Is your child bored? Put them in a pot and push them around.
Hours of fun. (For them.) Sorta fun for you.

So we’re all sick this week. Terry and Ronan picked up something on the playground and then brought it home. I took care of them for a few days but then, of course just as I was headed to an interview, I came down with fever, sore throat, congestion, chills and nausea. Most of the symptoms subsided after 48 hours but I still get queasy after eating.

This was the first occasion where we were all sick together. Like grief, there are various stages of being sick together as a family that we passed through. If you have children, they may be familiar to you.

1.)   One family member is sick. In this case, Ronan developed congestion that was serious enough to inhibit his sleep. Discontenting, but not serious.

2.)   Two family members are sick. The remaining family member is working hard, but things are taken care of.

3.)   Three family members (everybody) is sick. Things are still not so bad, because everyone is sick, so everybody just lies around feeling sorry for themselves. Parents drag their sorry asses out of bed and feed the kid. (Note: we kinda skipped this step and went to step 4.)

4.)   Two family members are sick, and the kid is better. This is the situation we found ourselves in. Ronan was ready to take on the world and we were ready for another round of Dayquil.

We spent the better part of an afternoon with an incredibly hyped-up kid using us as Mount Everest and repeatedly climbing all over while we both lay there quietly praying for an end to our misery. Not that we were hoping we would get better; we were hoping Ronan would run out of energy.

He’s not actually better; he still has a stuffy head that has made his sleep quite fitful but he’s the most cheerful sick kid I have ever seen, and I’m a teacher, so I’ve seen a lot of kids. His response to being sick was to learn to climb vertically. He’s already summated the high chair, which he (and us) were very proud of. Of course this means that we now have to watch him even more closely, if that were possible. The high chair, which used to fit under the dining table, now stands fully erect to prevent such summits without our attention. He’s devoting his engineering skills to figuring out which combination of dresser drawers will build a staircase to the diaper-changing table.

I can’t express how much fun it is to see him crawl around and get excited and happy about interacting with his environment. I also can’t express how miserable a task that is when you’re thinking about vomiting and stumbling around like you’re auditioning to be the next Lon Chaney in Frankenstein.

This combination of hyper kid, Dayquil, and lethargy resulted in a scary accident. Terry and I were attempting to soothe our exhaustion while Ronan was learning that he could also summit the living room chair, and then climb Mount Futon. Unfortunately our intrepid explorer suffered a mishap, which on Everest would have been fatal, but in our living room only resulted in a bump on the head. That’s right, he fell off Mount Futon in his joy, plummeting across the valley and landing his noggin on Mount Coffee Table. That ended the day’s exploration, and Ronan immediately returned to base camp for some snuggling and hugs to get over his tears.

Thankfully, Terry is almost fully recovered, and I’m feeling better. I have a feeling this is not the last time he will decide to climb. I’d like to thank my father-in-law again for so securely affixing our bookshelves to the wall. We’re gonna test those bookshelves, I can feel it.

Ronan seems to love his new stroller.
To the point that he cries anytime he has to part with it.

We have come to the inevitable time when parents must part with perfectly useful baby items that are large and expensive and totally useless to us. Ronan has outgrown his carseat and his stroller. 

Before he was born the mistress of all that is known, or can be known through thorough research (Terry) concluded that the Graco Snugrider (America’s favorite car seat!) was the best unit for us. It was useful because the car seat snapped into a stroller frame, allowing a dual purpose use. Yes, it had a clumsy, awkward base that we had to carry around that DIDN’T fit into the stroller frame, so it wasn’t as clever as it sounds. And, until recently, we had no idea that America’s favorite car seat drove something like America’s favorite Humvee until we got our new stroller.

I was secretly hoping that the combination car seat and stroller combo would be available in all sizes, but we had to separate into two different, non-compatible units since Ronan gained the big twenty pounds. The old stroller faced Ronan towards us, allowing easy visibility. The new stroller faced Ronan out into the world, which meant I had to stop and walk around to check in on him. I’m sure there are sound safety reasons for that, but it annoyed me no end.

I was annoyed because I was used to the Humvee of strollers, which does not allow for quick and easy movement. The Graco is a fine unit – I’m sure whomever gets our slightly used stroller will be happy with it – but it is not for delicate maneuvers. It’s a tank that I constantly assumed was secretly engaging its wheellocks to thwart me. Often Ronan would end up on his head after the Graco failed to overtake a bump. Thankfully the five-point harness held. But it was tough; even airport baggage handlers could only rip off the useless cup holders in frustration after trying to jam it into the gate check without any damaging effects. I’m glad we never had a car wreck with it, but I’m sure Ronan would have been fine (assuming we strapped it in correctly.) The Graco is a hell of a solid unit.

The new Mia Moda Cielo showed me just how much of a large, fuel-guzzling, human powered vehicle we’ve been pushing around for a year. I no longer care about carrying a car seat and a stroller around, because pushing the Cielo is like driving a feather. I can steer it with one hand. It lives to go over bumps that would have made the Graco cry and seek another path. It folds up – not in the five seconds advertised on the website, but close – to something so small, it’s shocking. I’m sure with practice I will get that thing closed in no time.

The car seat replacement is also strong. It feels much heavier, perhaps because it’s rated to 40 pounds. Supposedly it will take another two years for Ronan to put on that much weight. We tried it this weekend when we fly to Buffalo. But that’s a story for another blog entry.

Part of this whole parenting thing is losing your concern about waste. Kids waste a lot of stuff. Ronan smears as much food on his face as he eats. We have yet to find someone to take the Graco, but we will definitely be recycling it to another needy parent since it has almost no wear.

The Graco will even come (eventually) with new, never-used padded inserts. Apparently the Graco Snugrider was recalled for having padding that disintegrated in the wash, causing tasty-looking morsels to extrude out of the seams. Graco, for free, sent us a new liner, which is apparently being shipped via snail, since it’s been months since we ordered it.

Ronan grew out of his first major expensive item before the company could recall it. We solved that problem – we never washed the liner. It seems like he grew up so fast, he never really used it.

Do any of us remember our first stroller? I know I don’t.

Kizz took this photo at the birthday boy’s party.

Ronan’s first birthday party was a huge success even though he accidentally attempted to bite his own tongue off. Thankfully that accident only resulted in a little bit of blood on Dad.

It’s incredible that a year has gone by since Ronan entered our lives. It seems like 12 minutes, not 12 months. I blinked and here we all are, one year later and one year older.

Ronan seemed to have no inkling, really, that the day was about him. He seemed to just go about his business, as he always does, smiling and flirting with all the party guests. Our invited list was made quite late, as we vacillated about having an open party. There’s something to be said for celebrating the last birthday Ronan will not be able to talk about with just the family. But finally, too late really, we invited a bunch of friends. Only half of the guest list lacked a better Saturday plan than watching Ronan get hyped up on sugar.

The centerpieces of the party were our dilapidated yet tasty homemade cakes. If I had known how complicated the cake making was going to become, I would have opted for a single cake. Thankfully I only had to frost.

We started out with a simple plan, the traditional box mix, only organic. Then we added pudding to the list of ingredients. Then we abandoned that plan for Aunt Mildred’s cryptic recipe books.

