New Dog’s New Tricks

Sometimes, Tristan creates a vacuum in her milk bottle, which stops the flow of milk.  I suppose every baby does it.  Marcel did it, but I learned to regularly pull the bottle away so as keep the flow steady and the cries at bay.  By the time Tristan arrived, however, I must’ve forgotten the trick because she regularly creates vacuums.  Amazingly, Tristan figured out the answer to the problem all on her own.

Often while I’m daydreaming my way through Tristan’s feeding, or whatever the hell it is I’m doing, Tristan realizes that the milk has stopped flowing.  Any other baby would start crying but fail to recognize that, just by opening their mouth, they have let air into the bottle which, in turn, allows the milk to flow again, thus making further cries unnecessary.

Of course, any baby would make this mistake.  After all, they’re just a baby!  Apparently, though, Tristan isn’t just a baby because Tristan doesn’t cry.

Instead, when the vacuum occurs and the flow dries up, Tristan starts pushing at my fingers.  She’s trying to push the bottle in my hand out of her mouth.  She’s not strong enough to actually move my hand, of course, but she is strong enough to get my attention.  When she starts pushing, I pull the bottle away, we wait for the telltale bubbles and hiss to stop and, when it does, she opens her mouth and I pop the bottle back in.

Obviously, she could achieve the same affect just by opening her mouth but, given her age, her way is mighty impressive to me.

 

Vacation Edition

I’m writing this blog to catalogue the history of my life in my daughters’ world so I don’t lose and forget any of our wonderful memories. During vacations, however, we’re working too hard developing memories to find time to get to a computer and write them down. In those instances, I’ll fill one post with multiple entries. This is one of those instances.

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8/16/2008:

So maybe I was a little premature in announcing a change in Tristan’s sleep patterns. She woke up several times a night, in the middle of the night, every night, last week. Worse, my wife continues her practice of always waking me up along with her and Tristan.

Specifically, she asks me to change Tristan’s diaper while she runs off for a little potty time herself, even if all Tristan wants to do is to nurse. I mean, if diaper changing won’t stop the crying, why do I have to be miserable along with everyone, too? One night, however, Tristan didn’t want to feed. She really just needed a diaper change.

Or maybe something else was happening.

Tristan’s crying didn’t abate when I removed the dirty diaper, as it usually does when she’s only complaining about a dirty diaper. And, as I pulled out the cold wipe, I fully expected her crying to intensify when I slathered it across her bottom. Instead, she quieted precipitously.

By this point, she had turned to look at the lamp, which bathed her face in a warm glow. And as I finished the job and taped the fasteners, her eyes closed, her hand, previously raised in a clinched fist, slowly fell and a smile–a BIG smile–spread across her face.

And a little misery was a small price to pay to see that.

8/23/2008:

When I was growing up, my Dad was very much involved in my life.  He read me the Bible through Exodus and taught me Amazing Grace.  He also taught me Chess, Checkers, Backgammon and Monopoly. And when it came to football, baseball, basketball and, even, soccer, he never missed a home game.

He’s a grandparent (“GP”) now, though, and he expects to only have the easy parts.  So he was taken aback when Marcel ordered him to get in line.  Even though I was feeding Tristan a bottle, I tried to save him, and jumped in line behind Marcel but she insisted that all of us–my Mom, my wife and GP–get in line behind her, too.  Defeated, my Dad complied.

We marched out of the den, through the library, the dining room, the kitchen and then all of the way to nursery.  In the nursery, there’s an oval area rug where she sat down, Native American-style, and ordered us to do the same, taken my Dad by surprise, again.  Again, nursing Tristan and all, I tried to take the weight and sit down for the group but, again, Marcel insisted.  Defeated, my Dad compromised and sat on her bed.

As soon as everyone was seated, Marcel started in with the songs.  We sang several rounds of an incomplete “A, B, Cs”. Then we played instruments. Tristan and I had a pillow masquerading as a basketball which Marcel informed the group was a guitar.  My wife, Grandma and GP had “instruments”, as well.  When we were done, Marcel instructed us to put the instruments behind us (surely so we wouldn’t be distracted during the next activity), then we sang new songs.

It became clear to us that Marcel was mimicking her daily experience at fancy daycare.  This revelation filled me with comfort and gratitude that my daughter was being so well nurtured and inspired by the people to whom I entrust her.  This revelation filled my father with something else, altogether: It filled him with a question.

“When do we take a nap?”