Alone with Kate, Day 1

Emily's starting a temp job that may become permanent. Today was her first day.

8:30 a.m. We say goodbye to Emily at the door. Kate is smiling and happy, no idea her world is changing. Emily is the opposite.

8:35 a.m. I put Kate down in the living room. Par-Tay! She immediately crawls into the midst of Jack's toys. Nothing appears dangerous. When she crawls, she kind of breathes heavily and snuffles with the effort, a little like a bulldog. She goes to his store and starts pulling out vegetables and sampling all of them by putting them in her mouth for a second, then moving on to the next one. I sit nearby. We do this for the next 15-20 minutes.

9:00 a.m. At the coffee table, she pulls books off the underneath shelf. She can do this for an indefinite amount of time.

9:15 a.m. Plays with musical book that plays tunes like "Patty Cake, Patty Cake," and "the Big Bad Wolf." Insipid, but she likes it and is proud of herself for getting the music to play. She turns and smiles. Claps a little.

9:30 a.m. Starting to get a little cranky. She's been up for over two hours. Basically her getting cranky is making loud noises a little more frequently. Getting more easily frustrated with her toys and stuff. Picking something up and putting it down heavily.

9:45 a.m. I put her down for a nap. Doesn't take. Five minutes later I walk in, and she's sitting up, running her little plastic fish on the bars of the crib. Just like a prisoner with a tin can. Funny.

9:55 a.m. Take two. She goes to sleep within minutes. I clean up my desk. Gamble that she's tired enough that I can shower without waking her up. Win that bet. Clean up breakfast dishes. Empty trash.

11:30 a.m. Kate's awake! I prep a bottle and go up to get her. She's crying, then switches it off in an instant. Crawls across her crib to me. I change her diaper and we head downstairs.

11:45 a.m. Kate takes her bottle well, but she's basically doing calisthenics in my lap. She doesn't just lie there, she sits up, rolls over, twists around, continuing to drink. Every once in a while she stops and bats the tip of the bottle, hooks her finger on my lip. Talks: "Baa Baa Baa. Baa. Baaaaaaaaaa. Baa Baa Baa. BAA."

12 noon. I let her crawl around. She does.

12:30 p.m. I give her lunch: yogurt and some blueberries. I think she's doing well with the blueberries until after I get her out of the seat and find most of them in the seat and on the floor. She does eat a lot of yogurt and some small pieces of canteloupe, though.

1:00 p.m. I bring her over to Aunt Cathy's. I have a fantasy draft for a magazine coming up and can't trust her to be OK while I'm doing it.

3:00 p.m. Cathy brings her back. Kate did OK, but she looks a little red-eyed; apparently she slept for about 20 minutes -- not enough not to be tired, but enough so that she might not nap this afternoon. A concern.

3:15 p.m. Bottle for Kate. More calisthenics. I make the final pick in my draft while giving her her bottle. Bet I'm the only guy in the league multi-tasking that way. Then again, it's a fantasy draft in the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday. Maybe everyone has a baby on their laps.

3:30 p.m. Not napping.

3:45 p.m. Take two. Still not napping. Cries indignant now. It's like she's saying to me, It's not happening. Give up.

4:00 p.m. I give up.

4:30 p.m. Kate has spent the past half hour crawling around, mostly happy, also clearly tired. I decide to go get Jack a little early, under the idea that she might sleep in the car. (Yuh.) Instead she pretty much wails in the car, wails when I put her down in Jack's room at daycare to get his lunch box, wails when I carry her back to the car (as does Jack, I might add, because it's raining and I ask him to stay just inside the door while I put Kate in the car, but he evidently doesn't understand and thinks I'm ditching him). I go back to get him and talk him down, and we're off.

4:45 p.m. Kate's still wailing in the car. I ask Jack to sing to her. He does. "Baby Cake, Baby Cake. Baby Cake....." She stops wailing.

5:00 p.m. Jack plays with Kate. Very nicely. She smiles and looks at him, in awe. Then he does something goofy with one of his toys, and she laughs. He does it again and she laughs harder. He does it 5, 10, 15 times, and she's literally gasping for breath -- she's in hysterics. Probably the fact that she's only slept 20 minutes since the morning is part of it, like in college when you'd been up all night and things seem even funnier the next morning. Anyway, he keeps on making her laugh. And Daddy can relax.

5:15 p.m. Mommy gets home. Kids happy. Daddy relaxes even more.

They Call Her Katie (sung to the tune of "Flipper")

Five fun things about Kate.

1. She can clap. Sometimes she'll spend several minutes practicing it. Sometimes she'll do something she's proud of, like crawl across the room or play something on the little piano, and she'll stop, sit up on her knees, and clap happily. As if she's applauding herself for what she's just done. Yes, I did that! Yay, me!

2. When she's hungry, she throws her mouth open wide for food. When she's not hungry, she kind of half opens her mouth and looks at me with some mild curiosity, like I'm a bug or something. I put the food to her lips and get some in, and she kind of absently smacks her lips at it. Hmm. This is OK. I guess.

3. Almost since before she could sit up, she kind of sits like a hurdler, or a cheerleader -- like she's doing a split. One leg is bent at the knee, the other is stretched out behind her. She balances like that, and I've never seen her fall from that position. It's pretty impressive.

4. She frequently disregards the toys we give her -- you know, the baby toys -- in favor of the toys we want to keep from her, Jack's toys. So I give her a big old plastic ring, and two seconds later she's tossed it aside (literally, I might add) and is making a beeline for one of Jack's tiny metal cars. Usually the tow truck, with a big metal hook extending from the back. Excellent, Katie.

