Formula for Disaster

leaving kitchen restoration half done +
having to wake up at 3 AM Saturday +
having to get Harrison out of house by 4:15 AM +
hour and half at airport +
2 hours on plane +
2 hours in another airport +
2 more hours on plane +
waiting at another airport for family +
45 minutes in car +
loss of all routine and normalcy +
10 month old

=

Anxiety attack for Mommy

The Clap

There's this Simpson's episode where they send Santa's Little Helper to obedience school because he's destroying things, urinating everywhere, ripping up papers, etc. Bart has a deadline to get him ship shape or else Homer's going to send him to the pound. Throughout the episode you see glimpses of the goings-on through doggie-goggles, just as Santa's Little Helper does. The world is all distorted and everything that is said by humans sounds like gobbledygook, just like the adults sound in the Peanuts cartoons, "Mwa mwa mwamwamwamwa!" That's all Santa's Little Helper can hear--"mwamwamwamwa"--all day long. Then of course, just as Homer's deadline is about to strike, you get the doggie-goggles again, focused on Bart, and you hear him say, "Mwa mwa mwa mwasit! Sit! Sit! C'mon boy! Please SIT!" And the little light bulb finally goes off for Santa's Little Helper and he understands! And he sits and doesn't have to go to the pound! Hooray!

Well, Harrison had that lightbulb moment yesterday and all of a sudden, started doing something on command! All we need to do is say, "YAY!" and he claps his little hands together just like one of those wind-up cymbal-clanging toy monkeys! And, oh, I know I said this about the crawling, but it is the CUTEST damn thing you have ever seen in the world. He smiles and waves his head around and looks so proud of himself and claps away while we stand there like fools going, "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!"

Now if we can just get him to stop the household destruction and prolific urination, we get to keep him.

Image: Harrison's Wild Weekend of Chicks and Booze

Image: Combover

This is what I've been reduced to

Ashley and I spent 20 minutes this morning in an email dissertation of spit up and stomach flu.

Our conclusions:

1. Babies are nasty.
2. Spit up (of the "milk volcano" variety) is not puke.
3. Puke is worse than diarrhea.
4. It's amusing to torture pregnant friends with details relating to points 1-3. (Sorry, Inga.)

It's the little things

A non-exhaustive list of some things that parenthood has made me appreciate:

Close parking spots. I used to make fun of those parking-space stalkers. Are you really that lazy, people? No wonder there's an obesity problem in the United States! Don't you realize it's taking you longer to wait for that lady to get her groceries loaded than it would to walk from that other space, right over there!?. I'm not at the stalker-level yet, but I will now drive those extra few yards to get to that close spot. I'm sorry that I made fun of you, people. You had 3 kids in tow. Or maybe you were missing a leg. Or were missing a leg and had three kids in tow. Or maybe you just had a 10 month old and a purse and car keys and a shopping cart liner.

Bagged salad.

Buildings with automatically opening doors that allow me and Harrison to enter without being crushed by heavy doors, necessitating the Jaws of Life to be employed in order to extract us from the twisted stroller-human wreckage that remains.

People who exercise common courtesy and stay behind to hold the door when it isn't automatic—there are too few of them. Hello?!?! Yes, I saw you turn around, look right at us, and keep going through the door, you bastard!?!?! (See Jaws of Life observation above.)

Starting the day early and enjoying every last bit of sun that it has to offer—one of the benefits to waking up at 5:50 AM. Your mom was right, Karen. I'm sorry that I always made fun of you in high school when I was sleeping until 1 or 2 PM and your Mom made you wake up at 8 AM every Saturday and Sunday and during the whole summer break. Actually, I'm not sorry. HA! HA! THAT WAS LAME!

Drive-throughs of any sort because they allow me to run errands with Harrison without having to strap and unstrap him into and out of the carseat. For example, drive-through pharmacy pickup windows, ATMs, and postal boxes. Oh, and brew-thrus—Just throw the keg in the back next to the diaper bag and hand me the funnel!

And finally…

Walmart Supercenters and frozen entrees.

Just kidding. I'm not that desperate for convenience yet, but check back whenever Baby #2 comes along…

The good, the bad, and the ugly

First, the good news: Harrison does not have an ear infection.

The bad news: Harrison does not have an ear infection. He just doesn't want to go to sleep anymore. Oh, and that will be $20 for that diagnosis, thank you very much.

Fire bad!

Harrison has started walking around the house using the contraption pictured below. It resembles a tricked out model of the walker my Granny uses. His gait is anything but graceful; thus, Doug and I have dubbed him Old Lady Frankenstein.

Image: walker

Image: angel

Image: devil

The State of Poop Address

Warning: this post has no grand philosophical point

One of the many unexpected developments that has come with parenthood is my obsession with Harrison's poop. If I had a dollar for every time I've used the word "poop"in the last 10 months, I'd be able to buy an island in Fiji right next door to Mel Gibson.

I believe that there are two reasons for parental poop-obsession: 1. Poop is a great barometer to the health of one's child; and 2. it's necessary to track the latest poop activity in order to make ready for any upcoming poop. A Boy Scout level of preparedness is absolutely essential, and one must possess complete information about the volume, viscosity, and odor of any poop that may have occurred. Hence, the daycare report we receive daily gives us up to-the-minute BM progress. (That's what poop is called at daycare—"BM"—as in "Harrison didn't have a BM until 2 PM" or "Harrison's BM didn't have much texture today." For some reason, "BM" is a term that Doug and I both find giggle-inducing. We’re very mature.)

