A Week of Trips and Writing (with Smiles)

November 14, Monday

My favorite photo of Esme so far!

     On Monday, we tried to visit the Genyokan noon class to watch Aikido, but we forgot that it was the day after a blackbelt test, so the Dojo was closed.  Oh well, we went to Meijer thrifty acres instead to get kitty litter and contact juice.  True to her heritage, Esme did not like Meijer very much.  I've always thought it was the lighting in big box stores that makes me not want to be in there.  Maybe it's the air.  Whatever the reason, Esme agrees with us -- not a great place to hang out.  Much better to be warm and cuddly on the couch at home!

November 15, Tuesday

     On Tuesday, we took the car in to the shop to get the check engine light checked.  It turned out there was an air sensor that needed replacing, so we had time to head downtown and check things out.  I'd taken the stroller with us, but the sun was shining into Esme's eyes (and would be for six or eight blocks) so I pulled her out of the stroller and tried out the evenflo carrier.  With Esme on my chest, facing in, we were able to walk all the way downtown with no trouble.  I wanted to fill up a couple of growlers at Arbor Brewing Co. (Their Take-Away Tuesdays mean that growlers to go are half price, which means you can get 64 ounces of beer for $5.  Show me anywhere else you can get craft brewed beer for less than a buck a bottle and I'm there.), so we stopped in soon after they opened.
     Our friend, Dave, was the host at the time, and opened the door for us to make my trip in with the stroller much easier.  He also motioned us to be a little quiet, as there was a television interview going on. Renee, the co-owner, was being interviewed by Detroit's channel 4 news about their upcoming expansion to India.  (Yes, you heard that right.  Our locally produced beer, with locally sourced food, is opening a branch in Bangalor, India.  I gathered from the interview that the only real change to anything on the menu will be changing the name of their flagship IPA from Sacred Cow -- not likely to be a popular name for a beer in India -- to Raging Elephant.)  As I sat and had a beer and a bowl of soup and wrote 1500 words on my NaNoWriMo novel, Esme slept.  In fact, she slept just about the entire time she was in the carrier on my chest.  (And I found out later that I made the six o'clock news:  they filmed my beer being poured, carried, and delivered to me, and apparently cut the shot as I was picking it up and taking a sip.  No word on whether Esme was visible in the shot.  And we don't have TV and they didn't post the video on their website, so, as far as I know, I can't go back and check.)
     We were even able to stop by the co-op on the way back to the car to grab Seventh Generation diapers -- and before you conservatives start asking why I'm buying green, crunch-granola, hippy-drippy diapers, it's because they end up being less than a quarter each.  Honestly, it's one of the first products I've seen where the 'environmentally friendly' product way undersells the competition.  And I was quite proud of myself for my multitasking at checkout.  Digging in my wallet for cash while giving the clerk my co-op member number, feeding Esme with her bottle and bagging my own stuff.  (Made me feel like one of those Hindu gods with the many arms!  Perhaps not a raging elephant, but who wants an elephant in your local co-op?)  All in all it turned out to be about a three-and-a-half hour nap for Esme, before we were back at the car, headed home with no warning lights on.

November 17, Thursday

     On Thursday morning, after our mid-morning feeding, we headed out to Trader Joe's to pick up a few groceries.  (For those of you who live where there is no Trader Joe's, I'm sorry.)  I was worried a little about Esme's reaction to Meijer on Monday, so I was prepared to zip out of there with the bare necessities, if necessary, but, like her parents, Esme had no trouble with TJ's.  As we went in, there was another dad with his two or three year old daughter who was not happy about going shopping, and made it very clear to anyone within a five hundred yard radius that she really, REALLY didn't want to sit in the little chair in the cart.  I tried to get away from them quickly so Esme wouldn't get upset, but she didn't seem to mind the noise -- and I think she might have enjoyed the attention each aisle as we would pass them, or they us, and the little girl would say, with greater happiness each time, "Baby!"  Nice to know Esme's a good influence on other kids.  May it always be so.
     We were also approached by a TJ's employee who confided in me that she was pregnant and so had to talk to just about every person with a baby who came into the store.  And by a retired teacher who told me that "all children are gifted until they're eight."  When I told her I was a fourth grade teacher (I have a few 8 year olds at the beginning of the year, but mostly my students have been 9 and 10), she simply said, "Then you know what I mean," and walked off.  No, ma'am, I'm not sure that I do, but thanks for agreeing that my baby is gifted.  (I still believe all children are gifted, though I don't necessarily appreciate all gifts, and I have found myself wishing I could re-gift some of them at times.)

