bogen.org

Last night after giving Garrison his bath, I went to the garage door, expecting to find Dalla waiting to come in from the outside. Normally, she’s ready to come back inside during the winter after just five or ten minutes by herself outside. In this instance, she’d been outside for more than twenty without a peep. I went to the door that separates the garage from the yard and whistled for her several times. Eventually, she came trotting towards the house from the dark yard. Even with her success over the past year killing rabbits, voles, and mice in the yard I was surprised to see her carrying the item pictured below in her mouth.

She was happy to drop the carcass and come indoors, so I let her into the house. She ran to the other end of the house and got some praise from Sarah and Garrison. That’s when Sarah noticed that Dalla had fleas on her neck that she most likely picked up from the rabbit. So, it was into the bath for her and I got to give my second bath of the evening.

Sarah and I bought each other smartphones for our birthdays. They aren’t any of the big so-called feature phones like the Droid X or iPhone 4. Rather, we got Samsung Intercepts for Virgin Mobile. I won’t go into all the reasons that we went the low-end route but you can shorthand many of them with one word, “money”.

In the past, when I saw people with their heads buried in smartphones I always looked down on them for what seemed like their complete obsession with a cell phone. Now that I have one of my own, I totally get it.

The phone is great for letting me check my e-mail pretty much anywhere I want. It has a slide-out keyboard which means that I can relatively rapidly type e-mails and text messages. The screen is bright and the camera isn’t awful. And all of that is nice, but what really makes it a great device to own is that fact that it’s basically a general purpose computing device that you can carry around with you and that extends the Internet to places far from a telephone line, Ethernet jack, or wi-fi network. I’ve used the phone to stream Internet radio stations in the car. I’ve checked Internet prices on products while in the store. I can update my online notebook full of books to read and ideas to ponder from just about anywhere. We’ve used it to pull up Google Maps in the car when we got turned around in a part of town we rarely visit. I can catch-up on all the latest baseball and hockey news from just about anywhere. Want to know what the weather forecast is? I can pull that up easily too. Forget something to read during a bus ride? No problem. Pull up the New York Times or the USA Today.

In short, having a smartphone is a little like carrying around an always-on, usually-connected laptop that also happens to fit in your pocket.

One of my biggest fears going into this winter was that we’d be stuck indoors for several months with a tornado of destruction masquerading as a two year old.  So far, that hasn’t been the case.  We’ve been able to get Garrison enough time outdoors that he’s been able to keep a relatively level head.

Today, for instance, we took him hiking on an Ice Ge Trail segment south of Madison that is relatively flat and easy to navigate.  Garrison was a real trouper and while he isn’t the fastest walker on uneven surfaces, he doesn’t lack for enthusiasm.  He walked for quite a while before finally getting tired and asking to ride in his backpack carrier.

The segment we walked runs along a creek that isn’t frozen yet.  After we told Garrison that we might see ducks, he spent the rest of the walk yammering in his two year-old way about ducks.  When we did see some ducks he was thrilled and that redoubled his chatter about ducks.  It was a bit like walking with a slightly incoherent waterfowl enthusiast.

The walking did tire him out, however. Once we got back into the car and the heater warmed things up he passed right out until we got home.

Over the past month, we’ve gotten in the habit of having 5-10 M&Ms, each, after dinner.  Tonight, Sarah cooked chicken parm for dinner.  Garrison at two pieces of pasta, one piece of broccoli, one bite of chicken, and called it a meal.  No amount of cajoling or encouragement could get him to eat any more.  Finally, we gave up.  When we were finished, Sarah and I broke out the M&Ms and had a few.  Garrison immediately wanted his.  We told him repeatedly that people who don’t eat dinner don’t get dessert.  Eventually, we came around to the position that if he ate his pasta he could have dessert.  This clearly wasn’t the bargain he wanted, but he really desired those bits of candy so he grudgingly ate his pasta.  Once he was done and he got his M&Ms, he was thrilled that we kept our part of the bargain.   Both Sarah and I were left wondering how much this sort of stubbornness/ultimatum/bargaining around food is going to be part of our future.

It’s been a busy couple of months for us and I haven’t even been able to hold to my unstated goal of posting at least once a month in this space.

Shortly after my last post, we made Memphis-style ribs for my sister’s birthday using a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. We’ve made ribs plenty of times in the past, and we’ve gotten some pretty variable results. There is a definite relationship between the amount of effort we’re willing to expend, the cuts of meat that we use, and the quality of the final product. In this case, the amount of effort required wasn’t very high, the cuts of meat (St. Louis-style ribs) weren’t terribly expensive, but the results were phenomenal. I highly recommend that recipe to anyone who enjoys ribs.

In mid-September, we took a trip to visit my family in South Dakota. That was the first very long car trip that we’ve taken with Garrison since he was just a little infant. We managed to schedule the time in the car so that he wouldn’t be awake for some of it, but it still required plenty of stops at playgrounds along the way for everyone to stay sane.

Garrison seemed to enjoy himself in South Dakota. My mom took care of him for a night, which let Sarah and I take a one-night vacation; that was the first time both of us had spent a night without him in the house since he was born.

