Backpacking Dad

Ever since Erin was born I've been talking to her in my head. And she's been talking back.

"Hi daddy."

"Show me how to pick up cheese."

"Can I drink bubble bath?"

"I love you."

She has a particular style of speaking when she is telepathizing with me; and sometimes Emily and I will vocalize those thoughts we are certain she is expressing with her infant ESP.

"Tryin' real hard to stand up here, guys."

"Sleepy now, guys."

"My foot tastes pretty good, guys."

She is always referring to the two of us as "guys". This is a correlate of her also insisting that both Emily and I are "da da". But it's just so damned cute that we don't correct her. She can call us "guys" all she wants.

Sunday afternoon we were waiting for her to nap. She had already insisted that she was "Hungry now, guys" and "Sleepy now, guys." So we gave her a bottle and settled in to enjoy our popcorn.

Oh. Right. We were at the movies. Together. I think the last movie Emily and I saw together was "27 Dresses". For some that might seem pretty recent; for me, who has seen every movie between then and now, it was a lifetime ago. So we had really high hopes for this afternoon out, with a baby who needed a nap and a well-timed film about to start.

But Erin wouldn't sleep. I think she hates to sleep in her fancy Mclaren umbrella stroller (something about her legs hanging down in front of her, I suspect). So, since I've seen many many movies, I took Erin out of the theater so Emily could watch Miss Pettrigrew doing something to help Amy Adams with her life.

I rolled Erin around, took her out of her stroller to play, put her back in to potentially drift off, studiously ignored her while I won 4 free games of Lord of the Rings pinball. Nothing. This kid was not going to sleep.

An hour and a half later Emily exited the theater and met us in the mezzanine of the cineplex. Erin was starting to fuss a bit in her stroller, so Emily took her out and let her crawl around. Erin apparently had had a mission in mind the entire time she was stuck in her stroller, because she crawled behind it, stood up against it, and started pushing.

Emily grabbed the handles and walked behind her so that Erin couldn't push the stroller too far out ahead of herself and faceplant. And after a few laps she picked Erin up so we could leave.

But Erin insisted, quite vocally, that she needed to get back to business.

"I have some deliveries to make, guys."

I walked behind her, holding the stroller handles as she pushed through the mezzanine; into the elevator, out of the elevator; through the lobby; out the front door; down the sidewalk; into another elevator; out of the elevator, through a parking garage; and finally to the car.

"Just needed to control a bit of the universe for a while, guys."

I love that kid. And I love that she delights in both controlling the world and being surprised by it.

But there has to be a better way to give her a bottle. I need to start developing my line of baby backpacking accessories.
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It was Saturday, and it had a very relaxed feel about it. Going into the weekend Emily had daydreamed about taking a last-minute flight from San Francisco to either Seattle or Vancouver BC, just because we could and a weekend away sounded awesome.

But it's rainy in Seattle and Vancouver this weekend. So we thought about somewhere closer we could go, just for the sake of going.

Why not Sausalito?

Well, I don't know why not. I don't really know why to, but if the point is to go just to go, then Sausalito it is, baby!

So we loaded up the backpack and drove to Pier 41 in San Francisco.

Erin took her second ferry ride ever (the first was the Amherst Islander up in Lake Ontario).

She snuggled with her mom on the boat:

We saw a guy building rock towers down by the waterfront:

Because it was a somewhat nautical day we dressed Erin in her best clam chowdah-yachting shoes from Old Navy:

We had lunch at Winships, where we were greeted very skeptically by the host when we asked for a high chair for our, you know, baby. The reason for his attitude became clear when we were sitting at the table reading the menu and we noticed this little item at the bottom:

As we left the restaurant we went into a junk store, I mean "souvenir shop" and Erin just about Lost Her Freaking Mind when she saw this Rubber Duck Tower:

I bought her a keychain version I could attach to a backpack strap for her to play with on the go:

We walked around for a while, went to the library, and then boarded the ferry again so Erin could nap in transit.