Oh, and it's not just the parents who are poop-obsessed. According to Dr. Spock, as toddlers become poop-aware, they take this fascination with feces to a whole new level. Spock notes that during the toilet-training process, toddlers become bizarrely possessive of their poop because they feel an extreme sense of pride at having produced something all by themselves. This notion makes me picture Harrison whirling around a training potty like Tom Hanks dancing around the fire in Castaway, shouting "Yes! Look what I have created! I have made poop!! I... [beats chest] have made poop!" Spock observes that toddlers even see their poop as an extension of their body, and he cautions that they can react with anger when their poop is flushed. He likens their response to one an adult would have at watching their own severed arm flushed away, never to be seen again.

I'm serious, folks.

And that's $16 for my Fiji fund.

Mellow down in to my soul

And the heavens open every time he smiles

He give me love, love, love, love, crazy love

Image: crazy love

Quote

Doug and I watched the brilliant Before Sunset* this weekend and I knew exactly what Ethan Hawke's character was talking about when he said,

"I feel like I'm running a small nursery with someone I used to date."

*for those of you that have seen it, don't worry: my marriage is not in trouble nor am I going to have an affair with a witty Parisian

Turn, turn, turn

I used to look at my cat, Claus Van Buren, and my heart would do a little lurch of love, and I'd wonder, "What kind of lurch is it going to do when I look at my own child?" And I was right to wonder. It is wondrous and unimaginable--the depth of love that I feel for him and the intense feeling of happiness I get just from looking at him turning an object over in his hands, tasting a new food, or hearing him sighing in the night. It makes me feel full and complete in a way that I never could have fathomed.

I also used to wonder what I would do when my grandma passes away. The thought of losing her was something so painful that I couldn't even bear to contemplate it. She's 86 now, in a nursing home, and not doing well. She's on maintenance care: no more tests, no more force feeding. She's tired and ready to go, and I'm going to be okay.

Harrison carries a little bit of her in him, and having him makes everything make sense—the circle of life and whatnot. His smiles and yelps will fill help to fill that emptiness when she goes, and everyday when I see his Hooper chin it will remind me of her.

Image: Peepers

Jeepers, creepers

Jeepers, creepers....where’d ya get them peepers

Jeepers, creepers...where’d ya get those eyes

Gosh oh, git up....how’d they get so lit up

Gosh oh, gee oh....how’d they get that size

Jeepers, creepers....where’d ya get them peepers

Oh, those weepers....how they hypnotize

Just a few weeks after Harrison was born, I confessed to Kama that Doug isn't Harrison's real father—it's Brad Pitt, and now that he and Jen have finally broken up, I'm letting the cat out of the bag to the rest of the world.
_____________________

Like every other expectant couple on the planet, Doug and I often speculated and fantasized about what Minty (his fetal name) would look like. "He'll definitely have dark brown hair and olive skin," we decided. And either brown eyes, like me and Grandma H, or hazel, like Doug, Grandpa J, Grandpa H, and Great-Grandma Helen.

No way did we think we'd end up with Aryan Baby. Recessive Gene Boy.

Sometimes, this bothers me. Like the time Inga, Harrison, and I went out to eat and the intrusive waitress (aka The Space Invader) went on and on about how much Harrison looked like Inga! Or the fact that everyone, everyone, says, "He looks just like Doug!" Which isn't really true. It's just that he doesn't look Vietnamese. At all.

Certainly, I see bits and pieces of myself in Harrison. He has my almond-shaped eyes, my Hooper chin, and my Vietnamese nose. But overall, from his baby blues, to his golden brown hair, to his alabaster skin (the softest skin in the universe)—the whole baby package—Harrison looks nothing like me.

Like most American biracial children, I (and Val) am still dealing with issues of identity, and I wonder how race and ethnicity will shape Harrison. Like his father, he will always experience the benefits of white, male privilege, but I hope that Doug and I will also be successful in instilling in him a sense of pride in his Vietnamese-ness. I pray that he'll eat fish sauce.

The truth comes out

I only had this kid so that I could groom him to work at DSW and use him for his employee discount.

Image: Al Bundy

The Face

Harrison has been cracking us up lately—the kind of cracking up that surfaces hours or days later when you happen to think randomly about whatever-it-was when you're alone at your desk or car and causes coworkers or strangers to wonder whether you've (finally) gone off the deep end.

The funniest of Harrison's activities is what we call The Face. It is rather indescribable. Not many of you have seen The Face, and it hasn't really yet been captured on camera, because The Face is often fleeting and the owner of The Face is a bit of a spaz. The Face may actually be more difficult to capture on film than, say, a charging wildebeest in the Serengeti. Perhaps we should call in National Geographic.

The Face consists of a whole lot of eye bugging and mouth opening—mouth opening so wide that the corners of the mouth are strained and could split. The Face is often accompanied by excited twitching and sometimes by arm flapping and shrieking. It is a sight to behold.

Inga was privileged enough to witness The Face this weekend when Doug presented Harrison with his first ball—a mini soccer ball. You're just getting him a ball now, you ask? Now you'd think that finding a child a ball would be a relatively easy task, but it's not! Infant-friendly balls do not exist—not at babysrus, toysrus, kbtoys, kmart, target, or walmart! The closest we could find to a baby-sized ball was a dog ball that was meat flavored, and we weren't that desperate. Toys that are not battery-operated and constructed to produce a deafening, irritating electronic cacophony are hard to come by. What's the world coming to, folks, when it takes you 9 months to locate a goddamned ball for your child?

But I digress—Inga, Doug, and I started rolling the ball to Harrison, who, because he's a genius, figured out right away the object of the game and rolled it right back to us. And then my beautiful child's face was morphed into the most extreme, ugly, and hilarious version of The Face Doug and I have ever seen. And he did it EVERY TIME he rolled the ball.

I will do my best to capture The Face on film. In the meantime, you can get an idea of what it looks like below. It's like this. Only with more eye bugging. And mouth gaping. And twitching.

Image: Nearly The Face