when she's a teenager, I won't have to murder her suitors weekly, but not as hideous as some sort of troll-sasquatch hybrid, such that the townspeople try to burn her alive. I just want Bailey to be beautiful on the inside...you know, clean, glistening internal organs.

Bnote # 72 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Seven: Super...Dad? Wait, What?

2010-08-09T09:03:00.002-04:00

Although I have watched Bailey all day on my own several times, this week marked the beginning of the wife's new job, and hence the beginning of my new full time job as an entry level stay-at-home-dad-lawyer, esq. I did in fact also begin doing my lawyerin' at home gig this week too. Here's a run down of my first day on the job, with times approximated (possibly made up):

6:38 a.m. - Wake up to crying infant.

6:52 a.m. - Realize where I am, and that I am an adult with adult responsibilities. Bummer.

6:53 a.m. - See daughter's first smile of the day, realize adult responsibilities are worth it. Celebrate with 3 minute shower.

6:57 a.m. - Check email to schedule house showing for potential tenant responding to Craigslist posting.

6:58 a.m. - Check responder's Facebook page to assess whether responder is on the level or a deranged maniac who will brutally murder whomever shows the house. I decide there's at least a 51% chance responder is not a serial killer, will proceed with showing house.

7:00 a.m. - Diaper change. Bailey poops on two recently washed changing table items. I treat said items with industrial size stain remover vat.

7:02 a.m. - Start washing cloth diapers. Damn the environment and the cloth diaper industrial complex for making the wife think she needs to be socially conscious. Eat English muffin while sifting through soiled diapers. I hope that's a raisin.

7:10 a.m. - The wife has left, so on my own now...Bailey's first feeding of the day, unless you include the several times the wife fed her in the night while I slept peacefully.

7:12 a.m. - Turn on TV while feeding, watch 100% not-illegally-downloaded episode of Breaking Bad. If Bailey grows up to be a meth dealer, we'll know why. That's right, meth in the wife's breast milk.

7:47 a.m. - Diaper change.

7:52 a.m. - Bailey is fussy. I walk her around the house singing the following song to the tune of that little league chant ("Everywhere we go, people wanna know, who we are, so we tell them, we are the mighty mighty ________________[insert team name]) substituting in "Little baby Bailey, Little baby Bailey, Little baby Bailey, Little baby Bailey, YOU...ARE...THE LITTLE BABY BAILEY") Somehow that is the one thing I sing that she likes the best.

8:17 a.m. - I finally get Bailey to sleep.

8:18 a.m. - Call my dad to see if he can show the house. Although it's an hour and a half drive for him, he must periodically visit that city because they are the only place nearby that will take his blood without making him pay for it. (Long story...hopefully Bailey and I only get certain family genes).

8:20 a.m. - Put diapers in the dryer. They will all be wet again within 2 days.

8:27 a.m. - Bailey is awake again, diaper, feed, repeat.

8:47 a.m. - Bailey asleep, go to finish touch-up paint job upstairs. Some awesome interior decorator wannabe painted most of the house four different shades of "Apricot" colored paint, from lightest to darkest: Pale Honey, Apricot Ice, Dusty Apricot, Apricot Feces Smear.

9:32 a.m. - Re-reviewed construction plans relevant to lawyer work project. "Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in!" - Michael Corleone

10:04 a.m. - Feeding with one hand, calling tenant, then realtor, then tenant with the other hand, trying to stay in the one spot in our house that gets cell phone signal.

10:27 a.m. - Call to old boss re: construction project. I must have left the square foot where my cell phone works so we got cut off. When I called him back, he said he'd been talking for a minute before he realized I wasn't there any more. We lawyers love to hear ourselves talk.

11:04 a.m. - Bailey asleep.

11:05 a.m. - Eat lunch. Bailey, see how much easier it is eat 3 times a day instead of 20? I also thawed out both salmon and pork chops for dinner, since the wife is a picky eater.

11: 45 a.m. - Awake time. Diaper change. I had to first get the diapers out of the dryer. I dumped them out on the floor. Why fold when they will be used up and in a pile within two days?

11:51 a.m. - Feeding. Bailey pees all over my shorts. Feeding completed minus shorts. Not sure if feeding an infant in my underwear is legal. Note to self: research this issue, bill to wife.

11:59 a.m. - Bailey asleep. Went upstairs for clean shorts and post-lunch constitutional.

12:13 p.m. - Started writing this bnote. All the days kind of run together now, so I better get this action-packed drama down while I remember it.