Aunt Mildred is Terry’s great aunt, and the keeper of several recipe books that apparently were written in longhand (or military code). Recipes are extremely important in Terry’s side of the family, to the point that Ronan’s Grandpa will never be forgiven for losing a book of Great-Grandma’s recipes, and is roundly verbally teased whenever anything vaguely resembling a recipe is made. No amount of protestation or apology will ever get him off the hook. Terry rescued Aunt Mildred’s cake recipes when her family cleaned out her house to get ready to sell it.

Terry selected a white cake with marshmallow frosting and a chocolate cake with chocolate fudge frosting from Aunt Mildred’s recipe book. Those would be daunting enough to make from scratch with Food Network directions. But Aunt Mildred’s recipes require something more in the way of faith. Aunt Mildred’s handwriting looks very much like Colonial Era handwriting. I look at the ledger book (don’t you write your recipes in a ledger?) and immediately wax nostalgic for George Washington, because he could probably read the recipes to us.

On top of that, Aunt Mildred was such a good cook that she left out minor details such as cooking times, oven temperature or a precise definition of just what “a good long time” or “softball” meant for successive generations of cooks. So part of the fun of the recipe is that you get to make up part of it yourself. Terry would collaborate via phone with her mother about what the recipe said and what it all meant. Sometimes her Mom would call back with a passage from another of Aunt Mildred’s cookbooks that illuminated a critical part of the recipe. We weren’t making cakes as much as we were deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls.

My job was to frost the finished cakes. Which was all well and dandy at 11 AM, when I had energy, Terry didn’t have cake flour on her elbows and Ronan was still interested in what we were doing. However, having two cakes doubled all the preparation time, so by 11 PM, I didn’t feel as excited about cake decoration and just wanted to get them done.

Terry had expertly baked the cakes, and they smelled delicious and the hot steamy cake residue left in the pan tasted great as well. However, the flaw in our plan was that Aunt Mildred’s cakes were not exactly structurally sound. The white cake with the marshmallow frosting (which was supposed to be a meringue frosting) started to shift after the frosting was applied. The three layers slid off each other, creating a cake more reminiscent of a Frank Gehry building than a birthday cake. Attempting to level out the high peaks of the chocolate cake, the top layer broke apart while waiting for the bottom layer to be frosted. The neat, almost geometrical quarters had to be put on one at a time. While they stayed put there was a large crack in the cake that could not be filled with frosting. To prevent additional cake-quakes, we fastened the layers to each other with chopsticks. No really. Chopsticks.

Thankfully they tasted great. Since it took poor Terry all day and most of the evening to bake the cakes and make the frosting from scratch, we had not considered two critical questions. One, where could we store the cakes? And two, where could we store the cakes that would not be accessible by the new colony of ants living in the floorboards? Finally, through careful balancing of the cake plates on each other and sliding the plate edge into the shelf notch in the refrigerator, I got them out of the ants’ reach.

The day of the party, our friend Kizz showed up a wee bit early and played with Ronan while we set up for the party. For some reason, Kizz was determined not to shed Ronan’s blood in an accident. I wasn’t cognizant of how the subject came up. Perhaps Ronan headed for the corner of the coffee table or picked up some deadly instrument. Whatever the reason, Kizz was determined that no blood be spilled at the party.

The rest of the guests arrived and we laughed and talked and sang happy birthday, which delighted and confused Ronan, who sometimes seems to take group singing as a direct threat to his well being. The homemade cake and ice cream (store-bought, thankfully) was eaten and pronounced ugly but delicious, and soon people began to head out the door, including Kizz, who took her magic bloodletting-preventing powers with her.

Ronan’s first cake and ice cream was gratefully received, but only as a toy. He played with the cake and ice cream for a while, but didn’t seem too interested in eating it. He did manage to get it all over his face.

Ronan travels, at the time of this writing, with his tongue out of his mouth at times. As he is on the verge of walking, he is constantly falling over at a much higher rate than previously in his life. Shortly after Kizz left, Ronan took a header that, through a series of incredible coincidences, took his chin in contact with the futon frame, and his teeth in contact with his mouth. The Aristocrats!

A small, but noticeable, amount of blood poured forth as he buried his head in my chest and cried. An audible gasp erupted as the remaining guests realized that the reason for the party was now spitting a quantity of blood onto his father’s chest.

Over a year ago, a friend gave us a gift of a doll that had an ice center. This poor doll has been in the freezer for a whole year, waiting for the day when it would be called to chill a stricken child. Locked in that dark, cold place, rudely shuffled around and battered by too many frozen pizzas and leftover bagels, it had suffered too many indignities. Now, on the day of Ronan’s birthday, we called forth this long-suffering doll from the bowels of our tiny freezer, to soothe Ronan’s broken tongue.

Ronan took one look at it, stopped crying, and dumped it on the floor after a few minutes. I doubt he ever used the ice core of the doll on his tongue.

Now the doll is back in the freezer, awaiting the next time it is called to cool a skinned knee. Sometime in 2009 by the current use schedule.

All was well, however. With the guests full of cake and ice cream, they stumbled home quite early for some food that was actually nutritious.

Some of my favorite moments of that day will always be the family outing to the playground after the party. Ronan discovered that he loves the slide – but only if Dad is there to send him off and Mom is waiting to catch him. Subsequent trips to the playground with only parent did not elicit the same level of excitement. We must of sent our giggling child down the slide dozens of times. Something that the family could do together. So we got our family time and our party with friends both on the same day.

Despite the blood, it was a wonderful day.

One year later, Terry and I are better parents. A year from now we will be even better parents. This past year we learned to be parents together. Terry and I are closer than ever before, and our love for Ronan has grown more ornate and broad the more we get to know him. I cherish our time together. We are blessed by our family, and by so many friends who came to celebrate his birthday.

Here’s to the next seventeen years. May they pass by slowly. Even though I know they won’t.

Ronan is told he will have cake and ice cream for the first time.
He's holding his tootbrush.

Friday will be Ronan’s first birthday. He’s survived his first year. This is the seventy-sixth entry on this blog.

We’ve all survived. In some ways, it’s been a tough year. I had a big fight with my now-former employer, leading to much anger and depression. Terry’s job went from full-time to contract employment, and there’s not much out there to replace it. If Ronan weren’t in our lives to make this a wonderful year, it would be one of the more depressing years of my life.

But he was born, and everything seems to pale in comparison. Job problems suck, but they point out just how lucky Terry and I are in terms of the beautiful baby boy we got early Wednesday morning, April 4, 2007.

I’m going to look for temp work now, until Terry goes back to work, but the past 18 months – I was working on my websites before he was born – have been wonderful. Being home, besides letting me set up unforkids.com, gave me a chance to fully participate in Ronan’s gestation and birth, and then to be home with him every day.

I will always cherish this time we had together. Many years from now, when to his horror he discovers this blog and makes me pull it down in a fit of embarrassment, perhaps he will read these entries in this online diary before demanding that the site be nuked. For a little while at least, I hope he learns a little bit about how he came to be, what his birth meant to us, and what his first year taught us.