November 18, Friday

     Friday ended up being a writing day for me.  Esme and I set up shop on the couch and I tore through over 1600 words in the morning, another 1500 in the afternoon, yet another 1600 in the evening, and, with Tina's prodding, made one final push to snag the extra few hundred words I needed to clear 5,000 words for the day, and fully catch up to the 30,000 words I was supposed to have written by this day in NaNoWriMo.  My novel is fleshing itself out quite well.  I have to say though, I never know what's going to happen when I sit down.  I simply start writing and learn about my characters and the situations they find themselves in and how they deal with those.  It's just like reading a book, except I'm the one writing it.  I do have some pretty clear ideas about general upcoming situations, but I have no idea what's specifically going to happen, how they're going to survive without getting caught, and if their overall plan is going to work out for them.  I guess I'll have to keep writing...

November 19, Saturday

     Tina took Esme to Whole Foods on Saturday afternoon to get ingredients for an incredible Southwestern Soup (Moosewood Celebrates, if you want the recipe), and she did fine there, too.  I didn't go with them, so I don't have stories to tell about it.  Sorry.


November 20, Sunday

     And, finally, today Esme went with Tina to visit the prenatal yoga class at A2 Yoga.  They attended regularly while Tina was pregnant, but this was their first time back with Esme on the outside.  They were apparently well received, though Esme did have a moment's scare when the previous class let out and a bunch of energized yogis came funneling out of the studio door right towards them.

     So that makes a big box store, four different grocery stores, a yoga studio and (almost) an Aikido dojo, a car repair shop, and a bar.  You wouldn't know it by reading this post, but she still sleeps most of the time and rarely leaves the house.

     This coming week we're looking forward to our two month doctor's appointment on Tuesday, a family visit on Thursday (and we're going to leave the Thanksgiving cooking to the fabulous restaurant where Tina and I were engaged two-and-a-half years ago, The Quarter Bistro), and picking up Esme's first Christmas tree on Friday.  Plus, added bonus, Tina has the whole week off!  It's going to be family week at the Davis'.

First Jam Session

November 10, 2011

     Today, Wade's friend, Jon, came over to practice as two thirds of Bowling Green.  Esme seemed to move her hand in time to the music (is this the sound of one hand clapping?), so we tried to let her sit in on a few tunes.

Jon takes a break while Esme tries out her new drum

     When we went to North Carolina at the end of October, all of the grandchildren received drums (complete with drum sticks).  Esme tried hers out for the first time today.  She's still not quite clear on the concept, but she's definitely moving in rhythm with our music.

 She can get her hand on top of the drum, and she also repositioned the drum for better resonance.  I think she's hoping for a bass drum to play with her feet, as well as a cymbal for a little syncopation.

     She was pretty thrilled when dad sat down for a photo op.  Throughout the practice session, she was watching our hands strumming (or plucking in my case) and seeing the light reflect off of our guitars.  She would even watch our faces as we sang.
     Based on her responses to the various things we played, as well as the music we have going in the house most of the time, I would say she's a huge fan of live music, but she does have an affinity for the classic jazz of Ellington, Coltrane, and Mingus.

     Of course, all of this music playing and spectating does tire her out.  Before we even had our instruments packed up, she had sacked out.  So thanks, Jon, for a great jam session (in preparation for Woodruff's next Tuesday -- we're already on the list), and thanks to all of you for reading!

My First Official Day

     It's 9:45AM on Monday, November 7, 2011.  Today is Tina's first day back at work, and my first daddy daycare duty day.  I have been looking forward to this for, let's be honest, about fifteen years, as my blog description points out.  And less than three hours into my first official day, I have three scraped knuckles, a mess to clean up in the bathroom, a spilled cup of coffee in the back yard, and I've been laughing at myself for the past half hour.  Sometimes, it's either that or cry, and laughter is so much more fun.

