milestones

Last week, a friend was asking me about when the little D had started talking more.  And I realized that I actually couldn't quite remember.  And thinking about it more, I've realized I've been bad about noting milestones in general.  So I'm going to make a desperate attempt to catch up, just so my kid doesn't have yet another reason to hate me as a teenager.  Actually, what happened too was that I started googling a bit to see what was normal at her age, and realized that she's quite a sharp little cookie.  And whatever happens the rest of her life, at least she can look back on these years and know that she was at the top of her game.

Communication:  It's in this area that the little miss shines.  Clearly takes after her mother!  I read that between the ages of 2 and 3, a child's vocabulary grows from 50 to about 300 words.  But I remember starting a list soon after her 18-month appointment and counting almost 50 words already.  So we have to be well on our way at this point.  Back then, her vocabulary consisted of mostly animals and body parts.  She could identify more wildlife than I could.  Nowadays, her vocabulary has grown to include more useful things, telling us what she wants to eat, ordering the dogs around, and answering simple questions.  Her ability to identify pictures in books - which started ages ago now, it seems - has grown by leaps and bounds.  She often knows what's coming in her favorite books before we turn the page.  She knows purple, pink, yellow, red, green, and blue consistently.  And can usually point out orange, white, and black.  This was a leap from even her 2nd birthday when she knew just purple.  She high fives and fist bumps and waves.

She makes short sentences now, of 2-3 words.  Sometimes she seems to even be using pronouns properly, which is a recent development.   So for example, if I say, "Oh Diya, there you are", she might say, "Here I am."

She's not very clear to anyone but us, and I'm not sure how much pronunciation fits into all this.  Her poo poo sounds a lot like purple, and she says "meore" instead of more.  Words that she's been saying incorrectly for a long time, she continues to say the way she always has.  Elephant has always been "yaya", though I imagine that if she were to learn to say it now, it'd sound closer to the real thing.

Cognitive.  Not sure what exactly would fit in this, but as far as I can see, the kid's too smart for her own good at times.  She's starting to recognize her name when she sees it spelled, and has started trying to spell it.  She gets as far as D-I-Y on a good day, with prompting.  She can count to 3, misses a few, and then can pick up again with 7-8-9.  She recognizes a few other letters too, besides the ones in her name, like M.  She knows that red light means stop and green means go.  She's all about organizing.  So when she plays with Legos, for example, she puts the same color blocks together, and hates when you mismatch.  She makes believe all the time now with her stuffed animals.  First, it started off with her giving us tea back at 18-months or so.  Then she pretended to give her animals tea.  Now, she puts her animals to sleep or talks to them and has them talk back to her.  "Yes, bear?  No bear, you wait," I've heard her say as she drags her bear with us to go to potty.  "Diya pee pee, bear wait."

Soon after we told her she's going to be a sister, she took 2 of her stuffed bears and started calling one of them "baby bear" and the other "sister bear."

Her memory is better than mine.

Social/Emotional:  The little D's always been shy and that hasn't changed.  She's interested in other kids but only from a distance.  She's recently learned the meaning of "scared" and says it often now when other people are close, as she hides behind my legs.  Actually, she seems to have a decent grasp on several emotions, which I found fascinating.  I don't know, seems so abstract.  But she knows scared, happy, and sad, and we've been working on hopeful, patient, and selfish.  By "working" I mean that we have a little book that talks about emotions and she seems to dig the pictures.  :)

Recently, I was washing my hands, and she climbed up her stool, saying "Diya's turn."  So I guess she gets the concept of waiting her turn.

Motor:  Here's where our kid's skills are weakest.  Well, I guess it depends on what you look at.  Her fine motor skills are pretty incredible, I think.  I was recently looking at a list of good toys for this age, and the site suggested 3-4 piece puzzles.  The little D's been doing that since she was at least 18 months old, probably even longer  She's way past that now.  G actually bought her a 50-piece puzzle with the 50-states a couple of months ago.  I'd say she's on the young side for that still, especially on the east coast, but it doesn't stop him from showing her.  We have these magnetic tiles that she'll build things with.  She can get a good stack going with blocks and legos.  She's great with tweezers, picking up something small and putting it somewhere else.  She's been able to eat with a spoon since just over 12 months, and drinking from a regular cup pretty reliably for almost a year (thanks to our daycare, nothing to do with us).  She can organize our silverware and nowadays we only sometimes find things out of place there.    

