Cheeky's Hideaway

Can't We Take Her to Springsteen Instead?

Before becoming a parent, nothing scared me more than the "activities."  Not diapers, not sleepless nights, not Upromise accounts...nothing.  Kids in crowds, chaotically running and screaming like spring breakers at Senor Frog's have as much appeal to me as sawing a linoleum knife between my toes.  I swore I would do everything in my power to avoid such events.

Two and a half years in and I have much the same opinion.  But that didn't stop us from buying Sesame Street Live tickets.

What the hell else were we gonna do on a cold Sunday morning?

Cheeky's love affair with Ernie and Elmo ain't what it used to be, but since I'd rather walk through the gates of hell than see Dora live Sesame Street seemed like a relatively benign way to kill a couple hours. 

Madison Square Garden--thrilled to be hosting anything but a Knicks game--was the venue.  We took our seats in a surprisingly empty section (a temporary thing, as dozens of harried parents arrived soon after it started) and I sipped my $4.50 Diet Coke (price gouging: alive and well).  As the lights dimmed Bert and Ernie took the stage to begin the sort of witty banter that appeals to six year olds and the mentally challenged.  I knew it was going to be a long couple hours.

Mind you, the whole thing wasn't bad.  The kids were relatively well-behaved, and the story, which revolved around Super Grover's lack of sleep and personal hygiene, did an admirable job of keeping Baby Bear off the stage.  But I couldn't help think that the cast would be frantically calling their agents after the show.  ("I said Susan Stroman, not Susan & Gordon!")  The music sounded like it came from a cheap boombox behind the curtains, and the periodic appearance of a random woman named Kay (you know, 'cause 'K' was the letter of the day) was an odd, undersized counterpoint to the rainbow of monsters on stage.  By intermission (!!!) my mind had slipped into a fugue in which the characters had blurred into psychedelic fractal screensaver. 

If Cheeky weren't jumping up and down on my legs I'd have slept for an hour.

We walked away a little spent, carrying one of 75,000 Elmo balloons and a heart-warming message about ....um...what was it?  Friendship?  Getting enough exercise?  Talking cheese?  I can't remember.  Cheeky had a good time, and although we felt like we'd lost an hour of our lives it was a small price to pay to see her happy.  Besides, it could have been much, much worse.

She's a Maniac, Maniac on the Floor

Cheeky's a good sleeper.  Hell, she's a GREAT sleeper.  When you're a lazy bastard like me--who considers waking up by 9 AM "really early"--you raise your arms to the heavens and praise whatever higher power Christopher Hitchens is railing against this week and thank him/her/it for gracing us with a child that gives us a solid 14 hours a day of peace and quiet.

Sometimes, though, she pushes herself too hard and resists her brain's perfectly reasonable request to shut down for routine maintenance.  When this happens to me you can usually spot the violent whipping of my head as it ricochets off my sternum and snaps back to instantaneous (and temporary) attention.  For the two hours after lunch I'm usually so tired I need to keep a pillow on my desk so I don't break my nose when my neck muscles give out and I careen forward.  But when Cheeky skips her nap, or puts in a particularly strenuous day of directing our every action, she doesn't collapse like her daddy.

No, she turns up the juice.

I've seriously never seen another living being (besides Benny Hill) move so frantically from toy to toy.  There's a lot of "she's-got-her-crayons no-wait-she's-climbing-into-the-stroller hold-on-she's-crafting-deer-butt-art wait-no-I-think-she-just-ran-into-the-bedroom quick-get-her-before-she-climbs-the-dresser-and-kills-herself.  It's exhausting to watch, and by that time we're exhausted already!

Cheeky blew off her nap on Saturday (an event that culminated in the kind of choke-filled screams that presage blown chunks all over the crib) and Oodgie and I watched for the next four hours as exhibited the symptoms of euphoric hyperactivity normally only seen in rock stars, super-models, and inner-city youth.  By the end of the night she was moving in spastic bursts--at times hilarious, but occasionally terrifying.  We negotiated a treaty with her ("only one more Elmo, then it's time for bed") which she almost immediately tried to withdraw from, but since I've got a nine-fold weight advantage I picked her twisting body off the couch and unceremoniously dumped her in her crib.

"You sleep now!"

Scream and yelling....5....4....3....2...1...

