Sisters

I've given up writing. I sleep at the capricious whims of an uncertain-of-her-primacy older sister and her endlessly-needy sidekick. I eat cold take-out standing in the kitchen while waiting for the bottle-warmer to get the formula to that happy just-right temperature for an easy feed. At the moment, we're all sick with some mysterious child-borne illness, yet here we are. It's all our fault - these two souls stuck together one way or another for the rest of their lives, and I couldn't love them more - they're sisters.

Alex and Maya

They don't know it yet, but they're going to be best friends. Dear Alex has been wonderful about welcoming Dear Maya into our lives, as chaotic and unsettling as it has been. The first few days home from the hospital have been easy for me, though I've lost some sleep sympathetically with Beautiful Wife, it hasn't been all that bad - that'll come later, when there's no more baby-nurse, and I take over the middle-of-the-night shift to give BW a break. I remember more of that long grind of feed, burp, change in the weeks and months later once the excitement and charm of the first few days wears off.
Like Dear Alex, I hold the dense little bundle of baby that is Dear Maya, and feel love and wonder and joy without any concept of how much change this new little soul will engender.

Welcome

Welcome to the world, you feisty little girl. Your cries made me laugh, and made me weep and hold my beautiful wife's hand even harder. You soooo wanted to be out of there, and here you are. This world's a cool place.

Signs

A few nights ago I had one of my recurring, mercifully but infrequent "Apocalypse Dreams" in which civilization crumbles to burning ruin, but normal every-day stuff keeps happening anyway - this one ended a little differently, in an operating room with BW and an impressive array of surgical props, including a wall of X-ray plates that looked oddly like ultrasound images. I got a chance to look at them a little bit, and saw a little tag on one of them that said "Male" - Aha, we're having a boy.

Two days ago I was walking up 6th Avenue from my office to get myself a cup of coffee at a local Starbucks. I'd happened to cross to the east side of the avenue because of what looked like a little commotion with some smoke and a firetruck. I happened to look over to see what was going on as the building exploded with a cinematic fireball and the sound of a loud and otherworldly hissing as the windows blew out and shattered glass scattered onto the avenue. The orange and black fireball rolled up into a mushroom cloud of fire as I ran for the corner. Wow. Just like in the movies.*

Last night, Beautiful Wife went to bed as usual, then got up, mentioning that she might be "leaking" uh, as in "honey, my water broke and I'm going into labor". Wow, just like that. That fast, and eerily reminiscent of how it went for the birth of Dear Alex, though this time we were a bit better prepared, with bags packed and plans made, more or less...


*It was a Con-Ed transformer explosion in the basement, no one was hurt - the building had been evacuated.

Snow day

The look on her face says it all.



A few weekends ago we went to our little house in the country for a quick get away from work and the day-to-day relentless busy-ness of being in Manhattan, and It went pretty much the way it always does - We had a wonderful drive with no traffic and perfect timing, with Dear Alex chatting amiably about everything and anything, and astonishing me with her command of language and it's nuances and potential for fun. We talked, and then suddenly, silence - she was out along with Beautiful Wife, asleep, more or less for the rest of the way. I still love the gentle exhalation of arrival, that turn into the driveway and the quiet at last of turning off the car and the gathering of will to get everyone out and into the house. Beautiful Wife opens the door and I scoop Dear Alex from her car seat all limbs and floppy dead weight as it occurs to me how much she's grown, and how long we've been doing this. I get a tighter hug and a whispered "I love you king daddy" as she falls back to sleep on my shoulder as I carry her up, up, up to her room and to bed. Saturday was a grey and cold lie-on-the-couch-and-watch-movies kind of day, and when the snow started to fall, it came as an endorsement of staying in and doing nothing save cuddling on the couch. It snowed beautifully, all afternoon, at times the world beyond the deck seeming to have disappeared behind the curtains of white. As evening came, I had that feeling that Dear Alex and I should get out a little and play, and decided that it would be good to make it a trip to the store to get us all dinner - good fun to try the car in the snow, and a chance to give BW a little break.

I had the odd thought while driving through the densely falling snow on the unplowed roads that this was a perfect moment, one to be savored for it's rarity. I read somewhere recently about how we don't really think to count and celebrate how many chances we'll get to do these seemingly ordinary things, and it put me in the mind to appreciate the beauty of watching thickly falling snow swirl in the orange-cast of parking lot sodium-vapor streetlights, and then wonder how many times in my lifetime I'll get to experience such a simple unmarked thing again. 5 times? 14 times? More than a hundred? Probably not.

I'm pretty sure that there's something about watching a child grow, and realizing how quickly that seems to happen that makes you stop and think for a moment about how much time - how many favorite experiences you'll be able to count, and count on having again.