12:36 p.m. - Bailey starts crying, feeds for 30 seconds, goes back to sleep. I guess she just wanted to show me she owns my ass.

I may be ridiculously cute, but cross me and I will, in one stroke, strategically pee on my shirt, your shirt, your pants, your underwear, the furniture you're sitting on, the floor, and any nearby valuables. I own you.

12:48 p.m. - Finish painting, discover mysterious 5th shade of apricot paint that I can't match.

12:54 p.m. - Awake again, feeding time. I notice and am very disturbed by Bailey's pulsating soft spot on her head.

1:08 p.m. - Already out of fridge milk, time to thaw a titcicle. I forgot I was running it under hot water and almost let the sink overflow while writing bnote.

1:17 p.m. - Diaper change. I don't remember feeding her Skyline Chili, but that's what seems to have come out of her.

1:22 p.m. - Checked the mail. And the wife says I never leave the house.

1:28 p.m. - Tummy time. My little bobble-head is developing excellent head control, except when she head-butts me, unless that's on purpose, which it could be.

1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. - A blur of the Holy Trinity of feeding, changing diapers, and soothing, along with the Unholy Trinity of spit-up, trying to poop on Daddy, and screaming for no discernible reason. Wait, both Trinities are the same thing. Deep.

5:31 p.m. - The wife returns home, does not want salmon or pork chops, orders pizza. Just kidding.

I may have left out some feedings or changings, so don't call child services on me. All in all, I feel like I accomplished a lot on multiple fronts. Heck, I could probably have taken care of twins. To any deities who may be following this bnote, I am just kidding, and would appreciate you not blessing me with twins in the future as an ironic twist, despite the many future baby bnotes it would help generate. Thank you.

Bnote # 71 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Six: The Dreaded Doctor Visit

2010-08-02T07:30:00.000-04:00

Last week Bailey turned 2 months old and we took her to her pediatrician for the first time. For her first month, Bailey had to visit the doctor every week to make sure she got her weight up. We wanted to make sure she was in the right weight class for Baby Fight Club. Oops, I just broke the first and second rules of Baby Fight Club. (Do not talk about Baby Fight Club.)

We were the only people in the waiting room when the nurse came out and called for "Barley." She then corrected herself to call for Bailey. The nurse said Barley would not be the weirdest name she had heard, and I said that our other child's name was "Hops." Either the woman had some sort of medical condition causing extreme laughter, or I am the funniest person to ever live, or doctors are just really boring. All are plausible. What I'm trying to say is she busted a gut over that off-the-cuff gem.

Bailey's new doctor was Dr. Steinberg (I think that's a Latino name), who was quite pleasant, but got out of dodge before the 5 shots were to be administered. Bailey was already screaming at this point and was obviously hungry as she was gnawing on the wife's arm. The "Barley" nurse returned and first gave her an oral vaccine, saying that babies sometimes don't like it. I said that Bailey was so hungry that it could be motor oil and she would still chug it. Again, I was met with pathological laughter.

When it came time for needles, I quite intentionally allowed Jess to be the one holding her down as part of my plan to have Bailey hate me less than my wife. When "Barley" nurse started sticking needles in Bailey's leg, the response was not the instant screaming I expected. Instead, Bailey's face turned red and she made an intense screaming face, but it just froze that way. After a good 15 seconds, she took a slow motion deep breath, and the scream faded into the same frozen face. It was like scream overload, or maybe it was such an intense scream that it caused a rift in the space-time continuum, time sped up, and there were actually several hours of screaming compressed into what we experienced as a minute or so. Sounds plausible.

Bailey's scream upon 5 shots in succession may have destroyed neighboring galaxies, and/or parallel dimensions.

Bnote # 70 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Five: Crying

2010-07-26T09:46:00.001-04:00

Although I am told babies can't say their first words until much later, I was convinced Bailey said "yuck" the other day although it may just have been the sound she made barfing up a white foam I can only assume was milk, unless she snuck some mayo, sour cream, or tartar sauce out of the fridge without my knowledge.

In actuality, 99.9% of Bailey's interpersonal communication consists of crying. Although everybody knows babies cry, it's really more like screaming, because I've yet to she a tear shed through the frequent crying. Maybe the babies are fake crying, or like lizards and other lower life forms, have non-functional tear ducts. (I am too lazy to Google an animal that really has non-working tear ducts, so let's just go with lizards.)

