Thursday, June 29, 2006

I would now like to introduce...

On May 18th of this year, my little brother, Stephen, and his long-term girlfriend, Ashley, tied the knot. They were married in a civil ceremony at city hall in Newport News, Virginia, just outside of their base. My brother called, elated, and told me of his news, and I wished him well, and of course spoke to Ashley to welcome her to the family. He then swore me to secrecy. The news was not supposed to go beyond me and Shawn.

I am terrible of keeping secrets, so a part of me felt a little trepidation at this responsibility. The way I usually keep a secret is by pretending whatever it was never happened, and banishing any thought of it from my mind. But I wanted to think of my newly married brother, I was excited and wanted to shout the news from the rooftops.

Part of me was okay with the whole secret business. I had helped guide Stephen and Ashley through their choice of how, when and where to get married. It was important to both of them that they get married before she shipped to Iraq for her six-month tour of duty, but they didn’t want to rush into such an important decision. The fact that they were so carefully considering their options only proved to me how serious they were taking their union, and how much they loved each other. I gave them my unequivocal blessing, and it felt really great that my brother and his fiancĂ©e had asked me for my advice. It was important to me that my brother trusted me, and that my opinion was valuable to him.

***

At weddings, the DJ always announces the bridal party couple by couple, playing some funky music as each pair dances into the reception. The high point of this event is the last couple—the bride and groom—who enter the room to riotous applause. Since my brother and his new bride haven’t had a reception yet, I thought it would be appropriate for me to introduce them to you all.

(Hold on while I put on my Jock Jams CD.)

“And now, I would like to introduce to you, your bride and groom, Ashely and Stephen Overcast!”



I love you guys.

A Proper Slide

There are two distinct parts of a trip with Reilly to Union Square Playground:

1) A swing on the swings
2) A slide on the slide

When I first introduced Reilly to the slide, she crawled right up to it and slid down head first. I wasn't a big fan of this technique, due to the probability of her eventually ramming her head into the ground.

Not long after, Reilly started to crawl up to the slide, slowly turn herself around, and then slide down feet first on her belly. Reilly learned this technique at daycare. In the "big kids room," where Reilly sometimes plays, there is a wooden playset that includes a slide. Amanda, the director there, mentioned that she had seen Reilly performing this trick and said that she was pretty smart for figuring it out. (Picture me beaming.)

Today, Reilly surprised me by crawling up to the slide, pushing herself up into a sitting position, and then zooming down in a proper, feet first slide. Luckily, I had my camera along--so--without further fatherly blabbing, here it is, in four frames:



Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Rockin'

This afternoon when I picked up Reilly at daycare, I asked Shawneeka the same question I always ask: “How was Reilly’s day?”

She said, “Your daughter is quite the climber.”

“How so?”

“Remember that wooden rocking chair we used to have in the corner? Well, today she was cruising around it and using it to pull herself up.”

Here I nod, knowing quite well that the computer chair in our apartment is one of her favorite places to play.

“One minute she was playing around it, and the next minute we look over and there she is sitting in it.”

“Oh, God,” I say.

“So, we had to take it out of the room. Once she figured out to get up on it, she wouldn’t leave it alone.”

I smiled, and looked to the corner where the rocking chair used to be, the bare floor yet another reflection of Reilly’s influence on the world around her.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The Law of the Pacifier

Last night, I put Reilly down for bed and left the room. She started crying right away, but that didn’t worry me—she often cries for a minute to settle herself down. However, this time her cries continued to escalate, so I was forced to return to her room to see what all of the hubbub was about.

In the darkened room, I saw Reilly standing up in her crib. Her face was damp with tears, and a little wet spot had formed at her feet where the tears had dripped from her chin to the mattress.

My daughter then did something that was so brilliant and yet so sad: she reached into her mouth and handed me her pacifier.

The Overcast household Law of the Pacifier states that Reilly may have her pacifier at naptime and bedtime only. In order for Reilly to exit her crib, she must first relinquish the pacifier.