Garrison’s language development continues apace. He loves words that end in hard ‘K’ sounds. Only, he likes to say them with a particularly harsh, phlegmy sounding ‘chk’ at the end. People have asked us if we speak German at home because his pronunciation of the hard ‘K’ sound is so phlegmy. For instance, when Sarah’s parents were here last weekend Garrison picked up the word ‘hawk’. Of course, he says it ‘haw-chk’. He’s also got ‘stuc-chk’, ‘duc-chk’, and his most commonly used word, ‘mo-chk’ (which is milk).

He now routinely calls us ‘Ma Ma’, and ‘Da Da’. That’s been a relatively recent change. He also now says things like, ‘Hi, Da Da’ when he returns if he knows you stayed home while he went somewhere or if you enter a room and he hasn’t seen you for a while.

Dalla is pronounced with a strong Spanish influence as ‘Dai-ya’. He particularly loves yelling at and for the dog. At least once a day he says, “No, no, Dai-ya” as she waits around his chair to clean up his mess. (Dalla, for her part, doesn’t acknowledge that form of her name any more than she does any other derivation of the name Dalla.) The other night we were all chanting Dalla’s name and she got pretty worried to hear her name used so much.

Garrison now often says ‘stuc-chk’ when he’s stuck or when something else is stuck that he’d like to manipulate. Of course, he still sometimes goes straight to yelling and screaming and then if you ask him what’s wrong, he says, ‘stuc-chk’. In the last week or so, water has become ‘non-non’, I’m not sure why. A horse is a ‘bum, bum’. Almost all birds on the grounds are ducks. Birds in the air are hawks. Fire hydrants, fire trucks, ambulances, and any other vehicle of sufficient size that is fire engine red in color is a ‘wow-wow’. He’s also come up with ‘wet’, ‘Go away, Dai-ya’, ‘root (roof)’, and ‘hot’ for coffee.

Garrison has a placemat that’s covered in dinosaurs and he was pointing at them the other day and I was naming them “seismosaurus, allosaurus, triceratops”, etc. Then, he pointed to the stegosaurus and I named it. He said, ‘duc-chk’. I named it again. He named it as a duck again. That continued for a couple more iterations and I gave up. I asked him about it the the next day, and he named it as a duck again. When I showed that to Sarah, she said, “Well, they are descended from birds.”

Sarah’s family visited us two weeks ago and her parents seemed to enjoy their time with our family. My mother is visiting us this week and she’s helping us out by babysitting several days while our day care is closed.

Curling starts up again this week. I’m now curling on Tuesday evenings and Sarah is curling on Thursdays. I’ll have a new skip for the first time in eight years. Every other year, I’ve played with the same skip, so this will truly be a new season for me.

We’ve been making slow but sure progress towards getting the house and yard ready for winter. The gardens are all done, so we took out the plants and replaced them with leaf mulch. The hanging baskets are all taken down and stowed in the garage. We are in the midst of getting a new sidewalk in the front of the house and are also getting a sidewalk poured from the front drive to the patio in the back. We’d walked on that ground so much and it was so compacted as a result that nothing could grow on it. The sidewalk will also be easier to clean off in the winter when it snows because we’ll be able to use the snow thrower. In years past, we would use the snow thrower and then shovel out a path by hand to the back yard.

There are a handful of new Garrison pictures in the Photo Gallery for interested parties.

Summer is winding down here in Madison but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been busy.

Two weeks ago, we visited the Sweet Corn Festival in Sun Prairie, which is about a half-hour from our house. We’d never been to the Sweet Corn Festival, even though we’d heard about it for years. This year, for whatever reason, we finally decided to go. It was cheap to get in ($5 for parking which includes admission), and they practically give away the corn ($6 for a so-called tote, which in our case held ten ears). We then spent a couple of bucks as a tip for someone to butter some of the corn for us. Sarah and I also got six-inch subs for $2 each. We had a dinner packed for Garrison because he hasn’t developed a taste for corn yet, and we brought water so that was the extent of our spending for the evening. We got more corn than we could eat in one sitting, had a picnic on a hill listening to some live music, and Garrison got to have fun in a petting zoo. For whatever reason, even though it doesn’t sound like much fun, we all had a good time.

Last weekend we met friends at the Capital Brewery Bier Garten. It had been two years since we’d last visited, and so we were surprised to find that they’d added a large canopy over much of the garden. That greatly improved the experience because previously, it was basically a bunch of picnic tables on a big concrete slab with the brewery (and bar) at one end and a stage at the other. With the canopy, it is now possible to enjoy yourself on sunny, hot days. Our friends, Paul and Ashely, brought their 17-month-old son Finn, and we were all happy to watch the boys play together, rather than just near each other. They chased each other around a tree, threw toys together, and generally entertained themselves well enough that the adults were able to enjoy some beer and adult conversation.

After giving up brewing for a couple of months because we anticipated moving, I’m trying to get back in the habit. A week or so ago I brewed up an English IPA and I’m hoping to brew up a red ale this weekend. I also recently started a small batch of hard cider.