Silence

I just don't get it. 

Seriously, why can't anyone force ME to take a nap.  I sure as hell wouldn't fight it.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

When I got to the gym this morning, the woman at the counter looked into my drooping eyes and chuckled.

"Don't worry; the worst is over."

Christ, is it that obvious?

I have a love/hate relationship with mornings.  And by "love/hate" I pretty much mean "hate."

There's nothing like the first rays of sunshine hitting the buildings and trees at dawn.  The only people on the streets are delivering papers or unlocking their businesses, except for the occasional jogger out taking in the brisk morning air.  The anticipation of the coming day adds sweetness to the calm and beauty around you.

But if you think for a nanosecond I'm crawling out of my nice comfy bed to see any of that then you'd better check your weed for flakes of mandrake or nightshade. 

That morning inertia--when gravity seems to be concentrated on you and your comforter, and that buzzing box next to your pillow is being fist-squashed like a beetle--has such a hold on me that I wouldn't expend the energy to kick a cruise-missile off the sheets of it landed there.

This begs the question: why the hell did I have a child?

There's little need for an alarm clock with Cheeky, because those first pathetic wails in the morning are more than sufficient motivation to shuffle bleary-eyed out of the bedroom and fetch the poor kid.  I feel for her, because waking up makes me want to wail, too.  But years of laziness have taught me that rolling over and burying my head and the pillow can buy me precious weeks minutes of extra sleep.  She won't learn that until Somnology 301 (not usually offered until your 24th semester), and when you add the discomfort of swimming in your own urine and being hungry after a dinner of Teddy Grahams she's probably looking for more than just a snooze alarm.

But when it comes to Cheeky's sleeping habits I have no reason to complain.  She's been Lionel Richie for a full year now, and she's taken it up a notch the last couple weeks, going 13 hours straight and not making a peep when she goes down.  It's like having Ladainian Tomlinson on your fantasy football team:  while others suffer we just do a little happy dance.

Herein lies the dilemna:  If Cheeky is sleeping until 9 AM, then it's MY responsibility to get my ass out of bed.  You can't expect me to do that on my own.  Isn't it my obligation...my duty...to sleep in, too?

Morning motivation is in short-supply at Casa de Cheeky.  What's to look forward to?  Coffee and the paper?  The news isn't that interesting.  Work?  Hey, I like my job but PowerPoint is hardly the path to spiritual fulfillment?  Quality time with Oodgie?  She's right there next to me; her evenings are longer than mine.  The gym?  I've already got a fabulous body...there's no need to work on it.

That last part is a lie, which is why I was at the gym this morning.  You would think the pungent smell of sweat--combined with watching old men with red headbands, knee-high socks, and t-shirts tucked into their shorts life 5 lb. weights--would be enough to rouse anyone from bed, but it's taking all my mental energy just to drag the pillow off my head.

The battle between my id and my super-ego in those first semi-conscious minutes is Ali-Frazier all over again.  While my super-ego screams "get up get up you lazy shit," my id yells "you BASTARD I will RAM your TOE into the dresser on the way out if you don't let me lie here."  And as usual my id makes good on it's promise.

I could try to work out at night, but between quality family time and my other priorities it's easy for me to make excuses.  I could take the quick and easy path to physical perfection, but we all know that drugs aren't the answer.  Or I could take a journey of personal acceptance, but I don't know if I can justify a trajectory towards a huskier future.

And so I battle my inner Dude yet again, hoping to turn this grudging spurt of motivation into a trend or--dare I dream--a habit?  Perhaps with focus and dedication I can turn myself into a morning person whittle away at my nutritional reserves.

HA!  A morning person?  That will never happen.  I just have to keep it up until daylight savings is over, when Cheeky will start waking up early again. 

In nature they call that "symbiosis."  In our house we just mumble, "well, I'm up anyway..."

Weekend Roundup, or Where Meteorology and Podiatry Collide

You know those ads for Firestone or Michelin tires, where the cars are careening around mountain passes with no barriers and boulders are falling into the road?  Usually it's in the middle of a giant storm that you only see during Storm Week on the Weather Channel, and it looks like having those tires are all that stand between you and becoming a tumbling fireball, even if you've only got a drivers permit and are driving an Adobe (the sporty little Mexican car that's made out of clay).  As if the wrath of God can be held at bay by steel-belted radials and tread zone technology.

