After The Tenth..... When The Fun Really Begins

We aren't quite ready for Letterman's "Stupid Human Tricks" segment, but we are well on our way. Macy has expanded her bag of tricks by another handful of talents.

I don't want to say that my wife is holding out on me, but last week Macy demonstrated mastery of a new trick that I didn't even know that Annie was working with her on. After the baby refused some solid food, Annie broke out a juice box and I found myself amazed as I watched Macy take it from her mother and began to drink from straw. At first she struggled a bit, drooling out almost as much juice as she swalllowed, but after a few moments she was drinking away without any mess.

I am totally amazed at the things Macy seems to learn and how quickly it seems to happen. Some of her "tricks" seem to be just fun toddler tasks, but some of them seem a little unusual. Maybe its just me....

THE FUN ONES:

- When Macy has had enough sleep, be it a full night or just a nap, she tends to stand up, cry a bit and then "drop" her woobie (stuffed animal blanket) onto the floor. The dropping is immediately followed by an "uh-oh...dada", informing me that something has happened that's not good. If we don't rush in, a few moments later you'll hear the clinking of the dropped binky followed by another "uh-oh." If you time it just right, sometimes you can catch her "uh-oh"-ing a split second BEFORE she drops it.

- She has now learned both the horizontal head shake means no and the vertical head bob means yes. You can now ask her questions and she'll respond. I was truly amazed the first time I saw Annie ask her if she wanted to go outside and the baby proceeded to shake her head yes and then walk to the door. There are clear signs of her gaining audio recognition. I not quite ready to declare her a genius because when I tested her "yes" head shake and asked her if it would be ok for the giant purple gorilla to crush the house, she nodded her head affirmatively.

THE ONES THAT MADE ME LOOK UP THE CHILD LABOR LAWS TO ENSURE THEY DON'T APPLY TO PARENTS:

The following "tricks" are hysterical to watch, but the first time I saw them, they seriously made me think twice about the times I heard Annie talk about having kids as "building a workforce."

- If you leave the diswasher door open, Macy will now walk over to the silverware tray and begin taking the utensils out and then put them back in. If you hand her your spoon, she will march it over to the diswasher and usually put it in the silverware section. The strangest part of watching her move the utensils around is that fact that when she's done, they are usually back where they belong, instead of on the floor. She actually seems to clean up after herself.

- I think I told you already that when you dress Macy you can tell her to go get socks and shoes and she does. She'll head over to the appropriate drawer, open it, find a pair of rolled up socks and then select a pair of shoes for the day. You never know which shoe she'll select, but she will ALWAYS return with a matching pair.

-If you leave the Swiffer out of the closet, she'll grab it and begin to "sweep" the floor.

-When Annie heads to the laundry room, the baby follows along. When the washer is finished, Annie grabs a wet item and hands it to Macy who promptly places it in the open drier and then gets ready for the next article of clothing.

- If Macy goes number one, you no longer have to grab the diaper and drop it in the Diaper Genie. She'll actually do it for you now. After she's dressed, you stand her up and hand her the rolled up and secured diaper and she'll walk it over to the can. If you step on the foot pedal to open the lid (I'm guessing in another month you won't even have to do that part) she'll drop it in and then clap hands celebrating her achievement.

So there you have it, you are now caught up with all of Macy's "tricks", at least for the moment. I wouldn't be surprised to get up from my computer desk to find the baby vacuuming the living room.

Studies show that when you have two children close in age, things go better when you prepare the toddler for the new arrival. Not being the types of parents to ignore well established plans, unless we don't agree with them, Annie and I are working on ideas to make the transition easier for Macy.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet, but Macy's daycare class has a handful of infants so she's getting to spend lots of time around little little ones. At home we are continuing the preparations and we recently bought Macy a litle baby girl doll. The thought is that if she gets used to having her own little baby, she won't complain too much when mommy has one too.

I happened to catch Macy playing with the doll and thought it would be fun to record her actions. Even as I filmed the video I could tell it was going to be really cute and I knew it was going to be YouTube quality. What I didn't know was that it would have quite an unexpected ending. I'm not going to ruin it by telling you what happens, but make sure you have your volume turned up because its more of an audible moment than a video moment. After you've watched the movie, I'll tell you more about what happened. Ok, go ahead and watch the movie. I'll wait...

Welcome back...I can only assume that you heard a "bang" at the end of the clip, just before the camera shook violently. If you watch closely, you can see Macy start to raise her baby up over her head. What you can't see is that after raising the baby up, she then swung it down striking the hard plastic baby head against my cheekbone, which explains why I couldn't keep the camera steady. Since that moment we've adjusted our plan a little to introduce the concept of GENTLE treatment of the baby.

