Neighborhood-Kids All Local. All for Kids. All the Time.

Removing the buttercup from the strawberry bed is a ritual of mine that I follow every couple of weeks in the springtime.  The chickens devour the buttercups when I toss them into the coop - it is one of their favorite foods.  I filled a couple of buckets amazingliy quick.  Actually, I don't know how long it took.  Weeding is a meditation.  I disappear, time slides by, and the bucket fills up.

In my spaciness, Eliot had drifted behind me and was playing with an empty bucket, a piece of paper, a tile, and a couple of buttercups.  I snapped out of it, looked around and Eliot was standing up by holding onto the edge of the raised vegetable bed smiling at me.  However, he not only had a big grin on his face, but a long brown drool dripping down his chin and onto his shirt.  The tell tale sign of pica - dirt eating.

 He thought it was funny.  He grabbed another clod and went for his mouth, but he shook too much due to his laughter and missed.  Either he liked eating the dirt or he liked the EEEyuK look on my face!

Playing with his favorite toy - stackable wooden rings - gets a whole new dimension when placed into a plastic tub.  Put them all in, snap on the lid, and watch the synapses pop and snap. 

Eli tosses it around and listens to the familiar CLACK the toys make when they smack into each other.  I left one corner of the lid ajar.   Finally he got the lid off, grabbed the big bead necklace he likes to chomp on, and waved it around victoriously with a big grin on his face.  

Then, we did it again.  And again.  Good times. 

Doing laundry and folding clothes can become quite a fun game.   I fold 'em and he grabs and flings them around.  By the time we were done, Eli helped me deliver the folded clothes to their proper place.  Finally we drove around the house, picked up toys, and delivered them to where they wanted to go.  I am not sure who was having more fun with the basket, him or me!

Our family has spent the past week passing a cold from one to another.  Snot and phlegm are the main pieces of evidence of our illnesses.  Sick babies are so pathetic; I feel so bad for him.  He feels miserable and he doesn't know why! 

We are on the floor, playing, and then all of a sudden he lets out a chunky, juicy cough/sneeze.  Things are flying all over, but since it is so sticky it mostly lands on his chin, cheeks, and upper lip.  WAAAAaaaahhh!  I comfort him and hold him and tell him he will feel better soon (unfortunately he doesn't really believe me).

Now the strange thing about Eli is that he hates having his face touched.  Wiping the snot, or food or spittle off his face is an epic battle.  If I just grab a towel and do it he bucks like a bronco, arches his back, kicks his legs, and tries to get his face as far away from me as possible.

So I go in for a sneak attack. Distract him with a canning jar lid or one of his wooden rings with one hand and then with my otherhand I go in for a quick swipe.  If I am accurate I can get a lot of it, but sometimes I am too quick and end up just smeering it around.  This makes it worse because now he is mad at me AND the stuff is spread over a larger area of his face.

Maybe in the end it is just best to leave it in place.  A few crusties on the lip or a couple of blobs of chewed up teething biscuit on the cheek never really hurt anyone.

After a few grumpy feverish days, Eli has 3 new top teeth to make a total of 5.  Boy, are they ever sharp.  Since everything within arms reach ends up in his mouth it is inevitable that my fingers make it in there.  He has not cut through the skin, but when he chomps down....
....EEEyOW!
I don't know about the details of what goes on when Mama breast feeds him.  But I am certainly glad that my nipple isn't in there!

Today's fashion ensemble finds eli wearing tight polo shirt tucked into his racy red pants.  He reminds me of the 1976 Olympic Gymnastics coach from Romania Bela Karolyi.  Or if his binky was actually a whistle he would look like Mr. Egan.  If you don't know Mr. Egan specifically, then there is a good chance you know his clone. Mr. Egan was my gym teacher in elementary school.

When picking up a book how do you grab it?  Thumb on the front cover and fingers rapping around the edge.  Squeezing together your thumb to fingers you latch on and lift.  Easy.  So easy that I have never really thought about it.

Yesterday morning, Eli and I are lying on the living room floor and this is what I observed...