Normally, when I go in to pick up Reilly after a nap, I first take out her pacifier and drop it to the mattress before removing her from the crib. Last night, when Reilly offered me her pacifier, she was sending me a clear, nonverbal message:

“Daddy, please take my pacifier. I want to come out of the crib!”

Sunday, June 25, 2006

First words

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was relatively comfortable calling “baby” Reilly’s first word. Unfortunately, after a day of saying “baby” approximately fifty times, Reilly has never said the word again. Since this blog is only full of honesty and truisms, I regretfully and officially redact “baby” as her first word.

In another previous post, I explained how Reilly loves to play with her stuffed kittens, and how she sometimes will share one with me. When she gives me a kitten to hold, I say, “Thank you.”

Politeness is important in our family. For example, last night, while eating dinner, Reilly offered Shawn a piece of her cheddar cheese. Shawn took it and said, “thank you.”

And Reilly said, “day doo.”

Shawn and I looked at each other and said, “thank you!”

And Reilly said, “day doo.”

Then, Shawn and I said, “YAY! Her first words!”

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Week 50 Pictures

The Week 50 pictures are up at the Smugmug site. For more shots of our trip to Flagler Beach, click here.


Friday, June 23, 2006

From the Archives: June 23, 2001 - Age 25

The solstice has ushered in summer, and with the sun comes America’s favorite pastime—no, not baseball—garage sales!

In the book Travels with Charley, Steinbeck traveled across the country in search of Americans that define our nation. I say, “Mr. Steinbeck, no need to travel the country. If you want to meet a true cross-section of Americans, just have a garage sale.”

Shawn and I had never held a garage sale ourselves, but moving from our Tallahassee townhouse to a single-room apartment in New York City necessitated the event. Armed with our first-timer enthusiasm and the faint memories of our parent’s garage sales (crinkled bills, jingling silver, and the painful, forced sale of old toys), we set out to unload four years of accumulated college-quality junk.

6:00am - Met my wife with a tired look as NPR clicked on our clock radio. We had been up until 2:00am the previous night pricing, which brings me to my first tip. We had many items. After realizing how long it would take to price each one, we began to throw like items into shallow cardboard boxes and put a single price on the outside. Then, as each item came up, I would ask Shawn, “quarter box, or dime box?” Shawn would glance at the item and pass down her verdict.

Near the end of the night, I said, “Shawn, 25 cents or a quarter on this one?” We both laughed so loud it woke up the dog.

6:15am – The coffee pot is rumbling as I walk out to Ocala Road to strategically post our garage sale signs. When I return to the house, there is a Cadillac parked parallel to our driveway and a bleary-eyed, white-whiskered old man standing in my empty carport. “Am I too early?” he asks. I check my watch. 6:30am. The garage sale ad in the Tallahassee Democrat stated 8:00am. This leads me to tip #2: If you don’t want early birds, you must state it in your ad. Then, they’ll come anyway.

Shawn and I drag items out the sliding glass door of our porch and arrange them in a semi-circle with the priciest items in the front, the nickel box in the back. The old man gathers together a pile of our things, thoughtfully smoking a cigar and sipping his coffee.

“Where ya’ll movin’?”
“New York City.”
“Hmph. Let’s talk.”

We move to his pile. He has our framed poster prints, blender, and some stuff from our quarter box. At a quick glance, I calculate $14. I soon find that the old man has another price in mind.

“These posters aren’t worth much. Frames are good. I’ll get money for them in the junk shop I own.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll give you ten bucks for the lot.”
“Sold!”

7:03am – A mother and daughter show up. Shawn and I now have our coffee and have abandoned our planned breakfast of bacon and eggs for hastily eaten granola bars. The young girl and her mother root through the 50 cent and 25 cent boxes, take a few items, and then the daughter tries on some of my wife’s clothes. The entire time they speak softly to each other in Spanish. Though I just graduated with a Spanish minor, I understand nothing.

When it comes time to buy, we bag up their items and I say to the couple, “Is this all?” The daughter—I guess she is about ten—shyly translates my sentence for her mother, her eyes downcast. The mother then says something to her daughter in Spanish.