With the big stuff, I imagine, she's quite behind.  Even before we found out she had hip dysplasia, she was slow in this area, slow to roll over and sit up.  She started crawling in her brace at just over a year, and took her first steps a few months before her 2nd birthday.  She's walking well now, and builds up pretty good speed, but not running.  She seems uncertain still in different terrain, like sand and tan bark.  And her gait is still that of a younger toddler, I think, wide-legged.  She can't jump with both feet off the ground, although she seems to be trying.  She needs help climbing up stairs.  She can get up onto couches on her own, and if we give her time, into her carseat.  Over the weekend, we were out and G and I were talking and suddenly realized that our kid had pulled herself up onto her stroller and was sitting and waiting to go.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw her trying to walk backwards, but she hasn't seemed too interested in doing this regularly.  She can pull toys behind her (she likes walking her alligator and snail), and carry a bunch of things while she's walking.

So there you have it.  Not too shabby, eh?  I'll probably try to do this more often just so that I can keep track of how she's coming along.  I feel bad that I haven't been doing it more already.  I guess milestones don't really matter until you realize your kid may be rocking them.  :)

31 weeks

Well, I know it's been a while since I posted, so it's time to get back on track.  I guess there wasn't much going on around here.  I mean, nothing really.  The little D turned 2 a few months ago.  TWO!!!  She went in for surgery 10 days later, and then went in for a second attempt a few weeks after that.  We were hospitalized a few times.  She was on a 2-week course of antibiotic treatment that required her to have a long-term IV line (well, you know, for 2 weeks at least).  And after it all, she potty trained.  Oh yah, by the way, she's potty trained now.  And I'm 31 weeks pregnant.  So sure, nothing major going on at all in our house.  Just the same old, same old.  Each of these, of course, deserves a post all on its own, and as usual, I've got plenty to say about it all now that I'm back on track.

But first things first.  Something truly horrible happened last week, and I'm still trying to adjust.  So for a long time now, I've gotten Brazilian waxes.  That's right, I'm going there, so if you really don't want to know this about me, I'd suggest you skip today's post and wait for toddler updates tomorrow.  Every 6 weeks or, I go to a lady that yanks off all my hair down there and I love it.  It started off years ago with simple trims now and again during swimsuit season.  And what can I say, it's like cocaine.  You can't get enough.  Before I knew it, it was everything but a strip, and now I just have them yank it all off.  It hurts like hell, but man, the effect makes me crawling back for more every time.

This time, though, it had been months.  The girl I recently started going to had a baby.  A few days before my scheduled appointment.  The nerve right?  (She was great for a few stories though, I gotta say.  Talk about hippy dippy -- she wasn't just about natural childbirth, she actually didn't get an ultrasound during her entire pregnancy because well, you know, women for centuries haven't gotten ultrasounds, so why does she need one).  Anyway, so I thought I'd have another month or so to find some one, but instead, she emailed a few days before my appointment saying she thought labor was close and she just couldn't see anymore people for a while.  Serves me right for pushing out my appointment until a few days before her due date.

So I stalled on finding some one new because it's always hard to find some one new.  Some one that's good at this (though never painless.  Lately I've only gone to estheticians who get rave reviews on being painless, but anyone that tries to tell you that a bikini wax is painless is just full of shit).  So anyway, I stalled.  Then couldn't find some one with an immediate opening.  Before I knew it, several months had passed.  And I was just itching for a wax already (LITERALLY itching, I mean, sorry to be gross).

