And The Official New Solid Food Of The Week Is...

Banana! Sofi seems to prefer it to rice cereal. Unfortunately, after we give Sofi her mashed-up small portion, neither of us particularly want to eat the rest of the banana, which just goes to waste.

Looking forward to introducing avocado.

Rockstar, Dream

Sometimes being a parent is like having your own personal groupie. The squeals of delight and paroxysms of joy - sometimes when I sing to her - transfer immediate rockstar status. I'm going to miss that when she grows up and realizes I'm not cool.

I dreamed she started walking and talking, all on the same day. And it wasn't just 'mama' and 'dada', it was a bunch of words and the ability to put some of them together to create additional meaning. I guess this means I'm impatient to get on to the next stage, which is weird, because I'm really enjoying having this ticklish groupie.

Time Marches

We tried giving Sofi her first solid food today and she seemed to take to it nicely. Rice cereal. Cathy tasted it later and said, "It's good! It's sweet." Yes, that means she tasted her own breast milk.

Since Sofi's solar powered, I'm much more aware that the days are getting longer than I used to be. "Isn't it dark yet?" and "She's awake already?"

I better go to bed now. She'll probably be up at five. Just have to finish the Blitzkrieg level of Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich.

What's that sound?

Sometimes, when Sofi's been crying for a couple of minutes, and we haven't gone to check on her, Cathy will ask, "What's that sound?"

Funny every time.

Spaghetti, Dream, Angsty Music

Sofi was complaining about being in the Evil Chair so mom picked her up and continued eating dinner. Something we do a lot without even thinking about it. Then Sofi grabbed a handful of mom's spaghetti. Mom gasped in startlement. I started laughing - the image of Sofi with her hand in mom's spaghetti was pretty funny, trust me. Then Sofi started crying. Not clear if it was because mom gasped, I laughed, or the spaghetti sauce was too hot. Her hand looks ok.

Last night I dreamed that a friend who lived in the same hotel as me had a sick baby: the back of the baby's head was this orange cottage-cheesy gunk and the baby had bloodshot eyes. The pediatrician made a house call, and turned out to be none other than Frank Miller, the comic book author who reinvented Daredevil and Batman and created Sin City. Later, after curing the baby, Frank Miller turned into Harlan Ellison and we went out looking for an arcade so we could play the arctic level of Halo 2. Astute readers will note that in real life I don't live in a hotel, Frank Miller is not a pediatrician (nor is he Harlan Ellison), and that there is no arctic level in Halo 2. Dreams. Huh. Interesting to us, boring to everyone else. [Correction: there really is an arctic level in Halo 2. I forgot. Maybe Frank Miller is Harlan Ellison...]

All my music is angsty, and it's been a while since I've listened to any. I gave Nine Inch Nails a whirl yesterday and found that I was having trouble relating to Trent now that I'm a happy family man. Marilyn Manson, on the other hand...who doesn't get a lift out of listening to the rousing choruses of Antichrist Superstar or Irresponsible Hate Anthem? "I wasn't born with enough middle fingers!" Rock.

Scrubs

Dr. Cox's wife: Isn't he an angel?

Dr. Cox (reaching into crib): Yeah.

Kid stirs.

Dr. Cox's wife: He's waking up!

They both duck and hide under crib.

You probably have to be a parent to get it. Cathy and I laughed a long, long time.

Other than that, Scrubs is getting kind of weak? The last two episodes weren't all that.

In other news, Sofi is showing mimetic desire. I'm reading *Mindful Parenting*, and she's grabbing at the pages. I try to give her another book (*Brave New World*, if anybody cares), and at first she's happy with that (although the pages are less resilient - *Mindful Parenting* just crumple, but *Brave New World* tears) but then she wants *Mindful Parenting* again.

Fuck

I should stop swearing in front of Sofi:

a) now

b) before six months

c) before twelve months

d) before two years

e) after two years

f) never

Discuss.

Heritage

I just discovered that swedish pancakes are easier to make than pancake-pancakes. No buttermilk (and no lemon in regular milk for fake buttermilk), no baking soda, no baking powder. My latent swedishness surfaces.

Theory of Slut Clothes

While out walking with Sofi, Cathy and I passed a teenage girl dressed somewhat provocatively.

"Sofi's going to dress like that, you know," Cathy said.

I actually think we're covered, historically:

60s: miniskirt.

70s: Bell-bottoms.

80s: the Madonna look. Underwear outside the clothes.

90s: Nirvana. Flannel. Layers.

00s: Spears, Aguilera. Underwear outside the clothes again, only more so.

So I'm pretty sure slut clothes are an even-numbered decade phenomenon. Sofi will turn 13 in 2017, so she'll be wearing grunge plus plus.

Coming soon: more half-baked theories.

