This One's Mainly To Panic The Grandparents

I got weak in the legs, watching Sloane traverse over these 3m-high loops at the local playground (on the occasion of our Ramsay Safe Walk evening, post to follow). Turner called me over to see the feat, reportedly sick to his stomach watching her the first time, himself.


Sloane, Dada, and Mia Ho.

In my day, I was also a great climber, me. For which I give my mom & dad HUGE props for being completely cool with letting us climb all over everything, including up onto counters and tables, and for providing us with swing sets and jungle gyms in the backyard throughout our youth. John and Ainsley and I all grew up with no fear of heights, and amazing core abs strength as a result of all that monkeying around.

But I very clearly remember visiting Nanny and Grampa at 206 South Hill Street in Thunder Bay, and climbing up onto the kitchen counter to fetch this ceramic bird from a shelf beside the sink - it was one of those things you fill with water and then blow through, producing a very passable bird tweedly-tweet-tweedly-tweet! So I'm scrambling up onto the counter with basically no trouble, and standing there picking up the bird, and Grampa comes in and yells, "GET DOWN FROM THERE! YOU'LL HURT YOURSELF!" And me: ...Really? I will? How?

This exact scene was to be repeated many, many, many times with my grandparents over the years, well into my twenties. And every time, the whole idea that I might possibly fall and hurt myself always struck me as absolutely ludicrous. Frankly, I had excellent balance and had the gymnastics balance beam medals to prove it. On a two-foot-wide counter I knew exactly what I was doing. Their fear of my inability to keep myself safe while climbing truly made me question my grandparents' judgement. I never fell. None of us did. And I wondered how grown-ups got things from the high cupboards.

When we moved to Calgary I was sent to Sam Livingston elementary in Lake Bonavista. In the schoolyard, there were these peanut-league soccer goalposts that had an extra, lower, set of bars within their frame. Me and the other gymnastically-inclined girls would play up there all recess and on lunchours, doing half-kips and baby drops, great fun. And then in grade five, along comes Lindsay Schooley. She was new, having moved to Calgary from somewhere else. She wanted to play on the bars with us. She didn't know what she was doing, and she fell, and broke her arm. We all got to sign her cast. But after that no one was allowed to play on those bars. And I remember, even as a 10-year-old, feeling so indignantly gipped by the whole situation. Pissed off: I most certainly wasn't going to fall and break my arm. Lindsay didn't know what she was doing and had tried a baby drop and missed it and now suddenly all of us were banned from the best part of the playground equipment. (I'm sure Lindsay Schooley is now a very capable adult leading a productive life. I'm sure she's a very intelligent and nice person. Let me not imply that Lindsay did anything wrong or bad by breaking her arm on those bars at Sam Livingston elementary way back in the early 1980s. I'm just noting here that she ruined it for the rest of us.) Even as a young person I had my suspicions that Lindsay's parents didn't let her climb around on the counters at home.

But! now! as a parent, I can really understand the concern for the first time. It's an actual physical feeling. It's as though you, yourself, are in danger. The blood sugar crash, the rush of sound in your head. Danger! Watching Sloane climbing these loops, my legs went tingly and strange. I really really really wanted to grab her and pull her down. You know, to keep her "safe".

So I now doubly, triply, quadruply appreciate my own parents' restraint when it came to this stuff. I'm sure they went through the same thing, that same gut fear. But they squelched it. (Or just didn't care. ...Just kidding! Kidding, kidding.) And I grew up strong and able and athletic, with excellent balance and no physical fear. Turner and I have talked about this - the climbing - a lot. He absolutely didn't do stuff like this when he was a kid. Turner wasn't allowed to stand in chairs or climb along the backs of couches, and of course the famous example in his family is that he wasn't really allowed to look down into the Grand Canyon when they visited it. ... And Margo, I know you're reading this! I want you to know that I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND where you were coming from. That fear - it just doesn't go away, does it? I think it never really does.

At this point, I can completely believe getting emails from Sloane at university, with photo attachments of boat races and cheerleading pyramids, and still getting that crazy parent vertigo.

For now, however, we're biting our tongues and fighting the nausea. And hoping she ends up with an "Excellence" in the Canada Fitness Test (when they re-institute it, of course), and never falls off a counter. Because then, of course, my grandparents will roll over in their graves and yell "I TOLD YOU SO!"

