In the very beginning, bath time was more of quick step in the process, in large part because Justine at that point in her life was little more than a writhing bag of goo with eyes that did little but eat, sleep and poop.  We’d dutifully put her in the tub, proceed immediately to the task of scrubbing away the awful scents she picked up from the friends and family that had held onto her.  After a quick rinse it was off to the changing table for diapers and pajamas.

As time went on however, it became clear that our little one enjoyed her time in the bath, and we started making a more conscious effort to let her sit in there and play, beginning to augment bath time with a variety of bath toys.  At first, it was mostly items that we already had in the kitchen that happened to float – cups, sponges, old cans filled with bacon fat for example.  Eventually we purchased commercial bath toys – “fancy” bath cups, rubber duckies, and little squirters – the latter providing probably more fun for me than for her.  I enjoyed squirting things (the cats, the wife, the Wicked Witch of the West) while Justine instead preferred to put the thing in her mouth and squeeze out all the water.

That has always been a bit of a struggle for us – for some unknown reason Justine has also shown a proclivity to drinking her bathwater.  She’ll take cups, surreptitiously fill them, and then drink them, ending usually in some nasty coughs as she is still getting the hang of the “chug” she probably won’t fully develop until college.  She does similar things at the pool, which is even harder to police, especially when she’s over in her pool swimming her laps while you are in the hot tub.

The actual vessel of bath time has changed significantly over the months as well as the toys.  When she first emerged from the womb, we used to bathe her in a teacup, resting her on a soup spoon while we scrubbed her with some doll brushes the Indian in the Cupboard gave us.  Eventually we moved her into a “toddler bath,” a molded plastic affair that was designed to fit over the double sink in the kitchen.  This was ideal because we could give Justine her bath, and then use the leftover bathwater for other chores, like rinsing vegetables and making Kool-Aid for the neighborhood kids.

Now that Justine has gotten too large for the kitchen sink, she now happily spends her bath firmly ensconced in the S.S. Ducky McMallard, a large inflatable duck that fits in our large bathtub and comes complete with beak that unleashes a barrage of classic Australian Wood Duck quacks, which she adores. We are somewhat less enthused when we trip over the thing in the middle of the night as it takes up most of the bathroom when not in the tub.  Her time in the bath has increased significantly, now bordering on the half an hour mark, which is a bit more a struggle for the watcher, who sits idly by while she engages in splashing, standing attempts, bath toy tossing, and the SCUBA certification.

Where does the road lead from here?  Based on her current progression I would estimate that by her 18 month birthday she’ll be lounging out for a few hours every night playing with some 1:32 scale working tugboats in a large Turkish bath.

I wonder if they make those in duck shapes…

- MWF -

In any case, those words seem apropos because our little Justine, seemingly out of the clear blue sky, delighted us with some sporadic hand to hand combat.  It was Easter morning, and Kim was preparing a monstrous feast, while I was once again whittling away my youth and intelligence trolling the Internet looking for clues on the Smoke Monster and why exactly New Kids on the Block thought a reunion tour was a good idea.  Justine was wandering about, picking up things, tasting them, and then throwing them aside.  Kim came out of the kitchen briefly, declaring that we needed “tunes” and turned on some Dave Matthews Band. Shortly after we watched as Justine suddenly started clapping her hands together.

Now I don’t want to suggest here that Dave Matthews may have “magical powers,” (magical plants is another matter entirely) but if he can cause children to spontaneously make developmental leaps, I bet his album sales would double.  Will this lead to a spate of newborns rocking out to “Crash into Me” or falling asleep to “Satellite?”  I would stake my reputation on it.

Honestly thought, in the days that have followed, Justine has gotten a little more regular with her clapping, and a pattern has emerged that actually throws the DMB theory into doubt.  For a long time now, one of the games we try to play with her is the classic “Catch,” which in normal human terms involves two people tossing a ball back and forth in the air, but in our variety involves her picking up the ball, raising it over her head and letting it fall to floor.  We respond by grabbing the ball (“catching” in the parlance) and reacting with the standard parental uber-excitement of shouting “yaaaay” and clapping our hands.  In watching her play by herself in the last couple of days, she’s followed a similar pattern (sans us of course).  she picks up a ball, brings it over her head, drops it, then shouts and claps her hands.

There you have it folks, the gentle beginnings of parental mimicry.  Frankly, this is as exciting as when the monkey touched the Monolith and then picked up the bone in 2001…

Things become mildly more complicated when your little one figures out how to roll over.  This precludes several normal infant resting spots, including atop the refrigerator and on the window sill next to the pie that you baked.  But again, for the most part, and with proper use of chocks and wedges, it is possible to get away for a few moments to shoo away the Mormons or place bets with your bookie.

But at some point, despite all of your attempts to dissuade the practice, the proverbial lightbulb will click in your child’s head, and things will suddenly, and irreversibly, change forever.

Yes friends, our little Justine has learned to crawl.

It was a slow but sure process with her, taking several weeks for her to put all the pieces together.  In what anthropologists have informed us is a fairly radical evolutionary mutation, she actually learned to pull herself into a sitting position before she learned to crawl.  That happened very suddenly, and we were both shocked to watch her do it.  From there we assumed crawling would be a snap.