Being married is a wonderful thing. Sometimes I have trouble understanding how much my life was lacking without Terry. I wasn’t unhappy; I had lots of friends, a good career, and many projects and hobbies to work on. But you never miss what you don’t understand. It’s not just that being married is a wonderful thing; being married to Terry is the wonderful thing in my life. Even when I’m annoyed at her for constantly asking if I’ve done something or to get something or whatever – she is acting out of her deep love for me (and now for Ronan). She makes me want to be a better person. She is the most caring, compassionate, respectful, graceful, joyous, temperate, enjoyable person I could be married to. She’s the only woman I’ve ever truly loved, and I hope to be with her for a long, long time. I can’t express to you, if you’ve never found someone that was your soulmate, how different a relationship can be. I waited for someone I really loved, and that is more complicated and sweeter than words can convey. Now that we’re married I can only wonder what it was like to not have her in my life. Sometimes I pity my unmarried, pre-Terry self for being so ignorant of what true love could be. I cannot imagine my life without her; it’s like we’ve been together for eternity, and will be together for eternity. I’m sure some gentle readers are thinking, “Yeah, dude, whatever! Get back to the Dad blog!” but it’s important that you understand how committed I am to my marriage to understand the next paragraph.

Ronan came into our lives about 18 months ago and emerged a year ago, and I cannot imagine what my life was before his arrival. Again, I have this overwhelming sense of emerging out of ignorance into a new understanding, not just of myself, but of Terry, and most importantly of our commitment to each other and to Ronan. At first, things weren’t peaches and cream. We had to learn to be parents, and later we had to learn to be parents in the face of being depressed about our financial and our job situations. This sometimes caused some stress. But we endured, and the reward was more than we could imagine. Some parents reading this will not be surprised, but Ronan has a personality all his own, even when he was just a few months old. There are glimpses of Terry, traces of me, but most of the time he is just Ronan. I have grown to love him very fiercely, and again I cannot imagine what my life would be like without him.

Whatever our job situation, this family is where I was destined to be. For all those people who wondered if I was ever going to get married, or what I was waiting for, I have it now. Here’s to the rest of my life. Regardless of what happens, there isn’t any other place I would rather be.

He's cute, but he's not wearing socks.

Kids love to take their socks off as soon as they figure out how to do this. Ronan has reached that stage and he is pretty damn proud of himself, judging by the wide smile he has every time he pulls one of them off.

Silly Daddy thought socks pricing would reflect the fact that they probably are short-lived. Silly Daddy had sticker shock recently when the family went to buy socks. Daddy was expecting $2 a pair, but instead was greeted with a choice of socks that were more than $4 a pair. Suddenly having organic cotton, chemical free socks seemed much less important if they were just going to end up living for eternity stuffed behind floorboards.

The socks fly off as soon as I stop riveting my attention to his every move. Usually, just to confound matters, only one of the pair is hidden deeply inside a pile of toys. We are quickly acquiring a pile of mismatched abandoned loners. I know something has happened when Ronan stands grinning at me. That probably means he’s either very happy, or very happy and has a cold foot. Sometimes the grin is accompanied by waving the sock in the air like he just doesn’t care, before it is thrown completely out of sight, where sock elves immediately descend and take possession of the sock and carry it into a magical world where parents can never venture.

Luckily we are moving into Spring, so unless Al Gore’s wrong, it should be getting warmer. So the sock issue is easily solved by just not wearing them, which Ronan seems to prefer. However, that solution does not work yet for going outside. For now we can prevent the sock’s escape by covering the foot with a shoe. I shudder to think how short a time that diversion will work; then we will be missing shoes as well as socks.

Last night Terry took Ronan to the coop, where, while shopping, Ronan either kicked off or took off his shoe. They were brand new, first time out shoes. Luckily for us, another shopper spied the errant shoe and gave it back to Terry. But it’s only a matter of time before we begin collecting a pile of mismatched and abandoned shoes to go with our pile of socks.

Perhaps all parents could agree to trade. We could put up a website where we could post photos of our mismatched shoes and socks and partner them up with other people who are missing the same article. Or we could just end the fashion requirement of matching shoes and socks (not that I follow that much anyway, even as an adult) and get a Fashion Avenue allowance for children to wear garishly mismatched shoes and socks. It could be a new trend.

I don’t know of any study of the amount of garbage that is actually lonely kid’s shoes and socks, but I imagine it’s a lot. There’s enough tennis shoes gone missing for people to throw some of theirs over telephone poles. What percentage of landfill is actually discarded shoes and socks because Mom and Dad can’t find the partner, which is off in elfin fairyland somewhere? I bet most parents reading this think it’s pretty high.

Soon after discarding his socks, Ronan discovered how to take off his pants. Right now this is reserved as the last expression of frustration, as in, Dad has only five minutes to shower, but Ronan wants to be picked up. When Dad comes out of the shower, Ronan is standing there, minus shoes, socks, and pants, with a giant grin on his face. He clearly expects to be rewarded for his accomplishment. It doesn’t matter that we have 30 minutes for the 45 minute subway ride to meet someone; he’s taken his clothes off, dammit, and that’s pretty cool. I imagine the first time his reaction was, “Hey! I just took my pants off! This is cool!” or something like that. Often he will take off his pants and then wave them around as if they are the pelt of some animal he’s just caught and skinned in a triumphal dance.

On second thought, I’m reading too much into it. He’s just excited to get semi-naked. The fact that I have to now redress him is of no concern. He now has control over his own clothes. That’s pretty cool when you’re one.

Ronan and Ryan at the movies.

As we approach Ronan’s first birthday, we are starting to emerge from infancy and move into toddler-hood. To that end, we took Ronan to see his first movie, Horton Hears a Who. We choose this movie for several reasons; one, it’s only about 90 minutes long; it’s rated G; and most importantly, several close friends worked on making it.

The process through which we determined the acceptability of the film was much more elaborate than I remember as a child. When I was young it was basically Dad saying “that movie sounds good,” and we were off. This was a much more complicated process. We first checked with our friend who worked on the movie to see if there were any scary bits, and then rechecked just to make sure. We then checked the running time and figured out which theatre it was in so we could decide where to sit. Finally, our friend was gracious enough to check with us first about what time would be best for Ronan before inviting all his other friends.

Once we decided to bring Ronan, I acquired three tickets ($8.75 for a child’s entry. I remember when my Dad paid $1.50 for me thirty years ago – at this rate, Ronan’s children will pay $51 for a child’s ticket in thirty years.) and we were off.

Ronan loves new experiences. His preferred mode is to take in his surroundings, looking around first. Then when he is comfortable, he will start exploring. I don’t know if it just took a long time to take it all in, or if the large digital screen overwhelmed him, but he stayed put through the whole movie. He never wanted to wander around like he does in other places. Which was good.

Uncle Ryan started out holding him during the pre-show advertising (when they cut into the long advertisements to show you shorter advertisements for about twenty minutes) and into the trailers. The trailer for Ice Age 3 ended with Scrat landing on the tail of a giant dinosaur (Allosaurus or T-Rex) which bellows a deep, scary roar at the hapless nut-muncher. As Scrat fell into the beast’s tail, I knew, just knew, that this wasn't going to be any fun for Ronan. Before I could do anything, the full-throated dino roar blasted forth in surround sound, and Ronan's lower lip quivered and then he broke into his own, less noisy wail. The dino made him cry. It was one of those moments where you’re trying to be comforting to him, but he was so cute you just wanted to laugh. He was crying with his little lower lip in a pout. I took him towards the door and held him through the next trailer, which wasn’t as loud but still loud enough to continue the crying. Soon enough he calmed down and I took him back to our seats.