On the other side of the Bay we walked around the piers for a bit:

And then we wound up at the AWESOME Musee Mechanique at the foot of Fisherman's Wharf. A bunch of old old old penny arcade mechanical games and novelties, like the English Execution, an ancient version of Rock'em Sock'em Robots, and my personal favourite, a classic baseball game:

Even though it wasn't a weekend trip to the Pacific Northwest we had a lot of fun. I love showing Erin the world, and I have to keep reminding myself that she doesn't yet believe that the interesting parts of the world are far away. And being able to show her new things makes them interesting to me as well.

Even if they are only 40 minutes away from home.

Whether you are 30 years old, or 11 months old, eating wasabi you don't expect to will cause you to make the same face.


In absolutely unrelated news, Erin tried sushi for the first time on Friday night.

Erin loves food. She also hates food. She alternates between scarfing down everything on her tray, and flinging food over the side onto the floor.

I'm sure that's normal. Every baby probably has the same kind of love-hate relationship with their comestibles.

But how can you tell if your baby has an eating disorder?

Erin loves playing with her mirror, and at 11 months old she may understand that it is a reflection of herself that she is seeing (I haven't tried the smudge-on-face test yet, so I can't be sure). But I worry that she is trying to improve the way she looks so she can snag some coveted baby modeling gig.

You see, my daughter might be bulimic.

After nearly every meal she sticks at least one finger down her throat until she gags. Then she looks up at me and laughs, and her eyes say "This will make me prettier, dad."

I think it's my fault. I told her last week that she has chunky thighs.

Hey kid. You will always be the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Now eat your cheese and carrot ravioli.

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Seriously, though. What's up with the gagging?

Erin and I went to the park today. She played on the grass; I played on the grass. She crawled around in woodchips; I crawled around in woodchips. She swung on a swing; I swung on a swing.

It was fun, but a little tiring. When we came home I put her down to crawl around in the living room. She crawled a little, and then started to practice her tantrums.

Well, they look like mini-tantrums (face bouncing off the floor, legs kicking the ground, fists pounding the carpet), but she's actually laughing the entire time. She'll throw a mini-fit, then look up at me to smile and laugh. It's very cute. For now.

She eventually made her way over to the patio door. I had opened the sliding glass door to air out the apartment while we were gone (and to cool it down; it gets very hot in here in the afternoon), and she crawled over to play with the vertical blinds (7 down, 20 to go on her "tear all the blinds off" mission) and to bounce off the screen. Soon she was on the floor again, throwing a mini-fit and laughing while she stretched out against the screen door facing the end of the sliding glass door.

And then she started to sound upset. I kept looking at her to see if she was ok, and she just seemed to be lying there, perhaps annoyed that the vertical blinds kept getting between me and her in her line of sight. But I got up and went over to her, and I moved the blinds out of the way and bent over to pick her up. And as I was pulling her up off the floor I finally figured out what was pissing her off.

Her finger was stuck. In this:


This hole in the end of the sliding glass door is just big enough for my daughter's index finger to fit into, and just small enough that it will close tightly around her skin when she tries to pull it out. I was already lifting her off the ground when I saw this, but thankfully I hadn't grabbed her to hurl her up into the air from the floor! I...I feel a little ill thinking about that.

We've done some child-proofing around the apartment. But honestly, it never even occured to me that there was anything potentially dangerous on the inside edge of the sliding glass door. And I can't really understand what that hole is doing there anyway. There is nothing on the frame that uses the hole for anything:

So, I sit here now while my daughter naps, horrifying visions flashing through my head, and all I can think to do is rail against the patio door manufacturer. Because I can't permit myself to think that I've done something wrong. Of course not. I'm a good parent. I don't neglect my daughter.

I could have...what?...I could have....no...I could...and it would have been my fault and I can't stare directly into that darkness.

So. Damn you, patio door company. Today I'm a shitty parent, but, come on; what is that hole for?

Over at At Home Dad, a dad safe zone, some of us wrote some poems for our kids.

If you happen to visit the site and find the poem thread, please don't burn any of us. It's a pretty personal site for some of us, and that thread in particular took some guts to post on.

But because I like the one I wrote for Erin I've decided to share it here:

Fair Trade

Please don't bite me
Don't pull my hair
There is no candy in my ear

Please don't hit me
Don't poke my eye
There is no candy in my nose

Please don't pinch me
Don't pull my lips
There is no candy down my throat

I will kiss you
I need a hug
Ah, so that's how you get so close.