On Sunday, the very first order of business was to go outside in the snow and play - Dear Alex had a little checklist: make snow angels, make a little snowman, go sledding.
All morning. Up the septic mound, down the septic mound. Up the septic mound, down the septic mound. Repeat. We had a very good time, and I noted that Alex has grown big enough to climb up and slide down all by herself, over and over again, though it's most fun for her when daddy sleds too. So I did, and I'm counting on doing that again. It makes her laugh to see me slide and fall in the snow, and it makes me happy to see her having so much fun. After a couple of hours of this, she abruptly stops - and runs into the house, having finally realized that she was freezing. Once inside and de-snowsuited and on the couch under a blanket with Beautiful Wife, I make her a warm cider and all is warm and cozy again. We decided then and there to stay in the snow another day. We took Monday off and instead of school for her and work for us, we went sledding again. It's one of those experiences worth counting.

Then and Now and Soon

Just having a sentimental time of things, thinking about how much Dear Alex has grown and what an interesting kid she's become. So far, so fast - and I am still constantly awed and amazed that I have the chance to help this little person become.

I'm thinking about it because Beautiful Wife and I have another on the way, and I've been stuck for weeks, no, months as to how to write about it with the proper expression of the deep wonder (and terror) that I'm feeling. It feels like it's been a long time since Dear Alex was a baby, and she gets farther from that every day - my Dear Lil'screamie isn't so screamie any more, and soon she's going to be a big sister. Big news, and exciting times to come, to be sure. I wax nostalgic, and look back with some curiousity as to how we managed to have such a great kid - at the same time remembering the thousands and thousands of little things that made it so.

I love this girl so much that the thought of having another baby challenges me to imagine loving another child as much, but I'm comforted by the sure knowlege that it is not only possible, but inevitable. It's just a little hard to grasp right now. As I look back, and look at Dear Alex now in her excitement about being a big sister, I'm pretty sure that between the three of us there's going to be plenty of love to go around.

The wind

Tonight the wind blows cold and hard from the northeast, coming off the lake with a roar in the trees, and it rattles the house in the country. It's a though nature has decided to let us know that change is afoot, and that the thin sunlight and gentle approaches to a new season are over - there's a real feeling of change in the air, almost an exclamation that winter is coming whether we're ready or not. There's a bright half-moon tonight, alternately casting stark shadows of the bare trees then disappearing behind wind-driven clouds, then lighting the night again - a scene I wish to wake Dear Alex to come out and see, to feel that quiet awe of the big wide world around us.
It puts me in mind of trips in the car from the city to the country, with Dear Alex awake and talking about the moon, the moon chasing us down the night, and calling out "the moon, daddy, the moon" and her delight with the peek-a-boo passing through the trees and over the hills. Tonight Dear Alex sleeps soundly in her big girl bed surrounded by her bunnies and the deep and sure knowledge of the love of mommy and daddy. She pointed out the moon to us last evening "a half-moon! in the daylight!" as we headed out to Brooklyn for our annual Thanksgiving dinner with aunts and uncles and family, then again later in the night as we left the city, tired and full and happy. We drove from the city and the lights and highways to the narrow two-lane country roads and into fog, an amazing and surprising fog so dense that it actually made me slow down, and take a little more care to get us safely home in the quiet and dripping dark. I will never tire of the routine of arrival - the sudden stillness of turning off the car then the flurry of activity, then quiet as I pick Dear Alex out of her car seat, wrap a blanket around her and carry her up the stairs and into the house and up more stairs to finally plop her unceremoniously into bed, usually with a nuzzle and a little tighter hug. Goodnight sweet girl.

Leap

Suspended for a moment in mid-air, a perfect metaphor for how I feel for her right now, and where she is in her young life - suspended between the distant memory of being a toddler and the little girl that she's rapidly becoming. She's a blur of constant motion and I wish sometimes that I could just slow her mad rush to become, and hold her still and hug her for a little bit, while she's still a kid that has no filters and no idea that there's anything else in the world to do but have fun in the here and now. This time feels so fleeting, like that moment of equipoise between rising and falling.

Every day, Dear Alex changes and grows and gets smarter and wiser and funnier, and it is a joy to travel with her as she makes real the promise and joy built into the process of growing up.

5 Years ago today...

Beautiful Wife became Beautiful Wife. I wouldn't change a thing. We've seen a lot of changes in our brief five years together, and I'm sure there's a lot more to come - I can't wait to see what happens next.

A blog is...

I was in a meeting today, about a large and complicated website that I've been working on, and the subject of blogs came up, as it was desired to incorporate one in this website. There was a lot of conversation around what constituted a blog, and it was generally agreed that it had something to do with a heartfelt interest and knowledge of the subject in question. Some other more telling stipulations were added, including one that made me want to run home and write - A Blog (to be considered a blog) is "published to or updated more than twice a week." That makes me something of a lapsed blogger, and made me stop and think about the whats and whys of lilscreamie, and it occurred to me that I've failed, am failing to keep up with tracking the growth and changes that this whole mess is supposed to celebrate - the wondrous growth and development of my very own child. It's not so much documentation, but a less-than-rigorous celebration of the stuff I'm likely to forget by next week, next month, next year - in short, the telling details that generally go unnoticed or unmentioned, and the profound mixture of responsibility and absurdity that is being daddy. Dear Alex has changed and grown so much through the long months of my silence, and now I'm feeling a mad rush to try to recapture the incredible texture and detail of all that she's becoming - I'm afraid that that effort is doomed to failure, but I can certainly try for my very own benefit to write again to something that was a labor of love and joy, set aside only for the realities of making and keeping a life for me and mine, and my own inertia.