After the dino’s roar made him cry, it was easier for me to hold him (I was seated on the aisle) rather than pass him back during the movie. I think watching what was essentially a giant screen TV enthralled him. The new digital projection makes movies like Horton, rendered in digital 3D, really pop. Being bathed in Dolby stereo also added to his experience. I don’t know if he enjoyed it or was a little scared, but he basically didn’t move the entire time, except for the dino roar and one other loud noise during the picture.

It’s kind of amazing to be watching a movie, something I’ve done as long as I can remember, with your son on your lap watching his first movie. I doubt he will remember any of it, but it was a wonderful experience for me. Terry may have less fond memories of Horton, because she was brave enough to breastfeed Ronan during the picture in the middle of the audience. I doubt anyone noticed in the dark, but Ronan seemed to eat quickly and get back to figuring out what the giant TV was doing.

So, after a wedding, a church visit, and several other public gatherings, we’ve learned that Ronan is not big on crowds or loud noises. He is immediately calmed and fascinated by moving pictures, and his attention to TV or movies will last for a few hours, as long as there aren’t any loud noises. The evil characters in Horton didn’t seem to faze him in the least.

While it may be some time before we take him to the movies again, since we will not often have the benefit of consulting the filmmakers beforehand for advice about what scenes may be scary, I can’t wait. Just as I really enjoyed watching movies with my Dad, I look forward to sharing this with him also!

The blushing bride with Ronan.

Ronan and the family took our first road trip to a family wedding in Vermont. The five-hour drive turned into an eight-hour drive with lunch stops, bathroom stops, and breastfeeding stops. Luckily we arrived before the really big snowstorm hit and we spent the rest of the weekend indoors, looking out the window at the snow blowing in the wind.

Ronan was very well behaved the whole weekend, but didn’t understand why he had to stay in the car seat the whole time on the road. After all, Mom and Dad and Uncle Ryan were free to move about the cabin. Terry, as usual, was impeccably prepared with new toys that distracted him for quite a while, and he slept on the trip as well, when he was too exhausted to take in all the new sights and sounds from the back seat of a 4-wheel-drive.

But as we approached the mountain inn where we were staying, he grew restless. Terry solved this problem with the overhead light, which she turned on and off. This proved to be so entertaining; she had to spend at least an hour turning in on and off. While this kept Ronan quiet, it didn’t entertain Terry nearly as much for some reason. Every time she tried to stop, Ronan kept pointing at the ceiling light and grunting until she turned it on and off again. She kept threatening to stop; but every time she gave in to him again. He was thoroughly entertained by this.

The inn was just as much fun as the trip up. Ronan has this way of sitting back and looking around for a while before crawling around and exploring a new environment. He would take in the rehearsal dinner or the reception or breakfast and look around for a while before wanting to head off, crawling around on his own. This would be fine except he’s only about a foot off the ground when he’s crawling and most places were filled with relatives either getting sloshed or on their way to getting sloshed, and I wasn’t sure that they would notice a baby under foot. (They’ll probably all take umbrage to that characterization.)

So the only time he got to crawl around during the weekend, outside of the time spent in the hotel room, was when the reception was in full swing and the bar area was mostly emptied of people. I had to pick up some toothpicks to prevent impalements; it was only later that I realized that he had crawled through an indeterminate number of spilled drinks, soaking his pants with alcohol, but he loved the wide-open spaces not found in our Brooklyn abode and didn’t care.

Overall he was a big hit at the wedding. Most babies I’ve encountered reach a point where they can’t stand one more person picking them up; Ronan seems to thrive on it. At least a hundred times someone picked him up and carried him off for some quality time, and as long as Mom or Dad were within line of sight, he seemed not to care. The one thing he did care about was the cheering when the happy couple was introduced at the reception. The whistles and the clapping and the noise undid our fair trooper, causing his one true meltdown of the weekend. His crying could barely be heard over the thunderous applause. Apparently, besides humming and singing, Ronan does not like loud crowds. Once the wedding party was seated and the noise quieted down, he was back to his old self.

We continued building his phobia of dogs with exposure to a sheepdog, which terrified him, and a small little pug, which at first terrified him but then he became more curious about her. The sheepdog caused Ronan to back up as fast as he could, which we were not aware he could do until he did it. Now he loves to crawl backwards as much as forwards. Hopefully through slow exposure to large dogs he will lose his phobia of being eaten or something. This will hopefully also improve, as he grows big enough so that large dogs don’t seem like Godzilla to him.

After a too-large breakfast Sunday morning to help us with our post-reception blues, we all piled back in the 4-wheeler for the drive back to New York City. Ronan was not happy about being consigned to the car seat again, and the toys held little interest for him. So Terry resorted to the ceiling light yet again, until she realized that she would have to do this for the next eight hours. Thankfully Ronan became interested in the passing, ever-changing view out the window, so she was able to try to get some sleep, even though she didn’t really sleep much. Ronan stared out the window until he too fell asleep.

The logistics of rental cars in New York City being what they are, we dropped Terry and Ronan off in Brooklyn before returning the rental car to Manhattan. I arrived home about two hours after we had left them. Ronan was happily eating dinner in the high chair, with Terry feeding him. Finding your family safe and sound and happy to see you after a long road trip is quite a nice feeling.

Smash Them again! That’ll teach those pans!

So as Ronan gets increasingly mobile, we have to babyproof. This means we lock everything up with safety locks that mostly annoy us and for now cause him to be disinterested in what’s behind the locked door.

We have a lock on the oven, a lock on the two doors of the bathroom cabinets, the double-door kitchen sink cabinet, and the doors of the upright cabinet from Ikea. Installing them took some doing – they come in one basic design, and it’s not evident how to put it on cabinets with widely varying designs. The upright was hardest, the right-angle lock receiver only stuck on one side. The solution was to stick one receiver to the other receiver, so that the receivers were stuck to each other as well as the cabinet door frame. I just read that paragraph, and I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about. But trust me, that was the hard one, and now even adults can’t open the left door without opening the right one first, because both door locks were made for the receiver to face one way, and because they’re stuck together, one faces the wrong way, making the lock open inside the cabinet, which is inconvenient. Try it out the next time you visit.

In fact, the whole thing is inconvenient, because at 2 AM, you really want to get a new roll of toilet paper without accidentally ripping the bathroom cabinet apart, which is what I’m going to do if I fail to remember that those doors are now locked. Plus, the bathroom cabinet is so old, total destruction is easy. (And it’s ugly. But telling your landlady “We locked the door, and Jason doesn’t know his own strength, so in the middle of the night, he accidentally ripped the doors off the hinges, so please buy us a new one. Oh, and the old one is ugly” doesn’t work really. She won’t accept “the bathroom cabinet is ugly” as an excuse for accidental early morning remodeling, and I’m too broke to afford to replace the sink, which is embedded in the top of the cabinet.)

Ronan seems unfazed by our attempts to thwart his exploration. Cabinet locked? Move on. Cabinet locked? Move on. Yes, he might play with the door, get some enjoyment out of the door popping out of his hands and back into the door frame, but he quickly moves on.