Poison, Smart, Bedtime

A couple days ago I left Sofi on the couch for a moment and when I returned discovered she had somehow gotten ahold of mommy's bottle of Proactive, cap off, and was mouthing the side of the bottle. Some of the Proactive had spurted on the couch. I thought we didn't have to worry about that kind of thing until she was crawling.

Stupid theory for the week: maybe our society becomes so body conscious because we keep telling our babies how cute they are. At a very young age they learn to place an inordinate value on cuteness. No more! I've started telling Sofi she's smart...with very little evidence so far to support that claim. "Who's a smart little baby? Who's a smart little baby?"

I'm the official put-to-bed person in the family. I enjoy this role. I read a story, then cuddle her in the glider chair in the dark while a wind-up stuffed Eeyore plays Brahm's lullaby. Getting her from the chair to the crib is the tricky part. The last two nights I managed to do it without any crying at all. Rock.

New Stuff

Day before yesterday Sofi made a few kissing noises. I was the only witness. Cathy doesn't believe me.

Yesterday she discovered a new, more penetrating cry-squeal thing. A hint of chalkboard, a hint of tires on pavement, a hint of Harvey Keitel acting upset. Ouch. Maybe she's teething? It's getting to be about that time.

Cathy discovered a new way to keep her happy without actually having to carry her around the apartment: strap her into the evil chair, looking out the window. She'll sit like that, content, for at least 20 minutes. Beats putting her in front of the TV.

Thin

The mothers in our parenting class are all scary thin. It's like they were wheeled straight into liposuction after delivery before the epidural wore off.

Murder

Jason Della Rocca's latest post reminded me: I accidentally exposed Sofi to her first murder yesterday. Watching *Hard-Boiled*, (the literal Chinese title is supposedly *Hot-handed God of Cops*, according to IMDB), and bottle feeding her at the same time. Trying to keep her head turned away from the screen, but there was an execution in a public library that kind of took me by surprise. Whoops.

Even at four months she likes TV; she twists and squirms aggressively to get a look at the screen.

Wish I'd Known

I wasn't able to figure out when we should switch to a faster nipple for bottle feeding. It's probably somewhere online, but for whatever reason, I was never able to find it.

Tonight we tried switching to a fast nipple just for the hell of it, really. Just to see what would happen.

And what used to take an hour and a half of fussing and complaining took about ten minutes. So that's why she didn't like the bottle. It was too slow!

If only we'd known sooner. With all the parenting classes and books, you'd think this would be part of the curriculum. But no. Had to figure it out for ourselves. Or maybe we were sick that day. Or skipped that chapter.

It almost makes me want to have a second kid, so we can use what we learn with the first...

Streak Over

Sofi cried last night, waking us up multiple times and crying for long enough (over 5 minutes) that Cathy got up and tended to her at 4 AM. Still, it was a 5-night run before that. A record.

Thanks, California

It was mildly bothersome that Sofi liked to sleep from 7:30 to 5. I didn't get to see much of her in the evenings when I got home from work, and then she woke us up early in the morning. Happily, last Sunday, the entire state of California agreed to set their clocks so Sofi's schedule would make a little more sense.

Honorable Mention

So Cathy, against my better judgment, sends my novel and the $100 entrance fee to the Writer's Digest Self-Published Fiction Contest.

The coolest thing about this is it means she believes in me: enough to pay the money (ok, it's our money, but still...), put the thing in an envelope, lick the stamps, walk to the post office. I can keep reminding myself about this whenever I need a boost.

The second coolest thing is I won an Honorable Mention. Which means they'll list me in their magazine and on their website. I'm not sure what their circulation is but I'm sure it's multiple orders of magnitude higher than my blog.

And they gave me a nice little certificate, and a "commentary sheet" that says things like: Plot: 5, Grammar: 4, Character Development: 5. (Grammar 4? What, you guys don't like sentence fragments and parataxis? That's a stylistic choice, man...) And then they say some nice things like "The writing style is quite sophisticated and ambitious...I found the voice to be controlled and confident. From the beginning of the novel, we are presented with a character with complex internal and external conflicts, a clear question/problem that needs to be solved, and a pace and plot structure that delivers a payoff at the end...Calvin and his friends are characters we understand and relate to, and the writing delves so deeply into their character developments that the reader is compelled to empathize with them."

And I get a gift certificate for $50 of Writer's Digest stuff. Hmm...$100 entrance fee, and I get $50 worth of stuff from their storeroom...

Hat Trick

Okay, she did wake up for three minutes last night. But since we didn't actually get out of bed, I'm going to count it as sleep. So that's three in a row. Rock.

Split Personality

A package arrived for me from Amazon.com today. It contained *Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting* and a Punisher graphic novel.

Like to see what the Amazon.com profile on me makes of that...

Two In A Row

Another ten hour sleep last night. Woo!

Sofi's over her cold. I'm not over mine.