Dance Party USA

Over the last 9, almost 10 months I’ve been trying to build up some resistance to Elijah’s constant assault of cuteness. Because if I doubled over with heart melting glee every time he did something cute, I’d never leave the house.

For instance, if in the morning he pops his head up from his crib and smiles his two-toothed hilarious smile, I’ll drop to the ground and cover my eyes. Or if he sits on the ground and suddenly notices his hand and curiously opens and closes it like he’s never seen a hand before, I’ll avert my eyes and shout, “Warning! There is cuteness afoot!” Or if he suddenly sees Diana and laughs like a lunatic I’ll run from the room screaming. .

Well, over the weekend Eli started something so cute, no ant-cute measure on the planet could contain it. I had to spend several days in bed recovering from the cute attack.

You see, Eli now dances.

He gets in his crawling stance, on all fours, and if he hears music he likes, he’ll rock back and forth with a huge smile on his face. Simply imagining it can make you double over in heart melting glee. In fact, I’m a little overloaded with cute now. I’m going to take a break.

I’m back.

You know the most awesome part of his dancing? The only music he dances to comes form his toys. The train that poops balls, the little blinking thing that looks like a keyboard, the fake guitar. He loves those songs.

However, much to our dismay, he doesn’t dance to our music. Which is a bit of a bummer because Diana and I play music for him all the time. Wilco, The Dead, The Beatles, The Aquabats, Bob Marley, etc. Nothing. Nada.

But if you play him “She’ll be coming around the mountain” through plastic speakers on a ball pooping train, it’s like American Bandstand.

Finger Food

You’ll recall from last week’s report from the dog that Elijah has graduated up to finger food. Up until about yesterday, we were shoving finger food into his mouth because he didn’t really get the concept. But now, in a major evolutionary leap, he can feed himself!

What does he eat? Well, mostly “Veggie Booty.” If you don’t know what Veggie Booty is, you aren’t an overpaid liberal living in a major metro. Veggie Booty is this puffed stuff, not unlike Cheetos. But we would never, ever feed our child processed partially hydrated chemicals. Heavens no. They’d make us give back our Subaru. It’s all organic and has real vegetables baked in. And it makes us feel superior. To top it off, it costs a ridiculous amount of money at the hippie grocery store.

He also eats chopped up turkey, chopped up cheese (much to Grover’s delight) and I as I look into our kitchen, Diana is steaming some real vegetables as I write this. The kid’s poo is awesome.

To experience how he eats, go grab yourself some finger food. I’ll wait. Now, picking up food for a 9 month old is not easy, so open your mouth, and try to pick up your finger food with, say, your elbows and get the food in. It takes him about a minute to execute a food from plate to mouth maneuver. 9 times out of 10, the food falls to the waiting Grover hole.

It’s almost 2pm and he’s still working on breakfast.

First Photo Shoot

At last check, there are 825 photos of Elijah in our iphoto library. He’s nine months old, so that means on average he’s getting photographed 91 times per month. And that’s just the ones we’ve kept. Think about how many we’ve deleted. It boggles the mind. He have him crying, eating, pooping, bathing, smiling, frowning, laughing in every conceivable outfit in locations ranging from his crib to the car to the planet Peoria.

So we figured it was about time we hired a professional photographer to take some pictures of him. Just in case we missed something.

A photographer friend of a friend came by bright and early today to capture our offspring in his least grouchy state. At first he was a little weary of a giant flashing light popping in his eyes every three seconds. But he got comfortable after a while and was a real pro. I think it was because we were playing really loud techno music and the photographer was screaming, “Give me more! Work it! Work it!”

He did the catwalk, er…crawl, through our living room. We got some classy ones of him on the couch, lounging Hugh Heffner style. We got some action shots of him taming a giant black dog. We even got some avant garde shots of him naked on our dinning room table. Which I didn’t quite understand. I imagine it was so we can blackmail him if he ever tries to run for President.

The photography lady said he was the best baby she’s ever shot. Which I’m sure is her standard pre-payment speech.

The results should come pretty soon. Look for them to line every inch of our house.

Me vs. Eli: Cords.

I feel like I missed the boat on announcing Elijah’s first crawl. Technically he’s crawling. If you can call crawling dragging yourself along the floor like the final scene of “Terminator.” But, like his second tooth (who I will name “Harold”) it was gradual and I can’t point to a date on the calendar.

But now I am waging war with Eli. The ultimate prize? Cords. Electrical cords. The kid loves them. I can completely understand. They’re so fun the way they just lay there and do nothing. Except course with electricity.

