{"id":2904,"date":"2005-02-22T22:41:27","date_gmt":"2005-02-23T05:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=2904"},"modified":"2005-02-22T22:41:27","modified_gmt":"2005-02-23T05:41:27","slug":"one-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2005\/02\/22\/one-down\/","title":{"rendered":"One Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The Squirrelly is one year old<\/a> today. So says the calendar, at any rate. If I had to guestimate how long I’ve been father, based on how quickly\/slowly time has flown\/crawled by since Birthday #0, I’d reckon about ((F-5) + ((S*3) \/ (W2<\/sup> – A)) – C) months, where F is my current frustration level on a scale from 1 to 10 (with 0 as “child asleep” and 10 as “in the middle of trying to change diaper while child simulates a paint shaker”), S = my current sleep debt (in hours), W = number of times in the past four weeks the kid has successfully prevented The Queen and I from wrasslin’ by employing one of his many Sibling Prevention Techniques, A = number of alcoholic beverages I’ve consumed prior to contemplating the question, and C = his cuteness constant of 210.<\/p>\n

Recently The Squirrelly has begun taking steps. He will stand up and take a tottering lurch toward something before giving up, resuming his quadrapedic lifestyle, and crawling to his destination in a flash. Grandpa Baldwin thinks that he will start walking-for-real by the end of the month, but, if he’s anything like his father, that might be overly optimistic. I can hunt-and-peck about 70 words a minute, and although I have tried to switch to touch-typing countless times over the last 15 years, I inevitably get frustrated in mid-email and revert to my two-fingers method. Given the speed at which The Squirrelly can crawl and the genetic material he carries, he may be crawling up to receive his diploma at 18.<\/p>\n

Still, he’s a little ahead of the game, locomotion-wise. But he appears to be behind the curve in the language department. Other kids his age have said their first words, or, at the very least, wave bye-bye with a little prompting. The Squirrelly, meanwhile, has given no indication that he will be conjugating verbs anytime soon. Apparently this is normal: at one year of age there are walkers, and there are talkers, but there are very few walkie-talkies. Given a choice we would have opted for a kid who could charmingly exclaim “duck!” rather than one who can wander into the laundry room and eat “Tide” straight from the box, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that our desires and The Squirrelly’s development belong to mutually exclusive sets. We wanted a kid who could clean gutters by now, for instance, and that hasn’t panned out.<\/p>\n

But he’s healthy and super-fun and completely normal. We have to keep reminding ourselves of this latter fact, because, like all parents, we are constantly (and often subconsciously) comparing our child’s development with that of his peers and fretting about any differences, real or imagined. It doesn’t help that most parenting books focus almost exclusively on Things That Can Go Terribly, Terribly Wrong. That’s why I’m going to write a book for new parents called Your Child Is Completely Normal<\/em>, to serve as a counterweight to the “guides” that trade in wanton fearmongering. My book will read like this:<\/p>\n

All the books we’re read say that infants will roll over by themselves by week 14 but our baby is 14 weeks, four days old and still can’t do it! Should we be concerned?<\/em><\/p>\n

Your child is completely normal.<\/p>\n

Our baby used to make eye contact with us all the time, but now he won’t ever look at us when we speak to him. Is he becoming antisocial?<\/em><\/p>\n

Your child is completely normal.<\/p>\n

Junior is only four months old, but he already says sentences, like “get out!” and “Captain Howdie says no!” Also, he floats above the bed and can rotate his head 360 degrees. Is this unusual?<\/em><\/p>\n

Your child is completely normal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Telly Savalas as my witness, I think this would be a best-seller.<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday, Squirrelly — the best years are yet to come! For your mother and I, I mean. Once you figure out that gutter-cleaning thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Squirrelly is one year old today. So says the calendar, at any rate. If I had to guestimate how long I’ve been father, based on how quickly\/slowly time has flown\/crawled by since Birthday #0, I’d reckon about ((F-5) + ((S*3) \/ (W2 – A)) – C) months, where F is my current frustration level […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-squirrelly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}