Over the past 2 months, the wife and I have learned to understand our new infant's language, which consists of 3 types of crying:

1. The Hungry Cry - A high pitched scream, constant in its tone, lengthy in its duration, and may be interrupted momentarily by sucking mouth motions, as if to say, "Mom (or Dad), how dare you try to shower, eat, or drop a deuce! Feed the almighty Milk Leech!"

2. The Diaper Cry - Starts as a low pitched, mildly uncomfortable bauble, slowly rising, filled with grunts and writhing, increasing in volume and intensity as various bodily excretions fill each and every bodily crevice. I have developed something called the 5 minute rule, wherein, the diaper is not to be changed until 5 minutes after the first fart, to prevent Dad being pooped on. However, it's hard to follow the rule when The Diaper Cry reaches its unhappy crescendo. There is a similar cry emitted when she is cooking up a diaper-splosion.

3. The Car Seat Cry - Bailey hates being put in a motor vehicle, and lets us know with a mournful, low wail. The wife has stated that hearing this cry on a lengthy trip makes her nauseous. This is one reason I never want to take her anywhere, and never want to leave the house again. This cry is followed by a prolonged period of despondent pouting after arrival at the destination. It doesn't work on me, but it makes my wife believe she is the worst mother ever. Babies are so emotionally manipulative.

4. The Wild Card Cry - Sometimes she just mixes it up to see if we're paying attention, perhaps as part of an experiment on the effect of sleep deprivation on paraglarvimagzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......................

Bailey's experiment journal entry #425 - "It's quite fascinating to see them scramble helplessly during the Wild Card Cry. My diaper has just been changed, I'm spitting out milk...each parent starts wondering if the other punched me or something. It's very enlightening to play them against one another."

Bnote # 69 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Four: White Noise

2010-07-19T11:50:00.001-04:00

According to the baby books I have read, or alternatively, have been summarized to me by a certain physician wife of mine, babies are soothed by white noise. It apparently approximates the inner sloshings of mom's body inside the womb. Somehow, the inside of a woman's body sounds like a vacuum cleaner or fan.

Since we have several fans and a vacuum cleaner, the wife naturally purchased stuffed animals that make their own variety of monotonous sounds. First was a giraffe that made cricket sounds, waterfall sounds (which increased my nighttime bathroom trips by 5000%), and bongos interrupted every 10 seconds or so with the braying of a giraffe, which sounds vaguely like someone vomiting into a didgeridoo. the bongo/giraffe sound was played so much during the first month of Bailey's life that it was incorporated into my dreams even when it wasn't playing. How am I supposed to hook up with supermodels while winning the World Series when I'm being attacked by bongo-playing giraffes? Awkward!

Now that the giraffe has been relegated to the car for fear it would become my Freddy Kruger, the Sleep Sheep has taken over. The Sleep Sheep somehow does not make any noises remotely related to sheep. I think there were 4 different sounds, but we stuck with ocean waves, since we could imagine that we were on a beach instead of sleeping hundreds of miles from the closest beach.

Naturally, the Sleep Sheep makes whale sounds. You have to buy Sleep Whale to get sheep sounds. Sleep Whale is a non-registered trademark of non-existent entity, Bnote, LLC.

I have previously mentioned watching a video called The Happiest Baby on the Block, which was created by pediatrician Harvey Karp, MD for parents like me who were too lazy to read his book. His keys to soothing a fussy baby were the 5 S's, namely swaddling, sideways holding, shushing, swinging, and sword-swallowing...no it was sucking...not on swords.

The shushing part of the S's consists of simulating the white noise by putting your mouth right next to the baby's ear and making a SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH sound louder than the baby is crying, so loud that if you did it in public, someone would call child protective services on you. But it seems to work, and Bailey has not given any indication of hearing loss...yet.

Bnote # 68 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Three: Zombie Dad

2010-07-19T11:47:00.001-04:00

I am concerned that I have become a zombie. The main trait of zombies is that they are preoccupied with feeding. As a result, they trudge around mindlessly. I am preoccupied with “feeding”, and trudge around mindlessly as a result.

Zombies were once human until they started changing, and the result is something disgusting. I was definitely human, until I started “changing”. I continue “changing”, daily…several times a day, when not feeding, and the result is always disgusting. Maybe I have gone beyond regular zombie, and am some sort of uber-zombie, like a boss in a Resident Evil video game. Horror movies tell me that the only cure is a bullet to the head or decapitation.