     Let me start from the beginning.  Which today is about 3:30 or so.  Okay, fine, I may as well set the whole stage.  Let's start last night as I finished up my daily NaNoWriMo writing.  Everyone else had already gone to bed, as they had to get up for school in the morning, and I had decided not to write past midnight.  I didn't quite reach my 1,667 words for the day, but I did fairly well.  I dragged myself to bed and drifted off to sleep.
     Tina has been doing just about all the nighttime tending to Esme for the past six and a half weeks.  Sure, I'd wake up and know things were going on, but Tina pointed out that she had to be up anyway to feed her, so I (perhaps too readily, I'll admit) accepted that -- with the caveat that once Tina went back to work that she would take care of feeding Esme, but would wake me up for anything else that might need to happen so she could maximize her sleep.  In the wee hours of the morning I became aware that my services might be needed.  Sure enough, Esme was done eating, but still feeling a little fussy.  And no wonder -- she has her first stuffy head.  (No fever, but a little cough, some sneezing, and a head in varying states of cloggedness.  Which can become a problem when she wants her pacifier and can't really breath through her nose.)  So I, well 'woke up' is the wrong phrasing, but suffice it to say that I was playing the hokey-pokey with the nuk, and trying to position Esme for optimum drainage.  She likes to nuzzle in to people when she sleeps, and I kept moving back, bit by bit, to be able to still tend to the nuk.  (For those of you unfamiliar, nuk is a brand name of pacifier.  I don't want to lose anyone by using overly specific terminology.)  By the time she had calmed down and was breathing somewhat smoothly through her nose, I had my back to the edge of the bed, my pillow was wedged up behind me (half off the bed) to keep it out of her way, and one of my arms was going to sleep, but so was Esme.  I decided to let them both sleep.
     I stayed like that throughout the rest of the night, only moving once Tina was already up and out of bed.  As I moved her over to the center of the bed and reclaimed some real estate for myself, Esme mumbled something about losing her nice warm spot on the bed before drifting off to sleep again.  I considered trying to go back to sleep, but with the dryer running in the basement (directly below my bed), the shower going (on the other side of my bedroom wall), and two people getting ready for school with accompanying conversation, hair dryers, and whatnot, I decided to watch Esme sleep.  After a while, I knew Tina would need to feed Esme before leaving, so I got up and, as if on cue, Esme started waking up also.  By the time Esme was more fully awake than me (how does she do that without coffee?), and started to ask for some breakfast, Tina was ready.  Soon after that I kissed my beautiful wife goodbye, and she headed off to work.
     Esme was seated next to me on the couch, looking like she was going to drift right back off to sleep.  I thought that would give me a perfect opportunity to catch back up on my writing and picked up my computer.  Esme had other ideas.  Instead of the sleepy, mildly congested girl who had been sitting next to me moments earlier, I had a much more wide awake girl who was starting to work some of the congestion out of her.  Much of the next hour was spent trying to calm her and help her breathe more freely.  We were again alternating for a while between breathing and pacifying, which, I'm here to tell you, is not a fun game for either participant.  When I finally did get her calmed down again, I grabbed my cup of coffee to head out to the garage to organize a couple of things that I was going to need later in the day.  While I was out there (not more than two minutes), I heard Esme crying in the monitor.  I went to set down my coffee, missed the picnic table and watched it tumble to the ground.  (I may have muttered an expletive at that point.)
     Now Esme has a tendency to work up to crying silently, then kick in the volume late in the program.  So by the time I made it across the lawn to the door, it sounded like she was moving beyond crying and trying to see if she could build to a full wail.  I sped up, but in pushing the door open, I scraped the back of three of my knuckles against the door frame rather forcefully.  (I am very likely to have done more than muttered an expletive at that point.)  As I reached Esme, I could see that her nuk was just out of her reach, so I offered it back to her.  She immediately took it and calmed down, much to my relief.  Then I looked at my hand.
     "Oh, that was worse than I thought,"I thought, and immediately headed to the bathroom.  Now Tina and I have different concepts of how things should be organized.  I tend to value function, while she values form.  Neither is necessarily better than the other, but when I opened the medicine cabinet to reach for the shelf where the band-aids, first aid ointment, and liquid bandages were all crowded together, I found a very neatly organized array of deodorant, cleanser, and hair products.  Oh right, I remembered, Tina reorganized this a while back.  (Momentary congratulations to self for not having need of a band-aid in quite some time.)  Looking back at my hand, I decided rinsing it off would be a good start.  As the water hit the backs of my knuckles, I heard a plaintive cry off in the distance.  Having done so much writing recently, I almost expected it to be a scene in which I come to realize that I am the one crying out due to the sting of the water on my fingers.  But no, it was really a cry, and it was not me.  For the next five or ten minutes, I did the best one man Three Stooges impersonation of my life.  Rinsing off the scrapes made them bleed more, so when I would go out to give Esme her nuk back, I would have to hurry to be able to get back to the sink before dripping started.  After rinsing again, I started looking around for the band-aids.  I would get through one or two drawers, cabinets, boxes within cabinets, etc., before Esme would start crying again.  Back to the sink, back to the nuk, back to the sink, back to the search.  As the bathroom came to resemble the aftermath of a tornado at the Johnson & Johnson factory, I did locate the band-aids, and it only took me three more nuk trips before I had my fingers covered.  I never did find the first aid ointment.
     After tending to the wounded, and sitting with Esme to help her go back to sleep, I retraced my steps to try to clean up my messes.  When that was finally finished, I could finally sit down to laugh at myself and start to write again.  But as you can tell, I did not get back to my NaNoWriMo novel, but instead decided to update my blog.
     Perspective is a powerful thing.  I came into this knowing that I have a solid history in childcare, I have been a nanny for a newborn, I am confident and in control and thrilled to be here.  Yet in the first two official hours as a stay-at-home dad, I have managed to mangle my hand, spill my coffee, destroy the bathroom, and trip over at least two different cats, all while keeping my daughter crying.
     (Whaddya mean 'what's my superhero powers'?  This IS me as a superhero.)