Fair trade.

Warning: Movie Karma and rant to follow.

Erin and I see a lot of movies. I'm a movie addict, and she's so easy to bring that we have seen just about everything. We go so often that I'm thinking about adding a new feature to the site: "Erin's Movie Reviews" that will rate movies based on how easy they were for her to sleep/stay quiet through, because some are easier than others (Erin does not like the sound of Paul Giamatti's voice whatsoever).

I was away from my family this Easter weekend, at a philosophy conference in Pasadena (I aspire to be a professional philosopher, if I ever manage to write a thesis, and I was asked to comment on a book this week, which I was very excited about). I was a bit torn about the trip: I wanted to jump into my professional life a bit after being home since September and thinking about nothing apart from Erin; but I also missed Erin and Emily terribly. And in my lonely, downtime moments I couldn't think of anything to do with myself. Sometimes I just didn't feel like talking to professors; I wanted to make faces at my daughter.

Now, historically this sort of loneliness and slight depression was easily remedied: booze can make you friends with just about everybody. But I didn't feel like drinking, and I certainly didn't feel like drinking alone. So I went to the movies.

I went twice. The first time I saw "Semi-Pro", and it was the late afternoon and hardly anyone was in the theater. This actually would have been a perfect movie to have Erin along to (that thought didn't help me feel any less lonely).

I also saw "Drillbit Taylor"; it had a convenient early evening start time and I hadn't seen it, so I went. I climbed to the very back of the near-empty theater and sat in the last row, right under the projector. As I waited for the movie to begin I marveled a little that the theater was once again empty, and then I maudlined a little that I didn't have Erin with me.

Erin is very good in the theater. But every once in a while she'll be awake and a little too gleeful. She laughs (fine), and babbles to herself (slightly less tolerable if there are other people around), but it's when she screeches with glee that I really make the move to take her out of the theater. I don't want to disturb the other movie-goers too much (or at all, really, but I only go to the early afternoon shows on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so the 3 other people who go to see the month-old movie on that day can, I think, deal.)

Waiting for a little karmic revenge on behalf of those 3 people?

Fine. Waiting for "Drillbit" to drill some bits. And into the PG-13 film screening room come, sprinting, bursting, buzzing, and flitting

Thirty 12-year old girls. And, in the almost completely empty theater they decide that they need to peform the equivalent of a Movie Theater Disk Defragmentation and ensure that all of the data bits are as close together as possible. They plunk themselves down Right. In. Front. Of. Me. And fill in my row to my left and to my right.

OMGROFLMAOMYOBIDKURADORKIH8TUKARMA

Chatty (of course; they were 12). Texting (of course; they were 12). Talking on cell phones (uh, 12).

Did I mention they were 12?

Did I mention that the movie was PG-13? I'm no prude (who says that?) but there were two mentions of pornography in the film itself and one in a preview trailer. And that was the tame stuff.

How did they get in? Oh. Because they were brought by one fraaaaaazzled escort. I both admired and hated this poor woman. On the one hand, she kept a pretty good lid on the babbling during the movie (there were occasional interruptions, but not really anything I would get upset over); on the other hand she had no business doing this by herself. I'm pretty sure that even though her purchasing tickets for these 30 girls was fully in keeping with the letter of the PG-13 warning and discouragement, it was clearly outside the spirit of the policy. You are supposed to be able to keep your younger kids under control at the movies, yes, but most importantly you are supposed to be able to make the decision for your kids that "Whoa! That was a bit over the top. We have to go, kids!" She was never ever ever going to be able to make the content-dependent decisions about the movie for this group, and it showed in what they were permitted to sit through.

I wouldn't have let them get past Justin Timberlake dressed as a French porn star in the 80's (in full banana hammock) in the trailer for the new Mike Meyers movie. They wouldn't have gotten past the more than overt sexual dialogue. Clearly the parents of these kids had decided that the kids could decide, as a group, which movie to see and that then they would figure out which parent was going to chaperone them. That's not the way to deal with PG-13 movies, folks. Not at all.

So. Did I learn my lesson? No. Erin and I will still be going to movies. All of them. Even the PG-13 movies. Do you know why? Because I know when I have to get up and take her out of the theater, and I am confident that I can make that decision for my daughter. I wouldn't try it with 30, no matter how well-behaved or even mature they are.

