Day 369 - Two for the Syllables (Please, No More McConaughey)

Remember that one time when I mentioned Matthew McConaughey in a blog post? 

Ok, I admit that was just earlier this week. That being said, I wasn't really wanting to bring him up again this soon if for no other reason than I find his last name incredibly difficult to spell. Plus, the name, McConaughey, is always going to have that little squiggly red line underneath it in Word. Yes, I'm aware I could just program the name into Word's dictionary. However, what's really the point in doing so as I'm not exactly mentioning the man daily?

So, once again, while I had no intentions of mentioning Matthew McConaughey again this soon, you'll soon see that Ellie left me with no alternative. 

A live camera shot of McConaughey when he discovers this post on the internet...

Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen Ellie's vocabulary expand seemingly daily. She'll randomly latch onto words that Bethany and I nonchalantly drop into conversation. You know, stuff like "Wow","Whoa" and "Cool" as mentioned in the past. She also knows "milk", "water", and even "hot". Up to this point though, Ellie's word choices have been one-syllable affairs. Well, that all changed last night.

I feel it pertinent to mention here that I spent basically all day yesterday plagued by a grumpy baby. By the time Bethany arrived home, I was spent for the day. My greeting for Bethany was something along the lines of "Here, take this," while thrusting Ellie into her hands. My wife being the understanding soul she is immediately responded by taking Ellie out to the backyard to play.   

After a few minutes of hanging out inside, I looked out the window to my girls in the backyard having fun and decided I might as well hang the hammock for them to swing in. After putting up the hammock, I took a few minutes to spread grass seed on some bare spots in the lawn before joining Bethany and Ellie in the hammock for family time. 

You're so wise, Godfather.

At this point, Ellie initiated one of her favorite games which I like to call "What's that?". Basically Ellie points to something inquisitively and proclaims "What?". Then, Bethany or I respond with the answer and Ellie will attempt to repeat the word.  In the context of the game, Ellie chose to ask us what the hammock was to which we replied accordingly. Now, I had no expectations for her to say "hammock" as it's a multi-syllable word. So, with that, you can imagine my palpable surprise when she succeeded in doing so. 

With that, I pretty much figured Ellie shocking us with her vocabulary was done for the day. I mean, as a toddler, how do you improve on a two-syllable word. That's right, with another two syllable word.

Fast forward to bathtime. With Ellie in the midst of playing in the water, Bethany and I were discussing some household chores we needed to get done that evening after Ellie was in bed. Upon confirming that she was good with doing so, I responded with a hearty McConaughey-ism of "Alright, alright, alright." At that, Ellie looked at me, huge smile on her face, and responded with her own "Alright, alright, alright" to all of our surprise. She followed that up with repeating her new catch phrase over and over and over until bedtime mercifully arrived.

Yay for being able to reuse gifs.

If I was asked to critique Ellie's delivery, I would have to rank it as not being laid back enough for a true McConaughey impression. It lacked that mellow, Southern drawl and instead became louder and included more screaming with each repetition. However, still not bad for a toddler who's learning new words all the time. I give it a solid B+.

Now, taking all of that into account, I don't want to write about Matthew McConaughey again for quite a while after this. I mean, I like the guy just fine but I feel like it's going to get creepy if I keep doing so. No one wants me to come across as creepy, right? #DaddyWrite

Daddy, don't be creepy. No more McConaughey.

Day 366 - How to Find a Ring in 7 Days

Based upon the title of this post, you should be able to ascertain two things. Number one, you obviously can't find a ring without first losing/misplacing said ring. Number two, I have seen 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' hence me ripping it off for this post. For the record, outside of 'A Time to Kill', I do consider this to be Matthew McConaughey's best pre-McConassaince film. Oh, what's that sound? Pretty sure it's the sound of my man card being revoked.

In the category of pictures I never thought would be included on #DaddyWrite, I present the above.

Back to that first point. A week ago on Sunday, while on my way home from the men's retreat, I received a text from Bethany that she had lost her engagement ring. Ok, I don't want to say lost because that just sounds mean. Let's go with misplaced instead. Regardless of the terminology you choose to use, I found myself feeling absolutely helpless. As my carpool buddy, Dustin, will attest, I was pretty bummed about the whole thing for most of the trip home. 

As soon as I dropped Dustin off at his house, I began retracing Bethany's steps from the day by immediately heading to the church. Please don't think me a jerk. My daughter was asleep next to my wife so my coming home would have just woken Ellie from her slumber. 

From a phone conversation with Bethany right after I received the text, the only places she had been that day were home, church, and Target. From the absolute start, I thought it most likely the ring could be found if it was just at church or home. Therefore, I decided to make a quick stop by church and retrace steps through the parking lot since Dustin's home is relatively close to there. Now, of course, I didn't find anything of value after a few trots back and forth across the lot so gave up and headed for home. Don't worry, I also made the obligatory trip to Target later that night to check the parking lot and women's departments for any sign of the ring (and got lots of weird looks in doing so).