The one cabinet that was left unlocked was the one holding our pots and pans. The dear readers who have children know that toddlers love pots and pans. Ronan did not discover our pots and pans until we had locked down our apartment, but pots and pans may be the best thing ever. EVER.

He loves to sit and just bang them on the kitchen tile floor. Or bang them together. Or bang them, one in each hand, on the floor and then on each other. As long as they are making lots of noise.

Of course, he seems to find the best moment when I have the least amount of energy. He either bangs them when I’ve just woken up, or when we’re winding down for the evening.  But mostly when I’ve just woken up.

I don’t know if pots and pans toys are going to be an ongoing interest, but already they are cleaner than ever. Since I was stunted as a child with a life-long hatred of doing dishes (we would sit around the dinner table, recounting our miseries – whomever had the worst day got out of doing dishes. My brother, who is generally happy and less depressed as an adult than I am, always had the best excuse for getting out of dishes. And he’s reading this and will kill me for saying so. DEAD.) Terry does the dishes in the family. But that arrangement may have to be renegotiated – as she is now washing all the pots and pans in the house every night, even if I’ve only used a few of them to cook. Ronan has pulled out all the rest and smashed them together until they are good and admonished for being inanimate objects.

Of course, he doesn’t think of them that way – they are just fun things that make lots of noise, so let’s make lots of noise – which is not going to bode well for me. It’s a good thing that I’m broke – I can barely stand the noise when I’m just awakened – but I imagine it would be much worse if I were hung over. I have been known, once a fortnight, to enjoy a good round or four at the local pub (which, usually, is six miles away, in Manhattan) before taking the Q train home. I shudder to think what that incessant pounding would be like after a well-enjoyed night out with friends.

But, luckily I’m too poor to drink right now. With any luck, Ronan will grow out of his pot-banging phase before I have enough income to start liquidating it again.

(Terry is laughing at me as she reads this, because she knows that my nights out with friends will probably come before Ronan outgrows banging pots together.)

Ronan in his own fort.

When I was a kid, my favorite hiding place was under the stairs, which had a tiny closet built in. I would remove the vacuum cleaner and the other stuff my parents kept there and it would be my bunker. I’d take my army soldiers and my air force planes and hide out. I could fit but Mom and Dad could barely get their shoulders in. They used to try to get me to come out for dinner. I relished being just out of reach and coming out when I wanted to, which was pretty much every time dinner smelled good.

Today, if I visited that house, I’d probably be amazed that I ever fit in there. Going back home to visit all the places I used to live/go to school/hang out makes me realize how big the world seems to a little kid. All the places were so small compared to my memories of them. Everything seemed much bigger then. I vividly remember standing up in the back of the family car (while Dad was driving) just to make him panic and shout at me to get back in my seatbelt. The sense of self-control and triumph at letting myself out of the seat belt without help as he hit 60 mph on the highway was a feeling I’d never forget. Standing up while driving, which was forbidden, was a new and exciting thing to do at age three.

Ronan, age less than one, is finding his own hiding places, which is a feat unto itself in our cramped apartment. It was cozy for the two of us when we moved in together; now that we’ve added a crib, playpen, playzone, exersaucer, little computer desk for me, and moved our master bedroom into our office (while leaving the office there), it’s downright small. I imagine that if we still live here when Ronan gets even a little older, he will be craving his own privacy. Ah, well; he will miss New York when we have to move because we can’t afford to live here anymore.

But for now, the apartment must seem very large to him. He can get into nooks and crannies that Terry and I overlook. He crawls very fast, and loves to cruise around the place checking everything out. This is great. What’s not so great is that he now has the ability to lift heavy books, which because of space issues are very close to his playpen, and drop them on top of himself. Which is not so great. But he thinks it’s great fun. He has probably stared up at those books for the past year, wondering what they were doing there, hoping to get his hands on them. Now he's big enough and strong enough. I only hope his head is strong enough. In the mean time we’ve moved his playpen into the middle of the room, which has done wonders for our apartment's feng shui.

One of his favorite places is standing under the dining table. Here he can play with his high chair, one of his favorite things to chew on, and cruise from chair leg to chair leg. This is great. What’s not so great is that I have to figure out how to get him out from under the table from time to time, which is not so easy, as he can now move the chairs to prevent me from instantly reaching him. Which he thinks is great fun. Plus, he hasn’t quite figured out how to get out always from underneath; this sometimes results in tears from a  bumped head. Or he will climb through the chair’s legs, which isn’t a problem from my point of view (it’s kind of silly to watch) but requires great effort on his part.

But I won’t have to worry about the table for more than a few months, because his head is already brushing on the underside of the table. Soon he won’t be able to stand up under there, and Terry and I will be left with our memories of his table adventures, which will only grow more nostalgic. He probably won’t remember the table at all, but will move on to find a new place to call his own.

It’s too bad we have a futon instead of a regular couch. I remember when I was too big to fit into the closet and I was sad. I built a fort out of the living room couch, complete with roof (made of grandma’s handknit blanket) and I felt a lot better. I’m sure Ronan will be just as creative in finding private hiding places, even in our tiny apartment. For now, I’ll enjoy his table fort. I know he does.

This is the clearest image I could get with my cell phone camera
as Ronan moves rapidly to enjoy typing on my laptop

So there I was, happily working on either one of my websites, a project for my MFA in Television, or just surfing the web.

And Ronan saw me.

Which would be fine, if he hadn’t completely noticed everything I was doing and committed it to memory so that I could bask in the first imitation of my life by my infant son.

Computers are pretty important in our house. Terry uses them all the time at work, and we own three. Technically our apartment is three rooms and a hallway, so we technically have a computer for every room in the place. But we keep two of them in one room and the other one is my laptop, which I use more since Ronan was born because I can take it from room to room and keep working while he’s sleeping or playing.

The first sign of impending imitation was a few months ago when Terry was working on her computer in the back room while I held Ronan while sitting my office chair. My computer was off, but Ronan happily banged away on the keyboard anyway, constantly turning to see if Terry was typing along with him. Warning bells should have gone off. Ronan was aping our behavior. At the time we dismissed it as a cute quirk.

Since becoming somewhat mobile, he has come to love banging away on my laptop to the point that he screams and cries if it’s taken away from him. He has no idea what he’s doing; in fact, he’s discovered a few key combinations I didn’t know existed. He wrote his first email to Terry, which consisted of a few jumbles of letters and “---------------.” The repeat function when a key is held down is fascinating, but he hasn’t quite realized that it works for every key. Which is a great thing if you’re less than one year old.

The keyboard’s tactile suface, which makes small noises when I type on it, makes even better noises if you pound on it really hard. So after a few gentle swipes at the trackpad, he will commence to serious banging on the keyboard while laughing hysterically. I attempt to corral those outbursts of enthusiasm, which earns me a distressed cry every time.

In fact, if I even attempt to position the computer so he can access the keyboard more easily, he thinks I’m taking it away from him and he cries. If I remove the power cord so that he doesn’t play with it, he thinks I’m taking the computer away and he cries. In fact, while he’s pounding on my $3000 laptop, pretty much any movement I make he interprets as an attempt to remove the computer from his use and causes a meltdown.

Which is a little confusing to me. He beams – positively radiates joy – when he’s pounding away, writing nothing. He constantly looks to me and seems to want approval for attacking the computer. So I concluded, perhaps egotistically, that he is emulating me. Which means that I’ve been spending too much time on the computer, and that even at less than eleven months he watches me and wants to do the things that I do. Which is great and scary all at the same time.