“We would also like the dresser,” the daughter says. The mother nods at me, confident that her daughter has translated her desires.

“That’ll be twenty-two,” I say. I round down.
“Veinte y dos,” the daughter says to her mother.

The mother pulls the bills out slowly, weighing the purchase in her mind. She hands them over, and I help her load the dresser into her pickup truck. I step back into the carport and reflect on the quiet pair as the truck grumbles to life.

7:34am – Two cars pull up at the same time. Neither driver chooses to park in the empty spaces of our apartment parking lot, instead parking side-by-side, effectively blocking all avenues of exit for my neighbors. I cringe.

One lady, a middle-aged African American, looks over our electronics, asks us of our camera works, then buys a glass flower vase and a table cloth instead. She leaves.

The other woman, a 30-something blond with equally blond armpit hair goes straight for Shawn’s clothes. My wife is a size 2. This lady was not, yet she tried on several items, desperately trying to button a shirt over her massive boobs. When she asks me my opinion, I tell her it looks great on her. Shawn tries to conceal her laughter.

After choosing a few shirts, she turns to my old radio that is softly playing The Morning Edition on NPR. Though it is still early, she takes the liberty of changing the station to country and cranking up the volume. I cringe for the second time, and sell it to her for $2 so to have an excuse to unplug it.

8:04am – Our second male arrives, buys my ghastly PEZ collection for $2, and asks us where we’re going.

“New York City.”
“Cool.”

He then purchases the only other poster frame that our first customer didn’t buy and wishes us luck.

8:15am – Our neighbor, Hazel, comes to sit with us on our porch. We engage in casual small talk, from our plans in New York to her dog’s allergies. She doesn’t shop our sale, which is fine because there are others browsing. When she leaves we understand she didn’t come to shop. She was just being a nosy neighbor and that was fine with us—she didn’t complain about the people milling about or their inability to park between two white lines.

8:30am – Two sisters show up in a SUV. One eyes our barstools with the blue velvet cushions. She picks at a gold tooth in her mouth.

“Just $6 for both of these?”
“Yeah,” I answer, wishing I hadn’t just marked them down from ten.
“That’s cheap.”
“Priced to sell,” I say.
She stops picking at her tooth. “I’ll take them!” she says, and hands me the $6.
“What! I saw them first!” her sister complains to me. Shawn smartly walks away while a sisterly argument erupts. I shrug my shoulders and they fight all the way back to their car.

8:43am – “So, when do all the students leave?”
The blond lady with the equally blond armpit hair is still here, talking to me as she picks through the dime box. The “students” as she calls them, already left two months ago at the end of spring term, but I am trying to get rid of her because she is boisterous and annoying the other customers.

“Oh, they’ll be leaving in late July,” I say.
“Ok, because when they leave they throw out all their stuff and I like to pick through it.”
“Oh,” I say, at a total loss for words.

She buys a few dime items and grabs her radio and too-small shirts and leaves. Shawn and I jointly roll our eyes and smile, then spend the next half hour gossiping about her.

10:25am – A red Saturn coupe pulls up and out pops a short lady with running shorts on and a crop of black hair.

“Where ya’ll moving to?”
“New York.”
“What part?”
“Manahattan.”
“Oh, I just came from there. I grew up in Brooklyn.”

We talk with her quite a bit. We learn that her husband works with the university at putting new student housing up. She shops garage sales for gifts for her friends, and is an admitted candle freak, which proves true when she buys every one we have.
“I’ll take this lamp too,” she says, “even though I don’t have a place for it. It is so cute!”

I find this statement interesting since we are selling it because we don’t have a place for it ourselves. This is the beauty of selling items at a garage sale. People will buy things they don’t need if only because they are cute. She leaves with three bags of stuff.

“Good luck.”

10:36am – Two African American women show up.

“Do you have any furniture for sale?”

We show them our table inside our townhouse and offer it to her for $20. She seems really excited, says that it’s just what she’s looking for, and that she really needs it. I wonder how she will get it back home since she arrived with her friend in a small Honda.

