Another case of the baby playing with the box the gift came in

This is Reilly’s Den:

In it, you can find everything an eight-month-old girl could ever need, including stuffed animals, plastic cups, boxes, a chair, mirror, teether, ball, and other assorted playthings.

But where is Reilly?

Reilly has scooted and wormed her way over to the coffee table, because who needs a den when there are books to pull off the shelves?

Astute readers might note that baby is wearing a winter hat while playing inside. Why is that? one might wonder.

Look no further than Reilly’s anxious dad, unhappy that his daughter had chosen as her playspace the only object in the entire apartment that has dangerously sharp edges. The hat, of course, is a form of helmet, to protect baby from smashing her head against the table and causing a panicked rush to the emergency room, followed by a four-hour wait to see a doctor, and eventually a look of deep condemnation from the baby’s mother.

See? The hat seems reasonable now.

Right?

The danger of being a small pink bear in another bear's den

Today while Shawn and I were doing some housework, we put Reilly in her den with a few stuffed animals and plastic cups and let her entertain herself for a bit. She grabbed onto a teether and got to work. After I had finished mopping the kitchen, I came into the living room to find her worming about with a small pink stuffed bear sticking out of her mouth.

I laughed at her, my little girl ruling her den, and opted against removing the bear from her mouth, since she was using it as a pseudo-pacifier. I am so used to quickly removing various items from her mouth, especially paper, which has a tendency to soften and break apart in baby saliva. I don’t mind her eating paper, but I don’t particularly want her swallowing it. I also chose to leave the bear in place because I can’t stand the thing. It plays a rather high-pitched version of “Go to sleep, go to sleep…” when its stomach is pressed, which delights Reilly, of course. You might guess that I’m not a big fan of the tune.

I hopped on the computer to knock out a few projects, and listened to Reilly as she played in her den behind me. About ten minutes later, I turned back to her and there she was, the bear still dangling out of her mouth. She looked at me as if to say, “What? Do I have something on my face?” I broke out in laughter, and she smiled and the bear dropped from her mouth, its leg all gnarled and soaked with baby drool.

My profile as an entry, since Blogger has a character limit, and I have a lot of character

My name Brian. I am married to a bright and talented woman named Shawn. After five years in New York City, we now live in suburban St. Petersburg with our two-year-old daughter, Reilly Grace.

Shawn and I were married in May of 2001, and two months later, moved to New York so that I could pursue a second Master’s degree in English, or in other words, another $15,000 in debt. We moved into our first apartment, a 150 square foot studio, in September in 2001, located on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village. One of its charms was the ability to stand outside our door and see the Empire State building to the north and the World Trade Center to the south. Ten days later, that view was changed forever, and with it was my view of the world as I understood it. This blog is not about that time, though that day forever will influence the person that I am.

The person that I am grew up in Belleair, Florida, a beach town peppered with golf courses. My childhood was memorable as all childhoods are, yet I have no trauma to report. The worst thing that ever happened was when my parents divorced, but surviving that event is too common to claim as a badge of courage. Despite having much acne and driving a 1980 Buick Skylark in the mid 1990’s, my high school experience was equally tame. I might have the same complaints as anyone who has lived with a normal suburban family, and I might be going on a bit about my childhood here, but after writing my way through two theses on the topic, I have to at least give it a paragraph. But to leave it now, I should say that my one lasting memory from childhood is that I was loved.

We have now returned to Florida, to where we grew up, to try to carve our lives of our own. So far, it has been difficult. The culture shock between urban New York and suburban Florida has left us stunned and unmoored. Still, to have family near is reassuring, and so we press on.

This is my second blog, though my first that would be called such. My last online writings I called an “online journal” and were written during our first three years as New Yorkers. Many of my readers will be familiar with Two to Three, and it was an interesting litmus test in how I might fare in daily writing. I hope to continue that experiment here, though with a less strenuous schedule. It was this desire for a less strenuous schedule that led me to cease writing Two to Three. After a hiatus, what came next was the birth of my daughter and an attempt to capture her changes in a weekly e-newsletter named The Life of Reilly. Those weekly entries, however, seemed to hamstring my creativity, and so I have returned to the web to begin again.

Enough telling, though, and on with the blog…