A Call To Arms

We've got a nozzle on the garden hose with one of those shower massage rotary dials that lets you select the shape and texture of your spray. It's pretty great, has everything you could ever want except a setting called Filthy Child. I don't know very much about these things, but I think the engineering would be a little difficult to manage. The Filthy Child setting needs wide enough coverage to hit a young torso in a single swipe, but not so much that you're wasting water. It would need enough force to work loose ground in dirt but enough delicacy so you won't take the skin off their thighs.

So, for all the engineers reading this--I'm putting out a call. Get me one of these, now!

Of Mice and Men

With the due date a good two weeks away and the baby shower set for this last Saturday, we figured we had a little time to get our ducks in a row and prepare ourselves for the arrival of baby number two: Isaac Oscar Petersen, a.k.a. "Ike."

But as Robert Burns once wrote, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

On Friday (April 22nd) after having her membranes stripped and taking a lovely walk up Cold Creek Canyon, Alisa started charting her contractions. By 9:00, during our favorite television show, NUMB3RS Alisa figured we'd better get to the hospital. She was contracting every 2-5 minutes, and by then she'd been doing it for over two hours.

We packed up Zoë and took her to her best friend Indie's house, where the girls and Indie's mother Jill had a girls night planned. While I was buckling Zoë into her car seat she looked at me and said, "Where are you and Mommy going? A meeting?"

I shook my head, and Zoë smiled. "You're going to the hospital."

"That's right," I said.

When I got back, Alisa had her bags fully packed. We did have a checklist, and really, we were impeccably organized about the whole thing. Within 20 minutes we were on the road. Alisa noticed that I we had a headlight out, and we joked that if we got pulled over, we could just say, "We know that officer. Do you know how to deliver a baby?"

The short version of the next two hours was that the nurses sent Alisa home -- her contractions weren't strong enough. So, at around midnight we glided through the Wendy's drive-thru window and got ourselves some cheeseburgers since, the minute they let Alisa back into the hospital they'd cut her off the food.

The nurses told us to get some rest, said we'd need it. So, once we got home. I crashed. Alisa immediately jumped out of bed with a hard contraction. I said, "Good, that means you're making progress." I then made a mental note to put that down in the book of things not to say when your wife is going to have a baby.

Two hours later Alisa stormed into our room and said, "I'm in labor now. This is for real. I'm sorry the bathroom is a mess." It took me a minute or two to orient myself. I was in the middle of a dream about (I am not lying about this) grading papers. Since we were already packed, it was easy to get going.

Alisa had been having skull-shattering contractions for two hours, and she just couldn't stand it anymore. We rang ourselves into the Emergency room and made it to the Labor and Delivery wing of the hospital. The nurses took one look at us and sort of gave us the "Come on, we just told you you're not close" look.

Alisa sort of howled, and then a nurse said, "You can go right into the room you were just in."

They hustled about. One of them checked Alisa's cervix. She was six to seven months pregnant herself, and as she felt around inside my wife's body, her eyebrows lifted. "You're at six and, like, eighty per-cent effaced. Call Dr. Lawrence."

At this point Alisa began truly screaming. Everyone was telling her to breathe. She said that she felt like throwing up, that she was going to split into pieces, that she needed an epidural -- right now! The anesthesiologist came in to the delivery room about 20 minutes later, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. The nurses were running around whispering things. They checked her again and she was at eight centimeters. There was no time for an epidural, and they tried for an intrathecal.After a few valiant tries and variations, the anesthesiologist placed his hand on my wife's shoulder and said, "I'm sorry. I can't do it. You're going to have to do it without the drugs."

Alisa's eyes went full moon. She shreiked and wailed and said over and over again, "I can't have this baby. I can't."

The doctor came in, checked Alisa, and said, "You're going to have this baby in the next ten minutes." Alisa said, "What?" then she asked all the women in the room if they had given birth. The doctor held up three fingers. One nurse said she had 4, the other three. The doctor smiled and said, "So, that makes ten between the three of us."

Alisa looked at each of them in turn and said, "Okay, let's get started."

She only had to push for about five to seven minutes, and Isaac Oscar was born. The doctor set him on Alisa's belly and Alisa said, "You're beautiful. You're gorgeous. We can have another one of these, can't we, Todd? We can do this again...can't we?"

I said, "Let's wait to see if this one runs us a mouth, then we'll decide."

Playland

A couple of days ago, the whole family was out to the Wal-Mart together. It was a snowy Saturday afternoon, and we'd all been cooped up for too long.

After forty-five minutes of cleverly keeping clear of all the Easter candy, we came up to the register, and I drew the short straw. In the grocery story, my wife and I split duties: one of us handles the groceries, and to other takes our kid to playland. Guess which duty I pulled.

The people who put grocery stores together know what they are doing. When one parks a grocery cart in front of a register and begin unloading, one's child is positioned right in front of a rack of candy. Even if the child is full, even if the child is eating two suckers (one in each hand), even if the child has been knocked out, they will reach for this candy...

And then scream if they can't get it.

So my wife and I have come to the point where we must split the chore and take our kid away from the candy. That's right, we are smart; we take our little girl away from the candy and set her up in the playland, which is a little arcade and coin-operated ride section of the Wal-Mart situated right next to the registers.

You see, they are brilliant; they will extract your money one way or another.

As a side note, there is a brilliant and fascinating section in Eric Schlosser's book, Fast Food Nation in which he describes the race between Disney and McDonalds to capture parents' money by enticing children into a fantasy world. Out of that race we get two things I despise: Disneyland and Playlands. This kind of salesmanship is lower than low. In fact, as far as I am concerned it's no longer sales but pure, unadulterated mongering, complete with one of the best diversionary tactics on the planet.