Instead she laboriously practiced each individual component of the crawl, figuring out optimal launch angles, head position, and thigh-leg force quotients.  She started by assuming the “position,” the classic “all fours.”  It took her awhile to get her legs untangled – for about a week she was doing a patented “all three and a half.”  After she mastered that she’d go up into the launch, and then rock forward, and then back into a sitting position.  She would do this over and over again, and Kim and I would both sit forward, anticipating that “this was it.”  Eventually we stopped paying attention, me going back to my organizing my lint collection by color and material and Kim practicing her squirrel calls.

Finally, one day she lunged forward and made a few tentative crawls before the expected Maggie Simpson landed her face-first in the carpet.  Unfazed, she’d continue this learning process until she finally figured it out.  We helped her along by enticing her to crawl in different directions, whether it be by waving an iPhone, dropping a ball, or tethering one of the cats to her.  Now, she’s a crawling master, undeterred from undertaking epic quests and crossing entire rooms to bag whatever quarry she may be after.  You know what this means.

Time to lock up the liquor cabinet.  And EVERYTHING else.

Our nightly victuals consumed, we adjourned to the living room for an hour of Daddy-Daughter time, where I atoned for being gone all day by succumbing to the wishes of my little girl and sat and watched as she picked things up, dropped them, and then picked them up again. Fascinating.  After a while of that she moved on to her new favorite activity – unfolding clean laundry from the laundry basket.  First grabbing the edge, she pulls it down to her mouth for a lick, and then pulls it all the way to floor and proceeds to pull out each item of clothing, taste it, and throw it behind her.  My mind drifted as I pondered teaching her to sort socks – now THAT would be something.

I was jolted from my reverie as she toppled to one side, bonking her head on the floor and letting out a scream.  My fatherly instinct kicked in and grabbed the iPhone, waving it at her.  Steve Jobs knows how to captivate – she was transfixed.  Thus began a lengthy bout of crawling practice – over to one side to get the iPhone, back over to get a regular phone.  The juxtaposition of old technology to new was quite striking – although I’m not sure she picked up on it – she seemed more concerned tasting the phones rather than pondering their cultural significance.

She tired of the game, and that’s when the trouble began.   I picked her up and held her in the air.  She giggled.  I flipped her on her belly than back into a sitting position.  She squealed.  I lay down on my back and put her on my stomach.  Then I started doing sit-ups, rolling her back and forth with me.  She laughed.  Encouraged, I did it again.  More laughter.  One more time!

That’s when she vomited on my face.

It all started innocently enough.  After we finally moved Justine from our bedroom to hers, it became important to try and soften the random noises that accompany the night-life on a sleepy street in the bowels of Central New York.  The night often comes alive with the sound of cars recklessly careening down the road, screeching deer, cougars ripping apart fallen gazelles, and of course my private helicopter returning from a jaunt down to the city after clubbing with Lindsay and J.Lo.  To help combat these potential “awakeners” we received via one of the baby showers one of those “white noise” machines.  After some experimentation, we settled on “the Ocean” as our weapon of choice.

Now, I am aware that there are folks out there that happily fall asleep with these machines, blissfully drifting off to the sounds of a rainstorm, the babble of a small stream in a dense wood, or honks and swearing of rush hour in Times Square.  But for me, listening both consciously and unconsciously to a 20 second clip of tidal waves repeated a bajillion times has a variety of assuredly unintended but very real consequences.  For example, I imagine a chart detailing my late night bathroom activities would show a sharp spike in peeing shortly after the machine entered our lives (although I suppose that could also be attributed to the extra drinking as well).  I also suffered a brief but frightening few weeks convinced that I was Frankie Avalon.  (Too old a reference?  Uh, how about Patrick Swayze in Point Break?  No?  Ummm.  World Famous Surfer Kelly Slater? Look, there’s only so many surfer references I can make…)

Eventually we stopped using the automated PeeTron and switched instead to using a Baby Einstein CD of “Wake Up and Goodnight” classical music.  Naturally, I was tasked with removing the “Wake Up” portion, and quadrupling the number of times that the 8 songs played.  Eventually we discovered that the boombox we have pointed at her room has a “repeat all” function that made it possible to maintain the sleepy music barrage at full force all night long.  This has been marginally better on my psyche than the old machine, although I do occasionally have dreams of conducting a large symphony orchestra only to wake up flailing my cat by the tail about the bed while Rachminanoff whispers through the house.

Both of these subtle methods of subduing a light sleeper are invasive enough to the brain, but mercifully the majority of my exposure to them occurs while I am asleep.  No such luck for when we travel in the car, where I am subjected to two other forms of auditory torture.  The first is another Baby Einstein CD, and in this case it’s the only one that seems to calm her down when we drive.  It’s filled with classic baby tunes, including old standbys like Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the Alphabet song (all of which have the same tune – which is a total ripoff).  I know them all by heart now, and in the order that they are played, so much so that if we ever were to lose it, I’m sure I could remaster my own version to replace it.  (REMIX!)  Naturally, of course, every single song is the type that burrows deep into the brain, and resurfaces at inappropriate times, such as in the big board meeting, or while attempting brain surgery.