Then I got the bright idea to at least trim a bit down there so it didn't become a rainforest.  Which is a fine idea most of the time.  I mean, I have a little trimmer that I've occasionally used.  I guess it's not a big deal, though it's usually just to take the edge off until the next appointment.  And that's when I realized.  I grabbed my trimmer, a little mirror I have, some paper towels for easy clean up and started to go for it. . . Except whoa, I couldn't see past my belly.  My hulking 30+ week pregnant belly that juts out like a basketball right in front of me.  And no amount of twisting, turning, mirror twirling did anything.  I gave it a go anyway, because I'm stupid like that, botched it horribly (I imagine anyway) and promptly scheduled an appointment with the next available Brazilian waxer.  Even more horrifying than realizing that I'm at that point in my pregnancy (and have been for quite a while already, I think) was having to explain to my waxer why I was all patchy down there.  Fun times.

the worse is yet to come

A few weeks ago, I admitted to some coworkers that we had never baby-proofed.  “Not even socket covers?” one of them asked.  Nope, not even a single socket cover.  The most we’ve done is buy a mat for a section of brick in front of our fire place.  And we only did that because the little D’s play mat is right in front of it, and we figured it was a head banging waiting to happen.

Usually the response when I say such things is a little bit of awe.  So lately, I’ve been pausing to think of how lucky we’ve gotten with our little one.  I almost have to do this because there seems to be so much screaming all the time these days.  And I need to think of something/ANYTHING to calm myself down.

So ya, our claim to fame is that we’ve never baby proofed.  For a few weeks, back when she was less than a year old, the little D started a practice where she’d crawl over to sockets while I was in the shower and couldn’t get to her.  It entailed a few soapy exits on my part, but it didn’t really last.  I waited for it to get worse, but it never did.  These days, I still shower with her in the bathroom.  I set a few toys on the floor and she either plays with them or entertains herself playing peek a boo with me from around the corner of the bathroom.  The moment the shower turns off, she’ll ask me, “all done?” and then take off.  It’s bizarre.  She can take off any time she wants.  I leave the door open.  In the beginning, I’d close of all the bedroom doors and put the dog gate up in the hallway so she didn’t have far to wander.  But I’ve realized that she doesn’t really want to go anywhere.  A few times she opened the cupboard but realized there was nothing exciting in there for her to play with.

When we visited my father-in-law a while back, he was impressed that she made no move for the big bowl of water that was set out for the dogs.  I wasn’t surprised.  For a while, when she was first learning to crawl, she liked playing in the dog water.  It was disgusting and she’d be covered.  I couldn’t help it, I laughed every time she did it.  Finally, I managed to stop and mostly ignored her(other than to change her every time she did it).  It was a quick phase that she outgrew before we knew it.  Clearly, we didn't do much to try to break her of the habit.  These days, she seems to know that it’s off limits.  Early on, I think she realized that it was for the dogs.  What’s funny about it is that if G were to take the exact same bowl, clean it out and fill it up with water for her to play with, she’d go to town.

Speaking of dogs, she’s never tortured ours.  Maybe their size puts her off a little, but she has no problem telling Tucker to “beep beep” or chasing Mia with her bike.  Or kicking them off their beds.  Or yelling for them to come "here."  So I don’t think it’s fear necessarily.  She pets gently.  She’s never tried to climb on Mia, although we’ve put her on Mia’s back plenty of times.  And she usually waits patiently for them to move when they’re in her way.  Well, or cries at me, but doesn't get too pushy with them.

She hates diaper changes but will help by lifting up her butt.  She’s never tried to roll off the table.  If I’m changing on the floor, she’ll wait patiently until I tell her I’m done and that she can go.  Even in the midst of a screaming fit, she’ll cooperate (for example, she might not like you putting her pants on, but she’ll hold her legs out while tantrum-ing).  She respects the edge of the bed and has never tried to fly off it.  I think both G and I have even dozed off while she played quietly between us.