When I was on the phone talking to my Mom, Ronan pounded so hard my shift key flew off and landed on the floor. I wasn’t aware of its location immediately, which led me to conclude that Ronan had eaten my shift key and kept right on going, smiling, pounding away, looking at me to see if I was proud of him.

Thankfully I soon located the shift key, and after exploring parts of my computer I never expected to see, I reattached the shift key and it’s working fine. It doesn’t even come off if I turn the laptop upside down. Yet.

When I was fantasizing about becoming a parent, I would promise myself I would stop drinking Dr Pepper, exercise, brush my teeth three times a day, floss, clean house regularly, all to teach him good practices. When Ronan was actually born, Dr Pepper’s stock went up from my consumption to stay awake for hours at night, I haven’t exercised (besides walks in the park) in over a year, I found floss in the medicine chest I thought I finished years ago, and I still brush far too little. Terry just implemented a new house cleaning chart; we’re both a week behind in our chores, but the house is cleaner than before, because previously we stopped cleaning. After he goes to sleep it takes all our energy to stare into space and mutter, “I have so many things to do,” over and over again.

I have to stop using my computer so much. When it gets warm out, I have to take him out every day. I have to teach him to floss and brush his teeth three times a day.

Crap, I have to start being a stay-at-home Dad full time. Who said parenting gets easier the older they get? They never had kids.

Capturing the increasingly mobile infant isn’t easy.
Here he is between the first and second haircuts.

So Ronan and I were at the playground with our Dad’s group the other day. One of the Dads looked at Ronan and said, “You need to cut his hair. It’s time for the first haircut.”

Not tht we didn’t know that. His bangs have grown so that they are down past his eyes, and we are constantly brushing them out of his food. (Remember, babies attempt to put their food through their noses and eye sockets. You would too if no one had explained to you how to eat.) Every night we comb the leftovers out of his hair. We had decided that we would cut it ourselves, and put a pair of scissors on our wish list for Christmas, which nobody bought for us.

So, yesterday, Terry woke me up as she was leaving for work. I don’t know why Terry thinks that giving me instructions when I’ve just woken up is a good thing; perhaps she gives me instructions so that my brain is forced into action and I’ll wake up faster. I dunno. Anyway, I heard “Give Ronan a haircut, trim his bangs,” when she actually said, “TOGETHER, we should give Ronan a haircut, trim his bangs,” which implies that I should wait until she gets home or for the weekend. Nevertheless, my sleep-addled brain heard “give him a haircut” so that’s what I did when she went to work.

Again, not really awake, I decided that the best thing to do would be to dampen his hair and trim his bangs before breakfast, when he is relatively immobile in the high chair. However, no one told me that I would need the chair from A Clockwork Orange in order to keep his head immobile. While he couldn’t move his body, his head squirmed around, attempting to keep the scissors in sight at all times.

Now, I should mention at this point that for whatever reason, my brain, which I’m beginning to think is working against me, recently gave me quite a vision during REM sleep. My jumbled day turned into me giving Ronan a haircut and accidentally stabbing him the eye with the scissors as he squirmed.

So I had a little trepidation about cutting his hair, and his bobbing and weaving (no pun intended) wasn’t helping. So, after a firm grip was applied to his chin, I cut the long bangs down to what I thought was a good length.

As I pulled the cut hair away from him, Ronan became apoplectic.  He wailed and cried as if he’d fallen down. He grabbed the hair out of my hands and looked at and cried some more. He looked at me with those big brown eyes and it was a look of betrayal and sadness. Not expecting such a reaction, I calmed him down and cut some more, because, well, I didn’t cut in a straight line, because he was squirming so much.

For those of you who aren’t parents, baby hair is strikingly beautiful hair; because it’s so fine, much less coarse than the brillo I grow. Which is great. However, when you cut it, the fineness causes it to get everywhere, and it’s really hard to hold onto or pick up. So very soon into the breakfast I suddenly realized that Ronan had hair in his hands, in his mouth, and for some reason one strand was in his food. Even though I had carefully collected the cut hair into an envelope marked “Ronan’s first haircut (bangs)” with the date, the hair was everywhere. So after his first haircut, Ronan ate part of himself. Well done, Dad!

The crying and the upsetness faded, and we enjoyed the day together. I told Terry over the phone about the haircut, which she was mighty sorry to have missed and explained the actual instructions she gave me. So I’ve made a mental note to not do anything with Ronan that might be considered a “first.”

When she got home, she took one look at Ronan’s crooked hairline, and gently asked, “Would you mind if I tried to trim his hair in the bath?” Of course I had no objection, given that I had robbed her of experiencing his first haircut, and also because it looked like I took a weed whacker to his forehead.

However, trimming his hair after the bath proved slightly more difficult. Unlike the high chair, which immobilized his body but not his head, Ronan was free to move about the baby bathtub at will. And, he was determined, to keep those scissors in his line of sight at all times. Because of the distractions of the water and the bath toys and the noise and both of us, he didn’t seem to notice that his hair was being cut like he did with me. However, Terry would repeatedly comb together a shock of hair to be trimmed, only to have Ronan move and pull the hair out of her hands.

She, too, was only able to cut an inverse angle of the top of Bart Simpson’s head. The zig-zag line that we cut looks so terrible that we have abandoned plans to trim the rest of Ronan’s rather long hair. I knew Terry would be disappointed, so I attempted to part Ronan’s hair a different way to cover up the meandering bangs. She saw through that right away. The horror of the zig-zag was known to all members of the family.

The great thing about your first haircut is that Ronan doesn’t seem to care. And that hair grows back.

Ronan enjoys prunes. Well, as a toy, anyway.

So, spoilers – this article is gross. If you’re bothered by grossness, go here.

We went to the pediatrician for Ronan’s 9-month well-baby checkup. “Start iron drops, Ferinsol®” she said, not actually pronouncing the ®. Now, gentle reader, you would think that we would have bells go off about why she was saying “start iron drops!” But we both assumed, since this was the well-baby visit, that iron drops were normal for 9-month-olds.

Disclaimer: iron drops are not normally given to healthy 9-month-olds.

Thanks to the USPS, the letter containing the vital information that Ronan had very mild anemia went into the Gowanus Canal. So our pediatricians were operating secure in the knowledge that we knew he had anemia, and we were operating in the assumption that he did not.

So, I’ve learned an important lesson about parenting: Always ask questions about drugs, even over-the-counter ones, even if you think you know the answer.

Ronan was getting two droppers of iron drops, plus a vitamin with iron. Everything seemed fine, Ronan was his usual happy self, until suddenly, usually while crawling or cruising, he would suddenly drop on his stomach and cry. I’m talkin’ wake-the-neighbors crying. I’m talkin’ “drop everything you’re doing and rush to see what dog has your child’s head in its jaws” crying. Rip-your-heart-out crying.

At first we didn’t know what was happening. After 10-15 minutes of comforting and hugs, he’d continue on his way. I can’t remember that I’ve encountered a constipated baby before, so I didn’t know what the signs were. For future reference, if your baby is crying like he’s gonna die, and has stopped all movement to lie prostrate on the floor, he might be constipated. Or a redneck. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

We scientifically diagnosed the constipation after a particularly gruesome and inconsolable session. A large block of black poo, about the size of a walnut, was deposited in his diaper. An exhausted Ronan just sat on my lap and didn’t move much.