5a. She's crazy about Jack. When she sees him in the morning, from her crib when he and I hear her and go in, she claps without clapping, then big smiles, then crawls quickly over to the bars to look at him up close. He puts his hands on the bars outside, then does something silly to make her laugh. She smiles from ear to ear. If he's in the living room and she's on the carpet, she crawls over to be near him. Wherever he is, and however many times he gets up and runs across the room. She seems to sigh internally, shrug, then get into crawling pose and determinedly crawl after him.

5b. Tonight I was reading them a story, and Jack stood up for some reason. She gazed up at him, eyes bright, mouth open, on the verge of laughing. It was exactly as if she was thinking, What wonderful thing is he going to do next?

Kate in Real Time

I think the best way to blog about Kate is to just write about her as she does things. So that's what I'm doing right now.

I put Kate down on the living room rug. She makes a beeline for Jack's Spider-man puzzle, that he and I just completed. She's been doing it every chance she gets the past couple of days. I don't know why.

She heads for his easel and markers. Another fascinating thing, another thing we want her away from. I pick her up and put her in the other half of the living room.

She shoots me a big smile and heads for the TiVo box. Starts hitting buttons channels change. She turns and laughs at me, then says "Da. Da."

Mommy calls from upstairs, where she's giving Jack a bath. "Did you call me?" "Nope," I say.

Kate hears Mommy's voice and abandons the TiVo and starts crawling, quickly, toward the stairs. We want to keep her out of that hallway, because there's a bathroom, and a heating grate, and it's a hard tile floor. She reaches the doorway and I say, "Kate, what are you doing?"

She looks at me. Laughs. Heads through the doorway.

I go pick her up and put her back on the rug. She crawls into the other half of the living room. Probably headed for the puzzle again, but stops when she sees the cool wooden car. She likes the car. Plays with it -- i.e., puts it in her mouth -- for a few minutes as I type on the laptop, which I'm carrying around with me.

Now she's on the move again. Headed for the kitchen. Making little gurgling, "heh-HEH" noises, which she does sometimes.

She's in the kitchen. Gotta go.

Daddy's Day

Emily came into the room after putting Jack to bed. Said,

"Jack was wondering where our clock with hands was. I said, I don't know. He said, Did it die? I said, er, no, Jack, only people and animals die. Jack said, Will Molly die? (Nana and Baba's dog.) Emily said, well, not for a long long long time. Jack said, Will you die?

Emily said, not for a long long long long long long long long long long time. Jack said, Will Daddy die? Emily said, not for a long long long long long long long long long time. Not quite as long, because you're older. (Emily's a riot.) Jack said, Daddy's old old old old old.

Then he said, I think I have the best Daddy in the whole world. Emily said, yes, I think you do. Jack said, he makes you laugh. Emily said, yes, he does. And I think one day you'll be just as funny as Daddy, and you'll make me laugh too. Jack smiled.

The Neighbors

Our neighbors have a son about Jack's age, so they play together every so often. They also have an enclosed yard, whereas ours connects with a yard belonging to bigger kids, who as I've mentioned in the past Jack is fascinated with and wants to play with, even though he really can't/shouldn't and it usually ends badly. In short, we usually play over in Max's yard.

Max's 3rd birthday gift was a little house structure, which is basically a child-size plastic house with a front porch, kitchen area, and windows he can peek out. ("And a doorbell!" Jack said to Grandma; apparently it made quite an impression on him after his first visit.) Jack likes it a lot; I think he could quite happily go over there and play in it for a while on a daily basis.

So today we were over there and Max's Dad, Mike, who's fairly tall, crawled into it to entice Max and Jack into playing with it rather than whatever it was they were doing, which appeared to be throwing small rocks into a hole in the dirt and laughing hysterically. Or something similar. Then they moved on to throwing small rocks into a hole in a ladder leaning against the house. Next time Mike needs the ladder, it's going to rattle. Anyway, Jack came over -- Max continued to throw rocks, apparently because playing with Mike and the house didn't have the same novelty for him as it did for Jack -- and walked into the house like he owned the place. Mike crawled out, because it was pretty crowded.

"So Jackie (he calls him Jackie), what are you doing?" Jack: "I'm going to make dinner." "What are you going to make?" Jack: "Potatoes with apple sauce, with some sugar on the side." "Okay......." Jack busied himself in the tiny kitchen. Then: Mike rang the doorbell. Jack ignored it. Mike: "I'm at the door." Jack: "Oh, come in!" Mike: "No, you're supposed to say, who is it?" Jack: "Oh. Who is it?" Mike: "My car broke down, may I use your phone?" Jack: "Okay, come in!" Mike (mock exasperated): "No, you can't just let me in! I could be anybody." Jack: "Oh." Mike: "Can I come in and use your phone?" Jack: "Okay!" Mike: "(sigh)"

(I should mention that while Jack was playing with Max, Max's Mommy, Lisa, was crawling around in the grass shooting pictures of Kate with her camera. I think she just likes having new subjects to take pictures of, or she likes taking pictures, but regardless, she's taken some absolutely outstanding pictures of both Kate and Jack, and one day we're going to schedule her to take Kate's 6 month old picture. Er, Kate will be 8 months old in less than two weeks.)

Later that night, Emily and Jack were looking at houses online. Emily does that sometimes. At one point Jack got really sad. and he said in his quiet, sad voice: "We're not going to move away from Max, are we?"

Emily (long pause): "Er...well, maybe one day, but not for a long time."

And really, who knows.