“I’ll have to see if I can borrow my neighbor’s truck. I’ll be back at noon.”

1:00pm – The women still haven’t returned for the table. We have learned a lesson, and offer up our next tip: If someone wants something but doesn’t have the means to move it immediately, get a deposit.

Shawn begins consolidating items into the quarter boxes.

2:15pm – We haven’t had a customer for an hour and fifteen minutes. Shawn cuts the prices on all remaining items in half. As if they could hear our marker slashing prices, two cars show up. An elderly, heavily wrinkled white lady buys a hoard of quarter items. The other, another old lady with a soft black afro buys our wicker baskets, a mixer, and both our computer chairs.

2:23pm – A man shows up with his daughters, one about 17, the other a preteen. They quickly glance over our dwindling possessions, frown, and they complain that they couldn’t see our garage sale signs as they sped off.

A lady who was browsing through Shawn’s clothes watches the whole scene.

“I didn’t have any trouble finding it,” she offers. The way she says it sounds like an apology, trying to make up for the rudeness of her fellow shopper. When her total comes to $6.85, I round down to six. Both of us are happy.

2:50pm – A door slams next door and our Cuban neighbor comes out.

“When you moving?”
“Mid-July.”
“Where you going?”
“New York City.”
“Oh, I’m moving soon too—to Texas. New York is a great place. Are you going to settle there?”
“No, we’re just going for a few years.”
“Well, it’ll be a good experience. Too expensive for my taste, though, and the city is too busy for me.”
“Yeah,” I say, though the busyness is half the reason we’re going.

He buys our Polaroid camera and some duffel bags, and then goes back next door. In the five years I’ve lived here, that’s the most he’s ever spoken to me.

3:05pm – A woman arrives with her daughter. She had bought a few items earlier in the day, and has returned, as promised, to let her daughter try on a few of Shawn’s clothes. They buy a dress, and leave.

3:30pm – I have taken down the signs and Shawn has consolidated what remains of the sale into three cardboard boxes. I load the boxes into the trunk of my car for a later drop off at Goodwill. Shawn’s leftover clothes will be taken to the local Women’s Abuse Shelter of Tallahassee.

4:00pm – Shawn is asleep on the couch and I am writing this entry, reflecting on our day. We had declared it a success, over $200 richer and having reduced our stuff from a carport to a car trunk.

I think of…[At this point, the pen scrawls across the page and the entry ends, as I have also fallen asleep.]

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Instead of the usual babble

This afternoon, Reilly and I met up with Seth to grab some falafel from Mamoun's. After we purchased our falafel sandwiches, we strolled back to his place so that I could watch the last episode of The Office. He'd been saving it for me on TiVo for over a month now.

After the show was over, I set down Reilly in front of me, and she started cruising along the edge of Seth and Cindy's coffee table. When she reached the edge, she held onto the table with one hand, and then extended her other hand to reach for Seth. Seth started to move toward her to pick her up, but I stopped him and told him to reach out too.

Reilly very calmly let go of the table, and took a step forward. And then ANOTHER step. AND THEN ANOTHER STEP!

Just like that, at age 11 months, 11 days, my baby became a walker. It was as exhilarating as it was sudden.

Next thing I know, she'll turn to me and instead of her usual babble, will say, "Daddy, do you think you could fix me a bottle?"

In Memoriam

Shawn and I took Reilly to Flagler Beach, Florida this past weekend. There we met up with Shawn’s father’s side of the family: Grandpa, Grandma, Craig, Donna, Danny, Chris, Jimmy, Chuck, Jay, Sam, Savannah, Cindy and John. Flagler was chosen because it was close to the grandparent’s home in Palm Coast, and also to incorporate a vacation aspect to a trip that had a more serious purpose.

It was several months ago that Shawn’s aunt Christine died. She passed away from breast cancer that had metastasized to her liver. Christine fought it until the very end, but sometimes the fight is not fair, and is so one-sided that your opponent has an impossible advantage.

