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The following is an email thread from this morning.  I didn’t think much of it as we were replying to each other, but now I’ve decided to archive it here, as a cautionary tale to those who don’t know what they’re getting themselves into when considering parenthood.  The original message is at the bottom, and the replies are at the top.

One of the skills in being a good parent is knowing what your child wants.  Some things are pretty easy to guess when you consider the auxiliary evidence, like say, when her bottom stinks to high heaven.  Ah, her need would be a diaper changing.

Other times, it’s not so evident.  Just recently, we’ve gone through a rash of occasions where we just couldn’t figure out what it was Maddie wanted.  It’d be meal time, and she’d be whinning and fussing reaching for the food.  So, we’d scoop some up and offer it to her.  Then she’d violently shake her head, and swipe at the food.  Okaay…

Some times, when I’m here on the computer, she’d come in to the room, and try and draw my attention away from the computer.  “Mmmm!  Mmmmm!”  I’d try and finish what I’m doing, unless she finds the pretty light on the power button to the computer.  Trust me on this:  You only make the mistake of letting babies near pretty power buttons once, if ever.

  “Mmmm!  Mmmmm!”  She’d start tugging at me.  Oh, how sweet.  She misses me and wants my attention.  So I save off my work, and turn my attention to her.  Okay, Baby, here comes Da Da!

  “Waaah!  Eh, waaah! Waa!”

  “What, what?  I thought you wanted to play with me.  What is it?  What do you want?”

  It took me a while, but it became clear when Maddie would run in a circle around me, grab the chair and make futile little climbing gestures at it.

  She wanted to use the computer.

PS.  It was the same thing with the food.  She didn’t want us to offer her food.  She wanted to get it herself.

Maddie activities:

• Gnawing balloons.
• Scattering wooden blocks
• “Sorting” clothes
• Kazoo playing
• Spinning and falling
• Running from Da da.
• Watching the hunter.

Last week, Maddie was acting very strangely during naptime.  She was restless and listless at the same time.  I tried to comfort her by staying in the nursery with her, but that wasn’t enough.  Only when I picked her up did I realize she was hot.  I took her temperature, and it turned out to be 103.5.  Well, the nap wasn’t going to happen, so I took her downstairs with me, but nothing interested her there either.  It was hard to see her so hot and uncomfortable.  But…

Although I really hated the fact that she was sick, it caused something amazing to happen.  As I was lying down, she crawled up to me and put her head on my arm and — get this — stayed put.  She normally never would have let me hold her.  She’d be too busy “helping us” by sorting things in drawers where we’d never guess to look for them, or scattering blocks all around the floor.  So she gave me a moment of peace and a chance to touch her back lovingly.

I hated the fact that she was sick, but I really enjoyed holding her.

Made with the trial version of Fog Creek’s City Desk.  So far so good!

Last night after tucking Maddie in, and kissing my wife goodbye as she went to work, I settled down to watch “A Fighter’s Blues.”  (A Hong Kong movie about a Chinese Kick Boxer visiting Thailand and meeting a Japanese orphanage worker.)

I was pretty comfortable laying lengthwise along the couch, relishing the solitude, when out of nowhere a big spider crawled across my arm and chest.  A quick spider.  Zip, and it was gone.  I barely had time to flick it.  It was slightly juicy, and kind of ant shaped, except for more and longer legs.  Ugh!  I imagined spiders crawling on me off and on for the rest of the night.

The next day while changing the baby, I felt another imaginary spider on my leg, only it turned out to be a real ant.  Where’d that come from?  Dang it, it turns out the family room was being scouted by about 20 ants.  Lucky that it wasn’t more before I caught them I guess…

In the spirit of making this journal accessible to like-minded individuals, I’m making it semi-blogchalk compliant.  

If you followed the link, you’d see the intent is that someone who wants to find blogs by locale (or interest, in my case) can do so.  But this requires the writers of the blogs create a page (like this) that includes certain keywords that are also listed as keywords in the page header.  In my case, those keywords would be:  English, United States, California, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Milpitas, Daddy, Mommy, Maddie, Babies, and Children.