Halloween 2011

     This year, for the first time ever, I was able to (semi) successfully grow a pumpkin in my garden.  I say semi-successfully because half of it had not fully turned orange yet, but I think I get credit if I can make it look like a jack-o-lantern.

Wade's first successful, home-grown pumpkin

     As the first trick-or-treater approached my door (a witch) I saw her through the window.  I got up to meet her at the door.  I opened the door to see her hang up with her friend on her cellphone, stuff the cell phone down the front of her shirt, and swing her bag around front to download the candy.  (Gabs a lot grabs the loot?)  Let the sugar binge begin!
     I did take Esme with me to the door a couple of times, but for some reason the kids were much more interested in what was in my other hand -- chocolate trumps baby, I guess.  Perhaps if we'd been dressed up as something other than a dad with his baby girl we'd have gotten more of their attention.  Oh well.

PS  In other news, and with the encouragement of several of my readers, I have changed my font and background, hopefully making the blog more readable.  Please offer feedback via email, fb, or G+.

North Carolina Visit

     On Tuesday, Oct 25, we got up at 5:30 to load the car and head out down to West Jefferson, North Carolina to visit my family.  My family tends to use the visit of one person to create a gathering, so I had scheduled our trip to coincide with my dad's trip up from Mississippi (to close down the Red Cabin for the winter, for those of you that know the Red Cabin).  Then my mom jumped on board, and by the time we arrived, Esme had one great-grandparent, three grandparents (and a great uncle), three aunts, three cousins, and two parents surrounding her.  Several other folks let us know they were sad they weren't going to be able to make it, but I don't know how much more visiting we could have done if more people had been there.  You see, my family also has a habit of driving ridiculous distances to stay places for short periods of time.  (That becomes important to understand when you realize this ends up being a four day trip with over 24 hours of it being on-the-road travel time.  With a five week old infant.)
     I don't know how many of you have ever loaded a car for travel with an infant, and those that have may not have done so in the last couple of decades with the advent of the car seat, but I can tell you that packing isn't the quick, methodical, let's get on the road activity that I'm used to.  Or it's not yet, at this point in our parenthood.  I knew the 6AM departure was optimistic, but when we rolled out of there at 7:40, I was a bit dismayed.  It was no big deal as we had no real agenda aside from enjoying our day's travel, but it took us over two hours to make coffee and put stuff in the car?  Really?
     The driving itself takes nine and a half hours, so it usually takes us about ten hours to get there.  (We don't tend to stop much, or for long.)  This trip was just over twelve hours.  Stops became both longer and more frequent (have you ever contemplated breast-feeding a child in a car seat?), and our innate tendency to ogle our child probably didn't help either.  (Our most frequent line at home these days starts with, "How did it get to be _______ already?  I just sat down with her five minutes ago...")  Overall, the ride was great.  Esme did a fabulous job and didn't give us any real difficulty the whole way.  I did notice a tendency on my part at the end of the trip to drive the twisty mountain roads quite a bit slower than is my norm, but having a baby asleep in the back is a great motivator to drive smoothly.
   We had a welcome committee waiting for us when we arrived, but almost half of them were up past their bedtimes by the time we brought in the first piece of gear, so the party didn't last long.  Which was fine with us as we were tired from the travel.  During the planning for the trip and the driving down, I wasn't sure what to hope for:  that Esme would sleep the whole way down, or that she would let us sleep throughout most of the first night there.  I didn't really entertain the possibility that both would happen.  Now, of course, neither actually happened -- Esme had never slept four hours in a row that I was aware of -- but she did astoundingly well on both fronts.  She did sleep the vast majority of the way down and the vast majority of that night.  (Did I mention she's five weeks old?  She's slept the vast majority of the time she's been alive thus far.)  In any case, I felt exceedingly grateful to her for continuing to allow at least me to get most of a night's rest.
     If you want to see more of what we did in North Carolina, see What's Up Doc?  Mostly it was visiting with family, eating well, reading, napping, and relaxing.  (And yes, napping and relaxing are two separate categories.  I would think that should go without saying.)  I will share one family tradition that my mom started with her grandchildren.  She found an old Chinese Medicine cabinet and has each of the infants pose in it.  Here, then, is the fourth grandchild, Esme, doing her best to fit inside the thing.