Insane comic book writers who have run out of ideas have produced comics where all the superheroes become zombies and are extra-dangerous. So look out for Darth Lawyer issue #17 “Zombie Darth Lawyer vs. Zombie Eye Peanut”. In that issue, Darth Lawyer uses his powers of litigation to file a motion to eat the judge’s brains.

Okay, this is the part where all the moms crucify me. It's true that I am sleep deprived, but at night, The wife is the one doing all the work, because she's the one swollen with milk. I can only be swollen with milk as a result of drinking too much milk with pancakes or whatnot, which is not useful to an infant. I have offered to perform night duties, but she doesn't have a big enough backstock of frozen milk yet for Bailey's milk popcicles. Before the move, I had started the full-time dad thing, so I have gotten more adept at feeding and changing, putting me somewhere between mediocre and terrible at my duties.

Despite the fact that the wife is doing the baby work at night, I am still exhausted from waking several times per night, and having recently moved every scrap of belongings we own. I also had a recurrence of a 24 hour illness that makes me so weak I can't hold a pen to write properly, making me only slightly more of a wuss than I already was. Maybe it's the zombie virus.

My computer also died (computer zombie virus?) and we had no internet yet, so that's why the world was minus one bnote last week. I have a gleaming new HP computron and internet access now, so I'll drop not one, but 2 classic new bnotes on ya today.

Bnote # 67 - Moving

2010-07-05T09:46:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, there lived two malcontents who decided they needed a change from living in Cincinnati. With the assistance of a complicated computerized residency matching system, said malcontents were deposited in a new town. Shortly thereafter the malcontents realized that Cincinnati wasn't so bad. In case you haven't guessed, the malcontents are none other than the wife and I.

We are finally moving back to Cincinnati. With costs rising, we decided to take everything but the big furniture in a U-haul. Isn't that how everyone likes to spend a holiday weekend?

I now call upon all of my minions to forever boycott U-haul. We reserved a truck, but they don't contact you until less than 24 hours before pick-up. The pick- up location was some seedy pawn shop several miles away. I show up and the person who does U-haul stuff is not there. After making me wait over an hour, they tell me they can't give me the truck, which is sitting right there in the parking lot.

I don't normally curse at strangers. I usually reserve that for family and friends. I am a reasonable person, but I don't think it's unreasonable to drop 3 f-bombs on somebody under the circumstances. I was asked to leave, which was fine since I didn't want to buy any stolen tools, watches, or guitar amps.

I had to zoom to Penske 5 minutes before they closed and pay twice as much for a smaller truck. Again, avoid U-haul if you care to stay in my good graces and if you want to prevent moving mishaps.
It took two days and two trips to move our things, 95% of which is junk that sits in the deepest darkest corner of our abode, unused, like some abandoned character from a Toy Story sequel.

When I returned home, my computer had exploded, and apparently has a crashed hard drive, or possibly computer AIDS. I'm writing this on some strange machine of the wife's, emblazoned with a fruit-shaped logo. Between the computer problems and the two days of moving It's been nice to have the extra stress and exhaustion to add to the baby-induced sleepless nights.

The luxurious new home for all our neglected crap.

Bnote # 66 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-Two: Onesies and Other Infant Fashions

2010-06-28T08:12:00.000-04:00

Prior to Bailey’s arrival, I heard people extol the virtues of the enigmatic clothing item known as the onesie. A onesie is a supposedly functional piece of baby clothing, given a cute sounding name to make it seem even better. I’m not sure I’m convinced.
The onesie is definitely better than putting any kind of pants or shorts on a baby. The wife put shorts on Bailey one day and I commanded that madness to cease. But I still prefer a t-shirt to a onesie. I still have to snap and unsnap the onesie onto a squirming baby for every diaper change, and since Bailey has proven to me that no extra layers of clothing or blankets will prevent the inevitable daily seepage on my clothes, bedsheets, or priceless first editions of Dickens novels, I’d rather stick with the t-shirts.

So what’s the rationale behind preferring onesies over t-shirts? I mean, is it obscene to have your baby hanging out in a t-shirt and diaper with no shorts? I certainly don’t want Bailey to be arrested for indecent exposure. I don’t think going all Donald Duck and not wearing pants is inappropriate, but I have no concept of what’s appropriate parenting behavior. Is it ok to change a diaper in the middle of a crowded restaurant? Will the parents relate, and the non-parents pity me, except for the guy trying to eat his bowl of chili without barfing? Clearly family and friends have no qualms about watching Bailey get changed, so why does the diaper need to be covered?