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness | Olden Days | Sloane

Comments [1]

---

She Said, He Said

Me:         Okay Sloane, that's it. (Taking bowl, standing up)
Sloane:    Nooooooo! Noooooooo!
Me:         Yes, that's it. I'm sorry. (Moving to sink, emptying bowl)
Sloane:    Nooooooo!
Me:         Yes. Yes. I'm sorry lovie. That's it. (Wiping hands)
Turner:    (Coming into kitchen) ...What's going on...?
Sloane:    No! Mama! (Crying. Screaming. Throwing spoon.)
Me:         (Turning to Sloane) No, lovey. You may not throw your bowl while blowing milk through the whole wheat ...shedded wheat ...bran squares. (Looking at Turner. Grinning at the idiocy of the statement.)
Turner:    ..."Living With A Two-Year-Old In Fifty Words Or Less"
Me:         ...Too true.
Sloane:    Mama, I'm done!

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [2]

---

Sloane's New Bag of Tricks

Turner comes back to Canada tomorrow after a long and generally successful research tour of Denmark and England these last three weeks. He saw the wind farms of Samsø, he toured the geothermal buildings of Manchester. Along the way he did a piece for the Globe & Mail on Christiania, the 30-year-old anarchist community in Copenhagen under threat by the Danish government; he figgered out the whatsit of London's best urban repurposement-by-skateboard-colonization in Southbank.

In London Turner's been staying with our grand friend John J in Shepherd's Bush, he did a bit of drinking with a lovely producer from Richard and Judy, and he put in some envy-inducing hours with our flipside nocturnal souls Angad and Tara. ... Y'know, I love Nakusp, and Sloaner and I have been having a great time here with Mum and Mike ...but jeez it must've been a hella great visit in London this week. The only one missing is Renée. We'll get over the Pond soon, sez Sloaner and me.
Anyway, it's been three weeks since Turner saw our darling daughter, and three weeks since I had a husband and co-parent. ...Three weeks is a long time. Like, it's 21 days, over 500 hours. Turner and I haven't been apart for this long for years - since before we became parents in March, since before we were married nearly two years ago... we haven't been apart this long since 2003 when we were broken up and living in different cities, actually. I miss my husband!
Now, Sloane - being a baby and in that whole "sponge" stage where she's apparently learning faster than she ever will for the rest of her life - picks up new stuff every few days. The being-able-to-feed-herself-a-cracker thing from July, for example. Day after day she's poking herself in the ear with the cracker, poink-poink-poink. The situation looks hopeless. Then, suddenly, the hand-eye coordination gets all aligned and presto, she's able to put it in her own mouth. (The not-choking-on-the-big-pieces development came a bit later.)
Earlier today, I sent Turner an email listing the developments Sloane has made in the time he's been away, to prepare him for tomorrow's reunion.

Sloane's new tricks include:

• clicking her tongue (...Barba-trick)

• lunge biting (but it's out of love... And teething. She bit my nose the other day and not only brought tears to my eyes, but left a welt that lasted three days... out of love)

• playing contentedly with the rubber duckie on the shower floor while I wash my hair (I used to leave her on the bathroom floor while I showered. Between the sound of the water and the ceiling fan she was sufficiently mesmerized into a genial stupor most days. However, since she got all mobile on us it seemed irresponsible to abandon her to the terrors of the bathroom floor - I kept thinking she'd tip forward into the toilet and drown or eat her weight in the under-sink maxi pads before I could intervene. So mostly I showered at night, or Turner watched her while I bathed. But in Turner's absence I was forced to finally try her out on the shower floor, armed with the rubber duckie for companionship. It all went unexpectedly swimmingly and a new era in Bristowe bathing was born)

• sleeping 12 hours at night (sometimes it's 12.5 hours. It was a few weeks of hell to get her onto a solid schedule, and some days are a lot better than others. But overall, she's a totally new baby in the sleeping department. I bury this one in the middle because it's basically her hugest achievement... no needing the boob to go back to sleep, no needing to crawl into bed with me/us, no real middle-of-the-night emergencies anymore. It's a fricken miracle)

• doing a crinkly face (it's not a leading-to-crying face, this is just a new face. I think she's still testing out when it's most appropriate; I've seen it break out at all different occasions the last few days)

• head-on-shoulder/chest when she's ready to go for her nap (this is possibly the most darling, charming, amazing thing Sloane does. Makes you feel like the greatest parent on earth)

• growling back and forth with another person (when Sloaner likes the food she's being given, she'll growl. It's compelling. So much so that everyone loves to growl back. She used to stop whenever you'd start, and the adult'd be left there growling at a blankfaced and henceforth silent baby with pablum in her eyebrows. But now she's got the interactive angle of the game and is all raahhhhh raAAHH! Rah. It's great)

• tweedle-burbling with other people's fingers, and sometimes with her own hand

• clapping hands (pattycake - pattycake - baker's man, etc.)
  