Dalla has been busy catching and killing the varmints in our back yard. The other night she caught another rabbit, flushing it out of the hostas in our back yard, chasing it to the fence, and killing it in front of all of us. Garrison didn’t quite understand what was going on, but he sure thought it was exciting watching her tear around the yard.

Sarah just finished with a month-long “boot camp” exercise program. For a month, she’d been getting up at 05:00 three times a week to exercise with a group in a local park. Having tried it when we lived in California, I can safely say that I won’t be joining her for any pre-dawn workouts any time soon.

On another note, there are some new photos of Garrison in the Photo Gallery.

Dalla has been unusually successful hunting in the yard this summer. She hasn’t tallied any squirrels, but she’s gotten plenty of rabbits, voles, and mice. Here she is with her most recent kill.

Dalla and her prey.

Another month has passed and we’ve been busy all the while.

We’ve been seemingly living underneath a huge garden sprinkler all summer as we’ve had rain more days than not. And when we get rain, it’s often in non-trivial quantities. Along with the rain, we’ve had a good number of very hot and humid days. As you might expect given those conditions, there are plenty of mosquitoes around this year. It’s gotten so bad that if we want to go out into the yard, everyone (except Dalla) has to put bug spray on their arms, legs, and head. Garrison’s head is particularly susceptible. If we don’t get bug spray on his head soon enough, he gets big red bites all over his forehead, cheeks, and neck.

The garden has been enjoying this weather for the most part. We’ve been drowning in zucchini again this year, even after giving away several to friends and coworkers. The tomatoes have been a bit late in coming, but now they’re finally starting to come in. For the first time ever, the tomato plants on the south side of our house got so big that they fell over and pulled their cages with them. After last year’s cucumber explosion, we didn’t plant any this year and that hasn’t been a terrible mistake. Some of the hot peppers are getting nice and ripe, but we have yet to get any green beans. I guess that’s the interesting aspect of gardening, you never know exactly how it’s all going to turn out.

Sarah and I planted a Zestar apple tree in our yard three years ago. This year is the first year that it’s produced any fruit. We harvested one of the two apples the tree produced this year (it’s still pretty small), and ate it last night. It was a really tasty apple. We have high hopes for next year.

Two weeks ago I took a day off of work and went up to Oshkosh for the annual AirVenture air show. I really enjoy listening to the interesting and varied speakers that give talks in the forums there. The airplanes are interesting, but it’s the speakers that keep me coming back. The most engaging speaker I heard this year was Bob Richards, the author of Secrets From the Tower. He’s definitely a character. The airplanes at the show this year were OK. The Air Force showed up with their version of the VF-22 Osprey and with a large array of cargo planes. There was the big DC-3 show, and a few other planes of interest, but not as many as in years past. Quite frankly, if the Air Force hadn’t been there, Aeroshell Square would have been a bit empty this year.

The day after AirVenture, Sarah, Garrison, Dalla, and I drove west to Governor Dodge State Park to spend the day. We had a nice walk on one of the park’s numerous hiking trails before sitting down to a picnic lunch on a hillside overlooking Cox Hollow lake. Garrison really seemed to enjoy the novelty of eating outdoors and on a blanket where he could get up and wander off to look at the lake any time the urge struck him.

The weekend after that, we went to the Wisconsin State Fair. I can’t say why I get the urge to visit the Fair every year, but I do. We did many of the obligatory State Fair things like eat deep fried food on a stick (cherry pie, in our case), visit all the livestock barns, jostle arms with thousands of our fellow Wisconsin residents, and bake in the heat and humidity.

Last weekend we made our annual trek to the Twin Cities to visit with friends and family. Once again, Garrison surprised us with how easily he took to the travel. He slept well in the hotels where we stayed, and wasn’t a complete terror when we ate in restaurants. We took him to the Como Park Zoo on Friday morning where he reinforced for us his dislike and perhaps fear of some large, land-bound animals. He enjoys watching animals in the water but large animals like gorillas and orangoutangs are definitely not on his favorite list. Regardless, he seemed to enjoy himself there. He may not have understood all that was going on around him, but he did his best to copy everyone else he saw by going up to every window and railing and peering over or through to what might be beyond.

We are extremely fortunate to have generous friends in the Cities who opened their homes to us both Friday and Saturday afternoon. Both days we were able to let Garrison nap on their beds while we ate lunch, which made the trip much, much easier for all concerned. Once he woke up, he was then able to burn off some energy playing in their yard or with their kids.

Saturday night, my Mom watched Garrison for us so that Sarah and I could take in a St. Paul Saints game. In short, the game experience is OK, but the Madison Mallards put on a better show. The Mallards have better food, better party spaces, better beer, seats closer to the game, lower seat prices, and better between innings entertainment. It was good to see what all the fuss is about, but I’ll take a Mallards game over a Saints game any day.

The original plan was for my Mom and I to take in a Twins game at Target Field on Friday night while Sarah watched Garrison at the hotel. Unfortunately, both Sarah and I were so wiped out by our drive up to the Cities on Thursday night (we arrived around 01:00 and woke up around 06:00), that we both passed out around 21:00. It will have to be next year for me to visit Target Field.