Well that storm--the one that kicks off the tidal wave that drowns New York* and masks the arrival of the alien fleet--slouched into our neighborhood on Friday and single-handedly smacked around our weekend plans.  It was one of those things that had a domino effect which spilled over well into Sunday, long after the clouds had passed.

It's not that we had a bad weekend per se.  It's just that most of our plans involved walking outside with an infant, and we hate putting her in "the bubble".  It feels like we're wrapping a plastic bag over her head (which we practically are) and it has the added bonus of trapping greenhouse gases underneath, much like Venus' atmosphere.  It took until Saturday afternoon for the storm to end, and by then we'd had enough of our apartment.  So for some reason I suggested we walk to Red Hook. 

Red Hook is supposedly an up-and-coming neighborhood in Brooklyn, and there was an art festival at the waterfront that sounded like a nice weekend excursion. The promise of fresh-air, panoramic city views, and a new adventure was quickly sapped by the following:

1. Red Hook wasn't as close as we thought.
2. There is a big gap between the "up" and "coming"
3. It was a dreary depressing day, and the longer you walked the more you noticed it
4. Most art isn't that interesting
5. It's even less interesting when you're drenched
6. Especially when you get there just as everyone has given up for the day

So our little adventure turned out to be a nearly endless journey with little to show for it.  Cheeky was cranky and exhausted, Oodgie's feet were killing her, and I was trying to be chipper ("Oooh, we should come back and go to that restaurant....in our car") while silently wishing I was at a bar with a tall cool one in my hand.

Unfortunately, the family was still a little wiped out on Sunday, when we went to ECG's for brunch.  Things were OK for a while...we checked out Henry's birthday present (pretty cool, but is it better than this?) and ate some nummy egg dish thingy.   We had grand plans for another day of fun and frollic, but after more walking (there was a street fair nearby) and a botched nap that sent Cheeky into her "kneeling and flailing" maneuvers, we decided to pack up early and head home.  Oodgie and I spent most of the trip back accusing the other of being in a foul mood (which is probably true...I may have threatened some people who were IN MY WAY on the subway stairs).  By the end of the night we were all just glad to crawl into bed and sleep it off.

Anyway, we got an A for effort, but a C- for execution...pretty much par for the course.  This week should be better, what with Tuesday's festivities and a radar map that doesn't look like someone spilled key lime and spinach on it.  Besides, I have to get everyone psyched up for our next little excursion...I hear Greenpoint is nice

* I'd like to apologize, as this marks the third reference to "The Day After Tomorrow" I've made on this blog over the last few months.  It's a significant milestone in that (a) I try not to over-reference anything, which is against my nature, and (b) because it pretty much sucked.  I just wanted to acknowledge this and let you know I will do better in the future to limit Roland Emmerich's influence on this blog.  I feel dirty.

Behold the Power of ECG

Dearest Family,

I must write to tell you of the strange goings-on in our village this past week.  One of the local children, a sweet-natured child called Cheeky by many, has been afflicted with lycanthropy and morphed into a creature of tremendous fury!  The transformation has struck fear into the hearts of the entire village, and there has been much rending of garments over how to handle this strange creature.

The village doctor, Mistress Oodgie, used all her remedies to treat the child, hoping to drive the evil humors from her body.  She produced a vial of mystical liquid called "Motrin" which she squirted into the wailing maw of the child, but it was to no avail.  She then soaked the child's pacifier in a magical substance called "Rumple Minze," hoping to sedate her.  Again, the transformed creature fought off the treatment, and the doctor cried many lamentations into the pitiless night. 

Then, the great warrior CroutonBoy, strapping as always in his dragon-skin boots and troll-hide jerkin, strode into battle.  It was a pitched frenzy, as the battle of wills carried well into the wee hours of the dawn, each adversary angling for advantage over the other.  But neither superior force nor gentle pleading could tame the beast, and a trail of destruction lay in its path.

