Hippy!

 My camera is officially dead (which reminds me that I have to call the warranty people today) so I grabbed a few shots with the laptop camera of my little hippy daughter.

The quality isn't as good but my little one is still just as adorable.

Don't mind the scary-looking guy. He's scary but his heart is gold.

 It only took approximately 57 tries to get her to stand still long enough for each good picture that we took.

I really need to shave.

This is my new favorite picture of her.

She really is absolutely adorable! I love that dress on her and if she'd keep that hairband on for more than a few seconds I'd use it to hold back her hair every day.

Unfortunately, she has a different way that she prefers to wear that particular hairband.

Yeah.

Seriously.

She walks around the room with it like this. She much prefers it this way.

My daughter is ridiculous.

My Head Is Elsewhere

My camera is kind of broken and my head hasn't been in the write place recently. I apologize for the dearth of updates and I'm planning on more coming somewhere down the line. For now I'll just try to say hi every now and then.

"I have no idea how those got there, daddy."

I'd like to take a nap during Lois' nap-time but that's becoming less and less of an actual thing.

As you can see here, she protests her naps rather effectively. She does this while screaming and crying and generally doing things that are not conducive to taking a nap.

She's up now, laying on the couch behind me and watching TV. She's exhausted but I don't have the fight in me to make her stay in her room.

She's being quiet, though, and calm. I'll put that in the win column as soon as she stops kicking the back of my head.

UPDATE:

It is now 5 1/2 hours after she was supposed to take her nap:

Little Bit

It's amazing how much information processes through the little brain in my daughter's head. Today I explained to her that I was going to have brain surgery in a few weeks and that Grammy Pammy is coming here in order to help. I didn't expect that she'd really get what was going on but I still wanted to explain what was going to happen because I want to get into the habit of including her in the planning of our lives.

When I was all done she walked over to me and looked at me, snot running from her little nose (poor girl has a cold), and kissed my arm. She climbed up on the couch, rubbed the back of my head, and said "Daddy's head big owie. It better soon."

I was touched.

She turned around, bent over, and farted on me, then ran away laughing.

Baby's First ER Visit

Oooh, artsy-fartsy blurry picture time!

Going 60 miles per hour in an area zoned for 30 is something I generally frown upon. Doing it around traffic is even worse and I don't recommend anybody do it, even if you're trained.

Now, I'm not saying I did that (because I have no idea if I can get a ticket for something I said on a blog if someone were feeling froggy enough to point it out to my local police) but yesterday as we rushed to the ER it's something I could conceivably have seen myself doing.

Yeah. The ER. Baby's first ER visit.

Of course this would happen during Laura's trip to DC for work training. Isn't that always the way of it? Things like this always happen while one of the parents are away, because life always works out just like a bad TV sitcom.

Lois is okay. She really is. We had an absolutely horrible night of sleep with her waking every hour but that was to be expected, from what the ER doctor told me and if a bad night's sleep is the worst of it then I'm happy to have had such a bad night of sleep.

She spilled the milk on the floor. Opened her cup up and just poured the entire cup of milk right out onto the hardwood-like flooring. I grabbed her away from it as I could see her contemplating playing in the milk puddle and we went to get some paper towels to clean it up.

We both wiped it up but it wasn't quite enough; the floor was still a little wet so I took the paper towels to throw them out in the kitchen and grabbed a couple more to finish up. I turned around and watched Lois jump into the wet section of the floor.

I was too far away.

Her feet went out from under her, up into the air, over her head. Her head. Her head went down below her body. It was the first thing to hit the hardwood-like flooring with a loud cracking noise, then the rest of her hit the floor.

Then silence.

Within a second I had her in my arms. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her eyes were filled with tears. She was conscious. I looked her over. No blood. The scream became much less silent at this point and she started wailing louder than any banshee ever had.

And then stopped. She whimpered. Looked away. Her jaw went slack, her pupils went huge. Her eyes went glassy. I tried to get her attention and got no response.

I asked her if she wanted a cookie and she didn't even look at me.

We got in the car and that's when I either did or did not break just about every moving violation law in existence. The ER is a 20 minute drive from home without traffic. Interestingly it seems to be possible to make it a 15 minute drive during prime traffic time. I don't think an ambulance could have made better time (especially considering they'd have to have had gotten to the apartment first).

When I got her out of the car at the ER I knew she was going to be okay because she started talking and acknowledging the world around her. She had held my hand several times on the way there but now she was saying things like "Daddy, truck!" and "Hi man!"

We still went into the ER, though. We still saw the doctor. The doctor said she was fine, told me what to look out for, and sent me home with some discharge papers that essentially said "If she throws up, break the law and get here in 10 minutes, otherwise she's okay. Give her some children's motrin for the headache she WILL have."

Last night was a bad night of sleep with her getting up every hour. Every. Hour.

If that's the worst that comes of this, though, I'll take it. No question about that.

My Daughter The Artist

 The interplay of the light against the darkness of my pants really shows the transitory state of life as the dark fades into the light.

See? Art. Lois doesn't take pictures, she makes art.

 This shot is called "Daddy is a big scary looking guy sometimes but I love him."

She really got my nostrils quite well.

This shot is either an up-close blurred picture of the rug that showcases that being too close to something can cause you to be unable to see it properly (a perfect view of life)

OR

this is a picture of alien ships.

This picture is called "Daddy's a goofball."

I do not approve.

She is now forbidden from handling the camera ever again.

That's the price of her art.

The Mighty, Mighty Mini One!

 She found my foam latex sword and started carrying it everywhere. When she was standing still and not really thinking about it she held it behind her back, at the ready.

 I think the old saying goes "when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like a nail."

Here you can see Lois problem-solving with her sword by stabbing the problem.

 "By the power of Greyskull!"

"I HAVE THE POWER!"

She even has her faithful steed!

Now, if only I could get her to stop trying to eat her sword, things would be awesome.