  
• standing for a few seconds completely on her own (Sloane's been standing while holding on to our hands since her first weeks, and she's been walking along furniture by herself for a month. However, by "standing on her own" here I mean that she's managing to stand without any kind of support, mid-air, on her feet, on her own. It's freaky)

• also, more hair (auburn, still thin on the sides; not exactly a "trick", per se, but still something new)

Come home soon, Turner! Our girl is getting all jiggy with the toddlerhood!


.....Come!
.....Home!

....Tuuurrrrr-Nurrrrr!

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness | Nakusp | Sloane

Comments [12]

---

We've Seen The Future And It Is A Dark, Dark Thing

After LOST and the news late Wednesday night, Ash and Turner are flipping through the channels and land on Much More Music's rundown of the one-hit-wonders of the last five years. Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping" plays, and it puts me in mind of our final months in India, feeling young and writing the terrific final chapters of being unencumbered and of independent means, loose on the world. This leads to a discussion of how it would have probably been fun to have made it to Australia at some point while we were still young partiers fresh out of university, something neither of us did (though we don't exactly regret it, it's something we just didn't get to on our various travels).

About five minutes passes, and we've gone through a few more videos, totally unconnected to the previous vibe. And then:

 

Ash: [sitting up, suddenly realizing] Oh no.

Turner: What?

A: Oh no.

T: What is it?

A: Oh no...

T: Whaaat?

A: Eventually, we're going to have to bankroll Sloane on one of those assinine "finding yourself" trips, she's going to go off to party in Brisbane and we're going to have to just sit by and watch.

T: Why Brisbane?  

A: Just that whole coast - Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Surfer's Paradise, that whole scene. Like what we saw driving into Brisbane last year with all the kids in the streets.

T: That was just after final exams at the universities.

A: Yeah, but it's a big party up there. Jenna went. I'm sure it's awesome. But someday, that's us, that's Sloane going off to that. And we have to sit there and let her go. We know what she's going to, we've done that, and we just have to let her go.

T: Yeah... But who knows, that whole part of Australia might be a big global warming disaster zone by the time she's ready to head out on her first travel adventure.

A: Yeah yeah, but it doesn't matter, it could be wherever - right now it's Australia, but wherever -- South America, Africa, it'll always be somewhere...[shudders] and someday we're going to bite our tongues and pay for Sloane to get on an airplane and leave us and head off into that big world of youth hostels and partying and we're just going to have to shut the fuck up and let her go. And of course we'll want her to in theory but in reality: shhiiiiiit! That chaos. The Israelis. The banana pancakes. Lord.

T: See, see, see ...see, I don't think that's the problem. I'm WAY more worried about a few years earlier, like, when she's 13? And some IDIOT comes to the door? With his [pinches the cartilage inside his nose]... his..

A: Septum.

T: This...[still pinching the nose cartilage] his... Y'know? The nose thing...

A: His septum.

T: ...That that that 'Here comes Bessie' piercing...

A: The septum.

T: Yeah. The inside of his nose, that stoopid piercing here. And he'll come to the door looking for Sloane. And I have to answer the fuckin' door and look at that. "Is Sloane home?" he says. And I've gotta let him in the house.

A: Yeah but see, but see, see I don't think that's ANYWHERE near the dangerous stage, at 13. You still have lots of control over the 13 year old girl's mind as a parent, even if it doesn't look like it. You can still keep her in line at that age. I'm totally way more worried about that older stage. When she's gone. Bye-bye. [Waving] Bye bye!

T: ...And he's wearing a fuckin' basketball jersey. A really big one. And nothing else, no coat, and it's, like, January. And he's got that stoopid piercing here [pinching his nose cartilage].

A: In the septum.

