June 24, 2010: Baby toss

Having an 11-month-old is all about picking shit up off the floor. Well, not actual shit. That hasn't happened. Yet. I'm sure it's only a matter of time. I've heard some pretty harrowing potty training stories in my time. In fact, my mom would be happy to regale you with tales of terrible things my twin sister and I did as babies involving actual shit. Clearly we were babies who were bored and left unattended for far too long. Whether you call it artistic or autistic, all I can say is it was, undoubtably, all Laura's idea and I was coerced into participating. My mom says she really hopes Gavin does the same thing, wanting, I think, some kind of karmic retribution. I hope he doesn't, not only because that's gross, but also because that is a totally fucked up thing to do.

No, the shit I'm talking about is the trail of destruction left in Gavin's wake. Right now, for example, on the floor in the living room is his demonically-possessed animal puzzle, a stack of children's books, and his walker. This begins a trail, which leads into the hallway and then to the kitchen, of Tupperware lids, an elephant-face funnel, and various pots and pans. In the past week I cannot tell you how many times I have tripped over the tea kettle.

In his room I am always picking up books. He likes to pull all of them off of the shelves -- and for a baby he has a lot of books. He doesn't just throw them around, he actually looks at them and as his dexterity gets better he enjoys books more and more ("Wow, this book has more than two pages?"). We have a very book-centered household. Stacy and I have hundreds of books and are big book nerds (we don't have cable, for example), so the fact that Gavin likes his books so much is quite wonderful. But I have long since stopped trying to put them back on his shelves in any discernible order. Not that I ever had any illusion of keeping his books alphabetized or anything. But when we first brought him home he was too tiny to rearrange his bookshelf and it was all neat and tidy. Granted, I much prefer the books being used and enjoyed, but I also have to shift my standards for neatness. It's also very clear that the books Gavin loves the most are the ones in the most ruinous condition. He's hard on his books. In fact, his first favorite book, called very succinctly, Sounds, had to go to book heaven (a.k.a. the recycling center). If Sounds had been a person he/she would have no doubt been quadriplegic due to extreme spinal damage. Moreover, internal injuries were widespread (the individual board book pages peeling apart) and would have necessitated some pretty heavy duty artificial life support (i.e. glue that wouldn't have fared well in a baby's mouth). That's just no quality of life for a book.

Gavin is also in the "throw it on the floor" stage. In his hands everything might as well be a wet bar of soap. It doesn't matter what it is. If you give him a sippy cup he might drink out of it, but he definitely will hold it over the edge of his highchair tray and open his hand, following its trajectory to the floor. There was a time when he was content to hold something at the grocery store. Just giving him a box of baby cereal to hold was enough to keep him content (watching, of course, for the many teachable "not for mouths" moments). He still wants to hold things at the store, except he only wants to hold them as long as it takes to throw them out of the cart and onto the floor. This is not very gratifying for the person pushing the cart. This same scenario plays out on the changing table. A toy no longer distracts him and keeps him still. Not even a previously forbidden object like the container of diaper rash ointment or a hairbrush do the trick. He just calmly extends his arm and opens his hand, letting the object drop while not even looking at it, instead he looks at me like, "A jar of calendula cream? You're going to have to do better than that to keep me from getting my hands in my dirty diaper and/or plunging off the changing table to my death."

I am especially nervous to see how Gavin's projectile fever will play out on the airplane we'll soon be taking to California. (Actually, "projectile fever" conjures up a much different, and far more disgusting, image than a child throwing his toy monkey on the ground. It actually reminds me of this article in a parenting magazine I read recently about a mother's trials and tribulations flying alone with her three kids, one of whom was a baby with a rotovirus that didn't make itself known until after takeoff. And it kept announcing itself again and again). He was quite good on our flight to Florida at Christmas, but back then he could just barely sit up by himself. Now he's a boy with the motto: "G-O!" Plus this flight is much longer. Oh, and since we're flying Spirit, we can't sit together unless we pay extra. At least, we can't be guaranteed that we'll sit together, because they randomly assign seats to people who don't pay. NICE. And yes, Spirit is the airline that charges for checked and carry-on bags and tries to sell that shit as "an improved customer service experience" with a video on their website of their asshole CEO crammed in an overhead bin. Thankfully the carry-on policy doesn't kick in until August, so it won't apply to us. Still, that's some bullshit right there. So, yeah. Spirit and I are in a fight right now. If it wasn't so important to Stacy to have a direct flight we'd totally be taking Southwest. United also flies non-stop to LA, but price-wise it's hundreds of dollars more than Spirit. Basically United has coolers lined up in the jetway where passengers deposit things like kidneys and plasma in order to pay for their flight. But hey, if you wanted to carry a cooler containing your liver onto a Spirit flight they'd charge you an extra $30. I'm surprised they aren't charging us extra for us to bring Gavin as carry-on. It would actually be cheaper to check him.