One thing that is clear to me is that every single item of baby clothing in the entire world snaps differently. I try to stick to the same few outfits, which is difficult with all the poo flying everywhere, because I don’t want to have to learn additional fastening methods. Most onesies have 3 snaps at the crotch, but there may or may not be snaps in the back, and their number and placement are as varied as our current sleep patterns. A few days ago I pulled out a t-shirt, thinking it would be something that would simply pull over her head. Instead I had to determine the exact order to in which to snap several snaps that were buried deep inside various fabric folds.

I recently watched a video that several people demanded I watch, called “The Happiest Baby on the Block.” This video revealed the secrets to calming a baby using the 5 S’s, the most important of which was swaddling. I have combined these techniques, which the wife calls my Jedi mind tricks, with a Velcro swaddler we received as a gift. Although not as fashionable looking as the “It’s all good with grandma” dress and matching bow, it’s a life-saver. I call it the baby straight jacket. And when I wrap her up in it, I sing “baby straight jacket, baby straight jacket” like a German death metal band might. I burst into song pretty regularly, which makes fatherhood a little easier.

Every once in awhile we let Bailey be a fashion plate and let her out of the ♫ ”baby straight jacket, baby straight jacket.” ♫

Bnote # 65 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty-One: Diapers

2010-06-21T08:07:00.001-04:00

This bnote should pretty much write itself. The vast majority of my humor centers on bodily functions, and I now live with a person who poops her pants several times a day. Since my contributions to feeding Bailey are minimal at this point until the wife deems her old enough for a bottle, I have overcompensated by changing almost every diaper (or as the wife calls them, “diapies”) when I am around. I have to say that I sort of enjoy changing diapers, not because I like to mess with poo (there’s a big difference between liking to talk about poo and actually conducting poo-related transactions) but because Bailey is usually active and alert when she’s being changed.

I am still improving on my technique, and running into some repeated problems. Sometimes I leave the wet wipes open and the top wipe dries out for the next time. Considering that we use 10 boxes of wipes every 5 seconds, I should not be wasting them. Also, when I remove the soiled diaper, Bailey wants to put her feet in it, so I dispose of it. Before I can get her wiped and get the clean diaper in there, Bailey likes to sneak another pee or poo in there. I need to be ready with the new diaper immediately, but I am just not quick enough on the draw to avoid all surprise splatterings.

The wife decided we were going to use cloth diapers for various reasons from cost to skin irritation to my wife being a mega-hippie. However, the cloth diapers of today do not remotely resemble the worn out rags I recall my parents using on my little sister. Modern cloth diapers are velcro-bound, removable-linered, colorful, slick devices that seem to be coated with the same stuff they make space shuttle hulls out of. Unfortunately, since Bailey is very small, even the small diapers are too big and result in leaks. Someone pooped our bed the other night. I’m not going to point any fingers, but…

When I told people that we were going to use cloth diapers, every single person, without fail, gave me a terror-filled head shake and politely but firmly told me I was headed down a path of poo-covered doom. Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is. Instead of the trash, the diapers go into a contraption that seems to be designed after nuclear waste disposal canisters. A washable bag within can be carried to the wash. Twice a week or so a batch of diapers must be washed. We don’t have to wash every other day because although Bailey needs to do her business more often than a 90-year old, the wife seems to have bought every cloth diaper on the planet. Although saving money is one motivation behind using cloth diapers, I’m pretty sure we spent more on cloth diapers than on our new house.

Yes, the diaper brand is really called “Bum Genius.” We chose that brand by flipping a coin because we couldn’t agree which name was more ridiculous between “Bum Genius” and “Fuzzi Bunz.”

Bnote # 64 – Baby Bnote Episode Twenty: Bath Time

2010-06-14T08:35:00.001-04:00

The wife has been nice enough to let me conduct the baths so I can actually participate meaningfully in Bailey’s upbringing. Who knew that bathing my baby would be the most fun I’ve ever had in my whole life? Who knew I was capable of saying something like that without being sarcastic? Most of the time, Bailey is either asleep or feeding, or both. (I would be huge if I could eat in my sleep.) Bath time is fun because Bailey is alert, and flails all over the place. We probably call her Bailey less than we call her “squirmy worm” as well as several other inexplicable nicknames, such as little bun, tadpole, stinker, snickerdoodle (no idea where I got that), and Elmer Fudd, not because she looks mostly bald, but because she constantly wants to kill wabbits.