The second musical pacifier we employ in the car is a jungle themed mirror that has flashing lights around the outside and plays a jaunty little Jungle-ish tune.  The CD is bad enough, but what makes this thing so mind-numbing is that the song that it plays is only about 30 seconds long, and of course is on infinite repeat.  Imagine 4 hours of a car ride with the same 30 second clip playing (and attempting to switch it off causes LOUD fits of anger) and you can see where my mind will start to splinter.

Will this auditary nightmare abate over time?  Unlikely – instead it’ll probably progress to Barney, Baby Beluga and with my luck, Hannah Montana.  Oh god, what if Hanson makes a resurgence?

Shortly after our rendezvous with Sleepy Santa at the mall, we headed home for what proved to be Justine’s (unsurprisingly) first Christmas.  We had originally planned to leave after work on the 23rd, for we had plans to meet with my family at noon the 24th to exchange gifts and engage in ‘holiday activities’.  But because of the desire to see Santa Clause, and the small detail of not being packed that night, we decided to leave bright and early on the 24th.

Justine, of course, was not adequately briefed about the plan, and instead decided to stay up much of the night, regaling us with tales about her day playing with toys, told entirely through loud, raucous screaming.  The light of day finally upon us, we took to the road, zombie-like, and headed south.  Naturally, our delay in leaving left us driving into the teeth of a ‘winter weather warning’ which mostly consisted of a large sheet of ice that covered the roads between Syracuse and Allentown.  It was not an auspicious start to the trip.

We arrived in Philly only a half an hour late to the gathering, and mustered the energy to appear lively as my family partook of a wonderful brunch and gift giving bonanza.  Justine delighted in her new toys, relishing in the attention given to her by everyone, while Kim and I bravely mustered smiles, taking turns slipping out to the bathroom to catch 5 minutes of sleep sitting on the toilet.

After the festivities, we attended the early Christmas Eve service at our church.  The church puts on 3 services on the day before Christmas, two later services geared towards adults that represent the somber and seriousness of the birth of Jesus, and the late afternoon service “for the kids” featuring a Christmas Pageant that revels in such historical inaccuracies as “Wise Women,” shepherds sporting Adidas sandals (and socks), and a real live baby Jesus portrayed by a one month old baby girl (in this case performed ably by my niece Abby).  It was certainly a charming, if raucous, affair, but it was nice to be involved in a service where Justine could scream and we wouldn’t get the usual stares and subtle “to the back” nods.

After church we headed over to Kim’s parents house for a full-on Christmas dinner, complete with ham, yams, and even a small “Christmas Beast.”  To continue to atone for a year’s worth of misdeeds, we agreed to attend another service at a small church nearby.  This was a more traditional affair, consisting of the usual litany of Christmas Eve service staples, including singing Christmas carols, the requisite acknowledgment of the church that Santa and Jesus can co-exist peacefully, if not amicably, and the candle-lit singing of Silent Night.  Justine, for her part, did a reasonably good job of not calling attention to herself, and Kim and I both made it through awake.  We returned to the house, and quickly succumbed to a well-deserved sleep, well aware of what lay ahead.

Christmas Day would dawn early.

“Who does your baby look like?”

We get this constantly, and frankly it’s becoming a bit annoying.  Look, I understand that this child we brought into the world is made up of a combination of both my wife and my DNA (allegedly), and thus shares traits from both of us.  Thus conceivably she could have “my nose,” or my wife’s “eyebrows,” or my “smug sense of self-satisfaction and loathing for the DMV.”  The problem is that the answer to this simple question is neither simple nor obvious.  And yet that doesn’t stop friends, family, or even random strangers at the supermarket from pondering the question.

In some cases I have seen obvious examples of parent/child similarities.  My boss’s second child, for example, is a dead ringer for him, right down to the way he laughs when I ask for a day off.  One of my brother’s sons is becoming indistinguishable from childhood pictures of my brother from the 70s.  My pet starfish’s severed tentacle is starting to grow into exactly the same shape as its mutilated parent.

But in our case it’s hard to say.  We’ve combed through our childhood pictures, looking for recognizable facial features, but they just don’t seem to be there.  I mean, obviously Justine has inherited my radiant smile, fantastic looks and sunny disposition, as well as Kim’s ability to sneeze, but none of these things has a direct correlation feature-wise to what we looked like back then.  It’s mysterious and maddening, especially to that lady in the produce aisle who continuously accosts us about the issue.

Facial features aside, I will say, though, that people have agreed that Justine has inherited my fingers.  Apparently I have distinctly long fingers, with long wide nails.  I like to think that these serve a larger purpose – perhaps some day the fate of the world may rest upon my ability to reach a few millimeters farther up my nose than the average human – but for now I don’t get a lot of extra advantage from them. But it’s good to know that at least there is something recognizable from me present physically in my child.  And who knows, as time goes on, perhaps she’ll end up looking more and more like me.

And may God have mercy on her if she does.

In all honesty, despite all the speculation, I have my own personal theory as to who she looks like:

You be the judge.