We buy toys that caution against small parts and choking hazards.  Even as a tiny baby, I can’t remember her really trying to eat anything she wasn’t supposed to.  I let her play with lima beans and rice kernels.  G lets her play with his wedding ring.  G fed her a cherry a while back and she ate the fruit but spit out the pit.  I often set her on the kitchen counter while I’m cooking, and let her stir.  If she sees stray pieces of dog food on the ground, she’ll put it in the dog bowl.  She can open any cupboard she wants.  We never bothered putting away our medicine or cleaning supplies.  In fact, for a while, we let her play with the Excedrin bottle (I wouldn’t recommend that though, just FYI.  Because there will inevitably be a time when she manages to open the bottle and pills will go flying all over the room, and you wonder if just maybe she decided to eat one.  And then spend the rest of the morning googling about babies who eat Excedrin.).

I have no idea how it happened.  And my kid is definitely not an angel.  God, anything but.  Just with respect to child proofing, we’ve never had to be that concerned.  I’m not sure how we got this lucky.  If anything, I’d say G and I are more permissive than not.  Pills?  Sure, why not, take this bottle, it’s bigger.  Wanna go play in the cupboard?  Here, may as well put this away while you’re over there.  The dresser?  Sure, just watch your fingers.  And the thing is, I'm not saying all this to brag.  I think, mostly, I'm just scared.  Because now that we've had it good, we're about to have another.  And I'm terrified that our house and all the little D's toys will be a million death traps for a wild-and-crazy #2.  What do you think, anyone care to bet on this with me?

my kid's HELLA smart

So, ages ago, our pediatrician suggested that we get the little D into physical therapy.  I asked our ortho about it, and she said, no, we don't need it.   She'll catch up when she's good and ready.  And of course her legs are stiff because she was still in the brace at the time.  So PT was unlikely to do any good because well, hello, her legs were going to go right back into that position for a good portion of the day.

Of course I happened to mention this to my folks and they wouldn't let it go.  "What about physical therapy?"  my mom would ask incessantly.   Because, you know, she knows best, and we all know my mom's propensity for getting the best deal from our docs.  Apparently a friend of theirs, a pediatrician, had also asked about PT.  It could just be one of those things where reasonable minds differ, but I'm going to go with the opinion of our specialist who treats our daughter for the condition, thanks very much. And I say that even though I love our ped and trust her quite a bit.  And you know, my mother and whichever random friend she was talking to.

And the annoying thing was that my mom would NOT let it go.  "Your mom was saying she'll be fine after she gets some physio" a cousin from India was telling me one time when we were talking about Diya's hips.  Um, ok yes, sure.  After every ped appointment, my mom would ask pointedly, "What did your doctor say about the hips?"  Usually, I'd blow it off with something along the lines of how we went to our ped for a regular check up, not for hip stuff.  Once, she said, "But pediatricians know a lot too."  And I knew exactly what she was passive-aggressively referring to.  OMG, already, my mother does not know how to let something go.  And really, why would you go against the advice of your specialist and worry about somehow undoing all the progress you've already made?  It made no sense to me.  But I think the difference between our ped (and my mother apparently) is that they were concerned about the little D's milestones, that she wasn't standing/walking, etc.  But our ortho (and G and I) are concerned first with the state of her hips.  Kids with dysplasia are perfectly capable of standing and walking, which is why the condition can sometimes go undiagnosed for a while.  It doesn't say much about the actual hip development if she can walk or not.  So while we waited anxiously for her to reach each milestone, I think the priority had to be first on the x-rays.

In January, when our ortho decided to let the little D free from her brace entirely, her hip wasn't quite fixed yet.  But what tipped the decision was that our kid was still really stiff, and our doc thought giving her some time to loosen up could only help with the hip development.  Well, last month, we had our hip appointment and guess what, our kid's hips are PERFECT!   The ortho actually said that she had to look at the old x-rays to remind herself which hip had been dislocated!!!!  So as far as the radiology is concerned, we are totally in the clear.  We'll continue to monitor to make sure everything is developing correctly, but I think the chances of her needing any further intervention are pretty slim now.  We'll still keep going in for increasingly less frequent x-rays until the little D's 18, so we'll become excellent friends with our ortho.

