my daughter's normal? cool...

i have recently learned two new things. i have recently confirmed two things.

1. my daughter is possessed.
2. playing music for a child in utero really works.

all drama aside, my child is not possessed but she has exhibited traits of one who may be possessed a couple of nights in the past week. she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. crazy screaming. holy shit what's happening screaming? we figured it was probably the canine teeth trying to come through, which by the way, we were told are the worse. unfortunately that is not the case so we still have that to look forward to. it's actually a sleeping disorder, my diligent researching wife found, called confusional arousal. the child is still asleep with eyes open or closed and does not recognize anything. and the more you try to talk to them and comfort them the worse it gets. of course we learned this the hard way, after the fact. she started moaning then it continued to build to thrashing around hitting pieces of furniture and throwing whatever she could get her hands on. the first time this happened, we were able to put on the backyardigans --this show at 1am when you're half asleep quickly produces a small amount of vomit in your mouth-- and she snapped out of it. this time however, the colorful singing adventurers of the backyard would not be able to save us from hurricane calli. she proceeded to send books across the room at nolyan ryan speed while scratching and pulling at my face in the midst of my futile attempts to calm her. this went on for 45 min before we gave in and let her massively destroy the living room. as i slumped in a chair, surrounded by defeat a light bulb went off in my head. and that's when the second confirmation set in.

when my wife was pregnant we wanted to find some soothing music to play for the baby and we decided on sigur ros's () album. for the last month of hillary's pregnancy she would put the head phones on her belly and play the cd. she never got past the first song out of boredom but it didn't matter. every time we place that song, calli stops what she's doing and falls into this trance. it's actually kind of surreal. i guess the womb is the safest place to be and the song takes her back there.

so, i got the cd put it on and she stopped. instantly. mid-yell-n-flail. turned toward the television --we don't have a stereo so i had to use the dvd player. desperate measures call for...-- and just stared. after a moment she crawled to get her "towel" (commonly known as the blanky) and curled up in hillary's lap. 3 plays later and she was ready to go back to bed. she slept fine the remainder of the night.

i wish there was a way for me to contact the band and explain to them how life saving their music is. and i don't mean that on some crazy fanatical level. i really mean it's life saving. i really felt like calli could have injured herself but when the first note of the first song on the cd played she went to another space and time. it's truly bizarre to watch.

talk about hard f*#king work. and to think that we chose to be parents. it's a damn good thing she's so unbelievably cute.

step-change

i comb through quite a few parenting blogs throughout the week and i have to say, there are some truly talented writers out there discussing the day to day we all go through as parents. these blogs make the commiserating process a hell of a lot easier. although i'm sure my parents would say something like "we used to actually have friends we knew and could see and talk to and blah, blah, blah". and they're probably right, again... as per usual. but that doesn't change how things work today. so, i have "friends" and i may not know what they look like (in person) and i may not even know where they live and i certainly don't know what their banana-nut bread taste like. then again how much of that matters when all i want is to find someone who's talking about how their kid also screams no and slap them in the face too.

that's not to say i don't have friends i see on a regular basis, because i do. lots of them for that matter. and we do cry together about how hard things get and how much we love these little rascals regardless of how big a turd they can be. and yeah some them do cook and the shit is damn good. my point being, the internet has opened this whole other world that helps the understanding process when it comes to the challenges of parenting. the problems may not get fixed but there's comfort in knowing that someone in chubbuck, idaho didn't sleep last night either.

which brings me to my real point. i ran across this posting about the loss of a step-parent. I have always associated the term step-parent as one who "steps-in" when the biological parent cannot or chooses not to be a part of a child's life. for the most part this statement (technically) is correct but everyone knows there's more to it than that.

i grew up with step-parents. in fact i had two step-dads from age 2-28. not at the same time but two during those ages. it all changed when i turned 29. my step-dad, who had been in my life since i was 10 came to me and asked if i would allow him to adopt me. i remember thinking, i'm nearly 30 years old and if this man still wants to claim me as his son after all the shit-fire i put him through then i would love to be his son.

we had a nice adoption ceremony on valentines day 2005 and a great party for friends and family and then my wife and i changed our last name. an overall very cool process. and i have to say as much as i didn't think it would change much, it did. i knew that i could always rely on him as a parent but as a step-child with an absent biological parent there was always this void. once i became adopted the void was filled, much to my suprise. there's been this feeling of completeness. i'm not trying to be mushy and induce tears but it's ture.