Instead of complaining about the way these corporations have our children shilling their crap, we have had our attentions turned to the problems of media content. The nudity and violence of the R-rated movie (not, of course, intended for children) proves the need for the toy, meal, clothing marketing package. Their content is child-friendly, just the thing a parent needs to keep Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarentino at bay.

My wife and I have been able to navigate this business pretty well, so far. We don't watch a bunch of television. Zoë likes old Felix the Cat cartoons better than whatever the hell they have on the tube these days. We don't know.

That's not entirely true, we have bowed a little to Dora the Explorer, because Dora is a can-do little girl and that's an okay message for now. And in the Wal-Mart playland we've not told our child that the horse, boat, truck, motorcycle actually trot, pitch, rumble, or vroom. Up until last week she thought of these things as play sculptures, like in the park. You use them for pretending.

Saturday, my daughter Zoë and I headed into the playland. To my surprise, and Zoë's amazement, we found a young dad and his eighteen-month old little girl in the Tigger Boat, not still on placid seas as it is when Zoë and I play on it. Saturday it was pitching its way across the bounding main, and Tigger was saying all kinds of Tiggery things about boats and silliness and being good, good friends.

As it will happen when she's amazed, Zoë's mouth went round and she gasped and she lifted her finger to point at the object of her attraction. "Daddy," she eventually gasped. "Daddy, that boat is moving."

"Yes," I said, thinking for some explanation. I couldn't say it was broken or that the little girl had special powers or that, heaven forbid, the girl's father had some skills, abilities, or connections that I lacked.

After a few more seconds of noise and rumbling the boat slowed, Tigger bid his passenger farewell. The little girl and her father debarked. As they left, the other father, damn him, looked down at Zoë and said, "Now it's your turn."

Zoë stared at me with deep and palpable yearning. It was obvious to me that I could not simply redirect her attentions to the still ice cream truck or the horse frozen mid-gallop over by the change machine. And with a "good" father within spitting distance, Zoë would know the difference between me and the preferable parent. She would know that I am the mean father, the parsimonious father, the father who will not unlock the joys of the universe with the small round "money" I have recently begun to allow her to fish out of the couch and put in the bib pocket of her overalls.

So I conceded...

I hoisted her into the boat and told her to grab the wheel. I plucked a quarter from my pocket, let it glint before her eyes, and then thumbed it into to machine, which roared to life, bounding and Tiggering for a minute or two until it slowed and stopped.

Zoë, still clutching the helm, looked up at me, smiling. The expression on her face said, "That's good, Dad. That was a good ride." I smiled back, then she wheeled and pointed her finger at the horse. "Make that one go, too," she said. "Put money in that one."

Thankfully her mother appeared with the groceries bagged. She was folding the long receipt in half and then in half again.

I helped Zoë down, and she ran to my wife. "He make it go. Daddy make it go."

She was so excited about the whole thing, with the ride and with the fact that I did this for her. So how could I help but feel incredible ambivalent about the whole thing. I was able to work magic for my little girl, but now we were trapped. She knew I could bring these inanimate sculptures to life, even for a minute, and in her world, that is power.

She would also know that I could choose not to use that power, and every time I withheld it would be a slight against her. It would be me choosing to love my money more than I loved her. I could see it. My wife could see it. Our lives had changed. We were in the system.

We have become fully-baptized parents, and it will take the rest of our lives to set things right.

Easy Rider, or maybe not that easy

My father gave Zoë a John Deere tricycle for her second birthday. She thought it was cool, but wouldn't abide the pedal blocks I created for her--much to clunky and unwieldy for a metropolitan two-year-old.

So we had to store the trike away for the past few months.

Well, it's come back out, and Zoë has been practicing, and she's pretty much a holy terror. Please enjoy the video feed on the little chopper princess.

Camera

You'll need Quicktime to view the movie, and it might take a few seconds to download.

The Genius in Diapers

Tonight, my wife and her family were watching Napoleon Dynamite, and I was sitting apart writing syllabi. I was well into my ART 1010 assignments when Z, the 2.5 year-old, burst into my office and crawled up on the chair next to me and began singing a song.

It went a little something like this:

Jesus was born like America.
Jesus was born on a trip, on a trip, on a trip.
He was on a trip, on a trip, on a trip.

What else could I say but, "You're right. They were on a trip, far from home"?

Now, that first line, "Jesus was born like America," is absolutely like something Paul Simon would have written 20 years ago.

We've Settled on a Palette

After some false starts, Alisa and I have settled on a palette for our very cool "Dwell Home."

Here's the final combination.

Dwell Palette

The Dwell Christmas Home

Lights

After I threw a fit about how trashy I thought multi-colored Christmas lights were, my amazingly talented, "very perfect" wife designed this display, suitable for something like Dwell Magazine.

Alisa was well complimented the next day on the tastefulness of her handiwork. She responded demurely with, "I just got the stuff at the grocery store and made the wreath out of some sticks from the backyard."

The wreath is really amazing. Take a closer look.

Maybe I was wrong about Presidential hopeful Dr. Howard Dean. Perhaps complaining can get you something.

Foolish, Foolish Man

I am sick, and should be sleeping, but I can justify it a little because I have to get my levain ready for tomorrow's breadmaking.

I also just set up a DSL connection at home, which I have been without for two years, and I am getting a little overly-enamored of being able to putz around at home, even when I should be sleeping so I won't be a burden to my family.

It was a lot easier to pull these kinds of moves when I was a single foolish man. Now there are other people to wake me up in the morning, and well, I can't say I hate it.