Sorry I got off topic. Since Bailey’s belly button is not completely healed up yet, she just gets what amounts to sponge baths. Once her naval blockade is lifted, she will graduate to something called a wash pod. The wash pod is proof that my wife will buy anything that is of European design and questionable functionality. The wash pod is a bucket that costs $25. Some kind-hearted person purchased this item for us in the orgy of gift-giving associated with our 4, yes 4 baby showers. So even though I didn’t spend the $25, I still don’t condone spending that much on a bucket. I haven’t bought any buckets lately, but I’m guessing one might procure a bucket from Walmart or a dollar store for $5.

The creators of the wash pod might point out that their product has a foam insert with a butt-shaped imprint for baby to sit on. Somehow, that small piece of foam is worth $20, and apparently cannot be duplicated by placing a towel in the bottom of the $5 bucket. I am told that as a baby I was washed in the kitchen sink. I turned out alright without being washed in a fancy Euro-bucket. I just hope some walrus doesn’t show up demanding his bukkit back.

I’m still not sure how I am supposed to clean the lower half of my child in the Euro-bucket, or rinse the soap off of her. For now, I’ll just enjoy the ease of the sponge baths, if one considers wiping down a break-dancing, grunting infant easy, especially when the possibility of poop blowout on our kitchen counter is a constant threat.

Bnote # 63 – Baby Bnote Episode Nineteen: Super Mom

2010-06-07T07:57:00.000-04:00

One thing that has become abundantly clear from the start of parenthood is that my wife is already an awesome mom. Everything seems to just come naturally for her. Meanwhile, try as I might, most of what I do seems clumsy and awkward. While she changes diapers effortlessly, I am likely to get pooped on. There is probably poop on our bedroom curtains, my hair, and possibly the ceiling…in the hallway…of the house 2 doors down the street.

The breastfeeding makes me feel a tad useless, although I usually wrap Bailey up and hand her off in the proper configuration. The wife normally uses the “football hold” and naturally calls out “hut hut hike” when I hand Bailey off. My wife is awesome. Another mom said that she seems like a breastfeeding savant. She could probably feed 3 infants and the guy at the end of The Grapes of Wrath all at the same time. I’m just glad she finally can get the self-esteem boost that comes with increased bust size after being flat-chested for all those years. (If you have never seen her, I am being sarcastic…so slightly less of a jerk.)

Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders, OJ Simpson, all could have been Hall of Fame breastfeeders.

I sound like an idiot if I baby talk, while the wife can soothe Bailey with her mere words. Before Bailey was born we had a discussion about eliminating our copious swearing once the baby was born. I believe she has substituted the word “goodness” in baby talk for every swear word. She says “goodness” as many times a day as I blink. It’s like a grandma’s curse word. It must be working though because she has completely stopped cussing, while I am still struggling, ~~damn it~~ darn-diddley-doodley.

Since the wife had to start maternity leave early she has to make up 2 weeks worth of her residency in late June and early July. So I will be taking over for a couple weeks before I take over for good in August. I still have a lot to learn, and can never be what a mother is. But she can also never be what a father is, which in my case is apparently a bumbling ignoramus covered in poop, pee, and puke. But I’m trying my best, and making up for my shortcomings with obsessive worrying. Any lack of sleep on my part so far is not from Bailey waking me up, since I’m useless in the middle of the night (again, the wife has milk, I don’t). My lack of sleep is from checking every five minutes to make sure Bailey is still breathing, hasn’t been stolen by gypsies, and isn’t sneaking out at night with some new boyfriend she met on the internet.

Bnote # 62 – Baby Bnote Episode Eighteen: Happy Zeroeth Birthday, Bailey!

2010-05-31T11:44:00.001-04:00

First, let me say, on a serious note for once, that Bailey’s birth and her existence is the most awesome thing that has ever happened to me. People said I would instantly fall in love and I thought they were exaggerating. If anything, becoming a dad was greater by far than anything that had been described to me. The wife and I practically can’t even look at Bailey without getting all emotional. We could just stare at her all day—and smell her. They should make candles and air fresheners that smell like babies. I highly recommend becoming a father, and recommend impregnating as many women as possible. (OK, I can only stay serious for a few sentences)

Now for some details. The wife was admitted at 9 p.m. to be induced about 11 days early because her blood pressure had been really high. Nothing happened all night and the next morning except for some minor contractions. We basically sat around and watched TV all morning. At one point we thought we might me in some kind of Lost-esque time loop because the clock was broken and would jump back about 30 minutes every hour. Also, we were watching Star Trek on HBO, which stopped about a third of the way through and restarted shortly thereafter. Only time will tell if we are traveling through time, purgatory, or just a normal magical island. (I am glad Bailey waited until after the Lost finale to show up)

Eventually the doctor broke her water. Keep in mind that induction, purposeful water breaking, and epidurals were all things that the wife conditioned me to find highly objectionable throughout our hippie-fied Hypnobirthing® class. But as John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” The contractions came on strong after her water was broken, and she was in considerable pain—more pain than when she broke her rib a month ago. So she went for the epidural. Sorry, hippies. Not only was she no longer in any real pain, but she also gave us such quotable gems as “my butt doesn’t feel like a butt.”