Just when all hope seemed lost, a familiar voice came from out of the sky, and behold, the clouds did part and Grandma stepped forth.  It had been many fortnights since she was last seen in our village, having spent a full moon's cycle among the beasts of darkest Africa.  Her mere presence brought an aura of peace to the village, and the vile tempers were drained from the fell beast as if by divine force.  And lo! The beast became a darling child once more, happy and playful, and was embraced by her delighted parents.  Many pitchforks and spades were raised into the air, and chants of "E-C-G! E-C-G!" rose over the tree-tops.  Madame Oodgie and CroutonBoy were dumbfounded, repeating their incantation of "Are you kidding me?" but grateful for her services.  They showered Grandma with laurels, and they resolved then and there to monitor the child for a future recurrence of the parents-bane and bring her immediately to Grandma for comfort.

And thus did the village's trials end happily.  The family is reunited in joy (and squalor) once again, although the fear...the fear may never go away.

I Feel Like a Million Rubles

A while back I lamented the end of daylight savings time.  I'm not a big fan of winter, and I'm even less of a fan of leaving the office to face this.  And since Cheeky doesn't care what time it is we just had to adjust to her revised schedule.  Fine, but don't blame me if I'm not myself.

But now it's spring...

Saturday Cheeky was in rare form, actively campaigning to be wrapped in saran wrap and stored until she ripened at 18 months.  She suddenly decided napping was for pussies and crankiness was the best way to summon us.  I'd had three cocktails by 6:00 just to keep from tearing my hair out in large tufts.  Thank god we had a babysitter that night so we could unwind and pretend to be care-free for a couple hours...

When we got home, we changed the clocks...

What a difference waking up before you child has on your worldview.  I sipped my coffee this morning while perusing the paper, checked my e-mail (I can get V!@gra for CH E AP!), and basked in the glorious silence.  I even toyed with going for a run, but then I chuckled to myself as I remembered who I was.  Even Cheeky woke up rested and relaxed, and probably surprised to be greeted by parents who had open eyes.

It's going to be a good week...I can feel it...

That was anti-climactic

So much for Cheeky's indoctrination in the Daddy's Ministry of Truth.  I had her for three and a half hours last night, and in the course of 30 minutes she pooped, took a bath, and fell asleep.  I'll have to postpone Ludovico treatment for another date.  The good news is that it was a wicked-simple babysitting assignment.  By the time Claud got home I had beat up a crack-dealer and escaped the cops by ducking into a barber shop on Grand Theft Auto, and even put away some laundry. 

We had a major breakthrough last night, too.  After Cheeky checked out at 7, she basically slept until 6 AM.  HUGE!!  Right at 12 weeks and 1 day, too.  That didn't keep her from making dying goat noises in her sleep, which had Claud bounding out of bed every hour, but at least she wasn't at risk from head trauma while I nodded off to sleep while feeding her at 3 AM.  That also doesn't mean she won't be calling the other velociraptors all night tonight, but it's a promising start.  Now I just need to anesthetize Claud so she can sleep through the grunting without her matriarchal instincts kicking in and we'll be set.

By the way, is anyone more excited than me about the new Wallace & Gromit movie?  AWESOME!!

Yellow #6, 8 hours of sleep, and 9/11

Only a handful of you may know this, but Claudia and I were supposed to have our first date on September 11, 2001.  We had "met" via Match.com and a Tuesday night date seemed like a low-pressure type of affair.  I worked across the street from the WTC, but was late for work that day.  I missed the worst of it, but did watch the towers fall from the West Side Highway, where my cab had stranded me.  After a long walk home, and many phone calls trying to locate friends and co-workers, Claud and I talked and decided that maybe having a first date the night thousands of people died would be a downer.  We rescheduled for 11 days later and promised each other that if thousands of people died that day, too, we would stop dating.  Fortunately, our relationship has caused no further casualties (quite the opposite).  But it's nice to look back on that day and think that despite the terrible things that happened that day we can still remember one good thing that we shared.

Now that you're all drying your eyes and sniffling into a kleenex, it's time to catch you up on our weekend.  As expected, we took one final excursion to NoFo, where ECG was eagerly waiting with merchandise and promises of babysitting.   (Not before we pinned Chloe down for a long-needed nail-clipping...they were getting  out of control.)  Chloe got a bunch of new clothes with an apple theme (not the apple theme I would pick), although as it turned out the theme was "can you believe how little these all cost?"  Nothing wrong with that.  The best part of the trip, though, was having ECG take the night shift two nights in a row!!  That meant 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep the whole weekend!  Plus, they had just completed a guest room above the garage which was like a little private apartment, painted an interesting celery color which made us feel like we were living inside a Mountain Dew bottle. 