So, you know how your little vaccum cleaner, I mean child will cruise around the house picking microscopic bits of stuff up off the floor and eating it?

Well, today I was in the kitchen at the pull out cutting board dicing a jalepeno...

Ok, so no pieces fell to the floor to be sucked up by my curious little super-crawler; but I was thinking about it the entire time I was dicing. I was actually planning my post-ingestion emergency steps in my head (without ever ceasing my mutilation of the pepper of course, because dinner is what's important, right?).

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So, you know how when you have your daughter in the backpack and you are giving her pieces of cheese on-the-go because the train is coming and you have to get on soon and she drops cheese down your back and you don't notice it until you are at home, un-back-packed, watching the hockey game and you get up to use the restroom and when you get back to the living room you see the cheese stuck to your chair?

Well, the other day....

This is yet another reason why mini-bagels are the best backpacking food. Cheese is sticky.

Apparently I would.

Many of the bloggers I've started reading (Motherbumper, Mom to the Screaming Masses and Sarah and the Goon Squad, among others) have posted raw, morning pictures of themselves. I'm not entirely clear on the purpose, but the dad-activist in me can't let this opportunity to be in on the game pass. Dads can play too. And we look just as terrible first thing in the morning as anyone.


So here is a picture of Erin this morning, you know, before she put on her makeup:



And this one is me without any product in my hair:


And this one is Emily when she first woke up:








Yeah. As if I was going to get away with that one. But instead, here is one of Erin and myself right before our Hair and Wardrobe people arrived at our on set trailer.



Do I win anything?

My father is Irish-Canadian. As he gets older he gets even more Irish and even more Canadian, and I see the same tendencies in myself. In the summer of 2006 we went to Ireland together for a week, just me and him. It was a pretty special trip, and I want to go again in a few years.

While we were there he told me that he and his wife were expecting another baby (they had a 6 year old daughter already).

When I came back home my wife and I conceived Erin. (That's her story, anyway; the doctor said that the date of conception was actually in the middle of my trip to Ireland. Without her. Hmmm......)

And as a result of how special that trip to Ireland was to both my father and I, and because we both get more Irish as we get older, we both decided to name our new daughters after our ancient homeland: my little girl is Erin E., and his little girl is M. Erin.

In honor of these two little Irish dancers, I give you the following very special song. Ireland's classic anthem: Danny Boy



Thanks Boing Boing

"What is the best mobile food for a backpacking baby?"

Well, I'm glad you asked, imaginary interlocutor.

It's mini-bagels. They don't fall apart all over me, as bread does; they don't smear, as cheese does; and they can be torn into fist sized pieces that keep your solid-chewing, masticating, Big Girl occupied, unlike smaller snacks that you would have to constantly replenish.

Any other questions, voice-in-my-head?

"Fastest land mammal?"

The cheetah.
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I've been home with Erin since the end of September, which I believe means that I've been doing this for (quick use of Windows Calculator) 6 months now, less about a week.

I haul her around everywhere, usually on my back. I toss her up in the air in a way that would scare the Blahnik's off of most moms. I also stretch out my arm and balance her (all 20lbs of her) on one hand, in a way that would scare the Chino's off of most dads.

But at around 5 months old she became very tossable, and I can't resist, and it makes her giggle, and I love to hear and see her giggle.

She has had her little bonks, and her big bonks, but surprisingly none of them as a result of the circus act that is her father's notion of "playtime".

So, as the saying goes, "imagine my surprise"....

Are you?

Thanks.

We were playing an innocuous little game of hide-and-go-seek in our apartment. The floorplan, with the bedroom and bathroom doors closed, is essentially like half of a pair of eyeglasses: a big circle, a straight line, and a corner at the end of the line. There aren't many places to hide, and our game really just consisted of me trying to crawl on my hands and knees just out of sight so that she would laugh and follow me around the corner.

I was leading her down the ear-hook hallway and to the dead-end; I twisted around at the end of the hall so that I could pop out as she approached and say "boo". And as she was coming around the corner and I lunged forward IT happened.

I sprained my baby toe.