T: Yeah. There. ...Fuck.

Both sit there, looking into space, Chumbawumba still echoing through the brain chambers.

 

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness

Comments [14]

---

Disaster On The Home Front (With A Happy Ending)

In light of the Hurricanes Of Destruction rampaging and flooding and flattening everything in sight along the Gulf coast in the USA, our incident on Thursday night was minor. But it was the worst crisis the Bristowe-Turner parenting administration has seen to this point, and there was much adrenaline, and we did end up going to the hospital. Lordy, this parenting gig has its heartstopping moments.

Sloane sports her much-chewed hospital admitting bracelet, now safely out of reach attached to her back.

Lord knows as soon as I became a mother I discovered a previously-unrealized ability to picture the most awful, monstrous things happening to my baby. Visions would arrive unbidden in my mind - Mum's cats eating her eyes after I leave her for a nap, desperate scenes of suffocation under a pile of laundry the moment I turn my back... no no no, please no. I squinch up my eyes and just try to breathe through those nightmares. I've never been a nervous person and I'm determined not to let these irrational fears to paralyse my parenting. But boy oh BOY are you endowed with an undeniable, enormous protective instinct the moment you become a parent, and it never lets up, and it never goes away. If Thursday proved something I only previously suspected, it's this: mine is now a life of worrying like crazy about my offspring, and trying like mad not to let them see me worrying. They said it was true and it's true: THE WORRY. Good old genetics.

So it was 11:30pm, and Sloane was in her crib. We were letting her cry a bit - she's been on a new back-to-sleep regimen that's helping her learn to fall asleep on her own. And it's been going really well (i.e. waaaaayyyyyy better than we ever thought it would). She cries just a bit, and not even every time, and then she settles down and conks out for the night. And up she gets in the morning, pleased and bright-eyed and smiling and well-slept. It's been amazing.

But sometimes there are a few minutes of really heartbreaking wails. Really hard to listen to. Hard. I'm serious. It calls up all the memories of lonely scared moments you ever had yourself, as a child. Those times where you just wanted your mom and she wasn't there (which is exactly what's going on for Sloane during those moments, of course). It's murder to listen to.

We were in the midst of a few minutes' of that kind of crying, and Turner and I were out in the livingroom steeling ourselves against the sound. Then it stopped. We relaxed. There she goes, off to sleep, we thought. ...And then there was a thud. It was the unmistakeable sound of our baby hitting the floor beside the crib.

We were going to lower the crib mattress on the weekend. We didn't think she could fall out of the crib yet, especially with the rail up. But when I'd gone in to soothe her the last time, I'd left the crib rail down. It was an accident. It could happen to anyone, but this time it happened to us. In the dark she'd pulled herself to standing and pitched over the rail.

In approximately .35 of a second Turner and I had vaulted the furniture and sprinted into the bedroom, and were pulling Sloane up from the floor. Luckily, amazingly, she'd landed on a body pillow we keep on the floor beside the crib. But there was a terrible purple goose-egg bruise rising at the top of her forehead, marking - very obviously - the spot that'd first hit the floor-through-the-pillow. God.

We had about fifteen seconds of really hard Emergency crying - all you parents out there know that cry. It's not the I'm tired cry, it's not the I'm hungry cry, it's not the I banged my xylophone too hard and scared myself cry. No, it's the Emergency cry. They only pull it out when something seriously serious has happened. I had her in my arms and held her tight, so tight, as she screamed.

But really quickly, she downgraded to the I hurt myself, ow I got hurt cry, And then she seemed to look around, realize the lights were on, that Turner and I were both in the room, that she was out of the crib and being held. And for all the world a look of joy seemed to cross her face: Hey - is this a party? Hey! A party! At night! Just what I wanted! And she started to smile and giggle. God. THE RELIEF.

Still buzzing on the original fear, we walked her around the house and we called the Health Link line. They sussed the situation over the phone and told us that all signs were good that she was going to be okay, but that we should go to the hospital just in case. By this time Sloane was babbling away and in a fine, fine mood: Hey you guys, let's do this party every night at midnight, k? This is great! Dumb sleeping-all-night is for the birds! We headed to the Rockyview, and went to Emerg. Sloane was very, very pleased to chirp and babble and grin at everyone there, was very interested to grab at the ear-speculum, she chewed up her hospital bracelet, and overall our baby girl was in one of the best moods we've seen, possibly ever.