Less than a couple hours after the epidural, she was all ready to squirt Bailey out. Things happened so fast that I might have missed the birth of my daughter by going downstairs to get a sandwich, since the wife was still mostly closed up when I left. I will remember that Italian panini for the rest of my days. Maybe this means something to you moms and obstetricians out there--the wife went from a 5 to a 10 in about a half hour, which I’m told is unheard of. Shortly after I returned, things got real, and the nurse was having her push. The doctor got there just in time for one push, then a second push where our ninja baby hurled herself out. The wife said she was a ninja baby because she came flying out so quickly that the doctor had to catch Bailey quickly up at her shoulder like a third baseman fielding a line drive short hop. Maybe she came out so quick because she is so small (5 lbs. 15 oz.of pure cute) or my wife has a big, um, heart, or a combination of both.

Everything after that has been a blur of love and joy. Mom and Bailey are fine, and I made it through the delivery without passing out. Life is good.

Babies like to wear straight jackets and elf hats.

Bnote # 61 – Baby Bnote Episode Seventeen: Maternity Leave

2010-05-24T08:39:00.001-04:00

The wife has been ordered on strict bed rest for the rest of her pregnancy, which medical science tells us will last no more than another 2 weeks, but considering how lazy and slow to wake up in the morning we are, Bailey may just sleep in for another few months. Anyway, the wife is now on maternity leave. Unfortunately that means she will have to go back to work for a couple weeks at the end of June. Hopefully Bailey will be mature enough by then to fend to stay home alone for a couple weeks. DISCLAIMER: Attention all state agencies--I am kidding. I am well aware one cannot leave one’s child alone at home until they are at least 6 months old. DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER: Still kidding--I’m not letting her out of my sight until she’s 30.

So the wife gets to stay home from work for a month and lay around in bed all day without being any sicker than usual (she started getting morning sickness again). However, she’s complaining about it, despite the fact that getting out of work is probably the number 2 reason she wanted to have a baby. (See Bnote # 56 for the top reason)

The added bonus for me is that when I get home from work, I become the wife's slave. Although a smaller and slightly more shrill and fussy slave master will replace her soon, at least the new one won’t be able to tell me, that I’m “not a very good slave.” At least I get to regularly order my wife to “get your ass back in bed” which is now my favorite catchphrase. She says I’m mean, but I’m only being mean out of love. The opportunity for meanness is just a collateral benefit. Another fun bonus is that she isn’t as tired anymore because she’s lying around all day, so when I’m ready for bed, she is awake and feels the need to pester me. The other night she was trying to use my ear as a puppet. And one morning she was up early making a huge racket puking…how rude.

This is pretty much what things were like before the wife was ordered on bed rest.

With the wife's current problems, the doctors may want to induce her this week. This of course would throw all of the hippie HypnoBirthing® stuff out the window. At least it may have bought the wife a couple months worth of a false sense of security.

If Bailey is a May baby, my birthday remains safely exclusive to me and approximately 1/365th of the population. I realized for the first time the other day that everyone in my immediate family, including my wife and myself, was born on an odd numbered day. Conspiracy theorist “eccentrics” like my dad would say there is more than a coincidence at work here. Perhaps the odd number lobby has started infiltrating obstetrics practice. I’m not sure I want to live in a world where most people have odd numbered birthdays.

Bnote # 60 – IKEA

2010-05-17T08:43:00.001-04:00

This was a particularly stressful weekend, which started with our everything-done-at-the-last-minute new house closing, and ending with the wife confined to bed rest until Bailey is born. In the middle of these trying times was one ray of idyllic sunshine…our trip to IKEA.

If you don’t know what IKEA is, I’ve heard it described a Wal-Mart for hipsters. I’m not sure if that was a slam or a compliment, but all sarcasm aside, I wouldn’t mind living there. I think somebody tried that as a publicity stunt once.

