Babies Climb A lot

Babies Climb Alot

Not an Unusual Occurrence

Hello, my friends. It's been a long time since we last spoke. How's the family? Have you taken care of that annoying fungus problem since last we spoke? Wonderful!

This blog is the continuation of "Babies Crawl Alot", but newly dubbed, "Babies Climb Alot" for reasons that, well, remain a bit of a mystery... Ha, Ha! Okay, just kidding!

As Zinnia rounds the home stretch towards the Terrific Twos, she has discovered that she likes to scale things in our house--chairs, couches, the cat tree, the cats, stairs, her papa and mama, patio furniture, and more.  She often walks around the house with her little green stool (it used to be her plastic Adirondack chair until we moved it to the garage), looking for things to climb or get into.

Zinnia is cat-like. She has a strong sense of exactly where we don't want her to go in any given moment, and then makes a beeline for it as if we had planted a sign that said, "Please, We Beg of You--Don't Climb This." And ever the adventuress, the more dangerous the better. I suspect if we kept a container of used sharps on the top tier of our eight foot high plastic shelving out in the garage (an unlikely scenario, I know, but indulge me), I would not at all be surprised to turn my back one day for, oh, say, 10 seconds, only to turn again to find our precious child balancing precariously atop a listing stack of encyclopedias, trying to reach her adorable little toddler hand into the starred, plastic opening of the hepatitis-laden needle container.

Sometimes I forget to close one of the covers on one of our gas stove controls and often turn to see Zinnia turning the gas knob back-and-forth, looking at me with a mischievous "Gotcha, Papa" grin on her face. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes I hold steady and don't react. Zinnia will mentally snap her fingers in a "Curses!" sort of way before moving on to whatever's next. At other times, I try to enlist her generous nature and simply ask her to please, pretty please close the knob cover. To my surprise and delight, most (but not all) of the time, Zinnia, ever helpful, is happy to cooperate.

Two days ago:  "Zinnie, will you please go give your mama her Danskos (shoes)?"
Z. cradled the oversized shoes against her chest and waddled across the house to wherever Jenn was preparing to seize the day. Yes, it was (and is) totally cute, and yes, it was (and will be) completely manipulative of me to do this. Without qualms or guilt, I transparently pawn Zinnia off on her mother so I can climb into the shower unmolested by her repeated pullings aside of the curtain. I have taken to locking the door once Z's attention is diverted by whatever task is at hand--oh my f*cking G-d, she can open doorknobs now!--but even so, it is generally not long before I hear frustrated cries from the hallway as the bathroom door rattles from the weight of a frustrated little fist pounding on the other side.

"Who is it?" I say, my own private joke.

Pound, pound. "Eh-ehhhh! Ehhh-ehhh!"

"Jenn, is that you?"

Babies Poo Alot

The first anniversary of the death of Barbara May Bender is fast approaching. Next month, the Bender-Lukesh household will fly to what some refer to as the Monte Carlo of the Midwest—Milwaukee—to move my mother’s things from the basement of my aunt, Barb’s sister-in-law, who needs the space, and more importantly, for the stone dedication. My mother is buried next to her father, Louis Putterman, and the stone reads thus:

There it is. The gravestone has already been inscripted with the above and set in place at my mother's grave sight. I was thinking about Barb yesterday, and how much she struggled in life and how much we--I should say "I"--one of her progeny, struggled to be in relationship to her. In an earlier blog entry written shortly after her death, I referred to my mother as "a pain in the ass, but she was our pain in the ass." Anymore, however, I miss her more on than off, and the idea of going to that bustling cosmopolitan of the all that is right and good in the world—again, Milwaukee—without Barb being present and in body is a bit surreal.

(Brief aside: As I write, Zinnia is having a mini-bout of coughing in the bedroom while her mother attempts to soothe her. She has had a persistent cough for the past week, the kind of cough where Z. chokes on her own phlegm, sometimes to the point of vomiting. Jenn took one for the team late last week while I was working in my office in the rear of the house. It took a while for me to hear her desperate calls for help. When I finally did, I ran to the bedroom only to see her holding Zinnia close to her chest while instructing me with some urgency to get her towel. Our sweet, innocent, cherub had projectile vomited all over Jenn, but, she noted with no small amount of pride the next morning, she had saved the comforter.They don’t tell you about this stuff in the manual.)

So, the stone dedication. It feels important, even while I hold no belief that Barb herself will be in attendance, either as disembodied spirit, a zombie-fied member of the living-dead, or anything in between. Regardless of the form, should my mother decide to make an appearance of the supernatural variety, she would certainly be a welcome guest.

To wit: Blessings to date that have manifested through the generosity of my mother since her passing:

1) I was able to quite my job with the university sooner than planned to go into private practice

2) Our home loan just came through yesterday. We needed 20% of the amount of the loan, which we couldn’t have approached without Barb’s help.

3) We were able to buy a 2010 used Prius with only 16,000+ miles on it, as opposed to the author’s 1995 Nissan pick-up (otherwise known as, You Still Got That Thing?) which is rounding the corner towards the 290,000 mile mark). Thanks to my mother, Jenn and baby Z. zre not only getting around town in the lap of luxury, but doing so at a planet-saving 50 miles to the gallon, and that, as my dear grandma Cele used to say, is nothing to sneeze at.

And since we are on the topic of sneezes (how's that for a segue?), most mornings these days, after Zinnia awakens following yet another restless night of being unable to clear the snot from her throat, Zinnia explodes with a sneeze that sends a stream of snot bursting from one of her nostrils like lava. The slime immediately starts to ooze down ... down whatever that ridge is called underneath the nose, and towards her mouth. If Jenn and I are not on the ball with a wipe, Z. happily sticks her tongue out to lap up the snot, proving yet again that babies can be really disgusting. 

Speaking of disgusting: 





(Keep Going ... )






(Warning: What you are about to see is extremely graphic and contains scatological content. Not for the faint of heart ...)









(Almost there ...)

Yes, that’s right--a picture of a poo, but not just any poo. This is the remains of Zinnia’s first successful attempt of pooing in her potty chair! In fact, so miraculous is this event that it is worthy of a bouquet of exclamation marks. “Zinnia pooed in her potty chair!!!!!!” She had been peeing in it off-and-on for about 6 weeks, but a poo? Whoa! She has upped her game and awed the experts in the process, once again proving her brilliance.

It happened with an assist from Jenn. Every morning, Zinnia walks over to the cat tree, leans over the first tier and starts to grunt as her eyes water. She huffs and puffs until she has (in the words of our ecstatic birthing teacher) "left us a little present."

This morning, however, was different. We threw caution to the wind and let Z. run around the house bare naked. Perhaps three time over a ten minute period she scampered over to the potty to pee. 

 “Hey," Jenn said. "Lets try putting the potty by the cat tree. Maybe she’ll use it this time when it's time for her to poo.”

I brought it over, and minutes later Zinnia sat on it, but her butt was hanging over the edge, which meant any feces would land smack dab on our lovely terrazzo tile floor. 

“No, sweetie," I coached, "scoot up a bit. Yeah, that’s it. There you go. Now do this.” I started to make ungodly grunting sounds to simulate for Z. what we were aiming for.  A moment later, Zinnia rose unceremoniously and toddled toward the bedroom to do ... whatever was next. I walked over, and peered down. Hallelujah!!! 

Ladies and gentleman, please, lets give it up for the brilliantest baby in the west.