Come ON!

It's the least manly injury I can think of: dad, crawling around on the floor with a baby sprains (not 'breaks', not 'severs') his smallest appendage.

I wish I could sprain my baby toe every day, though.

We celebrated Erin's first Christmas in December. To make it special we spent our holiday visiting her grandparents and her aunts. We expected that she would be loaded down with toys; so many, in fact, that we avoided buying her any ourselves.

We were not disappointed. And in full accord with the rule that says "If you don't have any kids buy the loudest and most annoying toy for those who do", Erin's aunt bought her this little gem.

The Leapfrog AlphabetPal Caterpillar.


It has many settings, music, colours, letters, and it will make some kind of noise with each foot that is even looked at in too direct a manner. It also has a large button on its back which, when depressed, encourages it to burst into a full song. And, if you pull it by its string it will sing the Alphabet Song.

That's a lot of noise for one little piece of plastic.

Because I knew this was a particularly obnoxious toy, with only marginal usefulness for my 10-month old daughter, I let her play with it only occasionally. But for some reason, perhaps because I'm evil, I turned it on tonight and let Erin go to town with it after her mom came home.

Erin poked it; it sang. Erin lifted it; it sang. Erin crawled around with it up on its side; it almost had a fit trying to figure out which of its many songs to sing (because many little feet were being crushed at once as Erin darted from room to room with it).

Erin's mom warned, "You have 5 more minutes with that thing, kid."

5 minutes passed. And a couple more. And the noise was maddening. I don't know why I let it go on; I can tune things out better, I suppose. But eventually I noticed a change in my daughter's play.

When she would drag the caterpillar around and it was quiet she was happy; but if it started singing she was getting upset. I imagined her inner monologue including several expletives and repeated exhortations for the plastic demon to "Just shut up! Shut up! Why can't you just be quiet?!?"

The toy was so annoying that not even my daughter could tolerate it for more than ten minutes.
But I toughed it out; I outlasted her.

As I reached down to finally turn the thing off I sent a mental message to my sister, my loving, considerate sister who had gifted us with this excellent torture device:

"I win, sis."

When I used to think about being a father, and think hard about the dangers my children would have to face, I would have imaginary battles with the forces of evil: Superdad strikes down another drunken hockey-dad! Superdad leaps into the air to catch child falling from tree! Superdad bakes amazing pie!

******************************************************************

In 2006, long before Erin was born, Emily and I were driving home on the 101 south out of San Francisco. It was late, and dark. I was driving in the number 2 (which is poo) lane, 2nd from the left, and we were just passing Daly City when I saw (No, I couldn't be seeing that; that must be a trick of the curving of the road) headlights in the left lane up ahead.

1. I truly came to believe that there was a car going north in the southband fast lane.
2. I realized that I was still in the blindspot of the car next to me.
3. I knew I was going to be dangerously cut off, possibly with contact, possibly violently, if I stayed where I was.
4. I knew I was possibly going to cut off, with contact, perhaps violently, any car in the lane to my right if I switched lanes
5. I knew I was going to be rear-ended if I suddenly hit my brakes.

Time remained frozen and I was able, preturnaturally quickly, to look over my right shoulder and reassure myself that there was no car there to be cut off, turn my signal on anyway; and dart into the next lane over...

...just before the car in the fast lane noticed the oncoming vehicle and swerved into the space I had just vacated.

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It was 2001, and Emily and I had just returned from IKEA with a new bed frame. It was one of those simple looking, beech-laminate frames with the wooden apron running all around so that the mattress was held in the frame rather than just sitting on it.

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It was about one month ago and I was in bed, propped up on a pillow as I watched Emily play with Erin toward the foot of the bed. Erin had become quite the little crawler, and she was constantly in motion. She started crawling toward me, over my slightly-elevated knees, and then off to my right side where the comforter was bunched up in a down ridge. She rolled over onto her back and wiggled on the comforter a little.

And then launched her self from a supine position off the edge of the bed.

Time froze. I was able to hurl myself forward from my pillowy resting place just in time to reach out and snag her leg as her head and shoulders disappeared over the edge. Upon contact her body jacknifed like she had reached the end of a bungee cord.

Her trajectory had been toward the carpeted floor; suddenly her head and shoulders swung back and

Crack!