Let me take you through a typical Saturday morning. I put Eli down, surrounding him with all kinds of awesome blinking, booping, flashing toys. And then he bolts for the cords. Dragging himself slowly. Deliberately. “Must…get…cords. Must…get…cords.”

I usually lay there on the floor, one eye closed, one eye on the boy, seeing how close to sleep I can get without actually falling asleep. I let him get within a baby arm’s length of the cords and then grab him by the ankles and drag him back to me. I’ll change his direction, give him a flashing toy and start the war again. He plays for a minute and then gets a look that says, “Hey, isn’t there some really dangerous thing around here I can play with?” And he’s off again. Must…get…cords. Must…get…cords.

Don’t get me started on the stereo.

A Word From the Dog

Hey gang. I’m frustrated by yesterday’s post. Not very funny. So, whenever I’m feeling uninspired, I turn it over to our guest contributor Grover The Dog.

Take it away, Grover.

Hello everybody. It’s me, your loveable pal Grover. Things have gotten very delicious here. For a long time, The Man and The Woman were feeding the human puppy milk. Which is fine. I’d lick up a few drops here or there. I’d much prefer sampling the human puppy’s flank steak, but I’m no dummy. There would be a lifetime ban of ball throwing if I chewed on the hairless puppy.

And then they started feeding it mush. Mush is delicious. Especially when I can lick it off the human puppy’s face. The Man and The Woman don’t approve and say, “Hey Grover. Hey Grover.” Which means I have to double my face licking efforts before they drag me away.

But get this. They’re feeding the human puppy people food now. They chop up turkey, bananas, also some nondescript crunchy things. And do you know what’s awesome? Almost none of the people food gets into the human puppy’s mouth. It throws the majority of the people food on the floor. Do you know who lives on the floor? Me. All I have to do is sit under its chair and wait for the snacks to fall from heaven. And when they pick the human puppy up, another rainstorm of people food falls from its lap.

I knew it was smart of me not to eat the human puppy.

Now, onto a more serious note. The human puppy has a toy that is evil personified. It’s a choo choo train that poops colored balls. Cleary possessed by the devil. Whenever it begins to roll by itself, I try to warn the humans, “Evil train! Evil train! Kill it!” The Man just laughs and scratches my ear.

I must find a way to destroy the evil train. Grover out.

Spoiled

The other week, Diana was doing the Elijah hand off to Marianna and they were contemplating his cuteness.

“Oh, he gorgeous,” Marianna said.
“Don’t I know it,” Di said.
“Oh yes. He spoiled.”

Huh? Come again? Spoiled? Di was taken aback. Spoiled? But…but…our baby can’t be spoiled. Spoiled kids are rich kids who drive red convertibles and have the last name “Kennedy.” Not our son.

But then we started thinking. Eli has been in a phase where he does not like to be anywhere but in our arms. If you put him down, he shrieks with anger. And, if we have the choice between cute babbling baby and baby who makes a noise that causes Grover to mash the phone buttons in an attempt to call a cab, we choose the happy baby.

But now I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want a spoiled baby. I want a cool baby. Wait a second. Don’t we have about a thousand baby books scattered through the house? Hold on a minute. I’m going to dust one off.

I’m back.

The baby book says that you cannot spoil a child under the age of one year. That when he cries we should tend to his needs.

Take that! I’m going to go give him a pony.

Ears Like A Hawk Pt 2

This has been another tough week for me on the work front. I’ve been logging some cat burglar hours. And that means Diana has taken 100% responsibility for Elijah, instead of her usual 99.9%. And as much of a joy the child is, it can get a little draining. Especially now that he is officially in his “I’d prefer to be held at all times" stage.

Last night, I limped home, drank a glass of wine and hit the sack, knowing that I had to be up early for meetings that would determine the future of the free world. You know, advertising. Somehow Eli knew my sleep was precious, because he woke up at 3a.m. and caterwauled for a good hour before Diana broke down and comforted him.

After much rocking and bottle sucking, he went back to sleep. I woke up at 6, needing to get a start to my day and Diana whispered, “Do everything in your power not to wake him up. I need sleep!” You know, in that kind of yell slash whisper.

Keep in mind I have to walk through his room to get downstairs and he has amazing hearing. So I crawled on my hands and knees through his room and down the stairs, much to the joy of Grover, who thought it was a game. He proceeded to bat he in my face with his paw in an attempt to get me to chase him. I mouthed, “Get out of the way, or no ball chasing for a week.”