Garrison continues to grow and develop. He has become an absolutely voracious devourer of books. More specifically, he wants us to read him book after book after book. We’re making heavy use of our library cards and the toddler and picture book sections as a result. He definitely knows more words than he can speak at this point. His most recent word is probably “dooooowwwwnn” for “down”. He’s also starting to play with toys a bit more. He spends more time playing with his various plastic trucks every day, which gives us a chance every now and then to get dinner on the table or do some other household chore.

In mid-June, we took Garrison to a pediatric ear-nose-throat specialist because he’d been having so many ear infections. The doctor unhesitatingly suggested that he have a myringotomy since he was well past the usual standard of six ear infections in six months. As part of that operation, small silicone tubes are placed in the tympanic membrane. Those tubes allow fluid to drain from the ear instead of remaining trapped and providing a breeding ground for bacteria. We weren’t really excited about subjecting him to surgery, but we were even less excited about the prospect of even more ear infections. Beyond that, we suspect that his language development has been slowed by all the fluid in his ears that could never drain out.

So, in late June we brought him over to the Children’s Hospital here in Madison. That facility is relatively new, having opened only a few years ago. It’s still very much a hospital, but if you had to bring your kid in surgery that isn’t a bad place to do it. The kids, generally, are immune to the dread that medical environs seem to breed in people, but the parents are almost always more quiet and subdued. After all, their kids wouldn’t be at the hospital if there was nothing wrong with them. We got to the hospital and were quickly processed into a personal waiting room where Garrison proceeded to explore all avenues for mischief while we waited for him to go into surgery. There is a room in that area full of toys for the kids to use, including a real light like you might find in a surgical suite and a bed that operates like a surgical bed. We met another dad in that room with his two kids (one a girl dressed normally, one a boy in a surgical gown who wasn’t that much older than Garrison). Eventually, Garrison and I went back to the surgical suite where I held him as they administered the anesthesia. Then I went back to the recovery room and waited with Sarah for fifteen minutes or so before we were called to the post-surgery room where he was waking up. It was a rough awakening for him, but eventually he stopped crying and we went back to the recovery room. We had gotten to the hospital shortly after 06:30 in the morning; Garrison went into surgery just past 08:00; and we arrived home shortly before 09:00. He was back to his old self by 09:15. Both Sarah and I felt blessed to have such a good hospital so close to home.

Post-surgery, Garrison has been using many more syllables than he did pre-surgery. All those syllables haven’t led to the acquisition of too many words, but he’s become extremely interested in books. If you’re indoors and sitting down, he will bring you book after book so that you can read them to him. The most prominent new phrase he’s learned is “all done”, which he says in a sing-song voice as “all none”. It’s rather endearing.

Garrison’s appetite is more consistent now that he’s not getting ear infections every couple of weeks. He doesn’t eat a lot at every meal, but the number of meals where he doesn’t want to eat anything has gone way down. He’s still really picky, though. Vegemite is good on bread; peanut butter is barely acceptable; everything else is not. Juice is bad; (decaf) iced coffee with milk is good. Ice cream is bad; jelly beans and gummy candies are good. Chicken is good; bison steak is good; grilled catfish is good; shrimp are very bad.

In other news, Sarah and I have been looking for a new house since February. We’ve seen all manor of houses in a variety of neighborhoods but have had a hard trying finding ones that actually interest us. We want a bigger house, but nothing too big and nothing too far from where we currently live. We really like our location and we’re not willing to give that up for a bedroom and/or a larger kitchen. So, that limits our search significantly. In late June we made an offer on a house just a couple of blocks south of us. It was a five bedroom house that backs up to the school Garrison will attend when he gets a bit older. We toured the house twice and really made an effort to look into all its nooks and crannies before making the offer. We volleyed back and forth with the sellers several times before agreeing to a price. So, we put the wheels of real estate into motion by getting our banker involved, scheduling a home inspection, and starting to pack up the clutter in our current house.

The financing wasn’t a problem, but the home inspection turned up some very expensive issues to fix. The problem with those were that the house had several other expensive issues that we already knew about. While we were willing to sink some money into the house post-purchase, like most people, our supply of funds is not infinite. So, we thought long and hard and decided to back out of the purchase. Given the extremely low interest rates and the fact that the house was so ideally located, it wasn’t easy to walk away. Especially because our neighborhood is very much a seller’s market and there’s no guarantee that we’ll find something else in the near future that meets our needs. However, we didn’t like the idea that we had to buy that house because we were afraid that we wouldn’t find something else.

So, we’re back in the housing market again.

One of the side effects of that aborted transaction is that we now have a storage container (of PODS fame) in our driveway that is 2/3 full of stuff. The original plan was to fill the pod with all of the junk we don’t use on a daily basis and ship it off to the pod storage facility for a few months while we sold our current house and moved into the new house. Then, once we were settled in, we’d arrange for the pod’s delivery. That would allow us to pack and unpack in several steps on either side of the move.