Sloane checks out the ER cot and all the machines that go ping!; her dad has one hand locked around her ankle, notice. By this point the purpleness of the goose-egg had almost disappeared.

Finally the ER doc arrived and checked her out, Sloane was pronounced "probably totally healthy, don't worry", and we were sent home with instructions to wake her up every hour to check for concussion.

Very relieved, very tired parents and one smiling smiler enjoying her trip to the emergency room.

Through the whole night at the hospital, I was fine. I didn't panic. I wasn't overwhelmed with what might be considered natural guilt about my role in leaving the rail down, nor did I cry or get overly protective of Sloane once I knew she was going to be okay. As soon as she stopped crying and looked around and smiled just after we got in the room, I knew she was well. We were lucky, and I was grateful.

But then I woke up the next day. Yesterday was awful. I was completely... hung over, emotionally. My heart and soul were hung the hell over, totally gueule de bois. Wrenched. Pulverized. I couldn't talk much, and everywhere around me I saw potential dangers threatening Sloane's life: Our plants (poisoning). The toilet (drowning). Electrical sockets (electrocution). And so on. The only thing that finally saved me was a girl date with Dana (made earlier in the week) to go see Theatre Calgary's "The Miracle Worker". I didn't want to go, but it was the best thing to do. (Thank You Dana!) When I came home late in the evening, I went in and woke Sloane up. Had to see her awake and alive in the world. She smiled at me, and fell back asleep.

Hopefully nothing bad ever ever ever happens to her ever ever ever again. But something tells me that this is just the beginning.

By the way, Turner lowered the crib mattress first thing on Friday.

 

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [2]

---

The Schedule

You need a schedule if you have a kid. It keeps you sane. It helps the child feel safe, that the world is a predictable and nurturing place. (You try to delay the popping of that bubble for as long as possible.) And on those days where you're exhausted and dizzy, it keeps you on track, moving from point to point.

We don't have it down perfect, and there are often anomalies in the pattern that throw it off - guests, appointments, projects, Turner going out to get lickered with Chris Koentges, Sunday dinner with the Bristowe clan, and so on. But Turner and I have established a kind of routine that more or less works for us, and it looks something comme ça:

5:30 - 6am or so: Sloane wakes up. I pull her into bed with us and feed her. She falls back asleep, and I get up to do my work: housecleaning, email, research, photo sorting. Sometimes Sloane doesn't go back to sleep. Those days, she rolls around kicking us in the stomach and kidneys until one or the other of us cracks and gets up with her. But usually, thankfully, she goes back to sleep.

8:30 or so: Sloane wakes up again. Feeding of Sloane. Turner rouses around this time and takes over for the morning parenting shift.

9:30 or so: Ash heads to the gym. Trying to build back the muscle I lost and to lose the flab I gained whilst pregnant, I am on a treadmill/crosstrainer/weight lifting regimen, with the occasional suicidal attempt at a Ripped class. Pounds lost thusfar: 0. Since muscle weighs twice as much as fat, I figure I'm putting on muscle. ...Meanwhile, under her dad's doting supervisory eye, Sloane gets in a few hours of the Jolly Jumper, playing with her blocks, crawling around the livingroom, having the first of the day's tremendous poos, and visiting the back yard. Then, naptime.

11:30am or so: Ash arrives home. Sloane is usually asleep when I get back, and I feed her once she wakes. Turner makes lunch.

Noon or so (but usually right at NOON, like the changing of the guard at the Pakistan-India border): Ash takes over for the afternoon parenting shift. Then it's lunchtime, with its attendant carrying Sloane around and distracting her in the high chair during kitchen cleanup, after which Turner heads downstairs to his office to work for the afternoon. I dunno what he does down there, since the sanctity of Turner's basement office is something we take seriously. But periodically there are phone calls, and book deals, and articles written, and interviews transcribed, and speaking events arranged, and so on, so something must be going on down there. The magic and alchemy that produces Turner's brilliant work, in any case.

12:30pm or so: Storytime. Sloane's favourites (read: Ashley's favourites, because they rhyme. Sloane is rather undiscriminating in her reading material, her main criterion for preference being in favour of whichever book I let her chew on that day) - Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, and Silly Sally. After storytime we start to get ready to go out. It takes a while: being changed, juggling baby on hip while packing the diaper bag, putting things in the car, forgetting the water bottle in the house and having to go back in to retrieve it, forgetting the soothie in the house and having to go back to get it, forgetting my wallet in the house... you get the picture.