As if the cancer were not enough, during chemo she lost her home and her hospital in Hurricane Katrina, and was forced to drift, ill and homeless, from relative to relative. At one point, she came to the City to visit Sloan Kettering for a second opinion, diagnosis and treatment. When we visited her at the Miracle House she was tired, her skin a little golden, her hair growing back in grey. But she was sharp enough. Reilly got to meet her great aunt, we got to have a meal together, and to hug hello and goodbye.

Christine asked to be cremated, and for her ashes to be cast out into the ocean at dawn. Shawn tells me it was a beautiful ceremony, and that the only people on the beach were those in our group. She said that the sound of the waves was calming.

I didn’t go. The reason that I didn’t go was that Reilly was still sleeping. Shawn asked if I would stay with her, and I was happy to. I’ve never had a very good grasp on death. I’ve gone from being ambivalent to it to fearing it at every moment, perhaps even feeling what it is to die. I was glad to skip the ceremony.

I always liked Christine. She was a free spirit, a little weird from living alone for all her adult life in New Orleans, but then again, who in New Orleans is normal? When Shawn and I took our cross-country road trip in 2000, we stopped in New Orleans to visit Christine. I remember that she took us to a Creole restaurant and Christine and I ordered Bloody Mary’s. They were the hottest damn Bloody Mary’s of all time, but Christine was stubborn enough to insist (through watering eyes and a sweaty brow) that they weren’t too bad and to keep on smiling and sipping.

After Christine’s ceremony, the family gathered at the local chain diner to have breakfast. Cindy—Shawn’s aunt and Christine’s sister—brought out pictures of Christine from her last days. My eyes welled with tears to see her. It seemed as if the color was off in the developing—Christine was ashen and yellow from her liver failure—but true to form, was still smiling, holding up a Christmas stocking with her name on it.

The weekend was spent with family, so it contained the usual irritations of too many opinions and clashing personalities. But more so, the overarching feeling was of belonging. And it was a reminder to me that your family is really all you have; a person to change your diaper, to pick you up when you fall down, to cast your ashes into the ocean when you’re gone.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Week 49 Pictures

Click here for more intolerable cuteness.



We're in Florida until Wednesday, so enjoy every last picture!

Objects in the dark tend to stay in motion

Yesterday, Reilly took two early naps, one which was over two hours long (a new record for her). After her second nap, she spent the rest of the afternoon tearing across the apartment in a frenzy of activity and play. Her little body was practically humming with all the pent-up energy.

As I watched my daughter speed across the living room, moving from one toy to the next, I came to a realization: When we are born, we are set in motion, and we do not stop moving until we die, not for a moment. Even when we are sleeping, we cannot escape movement.

Reilly’s physical activity is so prevalent now that to get her to be still is nearly impossible. It’s hard to believe that it was just ten months ago that I was anxiously looking down at my newborn as she lay in her crib, my eyes straining against the darkness to perceive the quiet motion of her breathing.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

The Persistent Thinker

Lately, I’ve noticed Reilly undergoing a significant cognitive change. To simplify: I can see her thinking.

Reilly has these three stuffed kittens that she loves to play with. There is a yellow one, a red one, and a blue one. The yellow and red ones rattle, and the blue one squeaks. I hang these toys from their Velcro snaps on the back of my computer chair. When Reilly sees her toys hanging there, she crawls over and immediately takes down the yellow kitten, which is her favorite. Then, she takes down the red, which is her second favorite.

At this point, she realized she is in a quandary. She looks at the blue kitten, then looks down to see that her hands are full already. After some deliberation, she puts the red kitten down so that she can have a hand free for the blue one. If I am nearby, I’ll say, “Can daddy have it?” and 9 times out of 10, she’ll give me the red kitten to hold while she is taking down the blue one.

Another example happened just a few hours ago, when we were giving Reilly a bath. At the end of the bath, Shawn called me in to look at Reilly. Shawn had spiked her hair into a chaotic whirlwind. I immediately broke out into laughter, and Shawn laughed too, while Reilly looked back and forth at each of us, trying to determine what was so funny. I could practically hear her wheels turning.