I made it downstairs and showered. On my way up the stairs, I heard Eli stir in his crib. He popped his head up and I hit the dirt. If he thinks everyone is still asleep he’ll sometimes go back to sleep. So imagine a grown man, naked, crawling along the floor, silently with a big black dog debating whether or not to bite his fleshy naked butt.

I managed to silently put my clothes on, sneak back downstairs and touch the front door before Eli started screaming. Which officially gave Di an extra 5 minutes of sleep.

p.s. Babies in a man’s hat? Cute.

Snip Snip.

I debated calling attention to Elijah’s first haircut. The other night Diana took the scissors to Eli while he was squirming in his high chair. It seems as though his baby hair was getting out of control and, gasp, was in danger of falling unsightly around his ears. He was this close to losing the title of “CUTEST BABY IN THE WORLD.” So Di grabbed the nearest shears and made the child presentable.

But does that count as a first haircut? I always thought a baby’s first haircut was supposed to be at a kid’s barber. With clowns and a rocket you sit in and some stupid name like “Cutie Clips.” And don’t we need a thousand photos of him freaking out and receiving a sucker for his troubles?

So no, I cannot officially call this a first haircut.

But it appears that the first haircut, er trim, was slightly crooked, which made Diana’s OCD go nuts. So last night Diana gave him another trim to even things out. I’m sure tonight he’ll get another trim to even out last night’s trim.

At this rate he’ll never need a real haircut.

Nerd

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me that underneath the advertising haircut and Wilco bootlegs and ironic t-shirts beats the heart of a true nerd.

I can speak at great length on the back-story of the videogame Halo. I spent a large portion of my youth rolling twelve sided dice. I can make a good case on who would win in a fight between Thor and The Hulk. You get the picture.

Which brings me to Elijah. He does a dead on Chewbacca impersonation. You know, that half growl, half gurgle that Chewbacca does (if you do not know who Chewbacca is, feel free to re-read that blog entry about Eli falling off the changing table). So he’ll be resisting his nap, playing with Lulu the stuffed lamb in his crib and he’ll start growling away, Chewbacca style.

This from a kid who has never even seen Star Wars.

I turn to Diana and say, “He’s doing Chewy! He’s doing Chewy!” She nods slowly and thinks back to all her quarterback boyfriends from high school. Then I shout up to Eli’s room, “Watch out for Darth Vader, Chewy! I’ll pick you up in the Millennium Falcon!”

Diana then rummages through our kitchen mumbling, “There’s got to be some scotch around here somewhere…”

Floor: 1. Eli: 0.

It was never a matter of if Elijah was going to fall off his changing table, it was a matter of when. Thankfully, everything is ok. And even more thankfully, it didn’t happen on my watch.

Let me back up. Yesterday was a grand pain for Diana all around. She had to drive to City Hall to contest a pile of parking tickets. Plus our Subaru got a flat. Plus Grover decided to eat something from Planet Doggy Barf and decorated our basement in a most unappealing way.

Thankfully, our friend Kitty was available to babysit. Her first order of business was to change Eli’s diaper. Because she isn’t a full time mom, and because babies don’t come with instructions printed on their butts, she didn’t realize Eli likes to squirm around on the changing table.

So before Diana or Kitty could react, Eli succumbed to the unstoppable force known to Newton and third grade science students as gravity. According to Diana, both women leapt across the room in John Woo style slow motion while screaming, “Nooooooooooooo!” Bop. Baby down, baby down.

Luckily, he landed on his side and not his skull. And he landed on the carpet instead of our glass recycling. But he was very very upset. As was Kitty. As was Diana. Grover, I assume, was downstairs cursing the existence of delicious garbage.

Diana already had a nine month doctor appointment set up for Elijah today, so we’ll get the official word that Eli is ok. But based on his crawling and rolling this morning I think he’s going to be fine.

Time to buy some change table straps.

Where’s Mommy?

If you look across all of the 2007 HamannEggs posts, you’ll notice some hilarious pictures of Eli. In various states of cuteness, poopiness, poutiness, cryiness. Which makes sense because it is mostly a blog about him.

And there are quite a few photos of me in the blog. Why? Could it be because I’m a self centered egomaniac who’s secretly writing the blog so he can read stories about himself disguised as stories about his son? That is a definite possibility. Let me ask myself about it and get back to you.

There is, however, a real lack of photos of Diana. Mostly because she’s the one who takes the majority of pictures in the house. Well, that isn’t very fair. This is supposed to be a family blog, not a men’s club. She makes up half of Eli’s genetic material. And she makes up roughly 99.99999% of Eli’s parenting. She should get a little bit of the press.