With nowhere to move, though, the pod and it’s 2/3 filled nature is now just a very visible conundrum. Do we unload it and get rid of it so that we can start using our driveway and garage again? Do we fill it up and send it off in the hopes that we’ll find something as the fall comes around? And if we don’t, then what happens? We paid for a month’s use of the pod, so it makes sense to keep it around that long on the off-chance that we find another house we like, but then we can’t keep the car in the garage and the pod is a bit of an eyesore in the neighborhood.

One of the upsides of not moving in the near future is that we’ll actually get to see our garden progress. We’ve been getting raspberries for several weeks now. Because of our warm spring and wet June, we got a big, early crop this year. Garrison likes to help us pick the raspberries, in his own way. You need to get one bowl for yourself, and one bowl for him. Then, you pick two or three raspberries. Put two in your bowl and one in his. Then, let him pour out the raspberry from his bowl into yours while he says “thank you” (which comes out more as a sing-song “dank you”). That goes one for several minutes. After a while, you might notice that he’s not returning any berries to you. That’s because he’s simply eating them. And then, once he’s full, he starts calling after the dog and giving the raspberries to her. You might think that you could avoid some of those lost berries by simply not giving them to him. However, then he starts randomly pulling off complete sections of raspberry cane, often with several berries attached that are usually in various stages of ripeness. So, if you don’t play his game, the overall berry loss is usually much higher.

The city is rebuilding the street in front of our house, which means that they’re also doing utility work to replace gas and water mains. Garrison loves watching the backhoes, dump trucks, diggers, and the like and the drive up and down the street. From his perspective, it would be great if the city could rebuild the street every summer.

For the Fourth of July, we drove down to Whitewater to take in the 4th of July parade. In June, we took Garrison to the Taste of New Glarus and the Green County Dairy Parade in New Glarus and he loved the parade. All the vehicles, and people, and animals really had him rapt. The Whitewater parade, with the addition of marching bands, numerous fire trucks, little Shriner cars, and the like, was even better from his perspective.

Sarah’s mother is in town this weekend, so we’ve got another pair of adult hands to help with keeping track of our extremely energetic toddler.

In the last week or so, Garrison’s language development has really taken off. It probably helps that he’s without an ear infection for the first time in a long time. He’s making all sorts of new sounds, and trying out some new syllables. He hasn’t really mastered too many new words, but he’s trying all the time. He says the word “shoes” and he knows what it means. He knows what the word “sweatshirt” means, but he doesn’t say it. He knows how to say “Touchdown!” and now breaks it out any time he’s excited about something. He even raises both hands above his head occasionally, as though he knows not only what it means, but the signal as well. He forgot how to say “Dalla” during his long string of ear infections and he calls her “Da-Tah” is a sort of whispery-sing-songy voice now. Of course, he calls all dogs “Da-Tah” in that same voice, so maybe he’s actually trying to say “dog”? He has a rudimentary grasp of how to say “ball” but the word isn’t all there yet. He’s now using sign language a bit more. He uses the sign for “milk” when he’s thirsty and he does a version of “all done” when he’s finished eating. Instead of the official sign for “more”, he smashes his fist into his palm as a universal sign for “I want”. In short, communicating with him is getting easier, but we’ve still got a long journey ahead of us.

He’s also taken to climbing up in a big way. He figured out how to climb up on a dining room chair, so now we have to keep an even closer eye on him to prevent him from either climbing up the back of the chairs and tipping them over or climbing up on to the table top (which he tries multiple times per day). He can climb up in his stroller now, and can go up and down stairs fairly well.

He’s also grown a fair bit in the last month or so. He used to fit in size 5 toddler shoes, and now we’re buying 6.5 shoes because the old ones don’t fit any more.

We put in our garden a couple of weeks ago once the danger of frost was past. We’ve got some tomatoes, peppers, beans, zucchini, broccoli, lettuce, kohlrabi, and cauliflower in the garden this year. The broccoli is almost ready to harvest already, while the kohlrabi have taken a beating from something (maybe cabbage moth worms?) that has almost completely wiped it out. The raspberries are coming on strong and it looks like we’re in for a bumper crop this year. The hops that survived the winter are doing generally OK and I should get a reasonable harvest this year. Unfortunately, only a handful of hops survived, so I’ll only get two varieties, at most. I’ll have to plant more rhizomes next spring.

Garrison’s fifteen month video is now available on YouTube.

If I had just one word to describe the members of our house this week, it would be “sick.” It started last week when Garrison (patient zero) brought home another day care plague. This led to not only another set of ear infections for him, it also opened the door for bacterial conjunctivitis (a.k.a. pink eye). Of course, his pink eye didn’t manifest until we were already out the door on a trip to Minnesota. After telephone consultation with our doctor’s office, we decided to wait until we got back to Madison on Monday to seek treatment.

On Monday, both his infections were diagnosed and he started on antibiotics. That same day, I went to work, but locked myself in an office to avoid my co-workers because I wasn’t sick enough to stay home, but I was sick enough to infect them.

Tuesday, I stayed home with Garrison because he wasn’t welcome at day care with pink eye and I was getting sicker.

Today, Wednesday, both Sarah and I were home sick, sick, sick. We’re both hoping for a better tomorrow.