There are IKEA stores scattered between cities, but the one we visited is north of Cincinnati. The next closest one is in maybe Chicago or Pittsburgh. It’s primarily a gigantic furniture store, where everything is of Swedish design. But there is also a small grocery with wacky Swedish food and a cafeteria. Personally, I plan to try out the Wednesday night $7.99 ribs. I’m a little more skeptical about eating a 99 cent hot breakfast plate in what is essentially a furniture warehouse.

I’d like to try every single grocery item at some point. So far I have had the meatballs and something called a krusball. The meatballs taste like they are made out of 10 different kinds of first-prize-winning livestock, mixed together, and laced with the nectar of the gods. Or maybe they just taste like an above-average meatball. Either way they’re good. A krusball is a chocolate covered ball of cocoanut/marshmallow fluff. My dad tried one and said it was probably the best thing he’d ever tasted, which is high praise, considering most of what he eats probably tastes like an ashtray from years of smoking.

IKEA also amused me because pretty much every item in the store had an English description such as “chair” followed by an often-funny sounding Swedish name that didn’t seem to be the Swedish word for the thing. I thought everything had a Swedish name, even the toilet brushes. The sign said “BOLMEN” but I guess that’s actually the brand name of the collection of bathroom items. It’s still hilarious that the names of the two, yes, two individuals who designed said toilet brush are listed on the website.

The best part about it all for a cheapskate like me is that the stuff at IKEA is pretty darn cheap. My brother-in-law bought a nice floor lamp for $6.99, which was cheaper than the light bulbs he bought for it. The only confusing part was that the brand name of that lamp was “NOT”, and the sign said “FLOOR LAMP NOT $6.99” so we were wondering if the lamp is not $6.99, then how much was it?

The best thing to come from Sweden since the Swedish Bikini Team, the Swedish Chef, or the Swedish Chef wearing a bikini.

Bnote # 59 – Baby Bnote Episode Sixteen: Mr. Mom II: I’m no Michael Keaton. Seriously, Michael Keaton is lame. I can’t believe he played Batman.

2010-05-10T08:31:00.001-04:00

I previously wrote about the possibility of my staying at home to raise the baby in light of the wife's new, more lucrative employment. As a former B- average law student, I just can’t match her earning power. The moral of the story is that if you want to be a rich lawyer, and not a lawyer that goes to jail every day or is a glorified law clerk, don’t take your law school decedents estates class before learning about future interests in Property I. That will be the epitaph on my tombstone someday.

Anywho, it has been agreed upon that I will in fact be leaving my job, probably in June or July, to be a stay-at-home dad. Only time will tell if I have what it takes to meet this challenge. I may be sending out resumes after a couple of days. I plan to keep working part-time from home. Since I am universally beloved, it should be no surprise that my current boss has agreed to send me overflow projects instead of hiring a replacement, so we’ll see how that works out.

When I tell people of our plans, there are two distinct groups of responses: those from women, and those from men. The women all say that it’s awesome and then later have a good chuckle thinking about me crashing and burning in my duties. With expectations set this low, I will feel like I will have succeeded as long as I don’t drop Bailey on her head…often. The men all give me the look that suggests first utter confusion followed by a look indicating the desire to file a petition to revoke my testicles. My boss, who refers to Bailey as my “brat”, said I was crazy and wondered why the wife couldn’t hire somebody to do that stuff. He also confessed to changing a single diaper when his two children were babies. It occurred on his lawn, and involved hosing down an infant and leaving the diaper for whatever animals enjoy dirty diapers. I don’t think dads nowadays can get off that easy. I’m not going to be kickin’ it old school.

The bottom line is that since we will be able to afford me not working, we think our child is better off raised by a parent than by strangers, who might sell our child to the circus. That happens, right? After all, when I’m on my death bed, I don’t think I’ll say “Gee, I wish I would have spent more time at the office instead of with my daughter.” Also I am a tad burned out on office life, not to mention the 45 minute commutes I’ve had to deal with for the last 6 years. Pseudo-retiring from the practice of law to be a Manny (man-nanny), will hopefully be a refreshing change. Maybe after a few years I will retire from being a Manny and start a new career as professional blogger. From the man who brought you the bnote comes “Egad! No bondage?”, the blog featuring dirty palindromes! Oh wait, it’s been done.

Frankly, I felt that Goodnight Moon lacked the depth of Dickens or Tolstoy. My child will not be reading such inferior literature with me in charge.