The concentrated evil coming out of his ass, was so hard, we immediately knew what he was so upset about. (Duh.) Within a few hours, Ronan began to tortuously expel seven hard walnuts, and I began contemplating killing the pediatricians. Or stopping the Ferinsol®.

So, avoiding a lengthy prison sentence for me, we stopped the iron drops. All was well for another week. Those of you without infants may not realize that it’s perfectly normal for a baby to go six or seven days without a poo. So, thinking that he was free and clear, we tried to forget all about the horrible iron drops and their walnuts.

The second pediatrician recommended prunes. So, I trudged to the store, acquired the last few packets of organic baby prunes, and commenced feeding them to Ronan. Ronan commenced smearing them all over the place.

But the poo fairy wasn’t done with Ronan. While the iron drops had stopped, he still had a lot inside, and a week later we were stunned to see his terrible pain return. Frantic calls to the pediatrician resulted in Ronan losing all carbohydrates, bananas, and dairy (all cause constipation) from his diet. Also, apparently prunes in large quantities can be contraindicated. (Who knew that there was the “just right” amount of prunes? If only I had that knowledge as a child, I could have gotten out of so many glasses of prune juice, which my Mom seemed to think was actually a beverage, not a remedy. To this day I hate prune juice.) Another day of Ronan wracked with pain again and again followed, and frantic calls to the third pediatrician in the office, who then gave us permission to unleash the nuclear bomb of anti-constipation weapons, the suppository. Apparently this is so potent a weapon that more than three days of use is against the United Nations’ protocol on human rights. Glycerin suppositories are such a laxative that continued use could suck every nutrient out of our child.

Not that we relish continued use. For those readers with children, we all know that a diaper changing table is just an invitation to play to an upwardly-mobile toddler. Our preferred position for Ronan on the diaper changing table is dead-center, on his back. Ronan’s preferred position is slightly to the left of the diaper changing table, on the dresser top, playing with grandma’s heirloom lamp. Why do we have an heirloom lamp within reach of a toddler? Shut up, that’s why.

So, the procedure is for me to hold Ronan on his stomach, while Terry, donning sterile gloves, greases the suppository with KY jelly, and then inserts it into the anus. (I say “the anus” because scientific writing always makes it sound like our anuses are separate living creatures.) Ronan, of course, is happy and content about this. No, of course he ISN’T. Someone just shoved a cold, slimy thing up “the anus.” He takes off like a bucking bronco, and Terry and I try to hold on. Apparently it takes two minutes of holding the damn suppository in “the anus” for it to stick or melt or sprout flowers or whatever the hell it does.

While we’ll continue applying suppositories for three nights, already the nuclear suppository has done its work. Starting with walnuts, we are ending with a football. This afternoon Ronan passed the largest poo of his life, apparently, and I’ve seen some large poos from this kid. I wasn’t around for this one, but Terry liked the size of the-hopefully-last-black-concentrated-evil-nasty-poo to an open adult fist. Thankfully he had much less stress, even with that monster poo.

As for his anemia, his iron is 26. 26 what-sis, I’m not sure. But 30 is normal. Some pediatricians, even the three in our office, don’t agree on that. Some think 20 is normal. So once “the anus” settles down, Ronan gets megadoses of spinach, molasses and lentils. (Not all at once; one at a time.)

Ronan pooed all the iron he had stored up, hopefully, and the poo fairy willing, he will not poo that much again for some time.

The UN Church Center in Turtle Cove.
(No, really, that's what the area used to be called.)

So, unfortunately, my friend’s father died. He was a mover and shaker at the United Nations, so the memorial service was at the same place Terry and I got married, the United Nations Church Center, a non-denominational chapel.

Now that I’m a stay-at-home Dad, I have to think about what to do with Ronan if I want to go somewhere. There are three choices: 1.) Stay home; 2.) Go with Ronan strapped to my chest or in his stroller; 3.) Get Terry, Ryan or someone else to stay with him. Before coming to the memorial service, I checked with my friend to see if it was okay to bring a baby.

His first sentence was “No.” The second sentence was “Just kidding, we’d love to see him.” Assuming his second sentence to be truthful, Ronan and I bundled up in his Bjørn carrier and headed off to midtown East.

Actually, I left out an important part: Ronan had such a crabby morning I was considering not going. He cried in my arms; he cried on the floor; he cried in his playpen. A short nap didn’t help. I fed him some solid food while I considered skipping the service. Checking with my brother, he wasn’t going, he had a temp job. I knew several other friends that wanted to be there but couldn’t because of work. Then the phone rang. My friend was on the other line with a question about microphones for the video of the service. I tried to be helpful, but he ended with, “See you soon, right?” which pretty much meant I had to go. Then we bundled up and rode the subway to Grand Central and walked to the UN Chapel.

Traveling with a child always takes 30 minutes more to get ready than I think it will, and instead of arriving early, we were cutting it close to the beginning of the service. I began to panic about not finding a seat as we got closer to the chapel. Luckily I was able to get a seat in the back. Joining me on my left was the UN representative (I think) of the Salvation Army, and on my left was the UN representative (I think) of someplace. Ronan was delighted at all the new things to look at. The service began with an Imam’s prayer, and then Andrew Young — of the Carter Administration — gave the eulogy. (My friend’s Dad was really involved with the UN.) About halfway through Ronan decided he’d had enough of looking around and had to explore.

This is the crucible of parenting. While he’s not yet walking, he’s crawling, and given a ledge (like, say, a row of chairs) he will go “cruising” which is not related to gay bars, but a baby term for holding on to something while the baby walks around. Ronan loves cruising and crawling, preferring it to any system of confinement we can think of or purchase.[i]

So I was faced with a dilemma. Do I let him down, and watch him crawl/cruise away? Do I hold him and hope he doesn’t cry? Ronan, as usual, made the decision for me. He was going to cry if he wasn’t allowed to explore, so I put him down, hoping he would just sit and be content. Foolish Daddy!

Ronan sat for about 3 seconds, then took off for the exit. The Salvation Army lady stopped him, and I scooped him up. She made faces at him for the rest of Andrew Young’s speech. For the next speech, he played with her shoulder rank insignia, attempting to grab it. This provoked Daddy’s earnestly repeated but quiet “No!” followed by Salvation Army lady’s “Oh, that’s okay.” Then it was time to get on the floor again.

This time Ronan didn’t take off for the exit. Instead, he entertained himself by sticking his hands up the butts of the three people in front of me. Two were delighted by his poke enough to smile at him and get a big smile back. The third person did not smile, but her stern gaze still got a smile from Ronan anyway.  Obviously either Ronan poked her where the sun doesn’t shine or she has a heart of stone. Again, repeatedly, I would take his hands away from the people’s butts. He thought this was great fun!

For the next speech, Ronan crawled under the chairs in front of us, and had a grand time laughing at me whispering for him to come back.

For the last speech, Ronan crawled up the leg of the UN representative of someplace, who actually didn’t seem to mind.