On the upside, Dalla’s mysterious sickness, which prompted her to wake Sarah three times in the middle of the night on Sunday night, appears to have passed.

As mentioned above, we went to Minnesota last weekend to visit some of my relatives. They have a farm west of Rochester that is conveniently located roughly half-way between Madison and Watertown (where my Mom lives). She drove out and met us at the farm, so we shared Mothers Day with her and my relatives.

As we travel, we’re slowly discovering Garrison’s tolerance for trips of various lengths. A driving trip of about four hours is pretty much the limit of what he’ll tolerate before melting down. We flew to Cleveland in April to visit Sarah’s family and for flights, anything over 1.5 hours is tough on everyone.

When we visited Cleveland, Garrison came down with an ear infection on the day we flew out there. Sarah had him checked for an ear infection the day prior to leaving. The doctor saw nothing wrong with his ears. The morning of our departure, Garrison became inconsolable shortly before we needed to leave for the airport. While Sarah put him down for a nap, I pushed back our flight by five hours (and paid a change fee). We eventually arrived in Cleveland, only to suffer through a sleepless night. A trip to urgent care showed both of his ears to be infected and back on antibiotics he went.

It’s become a given that if we travel, Garrison is going to come down with a previously undiagnosed ear infection as we’re walking out the door. Supposedly, the ear infections diminish radically when kids get to be about two years old. That can’t come soon enough.

Some photos of Garrison in the late winter/early spring are now in the photo gallery.

Now that early spring is upon us, Garrison is spending more and more time outside every day. At day care, they bring the kids outside every afternoon and let them crawl and toddle around an enclosed area with toys and a sand box. This means that every day that we pick Garrison up, he’s got really dirty hands and sand in his hair, pants, shoes, and often, his diaper. At home, it’s often hard to get him to come back inside without picking him up and depositing him indoors, which always leads to a crying spell.

Dalla is enjoying spring even more. She spends almost more time outside than in. She spends her days reclining regally in the back yard, and generally graces us with her presence most often around meal times.

Sarah started her annual attack on the weeds in her herb garden over the weekend while I took the blade off the mower last weekend so that it could be sharpened. We’re currently looking at fencing options to keep both rabbits and small humans out of herb and vegetable gardens.

Sarah and I started biking Garrison to and from day care a couple of weeks ago. We bought a bike trailer years ago for shuttling groceries home from the market, and this year we finally rigged it for human travel now that Garrison can ride in it. The only downside is that his day care is on top of one of the largest hills in town. It’s a rather punishing uphill ride from our place, but coming home is literally all downhill. If nothing else, all that uphill riding is good exercise for Sarah and I. Garrison doesn’t seem to mind the trailer, but he’s definitely not fond of his helmet. A couple of times I’ve gotten home only to find his helmet in his lap, rather than on his head.

Now that he’s mostly figured out walking, Garrison is working on climbing up. He started by climbing a little two or three inch step from the patio to the garage, and by climbing up onto the seat of a low futon in his bedroom. Since then, he’s gotten much more adventurous. We were in the kitchen over the weekend and were generally giving him less than a quarter of our combined attention because we were both working on something and we have the kitchen fairly well baby-proofed. It got fairly quiet (always a bad sign), so we looked up to find him standing on the seat of the rocking chair we keep in the kitchen, rocking back and forth while holding on to the back. That was an unexpected sight. He’s also tried climbing up some other places in the house, but is currently limited by his short stature to locations where he can get a solid handhold and pull himself up with his hands and arms. Fortunately, those locations are few and far between. He found it possible to climb into the seat of the rocking chair because he was able to get a grip on the slats that form the chair back.

One of Garrison’s few words (or is it a phrase?) is “Uh oh” said in a bit of a sing-song. He likes to say that after throwing his milk or water cup over the side of the high chair. We can only assume that he learned that at day care as neither of us can remember teaching it to him. It’s generally cute, though he often says “Uh oh” before throwing something over the side of the high chair, which definitely lessens the cute-factor significantly. The invocation of Dalla’s name is the concomitant to food flying off the high chair, though whether or not it precedes the airborne vittles seems to be predicated mostly on whim.

It turns out that our yard is under all that snow after all. Madison has been reveling in higher than normal temperatures for this time of year over the past week. Not only has it been nicer outside, but our snow cover is greatly diminished. That means that we’ve gotten an early start on the Spring mud season, but we’ve got to get through that to get to summer, so that’s a price we’ll gladly pay.

Garrison is trying to wear out his shoes with walking. Once he got the general hang of it, he hasn’t showed any interest in crawling. Of course, with walking (and being upright generally) the potential for mischief in new places and in new ways has only grown. He loves the microwave, which is alternately cute and annoying. It’s cute when you’re not using it, but when he turns the microwave off while you’re heating something in it, that’s annoying. We’ve had to move some electronics up to higher ground since he became just too fascinated with them. He figured out how to page the handset for the cordless phone from the base station, so that is mounted on the wall now. He likes to go into rooms, partially shut the door, and play peek-a-boo, which is fine until he locks himself into a room because he hasn’t quite figured out doorknobs yet. I preemptively replaced the bathroom doorknob because it could lock from the inside but there was no way to open the lock from the outside and I had nightmarish visions of the babysitter calling me and telling me that he had locked himself inside while I tried to talk her through the process of using the reciprocating saw to cut a hole in the door so that she could open it.