Well, that’s going to change. Starting now. Please enjoy today’s photo shoot of Eli and the greatest mom in the history of moms. The woman who changes poopy diapers. The woman who wakes up at 5am to change poopy diapers. The woman who feeds Eli, so Eli can make poopy diapers. The woman who has taught Eli where his nose is. The woman I love dearly.

Diana Jacklich Hamann.

Ears Like A Hawk

Aside from being unbelievably overpriced, our house is awesome. It’s exactly what I imagined my first home to be when I was a little kid (aside from a pet dragon and a pool filled with Kool Aid). Diana and I are two content Yuppies.

The only other drawback, besides the fact that it costs more than the national debt of Haiti, is the upstairs layout. The master bedroom is right next to Elijah’s room, which is at the top of the stairs. So you have to walk through Eli’s room to get to and from ours. And that’s fine for 90% of our day. But it causes a major pain whenever Eli is supposed to be asleep.

Because the kid has amazing hearing. If I am trying to sneak out in the morning to go to an early meeting, or if I’m trying to sneak by to change a sweaty t-shirt, I have to have ninja-like abilities or he’ll hear me, pop his little head up and give me a howl that says, “I caught you! Change my diaper and give me a bottle, bull in a china shop.”

To make matters worse, our bedroom door has the audio quality of a garbage truck filled with broken bottles. That’s on fire. I view opening our door like a jewel thief trying to extract the famous Baseball Diamond (“Great Muppet Caper” reference).

So until we can afford a new house (which based on this real estate market is never), or Eli suddenly develops waxy ears I’ll have to continue practicing to be a ninja jewel thief.

Cough Cough

So Elijah has a pretty bad cough. I don’t want to point fingers, but he caught it immediately after visiting his cousins at my dad’s house. Ahem. Fox? Finn? I’m looking at you. I stole today’s photo from Fox’s blog as retaliation. I believe I’ll be hearing from my brother Dave’s copyright lawyer any day now. But keep in mind, if you sue me for all of my money, we’re coming to live with you.

Where was I (the 2008 “Anyhoo”)? Oh, hacking coughs. He’s really feeling it in his chest. Whenever we hear him, Diana and I look at each other, then at the phone. To call the doctor or not? We try not to be those parents who call their doctor every time their kid looks cross eyed. Hmm, actually, crossed eyed babies are a great reason to call the doctor.

However, there goes a Jacklich family folk story about the time Diana’s mom waited to call the doc when her brother Mike had a hacking cough and he ended up getting pneumonia. THIS IS NOT A REPRESENTATION OF DIANA’S MOM’S MOTHERING. SHE’S A GREAT AND CARING MOM. Whew. That was almost two lawsuits in one blog entry.

So, over Christmas break we broke down and called the doctor. “Does he have a fever?” No. “Is he sluggish?” No. “Has he stopped eating?” No. “Is he having trouble sleeping?” No. “Will you stop calling us for every tiny thing that happens to your soon to be hypochondriac son?”

Double no.

I’m feeling guilty that I’m using a stolen photo for today’s blog. So I’m including a picture of me and Grover in front of the Christmas tree.

Tricks

I’ve always hated the idea of baby tricks. I think it’s demeaning to sit your baby in front of people and shout over and over, “How big are you?” I think it’s how stage freight is born. Babies aren’t put on this earth for our amusement. They’re put here to eventually learn how to mow our lawns. But I’m starting to change my tune of late because, well, Elijah has a baby trick. Clapping.

If the stars align and Eli is in the perfect post nap mood and you say, “Clap clap clap!” He’ll clap his little hands together. At which point I fall over from cuteness. He really gets into this clapping thing. Mostly because it gets such a positive rise out of his parents. But I’m getting the feeling he also claps when he approves of something. I caught him clapping while I was doing my Funky Robot dance the other day. Diana and Grover were not clapping, by the way.

Elijah also has a new disturbing trick. It appears that the boy is double jointed in his thumb. If he opens and closes his hand in the right way his tiny thumb pops. Ew. I have gone on record many times against double jointedness. I hate it. It gives me the creeps in the same way people who turn their eyelids inside out and World Record Holders for fingernail length.

So Eli will be sitting in his highchair chattering away, and then he starts gleefully popping his thumb. I scream and cry and run out of the room. Which makes him laugh. And pop his thumb. I crawl along the ground, holding my stomach, whispering, “Clap clap clap.”