So NOW, it's just a matter of catching up.  And so far, she's still really stiff.  Having her off the brace helped a lot, and we see so much improvement, but we still have a long ways to go.  So at this point, our ortho doc thought it might be a good time to try some physical therapy.  HA, guess what I'm not telling my mother?  :)

Anyway, we've been going for a few weeks now.  A day or two before we went, Diya took her first few steps unassisted.  I didn't see it, but G did.  At the PT appointment, she took a few more and it was exciting for me to see it finally.  Oh, guess what, too?  The PT has all kinds of toys to get the kids to do stuff, but you know what our kid likes?  These little fruit/yogurt bites.  So yah, we tempt her around the room with treats, similar to how we did our dog training.  :)  The PT's sort of helping her walk but she seems to agree that D is pretty close on her own already.  Instead, she's more focused on the stiffness.  Our kid doesn't really bend her knees when she walks, especially with her "bad" leg.  Her hips are extremely stiff. So she's given us exercises to strengthen the pelvic bone and the hip, and to make her use her right hip when climbing.  She noticed for example, that when she's coming to a stand, our kid leads with her left hip and then just kind of drags her right one along after, without having to put weight on it.  So this means she's been developing unevenly as far as strength goes.

Kind of as aside, the PT has also been doing some developmental testing to gauge the little D's abilities in other areas.  And is it sad that THIS was the reason I wanted to post?  I mean, sure I'm EXCITED about the hips, and THRILLED about the walking.  But guess what had me cheerful all last week?  Our kid apparently has amazing fine motor skills and visual motor skills.  I watched, impressed, as she had the little D performing tasks that I didn't even know she could do. Twist off the tops of the bottles, stack blocks in different positions, draw lines on paper the way the PT was doing (up/down, across, etc).  At one point, the therapist was looking for harder tasks to give her because she was acing everything.  "Um, you haven't let her play with scissors yet, have you?  Cuz that'd be next."  We had not.  At least in these two areas, she was at the 31-month level and counting.  Plus, I guess her vocabulary is pretty good for her age, too.  So TAKE THAT, hip dysplasia!

the diabolical mind at bedtime

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in my kid's head.  But these days, at bedtime, I'm pretty sure though that it's something like this:

7:00 pm -- Insist on going outside.  And taking my ride.  That'll do it!  By the time they get the dirt off me and get back inside, maybe they'll forget that it's almost bedtime already.

7:15 pm (assuming the outside tactic did not work; if it did, at least 7:30pm):  "No!!!  No books!"

7:35 pm -- Fine, if I have to read, then I want to read a million of them.  Wait, wait, not that one. "No!!  THIS one.  Umm, THIS."

7:45 pm -- Hmm, this book reading thing isn't so bad.  I wonder if I can get Dada to read more if I look cuter and ask nicely.  

7:50 pm -- Laugh while he changes your diaper and say "pee-yew."   That usually gets him laughing for a few minutes longer.  Take your time picking out pjs.  Ask for more milk. Make sure you have every single lovey blanket you own with you.     

8:00 pm -- Insist on mama. Insist on mama.  Because she's probably in the middle of something in the kitchen.

8:01 pm -- Look cute for mama.  She's the soft one.  Tell her, "mama!  Nose!"  She'll be proud of you for knowing where your nose is.  Sometimes, she'll pretend to be asleep.  Just keeping yelling "Mama!!"   Poke her eye if needed.  

8:02 pm -- Standing!

8:04 pm -- "Mi?  Dada!!!!   Dada!!!!  Mi!!!"  Because Dada loves running over to bring you more milk.  Tell him you want it cold but then ask for it to be warm AFTER he gets there with it.  

8:15 pm -- Hmm, all that cuteness and Mama still left you in the crib????  Oh well, time to practice walking.  And singing.  And jumping.  And playing with the 7 thousand lovey blankets they let you keep in your crib now.  When else do you have all this privacy?

8:30 pm --  Uh oh, Dada's back.  Tell him you've pooped.  He might sniff you for a minute but then leave you back to your jumping.  Or insist on Mama, that works too.  