We’ve had to leave the bathroom door shut all the time now since he figured out the fun of dropping things in the toilet. It started with diapers. After he saw us cleaning out his diapers in the toilet, he decided to join the fun by grabbing some clean diapers off his changing table and depositing them in the toilet. Since then, other items have found their way into the bowl and hence, the closed door.

Garrison is maturing mentally and trying all sorts of new head games. He’s started testing us to see if he can get a reaction from us by doing things that he knows he shouldn’t be doing. For instance, we don’t want him playing with or in the dog dishes so he gets a “no” every time he tries it. However, sometimes he deliberately bangs Dalla’s food dish just once with something, waits for us to tell him “no”, and then cackles happily. The temper tantrum is also part of his act now, as he tries to get his way more often.

Now that he’s older than one year old, we’ve dramatically expanded the number and variety of foods that we’re giving him and he’s showing definite preferences. For instance, he rather inexplicably loves broccoli but most other vegetables are bad. He has no time for cheese, but he ate almost an entire bratwurst last night. Pasta with red sauce is good; pasta with butter is bad. Plain whole wheat bread is good; plain waffles and zucchini bread are OK; waffles with maple syrup are bad. Ritz, oyster, goldfish, and graham crackers are good. Plain chickpeas are very good; beans in soup are good; refried beans are bad. Plain tilapia is good; plain tuna is OK; salmon is bad. Every time we set him down to a meal, it’s an adventure to see what he’s going to eat.

The curling season is coming to an end for Sarah and I. We’ve each only got a couple of games left before the season ends. After curling ends, it will be time to break out the garden tools and tackle the yard again.

The weather here in Madison has been relatively nice (for winter), and since Garrison is actually big enough to wear the bike helmet we bought him, Sarah and I decided to take him out in the bike trailer for a ride. It was mid-thirties and sunny, so we dressed him for the weather, put him in the trailer, and set off. We took a relatively short twenty minute ride with a stop in the middle so that if he hated the experience, he wouldn’t be stuck in the trailer forever. As you can see from the picture in the Photo Gallery the ride apparently wasn’t half-bad.

Who forgot to snap my onesie?

Diaper Change Failure

Photos of Garrison at eleven and twelve months are now available in the Photo Gallery.

Garrison’s one year video is now up on YouTube.

Now we just have to get through February and March and it’s all downhill from there until summer.

We’ve all been feeling a bit more housebound than usual this winter. Normally, Sarah, Dalla, and I would hit the trails for hiking or skiing or snowshoeing most weekends in the winter. If it was colder than usual, we’d just wear more clothes and stay out for less time. Now that we have Garrison, however, our options are a bit more limited. He really can’t tolerate weather colder than 15 degrees and they don’t make serious outdoors clothing for babies, so we have to pick and choose our days for outdoors exercise more carefully now. Fortunately, the weather was in the twenties last weekend, so we were able to get out and go hiking both Saturday and Sunday.

Garrison’s birthday came and went a couple of weeks ago. Sarah’s parents drove out for the weekend so they joined my sister in helping us celebrate. Garrison still doesn’t quite know what to make of presents, but he gave us the gift of walking the night before his birthday. It was actually a rather dramatic moment when he started. We were sitting around the living room chatting after dinner. GMan has a truck that he pushes around and he pulled himself up using the truck in the middle of all of us. Then, he rather dramatically pushed the truck away and stood there quite deliberately without holding on to anything for 30 seconds or so. It looked a bit like he had something very important to say and he was just searching for the best way to say it. Then, he toddled over to me and gave me a big hug. Then he toddled over to Sarah and gave her a big hug. Then it was back to me and back to Sarah. Then it over to his Grandma and back to Sarah. Then back to me. This went on for five minutes or so and he was just tickled pink every time he completed his little mini-journey. Now, he’s toddling all over the house. His toddling expeditions are getting longer every day and he probably spend more time upright now than he does crawling. He still uses his truck for balance when he wants to run, but he uses it less and less every day.

Sarah made cupcakes for Garrison’s birthday, but he was probably the person who enjoyed them the least. He doesn’t seem to be terribly interested in sweet breads, and the frosting didn’t seem to be his favorite either.

He’s also been eating a wider variety of foods the last couple of weeks. He still doesn’t like foods that you’d expect him to like (jelly, candy, some fruits), nor does he like most meats, but his list of foods that he will at least try has grown. Most startlingly, he really doesn’t like cheese. If he’s going to grow up in Wisconsin, that’s one dislike he’ll probably have to overcome. Our Australian readers might be interested to know that he does seem to enjoy Vegemite, which we have been led to believe, is commonly fed to Australian babies.

In other news, I almost ended up under a stationary bus this morning as I tried to board it. I stepped up to board the bus with my left foot and my right foot lost its grip on the icy curb. The next thing I knew I was dangling partially under the bus while clinging to bars on the door of the bus with a death grip. Eventually, I was able to right the ship and board, but it was an experience that I’m not in a hurry to duplicate.