1:30pm or so: Ash and Sloane head out on the afternoon's adventure. This ranges from grocery shopping and other errands, to the Mommy Movie at Chinook, to walks around the neighbourhood, to the wave pool at Southland Leisure Centre, trips to the library, and more. Sometimes we just hang around here. Between 1:30 and 3pm Sloane goes down for her second nap, wherever we are at that time.

5pm or so: Ash and Sloane get home, Sloane often arriving home in the midst of her late afternoon nap (#3 of the day) in the carseat. Turner emerges from the basement lair. Dinner preparations begin. Ash and Sloaner have some trampoline time, and some sit-on-the-pink-blanket-in-the-backyard time. Turner and I do some haphazard gardening, with Sloane looking on, eating grass and dodging the wasps.

6pm or so: Dinnertime. Cleanup.

6:30pm or so: The official baby bedtime routine begins. First off, the bath. Since Sloane refuses to sit in the Tummy Tub anymore, we take baths together in the big tub. Sloane spends a good amount of time chewing on the rubber ducky's head. Next, the massage. We go to Sloane's room, turn on the spaceheater, and grease the baby up with almond oil. Around this time Sloane gets pretty quiet. We do her feet and legs, and if she's in an especially cooperative mood, her head and back. Then it's into her pyjamas, at which point Sloane starts to fuss and protest. She knows the day is coming to a close.

7pm or so: We head to the bedroom for Sloane's dinner. If she falls asleep on the boob, she gets put in the crib and that's that. If she eats but doesn't go down, Sloane gets to come back out and sit in the high chair visiting with the people for another fifteen or twenty minutes or so. Then it's off to beddy bye, with Turner taking the put-baby-to-bed duty.

7:30 to 10pm or so: Adult time, which usually means internet surfing, cleaning the house and organizing various household projects, making to-do lists for tomorrow, and yelling at the television if we watch the news. Sometimes we watch movies, which makes it a popcorn night. 

10pm or so: Ashley's bedtime. Glasses of water fetched for the bedside table, oat bag heated up in the microwave, Sloane given a dreamfeed. Turner tucks me in, and often gives me a rub. He's a great husband that way.

Sometimes midnight, sometimes 1am, sometimes 2am or so: Turner finally comes to bed. I dunno what he does in those extra waking hours. I know he watches the Daily Show at some point, but sometimes I get up to pee and find him all in a lather, in the midst of some project of organizing the bills, or re-folding all of Sloane's clothes, or alphabetizing his record albums. I think Turner restores his own sanity in these quiet dark hours when the wife and child are asleep in the bedroom,m puttering away at his own projects.

2:30 am or so: Sloane wakes for her mid-night feed.

 

And the cycle continues...

 

Categories: Dad-ness | House | Married Life | Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [11]

---

Sloane's Two-Month Checkup

Oh, needles. We all hate them. My mother tells the story of my immunizations at 3 years old, where they had to get three more McKeller Hospital nurses and orderlies to hold me down on the table, I was fighting so hard. (Eventually I had so many needles with the Hodgekin's that now I'm fabulously fearless in person... though I can't watch people shooting up on tv. Dunno.) Turner still has a well-known phobia of needles, going green and passing out at the sight of sharps and the scent of rubbing alcohol. So guess which of us had to hold the baby when we took her in for her vaccinations on Friday? Yep.

The two-month checkup: a photo essay.

Our "local" health clinic, on Calgary's seedy east side. Formerly a lovely little town on the outskirts of the city, Forest Lawn is now home to lots of interesting immigrant communities and some of the trashiest white people in Calgary. Come for the pho, the Punjabi cloth shops, the Shun Fat Chinese grocer, the Latino market... stay for the pit bull breeders, the pawn shops/porn shops/used vacuum shops, and the lottery/crack addicts.

 

The smiling smiler weighs in at 11lbs, a good gain from her last checkup.

 

Measuring Sloane's length - 22 inches or so of burbling baby.

 

Official head circumference = Sloane, neither a pinhead nor a cranius maximus.

 

And now, the moment of truth.