Reilly typically uses her newfound brainpower for evil, of course. Yesterday afternoon, I was packing up a box of books, and she watched me the whole way, hatching her plan to reverse my hard work. When I finished the box, I sat back on the couch to watch some of the World Cup, and as soon as my ass hit the seat, she was on a B-line for the box. She had removed two books before I got to her. I put the books back, explained that she was messing up daddy’s neat packing job, and set her by her stool as an alternative.

She feigned interest in her stool until I was back on the couch, then peered up at me.

I said, “Don’t you dare!” to her, but she was already smiling that devilish grin of hers.

She swung around and zipped over to the box to continue her job where she left off. This time, I put her on the other side of the room and tied her tights together before returning to the couch. That’ll fix her, I thought.



But she is persistent in her thinking.

Viva los U.S.A.!

Reilly pictured here cheering on the U.S.A. national team against the Czech Republic. She even had her good luck puppy by her side.

Too bad that we lost 3-0, and that at such a young age, Reilly had to learn how painful it is to be an American soccer fan.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Art Appreciation

Yesterday afternoon, Reilly and I went to the playground at Washington Square Park while Shawn went to yoga. We spent most of our time at the swings, Reilly zooming back and forth in the cool city air and clapping her hands to show her satisfaction.

Now that Reilly is getting a bit older, we also spent some time on the actual playground. I held her hands as she walked around the area, exploring the playset. With her increased mobility, Reilly has also become more adventurous, and this time crawled up the three steps to the slide and slid down face first into my waiting arms.

At one point, I noticed that Reilly was staring over at the wooden benches that ring the playground. There was a small metal sculpture of a cat there, so I grabbed Reilly’s hands and we walked over to have a look at it. I couldn’t tell if she thought the cat was real, or if she just liked the shiny metal of the sculpture, but she ran her hands along the thing as if she was petting it. It was a very sweet moment.


Saturday, June 10, 2006

Week 48 Pictures

Week 48 pictures are up at the Smugmug site. Click here to view!


Reilly says, "Click here, or I will give you my meanest baby stare."

Friday, June 9, 2006

From the Archives: June 09, 2004 - Age 28

Note: For context, this entry was written three days after Shawn and I completed the San Diego Marathon.

Today is the first day that I was able to walk without a limp, though I still have quite a bit of pain in my left foot and a sore back. As Shawn said to me last night, while I was rubbing down her legs, “Every day it’s the same pain in a different place.” For whatever reason, our pain migrates to different body parts each day, (making sure nothing gets left out, I suppose). Don’t take this as too much of a complaint—it’s part of the deal, and please understand, we have no regrets. The pain, though, is a constant reminder of our trek, echoing with every move we make.

I was on the train home today, trying to find a comfortable way to sit on the hard subway bench seat, when the man across from me dropped his coffee. It spilled out on the subway floor right as the train pulled away, causing the puddle to stream down the car. The man, quite reasonably, said, “Shit!” At the next stop, he got off, out of embarrassment more than anything, I suppose. It was when I looked back to the puddle, and then to where he was sitting, that I realized he had forgotten his bag. It was just a grocery bag, and from what I could tell, its only content was a carton of ice cream. But this old man, with a day-old beard and wearing a Yankees hat over his coke bottle glasses, I mean, I felt bad for the guy. At the same time, I felt better, for all I had to worry about was soreness.

Thursday, June 8, 2006

Five more things you might not know about Reilly

1) Reilly has learned to point with the proper finger. Though it is encouraging to see her use her index finger, part of me really misses the way she used to flick the bird.

Reilly has also learned to follow my finger if I point at something. She’s a smart kid.

2) On Tuesday, I gave Reilly her first taste of chocolate. She loved it. A few minutes later, she crawled over to the bed, pulled herself up, and sneezed. When I looked back at her, there was a fine spray of chocolate sneeze all over the bedspread.