Please excuse me while I go and gently apply some ice to my face....

****BEFORE I GO ANY FURTHER, PLEASE NOTE THAT EVERYONE IS JUST FINE****

I had a bonus day off today, thanks to my office closing due to Friday's tax deadline. (Our parent company is a CPA firm and Friday was the extension deadline for your tax return. I hope everyone got their returns in, or you are going to help reduce our Federal Deficit with those IRS mandated fines.) Since I was home, I decided to keep Macy out of school and spend the day with her.

The morning started really well, with Zoe, Macy and I taking an early walk in the cool morning air. I opened some windows on the house and we all hung out playing on the floor. As the morning progressed, the temperature rose as it often does in South Florida and I closed them up and turned the air back on. I know what you are probably thinking right now. "This might be the most boring story I've ever read about. Is he really talking about opening and closing windows?????" I know that this isn't really exciting material, but it is an integral part of the story, so please bear with me.

Ok, last bit about windows...we recently upgraded the entire house getting rid of the 50 year old jalousie windows, replacing them with impact glass. For the uninitiated (otherwise known as non-South Floridians) impact windows are casually referred to as hurricane windows, since they can withstand a 2x4 smacking into them at 150 miles per hour.

So back to our hero, having a blast with his bonus baby time. Besides the previously mentioned windows, we also put in new doors. (Trust me...the house needed it) After the morning nap we both headed over to the big orange home repair store and had some extra keys made for the new locks.

After lunch, Macy, Zoe and I were hanging out on the living room floor, having fun with all of our fun toys and then I had a thought. It's been pretty hot out recently and we haven't had much rain. Maybe I should run out to the laundry room real quick and flip the sprinklers on. So up I hop, run out the side door, instinctively close it behind me and duck into the laundry room. Can you see where I'm going with this? I bet you can.

With the sprinklers firing up, I jog back to the door and discover one LARGE problem. While testing the keys to ensure I had a plan on what keys to make and how many I needed, I must have left the door handle in the locked position, which now meant I was officially locked out of the house. Locked out while Macy and Zoe were sitting locked in. Now do you see why I bored you with window opening and closing information? Panic set in as I quickly realized that all of the "extra" keys were sitting in the kitchen safely stored behind impact doors and glass.

I then did the pointless lap around the house, checking all of the doors, knowing full well that being a safety conscious father I kept them all locked, but praying for a miracle. No such luck. I looked across the street and saw the neighbors car in her driveway and I bolted over to her house. As I think back, I'm pretty certain I never even looked for oncoming cars and am very lucky to have crossed the street unharmed. I tried to calm my nerves as I knocked or more correctly, pounded on her front door.

"I just locked myself out of the house with Zoe and Macy on the floor and Annie has the only other key....", I sort of screamed at her. with lightening speed, she found a cordless phone and had me talking with the 911 operator. I tried to convince her to get someone to drive to Annie's school to get the key, but that's not really within the rules.

While on the phone waiting for the police and firemen to arrive, we could see Macy just hanging out, looking around, probably wondering why her daddy disappeared on her. After a few moments, Macy decided to check out what was happening in the backyard and crawled over to the sliding back door, after quickly checking out the telephone base. I ran to the back, hoping to keep Macy entertained so she would sit still near the door and not hurt herself. Great plan except Zoe gets jealous when I'm out back and I don't let her out with me....which is what I desperately wanted to do right at that moment. So now Zoe is barking like crazy and Macy is standing up against the glass, smooshing her nose, licking the glass with me placing my hand up against hers, like we were having a prison visit.

I was still on the phone with the dispatcher so I had the neighbor call Annie's school and tell her to get home as soon as possible. After what felt like an eternity but was probably only 10 minutes, the paramedics arrived and I tried my best to explain what happened, but I wasn't really in the best mental place, so who knows what I actually said to them.

Since Macy was just sitting at the back door, staring at all the strange men and in no obvious immediate danger, they were willing to hold off on taking out the heavy equipment to use to break into the house. While we "waited" for Annie, who I'm sure was taking a safe and casual drive from school to the house, they did a systematic check of all the doors and windows. I cannot explain it, because I'm sure I locked everything up tight after the morning breeze, but one of the guys was able to shove the the bathroom window up and over and it just fell into the house. (I've since tried to duplicate the task, but have been unsuccessful) I leap through the window and run down the hall to sweep up Macy.

As I'm heading out the front door with my "saved" daughter, Annie arrives to a wild scene of flashing lights and multiple emergency vehicles. Even though I felt like never letting go of Macy ever again, I let Annie take her from me.

The extra key I had made that morning was in its hiding place less than 5 minutes after all the first responders had moved onto their next mission and I was off to find an adult beverage.