Ronan just started clapping. After every speech, he would listen to everyone clap, then after the audience stopped, he would start — but then he couldn't hear clapping anymore, so he would stop before he really got started. A whole room full of people clapping delighted and excited him but he couldn't figure out the procedure for starting and stopping.

Finally, an hour later, the Imam came back to close the service with prayer. I can’t write or speak Arabic, but it was very heartfelt and beautiful, and everyone was moved by it, including Ronan, who yelled out the last three syllables, almost perfectly mimicking the Imam’s words. Which was a great way to end the service. Instead of wanting to melt into my seat, instead people found his sounds quite delightful (or, at least, they didn’t tell me they were pissed off by his outburst.)

Ronan and I waited for the crowds to make their way upstairs after the service. Allowed the free run of the whole row at last, he cruised down the aisle giggling with joy at finding a new place to play.

At the reception[ii], so many people, even those I didn’t know, commented on how well behaved Ronan was, and that they had no idea an infant was even in the room. For all his activity, he confined himself to poking the five people directly around us, and while they knew for sure a baby was in the room, most of the other people did not.

The only time my friend heard Ronan was when he answered the Imam’s call. I’m damn lucky to have such a great son who is so well behaved!

Ronan will eat paint chips, but not solid food.

We are finally making progress on the eating solid foods front. And when I say “solid” I actually mean “viscous liquid” as baby food isn’t actually solid. As expected from a young American, the sweet foods – pears, apples, mangoes, etc. – are very popular. Sweet potatoes, however, are not looked upon favorably. Squash is okay. Peas and rice, green beans and rice are welcomed. What is not welcomed is anything with chunks in it.

Finger food? Out. Cheerios? Out. Cheese? Out. Boiled egg yolk? Well okay, but only by accident. Right out? Oatmeal, rice cereal, pasta, and anything with carrot chunks in it.

Ronan is quite adept at spitting out the carrot or pasta or whatever chunk, while sucking the viscous liquid around it. He does not like the chunks of real food in his baby food. Even though he is almost ten months old he still greets each spoonful by sticking out his tongue, pushing most of the food out of his mouth. But surely, by some means, he will not eat that pasta or carrot.

The one time we gave him some of our food, macaroni and cheese, carefully cutting it up into baby-bite size chunks, it was too big and he choked. Now, being the son of a dramatist, I tend to completely panic when I choke on food. Ronan had a detached calmness while he was choking, like this happened on a regular basis (I cannot think of another time he choked on food). He spit the pasta out and went right on with his meal as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile I had ripped off the tray to his high chair, his bib, and was about to administer the Heimlich maneuver. Ronan looked at me if I was crazy, because I probably was.

The books say Ronan should be eating twelve ounces of solids a day. We’re overjoyed if he finishes a single ounce at each meal, for a total of three per day. Twice recently he has eaten an entire jar from opening to emptying, which is a four-ounce meal. This is an outstanding achievement, and we high-five and clap like it’s the BEST THING ever.

Because of the arrangement of our tiny living room, I’m the one that feeds Ronan (if I happen to be awake; I usually sleep through morning meal these days.) the food-laden raspberries, where Ronan puts his lips together and blows food all over me, have been replaced with clapping, where his food-encrusted hands launch baby food everywhere. The catapult, where he grabs a full spoonful and then lets go to launch it into the heavens, is still popular.

But he’s definitely eating, and that’s a good thing. Let’s say that he’s eating three ounces. At least one ounce seems to get on his clothes, and at least two get eaten. That’s already a 50% improvement.

It’s a little traumatic to see him covered in food and then he rubs his eyes with hands full of food. We can just imagine the food getting into his eyes and causing all sorts of problems. But that doesn’t really happen; it’s just scary and silly to see him not care that he’s rubbing food into his eyes.

As he ages, he will get better at eating. Ronan, if you’re reading this years later, you did very well.

Who can imagine such foul language coming from such a cute Kid?
Jason was cute once too.

Terry’s niece liked potato chips when she was very young. When she wanted another one, she would yell “Bitch!” which kind of sounds like chips, if you think about it.

Regular readers of the blog may notice that I am free with the Celtic oaths. Some might say that I am as free with the swearing as my father. On the occasion of my eighth grade graduation, we drove my then best friend (whom I’ve not spoken to since 1987) and his brother and mother to the school for the ceremony. Afterwards I went with my friend to his house, where I had this conversation:

My friend’s Mom: Your father is such a religious man.

Me: (incredulous) Ah, what? Religious? My Dad?

My friend’s Mom: He was praying so much today.

Me: During the ceremony?

My friend’s Mom: When he was driving.

Me: Ah, he prays? When he drives?

My friend’s Mom: He kept repeating, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” over and over again.

I can assure you that he was not praying. For my Dad, that was pretty tame. Especially when he was driving. I’ve heard a lot worse screamed out at bad drivers who happened to get in his way.

Ronan, my son, has started repeating sounds. This is good.

I swear. A lot. This is bad. This is bad because Ronan is learning to speak, and he gets excited about excitement. In other words, emotions make him happy. (Go figure.) Since I utter “Fuck!” with a great deal of emotion, this could mean that he will gravitate towards my profanity.

Not that I have a problem with the word “Fuck.” Compared to, say, the firebombing of Tokyo, I don’t think words are such a big deal. For just a few missed chances, a tone change here or there, some other word could have been offensive. I’m mildly offended when people make a big deal out of the word “Fuck.” George Carlin has a great routine about “Fuck” that sums up why the FCC has its head up its ass.

Yet it’s not the first (or second or third) word I’d like Ronan to use. Why? Because my wife, who excels at all things, taught me that “Fuck” is much more powerful if you use it sparingly. As in, when I say “Fuck!” nobody much cares, because I say “Fuck!” when I drop something, when my computer doesn’t boot up, when I’m late, and whenever I’m pissed off, which, apparently, is a lot.

Terry, on the other hand, hardly ever uses the word “Fuck!” When we were getting our wedding invitations together, and many friends came over (Thanks again!) to help stuff envelopes, Terry said, “Fuck!” and the whole assembly line stopped. Dead. Not because Terry said “Stop!” or “Halt!” or “There’s a mistake!” but because she said “Fuck!” and she never says “Fuck!” So when Terry says “Fuck!” something is really fucking wrong. Several people, including me, looked terrified. It all turned out okay, something was missing from the finished envelopes but we could stuff it in, blah blah blah. The point is that if I had said “Fuck!” that the whole assembly line would have kept moving without a care in the world, because I said “Fuck!” fourteen times just opening the first box of envelopes.

So teaching Ronan the proper use of expletives is important. Plus, we don’t want him saying “Fuck!” all the time.[i] Right now he’s just mimicking sounds, but soon it will be words. And it will be easier to not teach him to say “Fuck!” than for Ronan to unlearn saying the word.

Which puts me at a disadvantage. One, I have to think about what I’m going to say. Two, I have to stop myself from saying it. Did you ever want to stop a behavior, but the more you thought about it, the more you did it? That’s where I am now. I’m trying not to say “Fuck!” but the more I think about it, the more I find myself saying it. Am I just coming to terms with how much I swear? Am I swearing more now that I’m trying to stop?

I think I have to substitute another word for “Fuck!” Something that is kinda cool, but not too retro. Any ideas? Either post a comment or email me.

After all, it’s just a word. Penis.