3) Reilly’s vocabulary continues to expand. She is now making the ch, sh, and t sounds. But instead of saying “ch-ch-ch” she says “choo-shoo-choo-too.” She also makes a motorboat sound when she is upset. (I have a sample of the motorboat sound on video. If you want to see it, leave a comment and I’ll email it to you.)

4) In the morning, Sesame Street is no longer Reilly’s favorite thing to watch. Her preferred programming is watching Shawn get ready for work. I set up her high chair in the entryway to the bathroom, give her a few snacks, and she sits and watches Shawn put on her makeup and blow dry her hair. Shawn will occasionally point the blow dryer at Reilly, which our baby finds to be very funny.


5) On the way home from daycare, Reilly always goes crazy for the Mama Mia poster on the subway wall at the City Hall station. She cranes her neck as we get close to it, and then breaks out into a big smile and a “Huh! Huh! Huh!” when she sees the poster. I think her excitement comes from the fact that the poster somewhat resembles her mom. And Reilly loves her mom.

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Testing, Testing: 1, 2, 3

Yesterday, Reilly’s favorite activities were the following:

1) Stripping the piping between our air conditioner and the window. Piping that took me a very long time to get perfectly in place, so that no air would seep in between the window and the air unit.
2) Trying to stick her fingers in between the guards of the fan.
3) Placing her head inside the plastic drycleaner bag that covers Shawn’s suit jacket, which was hanging from her closet handle in the kitchen.

The results of Reilly’s favorite activities from yesterday:

1) Warm air and mosquitoes floated in from outside.
2) I had to turn off the fan and put it away, which further increased the already rising temperature of the apartment due to #1 above.
3) By this point I was so irritated I just let her play with the plastic bag. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? (Just a joke, folks!)

I couldn’t decide whether Reilly was playing with these things because they were inherently fun, or because she knows they’re off-limits. And I don’t know if it was the heat of the apartment or the fact that Reilly had been under my care for almost 48 hours (Shawn was in Orlando), but the kid was really getting under my skin. I mean, who knew an eleven-month-old would be testing her boundaries so early?

Monday, June 5, 2006

"Baby"

Over the past month, Reilly’s vocabulary has increased exponentially. She has moved from single syllables (da), to single repetitive syllables (da-da-da), to mixed repetitive syllables (ma-ba-da).

Over the last week, we have noticed Reilly getting closer and closer to forming words. To help her along, we chose four words for her to focus on: “mama,” “dada,” “duck,” and “baby.” When Reilly goes through one of her chatty stages during the day, we try each word several times to see if she’ll latch on to it.

The conversation goes a little like this:

Reilly: “ma-ma-ba-ma-da.”
Shawn: “MA-ma.”
Me: “MA-MA.”
Reilly: “ba-ma.”
Shawn: “Duck!”
Reilly: “Du.”
Me: “DuuuuCK.”
Reilly: “Duh.”

Today, during a similar back-and-forth, Reilly quite clearly said, “baby.” Shawn and I looked at each wide-eyed and said, in unison, “YAY! BAYBEE!” And Reilly said, “ba-by” again.

Later in the day, we went out to the west side promenade for a walk, and Shawn and I discussed whether or not to consider this as her first word, and decided that it was too early to tell. Reilly had gone through a similar stage before in which we were quite sure that she was purposefully saying “dada,” only to find that it was a one day event and not to be repeated again (much to my disappointment).

We strolled home, and as we were taking Reilly out of her stroller, Shawn said, “Hey, baby!”

Reilly turned to Shawn, looked her right in the eyes, and said, “baby.” And to ensure us it was no fluke, she said it again:

“Baby.”

Sunday, June 4, 2006

From the Archives: June 04, 2004 - Age 28

I was out the door by 7:30a, needing to get to Pfizer early to correct a major fuck-up that was hanging over my head.