It was one of the loudest sounds my heart had ever heard. Erin's head had swung at the laminated particle-board apron on our IKEA bed like McGwire swinging at number 62.

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Erin was, of course, fine. I was traumatized forever.

And I've learned, as so many before me who have discovered they have super-powers: Our great powers can be used for good or for evil, and it doesn't always have anything to do with our intentions. We don't automatically become heroes when we become parents. Being a hero requires work, focus, intention, and I think most of all: luck.

I'm going to try to use my powers for good. And maybe bake a pie.

By way of introduction, here is one of my favourite recent stories:

(Originally posted on Livejournal, February 13th, 2008)

I took Erin to the park today to eat some sand. She one-upped me by chipmunking a leaf and gagging on it later.

It was her first solo playdate, with an adorable little girl, T. By default it was also my first solo playdate with T's mom E. The girls have played lots of times, and E is one of Emily's mom friends that I hijacked back in October when I started going to the playgroup. E and I have hung out frequently, but always in a group of people. She has quickly become a good friend of mine as well.

That today was our first solo playdate occurred to me while we were having the following conversation, which I'll paraphrase because I don't remember it exactly:

• E: "Have you ever seen 'The Little Children'? Kate Winslet? She's a stay-at-home mom. Anyway, there are these moms who go to a park, and there's this guy who is a stay-at-home dad, and the moms all call him The Prom King."
• Me: "Why do they call him 'The Prom King'?"
• E: "Because he's really good-looking and they get all swoon-y. So, R (E's husband) and I were watching it the other night, and I turned to him and said, "Don't worry, we don't say that about Shawn"."
• Me (after a pause): "Oh. Well, I was never the Prom King."

Even though my immediate response could well have been "Ouch!", it wasn't, because I know her comment to R was about how the moms in the real group differ from the moms in the movie (not swooning, bored idiots, but awesome, professional women) rather than how I look (which is damned good all the time, thank you very much). And I never was the Prom King. But now I was conscious of being the dad in the group, and being out on a solo playdate now, and Hey, how am I perceived in this group of moms? But, that only preyed on my mind for the next hour, because I was about to be mortified.

The girls played for an hour, and we packed up to leave. Erin was in her backpack, and E was wheeling T over to their car in the stroller while Erin and I went to go in the opposite direction. And then, as I was turning to go E said something like "Oh wait [something unintelligible] kiss."

My next thoughts were very quick: (Are we at the kiss on the cheek stage in our relationship? I think I remember giving her a hug last time I saw her; I don't remember a kiss on the cheek. Who have I ever kissed on the cheek? Is E in that category now? Well, we've hung out a lot and I think we're pretty good friends. Ok, why not?)

I leaned in on the right (my right) and gave her a hug and a kiss on her left cheek. And then I hear in my left ear, something like: "I can't quite reach her."

I froze for a quarter-second eternity (drawing out the kiss on the cheek a little longer than the peck I had intended) and then I unfroze long enough to lower the backpack a little over my left shoulder so that E could kiss Erin .

But now that I was lowering the backpack I became aware that I was still kind of half-hugging E; I had begun to un-hug her, but paused in mid-un-hug to bring Erin down to her level. So in this half-un-hug state my hands were drawing away from her back but were now more on her waist.

It was like we were dancing. At the Prom.

Oh. Nice. Jackass.

I finally pulled out of the hug (and the dancing cheek-to-cheek) and turned to leave for real this time, when E called out, waving: "Tell Emily that I love her and miss her!"

Not as much as I did, right then.

Someone just smack me.

This moment of embarrassing SAHD park hijinks brought to you by a 3 mile hike with 30 lbs on my back this morning and too much fencing last night.

Welcome to Backpacking Dad. I'm an at-home dad. I have a daughter, Erin. I carry her around in my Backpack. We go on Dadventures.

I've been writing generally in my Livejournal for a couple of years now, and there are lots of posts over there about things I will talk about here. But I decided that I ought to filter out some of my non-dad things and dedicate a blog to just the Backpacking Dad stuff (if you want to read about philosophy, fencing, or hockey, check out the Livejournal).

Thanks for stoppping by.

Backpacking Dad.