Sarah recently learned that her brother and sister-in-law are expecting a baby in early September, so that means that we’re an aunt and uncle to be. That’s almost a harder concept to grasp than becoming a father. I never pictured myself as an uncle.

Sarah and I have tickets for the Camp Randall Hockey Classic this weekend here in Madison. An ice arena has been created on the football field at Camp Randall Stadium and potentially 80,000 fans could attend the game this Saturday against Michigan. The Badgers have another good team this year (ranked #3 in the PairWise Rankings) and Michigan is respectable, so we hope to see a good game. The weather is predicted to be chilly, but we both have plenty of warm clothes, so we hoping to have a good time. One of our neighbors will be babysitting Garrison, so it will be a bit of a night out on the town for us.

One of the hardest things about parenting for me to get comfortable with is treating Garrison when he’s sick. With an adult, or even an older child, they can tell you what’s hurting, how badly, how long, and maybe even what might have caused it.

With an baby, all you have to go on is your own experience, and what you can deduce from the baby’s behavior. Do they have a fever? Are they pale or flushed? Do certain actions (diaper changing; feeding; walking; crawling) seem to bother them more than others? Then, from that limited and often fragmentary information, you have to decide if they actually have a medical problem, how bad it might be, and whether or not to seek medical attention.

If you choose not to seek medical attention, then you may be left wondering if you’ve chosen the right course of action. After all, they can’t really disagree with your decision, because they don’t even know a decision has been made, much less that you made it for them.

In short, you’re left making serious decisions in a field that is hardly your specialty; with, at best, limited and fragmentary information; consultation with peers who likely know no more than you do; and little to no feedback.

A couple of nights ago, Garrison woke up screaming in the middle of the night. That, in and of itself, wasn’t unusual because he always wakes up screaming. When Sarah went to get him, she discovered that he was burning up with a fever. So, she got some infant acetaminophen into him. At that point, I got up to find out what all the extended screaming was about, and volunteered to take the first shift keeping an eye on him. We stripped him down to his diaper, pulled out a mattress onto the floor, and he and I curled up together on it.

We hadn’t been lying there for more than a minute when he vomited up all the medicine and whatever else was in his stomach. That was highly unusual. We decided to take a wait and see approach since his fever wasn’t dangerously high, and he’d be sleeping with one or the other of us the rest of the night so if he vomited again, we’d know about it right away and could reevaluate our decisions.

In the morning, his fever was still present, so we gave him some ibuprofen with his breakfast. Ibuprofen usually works well and quickly to reduce his fever. His temperature is often down to normal a half-hour after a dose. On Thursday, however, his fever stubbornly stuck around. Sarah went to work and I stayed home with Garrison since he couldn’t go to daycare with a fever and he was really clingy and unhappy. Every three hours I administered alternating doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen and, eventually, his temperature came down.

That night we gave him a dose of ibuprofen before putting him to bed and hoped for the best.

Around 01:15 in the morning, he woke up screaming (again, not unusual), and I went in to comfort him. After a few minutes of rocking in the rocking chair, he was sleeping, but his limbs were twitching randomly. When he was awake, I thought that I had noticed his hands shaking. Those two signs were very unusual. In addition, his fever was back and higher than before.

I woke up Sarah and we started down the problem solving tree again. Once again, we gave ibuprofen, stripped him down to his diaper, pulled out the mattress, and setup shifts to sleep with him. I took the first shift, and about a half-hour after he cuddled up against me, he was comfortably asleep.

That didn’t mean that I was comfortably asleep however. As Garrison slept peacefully next to me, I lay there wide awake and wondered if we should have done more. I was fully aware of the compromised decision making process that many people employ in the middle of the night and I worried that we had made some fundamental error or overlooked some subtle clue that might have given us some insight into why this fever was so tenacious and its root cause or that might have prompted us to seek medical attention. It was a long time before I slept.

On Friday, we finally discovered the source of his fever: teeth.

Until yesterday, Garrison still had only one tooth. Friday, a second tooth erupted from his top gums and it looks like a third will be joining us soon. With the emergence of that second tooth, Garrison’s fever disappeared and he slept comfortably (and so did we) for most of the night.

On a less medically-inclined note, I should discuss The Clapper.

Fans of 80′s television commercials will undoubtedly remember The Clapper’s earworm jingle, much to their chagrin.

My Dad gave Sarah and I a Clapper for Christmas this year. We moved it around the house a few times, trying to find a place to put it where it would do us the most good. We ended up putting it in the basement and hooking it up to a light we use when watching television.

At some point, Garrison must have noticed us clapping while we were down there, and he also must have noticed that particular light going on and off after we clapped because we noticed him staring at various lights around the house and clapping. If he’s in the basement with us, he’ll look right at the light to which the Clapper is connected and start clapping. He can’t clap loud enough to actuate the Clapper, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. In fact, he gets a little frustrated sometimes when his clapping doesn’t seem to work the same way ours does.

In a bit of cosmic justice, the day after my last post bemoaning the ugly snow we had, another five inches dropped on Madison.