The back-story: It has been my job since last week to prepare everything required for an important 25-person training session held by one of my executives. Yesterday I was putting the final touches on everything, setting up the conference room, confirming the food delivery, finding flipcharts and markers, setting up the A/V equipment, and so on. It was at about 4:30p that I realized that the Facilities Department had failed to deliver the 10 chairs I had ordered for the conference room. No problem, I thought, I’ll just give ‘em a call. The thing was, was that the Facilities Department closes at 4:30p. They have no voicemail. I began to panic, seeing that the meeting started at 8:30a the next morning. I was also filled with a sense of irony, in that I was at the receiving end of a Facilities mistake. (If you’ll remember, my 5-month tenure at Sotheby’s was in the Facilities Department, and if someone asked for chairs, they got ‘em.)

So, here is the picture: a perfectly set up conference room, the tables in order and everything in place, all of which meant nothing because there was no way for the attendees to sit down. Never before have I more clearly understood the value of a chair. So, I ran around and stole chairs from other conference rooms (which I was strongly instructed NOT to do), hoping that I could get to the office early enough in the morning to get a hold of Facilities, have the chairs delivered, and return the chairs to their proper conference rooms—all before 8:30a.

So this morning I was speed-walking down Bleecker Street to the subway station, my brain working frantically to decide the course of action to take in each potential situation that might arise. The streets were nearly empty, save a few elderly people walking their dogs and a garbage truck stopping intermittently to pick up dumpsters. I saw a school bus pick up some kids on the corner of Mercer—something I had never observed before. At Broadway the Hey How Ya’ll Doin’ Homeless Guy said “good morning” to me and I returned the gesture. He was just setting up his egg crate. In a sense, we were doing the same thing—both of us going to work.

But back to the story. So, I rocketed up to Grand Central, walked over to Pfizer, and just as I hit the 205 building, I noticed with a frantic grappling at my pants pocket that somehow I had lost my ID. DRAT! I cannot remember if I mentioned it in a previous entry, but the security is Fort Knox tight here. I went into the building anyway, and pleaded with the security guard to let me in.

“Do you remember me, I’m temping on the 3rd floor?”
“Sure, I remember you,” he said.
“Can you let me up, I forgot my ID.”
“No sir, you’ll have to get a new pass.”
“Even if you remember me?”
“Even if I remember you.”
“What if someone comes in who knows me. Can they let me up?”
He thought for a minute. “Sure, you can do that.”
“Great.”

So, I went outside and waited by the revolving doors in the hopes that someone would come along to save the day. Sure enough, in 5 minutes someone did come along, the very man who was leading the meeting that I was trying to get upstairs to set up for.

“Why are you here so early?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, just making sure everything is set up okay,” I answered.

So, up we went, and I was off to the races. I got Facilities on the line right away, and knowing how to deal with them, got the chairs upstairs in 5 minutes. Fuck-up averted. World saved. Still, one important point of interest remained—whatever happened to my ID card?

Later, when I caught my breath and had a little free time, I instant messaged Shawn and asked her if I had left my pass at the apartment.

“Well, sort of,” she replied.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I found your ID in the toilet.”
“How did it get THERE?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing!”

Saturday, June 3, 2006

Week 47 Pictures

Here is a picture of Reilly at Week 47 (almost 11 months)! For more pictures of her goofy smiles and flyaway hair, please click here.

Thursday, June 1, 2006

But do puppies eat bananas?

With Reilly, I sometimes feel like I’m raising a puppy, what with the constant drool, chewing of furniture, and cleaning up of the poop. She even crawls around the apartment with toys hanging out of her mouth and refuses to come when called.

Just when I’m convinced that my daughter is a canine in disguise, she’ll go and do something that makes me realize not only that she is an actual flesh-and-blood baby, but also that her days as a baby are coming rapidly to a close.

I just made up some banana bread, and while I was doing it, I peeled a banana for Reilly to eat. Normally, I cut up the banana into little bite-size* pieces and let Reilly feed it to herself. This time, I fed her the whole banana, letting her bite off little chunks on her own.

The attached picture shows how far she got on the thing. Honestly, for a second there, I thought she was going to eat the whole nanner!



*I went back and forth for about five minutes trying to determine if the correct expression is “bite-size” or “bite-sized.”