When Eli tries to grab his book that is lying on the floor beside him he first uses his mouth.  Sitting on his bum and bent over at the waste a string of drool hits the book cover first.  Then he tries to gum it, right in the middle of the cover.  Finally he reaches for it with his little fingers and again he tries to pick it up right in the center of the cover.  He is opening and closing his hands like one of those 3 fingered junk yard cranes, yet he is unable to get any purchase.  With wonderfully concentrated and determined furrowed eyebrows, Eli's "pick up the book" game continues for over a minute.  Never appearing frustrated, he is focused.  Then finally, success!  His hand accidentally slides over to the edge, he grasps, squeezes, and then swings the book around in victory.

Grabbing an edge.  What a concept. 

Cool is only a descriptive term regarding how I am feeling on this chilly morning.  I am cool in a literal sense and perhaps I periodically pull off the appearance of being cool.  Am I cool like Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool? Or like Snoopy’s alter ego Joe Cool?  Can this kind of cool still be achieved while pushing a stroller and wearing a milk stain on my shoulder?  I say, yes, but with mild trepidation.  I need to redefine what cool means, at least when it comes to being a cool daddy.

Being a cool daddy means to be a father who does more than just the bring-home-the-bacon, Stogy smokin’, sports page reading stereotype ala the patriarchal figure of Ward Cleaver.  A cool daddy gets into the trenches of raising a baby (diaper washing, bottle feeding, barfed up breast milk swabbing) and gets out into the real world of the streets (of Bellingham in my case) and it’s surrounding outdoor grandeur.  No sitting in the protection of your humble homestead!  Say yes, oh fathers, to getting onto the stage of soothing a disturbed baby in public. Watch the single men wince at your struggle and watch the women flash their eyelashes and give you that “what an adorable baby” look.  I get checked out, smiled at, and eyeballed so much more and interact with so many more people than the total anonymity I feel when I am by myself.  I feel so much more alive and aware of the moment.  I know it is simply because I am out and about with my adorable baby boy named Eli.  Being a Cool Daddy rips the sterotype of being a father from the detached, 1950’s era, bread-winner-only paradigm and replaces it with a father figure who is actually involved in the day-to-day saga of raising a child. 

Those interactions with people and the daytime adventures I have with Eli are what I will be documenting here.  I will teach you the ways and means of being a Cool Daddy.  Read on, my brother, and when questions arise in your mind and you are ready to seek advise then seek it from me.  Ask me your questions by commenting below.

• Cool Daddyhood is where you will find my philosophies and ponderings on defining modern fatherhood.
• Adventures of a Boy and his Dad tells the stories of Eli and I navigating the urban and rural, the yummy and yucky, the joy and pain of our time together. 
  
• Warm Fuzzies are endearing, cute, and cuddly anecdotes from a manly point of view.
  

I am a father in “the Ham” and proud of it.

Greg and I pushed our matching orange strollers to the door of the La Patiserrie vietnamese bakery for a Friday afternoon lunch.  I was surprised by how many people were in there for the lunch-time rush. I think we were both worried about whether it would be my son or his who would start crying first. I looked at him, he shrugged, and we went in.

After ordering, both babies seemed to be on the verge of losing it.  There is something stange about being in a restaurant with a baby who is starting to make non-adult sounds.  NNNNGGGAH!  I can’t help but feel like everyone has their eyes on me.  EEEERGGG! ILSSHH!  Surely they must be thinking ‘that poor man, where is his wife’?  GRUMPHHH!  I know I am a caring father, Greg is too.  The boys are okay, I am okay, there really is no problem.  Let them stare, if they really are staring.  WAAAAAHHHH!

Greg decides to push Finn outside.  Moving him around in the cool air normally puts 3 month old Finn to sleep.  When Greg returned, I had finished eating and Eli had finished his bottle.  All was good.

It wasn’t until we were walking home that Greg told me about what had happened when  he briefly left the restaurant.  A woman still carrying her chopsticks followed him outside and said,” I hope you aren’t leaving on account of me!  There are plenty of women inside that know exactly what you are feeling.  In fact, I think it is great to see two dads out with their babies.

Whoever you were, thank you for saying something.  It made both Greg and I feel great about being Dads.