That night, after plenty of discussion, I finally convinced Bethany that we should post the ring was lost on Facebook and try to find it via the power of social media. Over the next few days, I would see that post shared 74 times. I also posted ads for the ring on Facebook Marketplace and Craig's List hoping to get some kind of hit. Instead, as the days went by, I found myself feeling more and more dejected by a lack of progress. It seemed that nothing was working. I mean, I even convinced the Loss Prevention guy at Target to check the security camera footage to see if Bethany's ring was on her finger or not. Sadly, her left finger was obscured by her coat's sleeve.

A possible reenactment of Bethany on security camera footage...

Finally on Saturday morning, I was startled awake by the vibrations of my phone around 6:00 am. Looking at the text message from my friend, Allen, I was shocked to see that he was convinced he had found the ring. You see, he had shared my post about the ring on a swap-and-shop forum he was a part of. In doing so, he found that someone else had shared a post about a lost ring they found in the Target parking lot. After a little bit of back-and-forth, Allen sent the lady's phone number onto me so I could get in touch. 

Within two hours, Bethany and I (with Ellie) were at a CVS Pharmacy, sitting in the parking lot waiting for a yellow Jeep to meet us. Sure enough, once the lady and her husband arrived, it was with Bethany's very ring. It was a little worse for wear after being run over in the parking lot several times but nothing that couldn't be fixed and returned to us by March 31st (Thanks JCPenney Lifetime Protection Plan!).

Honestly, all that I have heard when telling people this story is how amazing it really is that the ring was recovered. I have to say I agree. Bethany and I both found ourselves praying for this very recovery throughout the week and we were both still in shock. I think the coolest part of the whole thing is how it shows everything happens in God's own timing. 

Throughout the week, I had definitely been obsessing over the ring as I cannot stand it when things are lost and just wanted to help find it. Finally, I reached the point where I was risking alienating my wife with my consistent searching and had to just give it up to God. In other words, I found myself acknowledging the fact that we would find the ring only if God willed it and I needed to be OK with that. Once I finally settled down on Thursday night and stopped obsessing is when the ring essentially fell right into our laps. 

I should probably say I'm sorry if you just come here for Ellie stories and got this little ditty instead. I did so because there are probably plenty of curious people wondering how we found the ring. Also, I realized it's much easier to tell stories via blog post rather than reciting it to individuals over and over again. 

Gotta think smarter, not harder. Alright, alright, alright. #DaddyWrite

Day 365 - Toddler Bed Blues

I am a man of great planning and foresight. By that, I mean I am none of those things. Now, I know you're trying valiantly to convince me that can't be true. 

"Oh Jesse, you are clearly one of the great planners and foresighters of the 21st century." 

That's very nice of you to say and all but I have to correct that sentence for a couple of reasons. Those being the fact that it's not true and 'foresighters' is not a word. Good work on getting the century correct though. 

In all seriousness, did you have any idea that today marked (what I believe to be) the 365th day of me staying home with Ellie? While Ellie is well over a year old, remember that I'm just counting the days in which I serve as Ellie's primary caregiver towards that total. I definitely can't count weekends as the sweet baby generally won't have anything to do with me. 

So, in honor of Day 365, I decided to postpone the story that I had gotten a good start on until tomorrow and instead focus on an Ellie-centric story.

Flashback to Friday at naptime. The only problem is that Ellie found herself not wanting to take a nap. Regardless, I laid her down in her crib and leave the room as quickly as possible to a cacophony of screams behind me. Once the door closed behind me, I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that she'll only cry for a few minutes before going to sleep. It just so happens that I was wrong about that.

Less than five minutes after laying Ellie down, I heard a massive bang followed by more intense screaming. Although my first reaction was to quickly bound up the stairs, I instead chose to wait. My thought process for that being that Ellie had likely been jumping up and down in the crib in her anger and lost her footing, falling into the side of the crib. About that time, I hear the unmistakable sound of pounding on a door. 

At that, I hustled up the stairs and opened the bedroom door to find Ellie standing there, holding her arms out for me to pick her up. In all of her anger and panic, I'm guessing she had scaled over the rails of the crib and dropped to the ground below.  At first, I found myself figuring it was a fluke situation, but I was honestly afraid to place her back in her crib since I didn't want my daughter to hurt herself. Instead, I decided to let Future Jesse deal with the issue and allowed Ellie to nap on my chest. 

Fast forward to Saturday. Obviously, I had shared the events of the prior day with Bethany but we both decided to chalk it up to being a fluke. Honestly, neither of us probably wanted to admit that our sweet little girl was growing up and becoming capable of things like escaping her crib. Before we knew it, it was naptime. Bethany took the initiative on this occasion to deliver Ellie to her crib, marching to the beat of baby screams all the way. As she laid Ellie down and closed the door, I already knew this wasn't going to work out for us.

Within three minutes, we would hear the unmistakable sound of Ellie dropping to the floor followed by her attempts to break down her bedroom door with all of her might. Thus begins again the futile attempts to put Ellie down for a nap again before Bethany finally just gave in and took a nap with her in our bed. Oh, in case you're wondering, naptime on Sunday morning was more of the same, only with two escapes instead of one.