8:45 pm -- Uh oh, Mama!!!  Gather your million lovey blankets, dive back down and pretend to be asleep. She'll totally buy it.  If not, tell her your hungry.  Yell, "Dada!!!!!  Dada!!!!  Rice???"  If you've been sick, that might work and he'll actually bring you some.  

9 pm -- Dammit, can't say awake anymore.  Feeling so sleepy .  . . 

the trouble with ideals . . .

is that they can be awfully hard to live by.

When our kid was born, I swore that we wouldn't let her watch tv until at least 2.  That's the recommendation offered by the American Pediatric Society, and it makes sense to me.  But right from the get go, I realized one huge problem with the plan.  G and I love tv.  We watch it a lot.  So suddenly trying to live by a rule that basically had us not turning the tv on while the kid was in the room was total torture.  But still, for the most part, we've done pretty well.  For the first few months of her life, it didn't matter because she didn't register tv anyway.  And then somewhere around four months, when we noticed her fascination with the bright lights, we turned it off in her presence and it stayed off.  Fortunately, she has an early bedtime, so once she's out for the night, we get to watch WHATEVER we want.

Until now.  Despite the no-tv rule, the one thing that we did do was let the little D watch short videos on our phone now and then.  Usually youtube videos of dogs and babies, or random videos that our friends posted on FB.  And when she turned a year, a friend gave us a DVD called "Science is Real" that's pretty awesome.  It's basically a series of music videos about science-related topics for children, created by They Might Be Giants.  It's super cute.  D's a bit young to grasp the concepts, but it's catchy, and I figured, what the hell, it's educational.   Sure, it was cheating a bit, but those few moments here and there got us through hospital procedures and long plane rides. Because, it's not really cheating if it's for a GOOD CAUSE.

And then, D developed her love for monkeys (well, basically all animals, but she especially loves to say "oooh oooh oooh").  So G thought she might like a few minutes of Curious George here and there.  So he found a series of short videos on Netflix and showed her every so often, just a minute or two now and then.  Usually when we were in bed on weekend mornings and didn't want to get up that early.  Whatever app or video we show her, we always sit and watch with her.  Maybe twice, we've handed her our phones when she got a little fussy in the car and let her watch a few minutes of something.  And it's never been more than maybe 10 minutes tops.

But you see where this is going, right?  This, my friends, is how it all starts.  Suddenly, I can't really claim to not let my kid watch TV anymore.  Well, I mean, I can, but it wouldn't be entirely accurate.  Especially after a month or two ago when I was sick and G was working.  I made the huge jump of actually letting her watch a George episode on the big screen, our living room tv.  I was miserable, already laying on the couch, and it seemed like not such a bad idea at the time, you know, to cuddle up with my kid and watch this inane monkey thing that I've seen a good dozen times now?  But somehow, watching tv on an actual TV (as opposed to our phone or laptop) suddenly seemed like I had slipped into terrible-parent mode. It's like the point of no return or something.  For a good week after that, our kid kept trying to turn the tv on and ask for "un-key."  It took all our distraction powers combined to resist.  Fortunately, she seems to have forgotten about it now.

Oh, of course there was that Elmo and that potty incident, too.   We still can't set her on the dang toilet without her asking for Elmo.  A few months ago, we took D to my brother's and were shocked when she pointed to their tv and said proudly "tee-vee".  How did she even what it was?  Or who Elmo was for that matter.  Now, we can no longer plead ignorance.

And finally, this morning happened.  We were laying in bed.  G was leaving for work.  I was kind of half asleep.  D was just jumping on our bed and grabbing things off the night stands like she always does. She pulled over the 3 remotes we have sitting on G's side (because come on, y'all know my husband -- it would be too easy to just have ONE remote).  And suddenly, she pointed one towards the tv in our bedroom and asked for the damn "un-key."!!!  How the f-- does she know??  It's been so long since we've watched tv in there that I don't even know which remote controls it.  And I certainly don't know how to watch Netflix back there.  But I guess it's not a huge jump to go from one tv to another.  Clearly, she's not fooled by the fact that it's in an entirely different part of the house.  Go figure.

