Water babies and sass

Hello everyone. Let me explain some things openly and honestly. When I started this blog, I had recently seen Julie and Julia. I thought to myself, I'm an aspiring writer. I could blog about being a stay at home dad, like Julie did about cooking through Julia Child's cookbook. Here's the thing, though. Cooking is not as labor-intensive as being a stay at home dad. It doesn't take all day every day to cook something. It always takes me all day to take care of Aislin. By the end of the day, I'm exhausted. So I haven't posted in a while.

Kate signed Aislin and me up for water babies a while back, and we started last week. Aislin normally likes the water. She likes bathing. She'll play with toys in the water and splash and have a good time. Well, the pool is different. She's okay as long as she's on my shoulder. If she's not on my shoulder, it's not okay. She's firmly established herself as the sensitive one in the group. I was talking to Dad about this, and he said that it took me something like seven years before I was comfortable in the water. Whatever the activity is, if she is not on my shoulder, she's crying. She doesn't like being dunked, doing the arm motions, kicking, jumping off the side, nothing. She doesn't mind being on the instructor's shoulder, as long as it's not for very long. In spite of her lack of enthusiasm, we're keeping at it.

Kate's been sick with a sinus infection and a bout of pneumonia. At this point, she's missed a grand total of four days of work, I believe. When I was driving her home from the doctor's office, she was talking about how she felt awful. Jokingly, I told her to get over it. This is how we are. She says something serious to me and I respond jocundly and she whimpers and asks why I don't love her. Obviously, it's the system of a healthy relationship. Anyway. I told her to get over it. And Aislin says in the same tone, Yeah! A few days later, Kate was telling me I needed to change the baby's diaper. I said, "Change the baby's diaper, blah blah blah." Aislin responded "blah blah blah." We laughed very hard.

She's cruising the furniture solidly now. She can almost reach the top of the table, and Kate and I are worried about that because up until now it's been a safe place to put stuff we don't want her getting into. Not for much longer. A few nights ago, she was cruising along, and she stumbled. She hit the edge of the coffee table and cut the inside of her mouth. We're not sure where. She started bleeding, and that's when we freaked out. We've got a couple of shirts now that have blood stains on the left shoulder where we were trying to console her. We haven't found the cut, but it couldn't have been too bad since it stopped bleeding pretty quickly.

That's about all I have to report. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post again. I can't promise I'll be more on top of it from now on. The baby never naps. When she does nap, she doesn't sleep that night. She's crazy. I try putting her down so I can type or do something for myself, and she starts pulling books off the shelves or playing for the mouse and keyboard. She's also getting to the point where she has opinions. If she wants something but doesn't get it, she gets pretty mad about it and starts screaming. Meanwhile, I see posts on facebook of parents who have their new child sleeping in a separate bedroom and everything. What I wouldn't give to have Aislin sleeping in a different bedroom. Heck, I'd be glad to have her content to sleep in a different bed. More often than not, she's sleeping horizontally between Kate and me, so I have one shoulder blade hanging off the edge of the bed. She still hates her crib. She only naps in her car seat. What I need is a remote control for her. I can mute her when she's screaming, pause her when she's getting into my stuff, and rewind when she falls and hurts herself. It's the 21st Century. Anyone want to tell me why we don't have one of those yet?