     In any case, after two days of family fun, we hopped back in the car for the return trip.  Esme still did a fabulous job, though perhaps more fussy than on the way down.  There were two momentous firsts on the way back.  Tina was in the back seat for a bit and she chose to read Esme her first book, The Little House.  Later in the trip, Tina also read me a story by our favorite author, Kate DeCamillo.  I'd read The Tale of Despereaux to Tina on a trip down to NC a couple of years ago, so she read The Tiger Rising to me on this trip (both read-alouds that we'd shared with our respective classrooms over the years).  Perhaps I was overly open to emotion, but both books Tina read brought tears to my eyes.

     Towards the end of the day, north of Columbus, we were ready to get back home and hoping against hope that Esme would sleep for the duration of the trip.  Neither of us believed in that possibility, as her last feeding had been in southern Ohio -- if she made it all the way home, it would be well over four hours between feedings, and like I mentioned earlier, we'd never seen that before.  Amazingly, she did make it literally all the way until we turned onto our street before she started crying -- and we probably would have made it all the way home if I hadn't stopped for gas (but driving for over 30 miles with the low fuel light on when we were so close to home didn't seem like the best plan -- I was having flashbacks to a family trip I'd been on as a child when we ran out of gas within sight of our exit from the interstate after a 12 hour drive).
     So now Esme has been in five states:  Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.  Pretty good for a five week old.  If she keeps this pace up, she'll have covered the whole country before she's two.  (Ed. note:  not gonna happen!)


     Super deluxe bonus:  when we got home, there was a frost forecast, so I was able to head out to the garden and harvest a bounty.  In late October in Michigan I harvested carrots, two kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of very spicy peppers, arugula, kale, mustard greens, green onions, and a pumpkin (but you'll see that in a later post...).

It All Started with ABC

October 17, 2011

     It was several years back now, but Tina's and my first date was at Arbor Brewing Company.  Some call it 'the pub', but we've always called it ABC.  And it's a very good place to start.  I actually wrote a song about our first kiss -- and it starts out in that crowded pub.  Perhaps I'll perform that at Woodruff's some night and post it here...

     But this isn't about our first visit to ABC, it's about Esme's.  (Yes, the first two outings we had with our daughter were both to bars.  Think what you will, they're both very family friendly places filled with our family friends.)  Esme didn't have anything to drink in either establishment, but I won't hold that against her.  I would hold it against her if she develops a taste for Bud Light, though.  I hope I'm able to teach her to be a responsible drinker -- meaning that she drinks locally produced beverages brewed with environmentally sustainable practices.  (Did I mention ABC is working on setting up solar power for their brewing operation?)  Oh, and beer that has flavor -- friends don't let friends drink crappy beer.

     In any case, I think you can see that she wasn't exactly excited about the trip -- she was her normal, mellow, sleepy self.  She does look just a little gangsta in the last picture, though...

   So if you're in town, and you'd like to have a beer, hopefully you'll let me guide us to ABC to share in the joy and bliss that is their stock in trade.

PS.  Sorry I haven't kept up so well over the past few weeks.  I'm getting back to it, but also participating in NaNoWriMo, so we'll see how I do this month...