(Ingredients: carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, orange juice from concentrate, natural and artificial flavor, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preserves freshness), caffeine, sodium citrate, yellow 6, ascorbic acid (preserves freshness), calcium disodium EDTA (to protect flavor), yellow 5, gum arabic, brominated vegetable oil, red 40)

So we slept.  A lot.  It was AWESOME.  The trip itself was great for Chloe, who was happier than usual with the extra attention, and great for us because we actually got some extended alone time for the first time in weeks.  We went out to dinner at a great restaurant in Greenport called the Frisky Oyster, and enjoyed a final glorious weekend floating in the pool. 

We just got home a couple hours ago, after a particular annoying drive and search for a parking space.   I spent a good chunk of the drive being criticized for my driving, although that guy was clearly sitting in my blind-spot just to piss me off, and that jack-ass just cut in front of me and NO WAY am I going to let him get away with that!!!!  Sorry...regressed for a second.  Anyway, on a good day, our neighborhood is an intricate ballet of cars moving from Wednesday to Tuesday spaces, the ebb and flow of courthouse employees enabling residents to gently slip from space to space like the delicate dance of the sugar-plum fairies.  On Sunday night, it's like a Cabbage Patch Kid display in 1983, and  we were five minutes late for the sale.  After 712 laps around the block we ended up in a garage.  But we're home, the kid is sleeping, and now we're going to try one more time to get into "Rome."  Slow going, HBO...slow going...throw us a bone...

There's a federal emergency...in my pants!

As you can tell we haven't updated this in a couple days, but we've been mesmerized by the rapid descent into chaos we've been watching on CNN.  I've always suspected that civilization was always three days away from total anarchy, but I never expected to watch it unfold like this.  I could launch into an intense diatribe on the socio-political ramifications of the relief efforts, but there are other blogs no doubt devoted to that.  So instead I'll just ask you make a donation to the relief efforts, then move on to the puking and pooping.

The debate for the last few days at Casa de Cheeky has been about whether or not to get a night nurse.  Is it necessary, or are we just big babies?  And the big question, you may ask, is "Why now?"  Some of you may modify that to "Why now, morons?"  Well, ECG has offered to help us with it, and after two months of late-night vigils and cleaning up spin-art in near-darkness the cumulative effects are wearing on us.   The blissful feeling of waking up after a full night of sleep is pretty compelling, so we may give it a shot for a few days to see how it goes.

Chloe's hair is growing a little long in back, which makes her vaguely look like Mr. Mxyzptlk.  She's also gotten much better at burping, and not those wussy Willie Wonka 'fizzy lifting drink' burps.  We're talking full on Barney Gumbel/Ogre belches that shake windows and frighten wildlife.  I don't know what side of the family she gets that from (probably both) but it's a good sign that she's getting stronger and figuring out the important things in life.

By the way, we just added a couple more pictures...check 'em out!

Doze. Awaken. Cry. Doze. Awaken. Repeat Hourly.

Remember how well I said Chloe was doing with the night-sleeping thingee?  Yeah, not so much anymore.  Claud and I have been shuffling from room to room on an hourly basis the last few nights because Chloe's gastro-intestinal and/or nervous system sending audible alerts.  There's usually a few minutes of confusion, followed by some mild-cursing, then one or both of us travels the 3,417 miles from our bedroom to hers to pick her up and let her scream in our ears.  She also has one volume with no modulation whatsoever, so you can imagine how sleep-deprived brains react to that.  We're ready to start filling her bottles with Jägermeister, which has helped me sleep in the past...as well as make me both handsome and bullet-proof.

I worked from home today to give Claud an extra set of hands for once.  With Chloe degrading into high-maintenance mode, it was pretty clear she was becoming more than a one person job.  It's not easy to type urgent e-mails with a 7-week old kicking you in the chest, but I did my best.  Poor Claudia doesn't have much time to catch a nap, and is eager to begin working out again.  Both Chloe and Claudia are checked out in their respective bedrooms right now, leaving me to either update the budget request template for 2006 funding or escape from killer zombies on the Xbox.  Sadly, it's going to have to be the former, at least until one of them has a breakdown (in 5...4...3...2...1...gotta go)