"Before." Immediately after this picture was taken, Turner went out to wait in the hallway.

 

"After". Roused by our babygirl's screams, Turner returned to document the aftermath of the scheduled torture (intramuscular, in the thigh - 2 in the left, one in the right).

 

The miracle of modern medicine, and the blessing of a public health care system - vaccinations for all (at least, all whose parents will allow them to be immunized against the world's worst childhood diseases, for free).

 

Waiting the obligatory 15 minutes in the lobby, in case of anaphylactic shock.

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [0]

---

Tell It To The Bear

INT: Kitchen. Ash is washing out the breast pump at the sink, Turner is soothing Sloane, hum-singing to her as he sock-skates around the table.

Ash:       [Stops, listens, recognizes the tune] ...You knooooowwww, when Rolling Stone goes back to printing good journalism and they want you for the cover, and you try to wear a "Corporate Magazines Still Suck" tshirt*, I'm gunna tell them you sang your daughter to sleep with the A&W theme song.

Turner:    ...I think it was something already, before it was the A&W song.

Ash:       Shuuuuure it was.

 

*Turner, a big Nirvava fan, has their 1992 Rolling Stone cover framed in his office. Kurt Cobain is wearing a hastily hand-lettered white tshirt bearing these words.

 

Categories: Dad-ness

Comments [0]

---

Overheard, 7:02pm

After Sloane's dinner, Turner in the livingroom:

"...I know what would bring on the burp, eh? It's if I moved this towel away, right? Then you'd spit up some good, eh? ...And if we put on the Beatrix Potter outfit, right?" [whenever Sloane wears her Peter Rabbit sleeper she barfs all over everything. It's a whole theme.]

and

[patting Sloane on the back, leaning her back and forth on his lap] "You get the feeling that it's like one of those pedestrian crossings things - 'push this button to cross'...? Like, does this even do anything? You know? Like, you're going to burp when you want to burp, so am I doing anything constructive here?"

and

"Are there going to be no burps today from baby Sloane? ...No burps today, madam? ...I gave at the office?"

 

Categories: Dad-ness | Sloane

Comments [0]

---

Arrrr! You Can Never Start Them Too Young

A former DJ and obsessive music lover, Turner gives Sloane the first of many pirating lessons

Categories: Dad-ness | Sloane

Comments [3]

---

Lazy Mom Confessional

INT: Chez Bristowe Turner, 3:10am

The middle-of-the-night parenting deal is this: Ashley is in charge of what goes into the kid, and Turner is in charge of what comes out, a share-and-share-alike model for the sleep deprivation. Turner has gone to burp-n'-change Sloane after her night meal, and Ashley is in bed, awaiting their return.

Ash: [waiting in bed for what seems like a very long time for one diaper change] ...Turner? [nothing] ...Turner? [Ash hikes up on one elbow, looks down the hall. Sounds of Turner mumbling to Sloane in the nursery] ...Something wrong? Turner? [Ash considers getting up to investigate, decides to stay in bed. Rolls over, falls back asleep. Some time later, Turner returns with Sloane] ...Henh? Oh. Turner - what the hell took so long?

Turner: Nothing, everything's fine.

Ash: [taking baby] Hello my bibi! ...Was she wearing this before?

T: No. [climbing into bed] I had to change her.

Ash: Why? Diaper explosion?

T: No no no. [Droning tired voice, relating story as fast as possible] Everything was fine, we were all clean and changed, I swaddled her back up, it was a good wrap, good and tight, and then she spit up on the double-wide receiving blanket. ...So I had to unwrap her, and then she was unwrapped and I had a towel by her head and she spit up again and managed to just get a little down the crack between the cloth and her head and it dribbled onto her shoulder. ...So I had to change her. It seems like no matter where I put the towel, the spit up always finds a way around it.

A: Was it a lot?

T: What?

A: The spit up.

T: No no, not much, just a spot. ...But I had to change her, it got her shoulder a bit.

A: Hm. [Admitting] I think I probably would have just dabbed it clean and wrapped her up and brought her back to bed, me.

T: ...I couldn't do that -- how would you like to sleep with a wet shoulder?

A: [Thinking she would not like to sleep with a wet shoulder. Also thinking she's glad for the nighttime deal that sees Turner in charge of changing Sloane out of sleepers with dribbly wet shoulders] Hm. Wouldn't. ...Way to go, Dad.