so when i read the post about how this woman lost her step-dad it really hit home. step parents are not just stand-ins. they are life's soldiers serving as the stable element a child needs to feel their way through the day. i can't imagine what my life would be with out my father (step-dad) in it.

i will enjoy the fact that my kid is growing up/i will enjoy the fact that my kid is growing up/i will enjoy the...

apparently i'm obsessed with the notion of kids growing up and moving on but i can't avoid it. it keeps popping up in my life. so i continue to comment on it boring the few readers i may have and for that i apologize. clearly it doesn't bother me enough to stop writing about it so for that i apologize as well. and i also apologize for apologizing so much.

last night was the first time calli has stayed the night away from us with someone other than a grandparent. she stayed with my sister and her fiance. now, she didn't stay very far away, they spent the night on my parents side of the duplex we own together --i know, yes we did what many would consider to be a completely ludicrous thing and went in with my folks on a piece of property. but that's a whole other story in itself. jut know that it has worked out great-- since my mom has equipped it with all the essentials for housing a toddler. but that doesn't change the fact that she did not sleep in her own bed and we did not see her for 14 hrs. don't get me wrong, i totally trust my sister and i trust her better half even more for that matter, (his mother owns a daycare) it's just that having your child sleeping in a place where the overseers only experience in child rearing would be having a dog, makes you sleep a little lighter. actually i slept like shit. but that seems to be part of it. every thing's fine-she had a great time-no broken bones-or chocking incidences-i'm worring too much-i should have known it would be ok-and so on. with this behind me, i think i'll be sleeping much better next time. it's a building process.

the real test comes next weekend when we head to our hometown for my mother's 49th birthday and my wife's grandfather's 90th birthday. we agreed to leave calli there with my mom when we return to austin. i think this may have been more a selfish move on my part but none-the-less we agreeded to it. so, we'll be coming home on sunday and my mom will be up on tuesday, which puts us nearly 48hrs and 190 miles away form calli. i do think the down time will be nice but at the same time she was gone last night for maybe 14hrs and only 25ft away and i slept like shit. this is exactly what i've been bitching about. the whole growing up thing. it seems normal,sleep overs with the grandparents or aunts and uncles, i just didn't realize this would be starting so soon. all of a sudden she doesn't need us 24/7. i know something can be said about her building these bonds and frankly, having hillary to myself is not so bad either but it doesn't change the fact that it's hard letting go of so much. i guess it has to start sometime.

so we continue to watch our baby turn into a little girl and enjoy the fact that she has so many people in her life we completely trust who want to spend so much time with her.

*i'm quickly realizing that i'm not obsessed with any notion but rather slowly understanding what being a parent is all about.

dead set and won't take no for an answer

it seems parents only talk about how their kids get older- change-they can hardly keep up-blah-blah-blah. i get just as tired of hearing this as the next guy but bottom line --it's true. they grow up so fast and you want nothing more than to sit and watch tv holding that warm bundle knowing you're all they need in life. as much as i loved those days --i think i'll long for them more as calli does get older-- her crazy personality is so much fun right now.

it's wild to see the independence start to set in. she only wears the clothes she picks out and when she makes up her mind about something there's no changing it.

a few weeks ago after a bath she put on a nightgown and then had to put on shoes. she wasn't going anywhere but still she had to have them. so she went to sleep with them on and asked to take them off in the morning. no big deal just a normal thing. who knows why but that's how it went down.

on our way home from the park the other day she put on her favorite pair of elton john sunglasses and wore them proudly. so proudly she wouldn't take them off. she got in the tub and when hillary took off the glasses to wash her face she flipped out. i mean real-tears-long-silent-open-mouth-breath-intake-prior-to-scream flip out. so she quickly washed her face and as soon as i got the glasses back on she stopped. pretty amazing. she definitely knows what she wants. thankfully she let me take them from her when i went to put her in bed and she hasn't asked for them since.

not quite sure what prompts these ideas but damn it's fun to watch.

calli's first airshow

i mentioned before that planes are one of calli's favorite things right now. every time i pull out the laptop she comes over and begs -- airpane, airpane. then i'm subjected to viewing stock photos of random planes for the next 15 min. so, when we heard the air show would be going on in our hometown we had to go. lucky for us my folks had super cool-super exclusive vip passes. free lunch and all.

we got there and she seemed to have died and gone to heaven. she loved everything about it. the noise, the flying, the pilots even the annoying hearing protectors she hated at first.

the weather could have been better but form the most part the air show went down in the books as a complete success.