Finally, Bethany and I came to the realization that we couldn't have Ellie dropping three to four feet to the floor below every time she wanted out of her crib. Therefore, we made the difficult decision to transition Ellie's crib into a toddler bed much, much earlier than we had wanted. 

This is not a picture of our crib but is a stock photo of our crib from the internet. Follow?

In case you're wondering, the actual process of converting our crib to a toddler bed isn't a long process. Four screws and done. The difficult decision lied with the fact that Ellie, like most toddlers, doesn't really do well with change. Now, Ellie was initially overjoyed at her "new" bed and her ability to get in and out of it at will. That would change though once bedtime rolled around.

Following Ellie's bath, it came time to get her dressed in her nice, fuzzy polar bear pajamas, brush her hair, turn on her sleepy time CD, hug and kiss her good night, and lastly, deposit her into her "new" bed before closing the door. Now, something you should know about Ellie is that she's never been a huge fan of bedtime. Before now though, she was unable to do anything about. That is no longer the case.

Ellie promptly dropped out of her bed and began beating on the door with all of her might. Bethany and I knew this would be the scenario ahead of time so we had planned on ten minutes before soothing our child. Unfortunately, the intensity and violence with which Ellie pounded on the door drew us to her much earlier. 

In fact, Bethany and I ended up having to split time over the course of an hour laying on the floor next to Ellie's bed just to keep her in there. Unfortunately, when I left for the final time, Ellie bumbled out of bed once again to beat on the door until she finally passed out about fifteen minutes later. It's ok, don't be too worried about her as I had to make a couple of visitations over the course of the night before finally moving Ellie to our bed during the 4:00 hour.

Now, with one night in the books, I find myself totally wondering what this process is going to bring in the long run. The one thing I'm hoping is that it won't take another 365 days (with me as primary caregiver) to achieve some resolution. By that I mean, Mom and Dad winning and the baby losing. #DaddyWrite

Day 363 - Baby Angry. Baby Smash!

Bruce Banner. Just your everyday, mild-mannered scientist researching experimental gamma radiation. Simple enough, right? While you may not have heard of our good friend, Bruce, I'd be willing to bet you've heard of his alter-ego. That being the Incredible Hulk, the angry emerald giant who runs around speaking various forms of baby talk and pretty much smashing anything in his path. 

Hulk smash?

Now, believe it or not, there was actually a reason for me to go on a little rant that basically outed me as a huge nerd. Well, let me rephrase that: I'm a huge nerd in regards to the Marvel movies. I'm not really a comic book guy. In fact, if you had to ask me what the last comic book I purchased was, I'm pretty sure it was a Looney Tunes comic book somewhere in Alabama. Or maybe Tennessee or Louisiana. The one where Bugs escaped that big, furry, red monster dude. 

Ok, back to the reasoning for the rant. It's very simple, really. Basically, my precious, adorable, occasional cantankerous daughter, Ellie, has undergone a metamorphosis to become precious, adorable, and nearly always cantankerous. Side note, cantankerous is actually a very difficult word for me to spell. Everyone has their faults though.

Gossamer! His name was Gossamer!

Now, I've always heard of the terrible twos, but Ellie seems to have grown into that stage a little earlier than I anticipated and/or wanted. In fact, it's not farfetched to call her attitude downright combative. While Ellie's always had a temper, she is now experiences the side-effects of said temper more often.

For example, one of Ellie's favorite things to do is steal Bethany's or my cell phone and frolic around the house with it. However, when the frolicking ends, she then becomes obsessed with trying to crack the passcode to get into our phones. Envision her, tapping numbers randomly into our phones, trying in vain to crack my very secure passcode of 1-2-3-4. And yes, that's not my real passcode. Tell the truth, you thought I divulged something very important, right?

Now you don't know what to believe...

It's not uncommon for Ellie to eventually lock us out of our phones for a period of time due to failing at logging in too many times. For the record, she has locked us out for upwards of 15 minutes before. That's where the fun starts though. Normally, at this point, I'll start attempting to reclaim my phone from my curious daughter; an action that is wrought with peril. The moment I even reach out for said phone, Ellie goes into fight or flight mode. If she's unable to get away from me in time, her response is to chuck the phone as hard and as far as she can.

Here's where things get interesting. The second that I tell her she did wrong or confront her about her misdeed, Ellie will throw herself onto the floor in a blind rage, screaming and kicking all the while. At this point, I'm met with two options. I can either console the baby or walk away, leaving her kicking and screaming until she's blue in the face. Guess which option I generally pick. Go ahead, guess. Hey, you're right and/or wrong! I do just let her lay in the floor kicking and screaming while I do something productive like stare out the window happily. 

Lucky for me, she can't do any real damage at this point in time with her temper tantrums. Worst case scenario, she just gets a nasty contusion from banging her limbs on the ground. I just have to make certain she's not exposed to any gamma radiation lest she turns green, muscular, and super angry. If that happened, I'm not 100% certain our home owners insurance would cover the damages that would surely occur. And well, I know I wouldn't want to cover that out-of-pocket. #DaddyWrite

It's not 'Hulk Baby' but I can give you 'Creepy Baby with Wild Hair'. On second though, I should provide a nice picture too.