T: ...Yeah.

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness

Comments [11]

---

Whut We Got In Thuh Mail

Sent to Sloane by Papa Mike, a tool of infant hypnosis arrived in a suspicious-looking bulky brown paper parcel the other day. After we hosed it down and ripped it open, this awesome educational bumper went straight into the crib (I hear you screaming, "Crib bumpers are dangerous! SIDS! SIDS!" -- calm down, Sloane sleeps in a moses basket beside our bed and just visits the crib in the daytime) to start its brainwashing work. And just in the nick of time... since Turner had begun making noise about how Sloane might be, and I quote, "falling behind". Seriously, I heard him mention flashcards. I heard him reference this learning toy he saw the other night on a Sex In The City rerun. And then I heard him making plans to go out looking for an educational mobile.

Now, there's something you need to know about Turner, and it's that he spent some of his formative childhood years living in the United States. Most of the time you'd never know anything was amiss (unless you count that stubborn anti-Reagan thing T has going on) - he's as Canadian as the rest of us. But then every so often, he comes out with a twangy and bizarre pronounciation of some word which, north of the 49 parallel, shurrr don't sound like that. Impossible to predict when they'll crop up or why some words stuck and others didn't, these pronounciations must've sponged into his brain as a kid, somehow escaping the process of Canadianization en route to adulthood.

In any case, today's word of this sort is: mobile. In Canada this word is pronounced moe-bye-ull. In his keeping-Sloane-up-with-the-baby-Joneses jonesing, Turner has come out with this word a number of times, and off his St. Louis-and-Denver-tainted tongue it sounds decidedly like "moe-beel". As in, "We need to get Sloane one of those educational moe-beels".

As in, "Hot damn, woman! We needs to get this chile one'a them ejukayshunull moe-beels!"

Anyway, the fortuitous timing of the arrival of Papa Mike's educational bumper filled our moe-beel void in a big way. Now, we'd read and heard that newborns see contrast way earlier than colour and shape, but it's just one of those many many bits of advice and information you're given in the period leading up to the birth of a child. In one ear, and hastily shelved near the back. So when we unwrapped the bumper and saw the black n' white pictures, we had one of those, "oh yeah, the books say babies like contrast" moments, but it didn't really hit too strong a chord. 

Nonetheless we wasted no time in rigging up the bumper, and then lay Sloane in the crib for a test run. Our gurgling and unfocussed two-week-old suddenly fell rapt and silent as she stared in awe at the bumper. I am not shitting you, this thing stopped her cold. I actually reached in and poked her to make sure she wasn't having some kind of silent baby seizure; that's how marked was the reaction to the pictures along the pad. ...I'm not sure what exactly she's learning from it, but you can almost hear the wheels turning in her brain as she lies there gaping at this thing.

"Falling behind" no more, our child goes to the head of the class in stripey lines and dots, and without the aid of a moe-beel. All hail the educational bumper pad!

Our child, mesmerized by the gift of patterns-in-contrast

Categories: Dad-ness | Family | Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [0]

---

Overheard, 12:50pm

Turner, singing to Sloane in the front hallway:

"You're gonna give your father / Chronic back pain / Because you demand to be / Danced around the house / Don't put me down! / You say ..."

For those of you who have heard Turner sing, you'll understand the miracle involved in Sloane's fondness for these ditties.. but go figure, give Turner five minutes and she's out cold.

Categories: Dad-ness | Sloane

Comments [1]

---

Baby Smell Gooood

INT: Ash and Turner, wandering around the house post-Sloane's-afternoon-bath, picking up the livingroom

Ash: (faintly) ...The baby smell is a nice compensation, eh?

Turner: (looking up from rocking Sloane) ...For what?

A: For... (looking around, sort of at a confused loss) all the mess...

T: ...And the sleep deprivation and the disorganization and all the laundry and the unpredictable noise and disruption and the episiotomy discomfort...?

A: Yeah. All that.

T: Aside from the love.

A: Yeah, aside from the love. The smell is a nice bonus.  

Categories: Dad-ness | Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [0]

---

Turner Swaddles

Turner shows our "Baby and Beyond" class a thing or two about swaddling a baby (turns out there were a few better ways... we've since adopted another method, demonstrated afterward).

Categories: Dad-ness | Sloane

Comments [0]

---