I'm sad to say that I caved.  Because while I was playing around with the remote and trying to grab G before we walked out the door, guess what my kid was doing?  Making herself comfortable by dragging a pillow over to the headboard, pulling the covers up, and snugging in with her lovey blankets.  Sigh.  I'm guessing that many ideals are going to be shattered in the face of such goddamn cuteness.   And honestly, those 20 minutes where she snuggled up next to me and pointed out all the things in her video might just have been worth it.

fathers

With Father's Day around the corner, I've been thinking a lot about good dads.  Specifically, I've been thinking that our kid is pretty darn lucky to have an awesome dad.  Those of you that know G even a little bit are probably shocked to hear this.  Believe me, it was a bit of a shock to me, too, and he may have even surprised himself a little.  But when it comes to parenting, my husband's kind of da bomb.

Lately, I feel like I've heard a lot about friends' husbands who don't "help" out as much around the house or with the kids.  To be honest, I think it rubs me the wrong way to hear it phrased quite that way.  I mean, I could care less how other people about it.  But if G were to talk to me about “helping” me to parent OUR child, I’d be pretty livid.  Because doesn’t helping make it sound like it’s my responsibility to begin with and he's doing me a favor by chipping in?  I don’t know, at least that’s the way I’d see it, but that’s probably another rant for a different day.  Maybe you'll be lucky and I'll go off on it at the next party like I've been known to in the past.

Fortunately for all of us, my husband seems to view parenting the way I do.  Sure he might ask me about "babysitting" our child, but only because he knows it annoys me.  He knows how ridiculous it sounds.  I've never had to ask for "help."  He does for our daughter happily what a good parent would do . . . feed her, bathe her, play with her, tell her he loves her, wake up with her in the middle of the night.  I don't think there's a single aspect of parenthood that he hasn't dived into with equal enthusiasm. Well, ok, enthusiasm is a strong word.  Oh, and he probably doesn't spend hours on the internet reading about how to regulate naps or make baby food.  But for the most part, we're a team, and I'm reminded of it daily.  

When I first went back to work after maternity leave, he took a few weeks off to stay home with our then 6-month old.  He'd send me photo updates throughout the day.  During that time, and any time when I've gone to work and he hasn't, he takes night shifts, knowing he might be able to catch a few zzz's during the day.  I don't have to ask, he just does.  When's the little D's been sick (and that's been often), we take turns staying home with her.  When she gets up at night, he's gotten up just as often as I have, if not more.  Sure, when I was breastfeeding, it was a little hard for him to contribute the same way.  But even those nights, as soon as I went back to work, he took his turn changing diapers and putting D to sleep after she nursed.  When it comes to me taking time away from D, he's never been anything but encouraging.  It's hard for me to leave her but never been hard for him to take on the challenge.  I'd hesitantly propose one night, he inevitably says take two.  Sometimes, ok, often, in the mornings on weekends, I roll over and say, "Maybe you could go grab her."  And he mostly always does.  

These days, sometimes, our kid plays favorites.  But she'll just as often cry out for dada as she does for me.  When he's gone, she'll look for him.  She asks for him as soon as she wakes up in the morning.  Whether she's with me or her dad, she is guaranteed the same naps, the same meals, the same basic routine.  I've never worried that he'll forget to change her diaper or feed her on schedule.  I don't leave him to-do lists.  Sure, there were those times she fell off the high chair and opened a bottle of Excedrin on his watch, but she survived.

We do more than our share of fighting.  A few weeks ago, he got the kid hooked on pub mix.  And of course he works too much.  But D will never find him to be anything less than an active parent.  A few weeks ago, a friend watched him playing with both our girls and made a comment about he was a natural at parenting.  While I sometimes get bored putting the same puzzle together a million times, G was telling me lately that he "liked hanging out" with our kid and always had a good time. Whatever.

Anyway, I don't know how you do, but I love that you've always taken on the challenge of parenting as a 2-man job.  And  your kid might just love you more than me.  Happy father's day!\
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