I will have to start writing again, as I've got the terrible assignment to write about Dear Alex for her kindergarten applications - Including the dreaded "Describe your child's personality and interests... including his or her strengths and weaknesses..." As if she had any weaknesses.

The whole NY kindergarten placement thing has been a real surprise to me. I first heard about it when Beautiful Wife and I were shopping around for preschools, and got asked the question about "where we wanted her to go to kindergarten, because certain preschools can get you on the track..." I'd just assumed you picked a school, paid some money, and the kid went there. Buyer's market, so to speak.

I was sadly mistaken, and have been working diligently to recover from that one ever since, going on school tours and fitting in with other parents trying to stand out but not stand out too much to give their kid the best chances at the best schools. I suddenly get it, and am awed by the depth and importance made of Where The Kid Goes To Kindergarten. It's a track, or a trap, but it can materially affect who Dear Alex is and what she might do 10, 15, 20 years from now. Amazing - the right school, well chosen can make a difference. We'll see how it goes.

Sculpture

Dear Alex says: "It's called Scary lightning before the thunder comes - It's really called that."
I say that she's got a sense of design and composition, and it's fun to watch her build things, and take pride in her creations. I love that she gave it a name. She went on to explain that it works by "twisting it this way and that (she demonstrates) to scare away the thunder, after the lightning comes." I love her imagination.

Magically

It's a certainty that objects have inner lives and can do amazing things and feel - and Beautiful Wife and I live with a kind of full-time magical realist, where she controls the show (a little bit) and can make anything happen - "what color do you like daddy?" and I say "blue" and Dear Alex can tell me "I don't have any blue cupcakes, but the wrapper is blue, so you can have pink." And then Dear Alex can give me a little blue cupcake right off of her pajamas, and I can eat it. Magically, she can make me a cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs, and hand them to me as I pretend to eat and genuinely enjoy the joy she takes in my playing along in her world.

Snow Day

Last night was one of those beautiful mid-winter nights that close gently and quietly, after seeing Dear Alex, then Beautiful Wife off to bed I got to stay up and think about "the question" and write a post about it and go about my business in this quiet house in the snow. As I looked out, it was snowing gently, an impossibly fine snowfall so light that it seemed that the flakes weren't really falling, so much as suspended like little bits of light. Lovely night and it made me think to check the weather - a call for a dusting to half an inch or so of accumulation overnight. Nothing to get too excited about, so I went to bed.
In the middle of the night, sometime after easy sleep and well before it was time to wake, Dear Alex had a bit of an accident in her bed - this weekend was our first attempt at letting her sleep in underwear for the whole night, instead of those nasty pull-up diapers - a welcome change for all of us, and it's clear that Dear Alex is ready for the change. The first night went just fine, but last night, she didn't quite make it - and it truly upset her terribly. There was a flurry of damage control activity, with me searching the room and her closet for something approximating a sheet to replace the one I'd hastily removed and, of course looking for dry PJs to change her into - all while reassuring her that "it was okay and that accidents happen, and that next time you'll get up sooner and find the potty, and you're such a big girl that you'll be just fine" all while wrapping her in a dry blanket and hugging her because she was so pathetically sad and cold and obviously dejected at her failure. I really felt for her, and tried to make all okay. We got cleaned up and dressed and it occurred to me how grateful I am for how simple it can be to simply take care to make someone, in this case Dear Alex, so much better.

This morning we were up before dawn, and as I was making coffee and heating water for Dear Alex's cup of tea I looked outside and noticed that it was still snowing, and that measly half-inch had turned magically into at least another six inches of fresh snow, and it was still coming down - today was a perfect "snow day" - and we're staying in the country 'til tomorrow. The kid and I went to the hardware store to play with her new car in the snow so that we could get cookie sheets to bake cookies and some screws for me to put up some shelves, and ended up with another sled - so that we could all play outside for the rest of the day on the amazing sled run that I've been building, and we did. We sledded. We baked cookies. We took a long walk in the snow on the frozen lake and had hot chocolate. At the moment, the car is stuck in the driveway (Beautiful Wife will take care of that in the morning - she's good like that) and Dear Alex is sleeping and all is right with the world.

The Big Question

After bedtime tonight, and I'm hanging out with Dear Alex to have our usual wrap-up of the day, and Dear Alex asks: "Daddy, where do we come from?" I'm thinking that I'm going to get off easy on this one, so I answer "mommies. we all come form mommies. everybody has a mommy." Easy.
Dear Alex asks again: "No, where do we come from?" I answer "We are people and we all come from mommies and daddies and we come from love." There - a definitive and right-sounding answer that gives credit to everyone, and adds the magic of love, but that's not what she's looking for. "No, no daddy where do we come from... who made us, who made us?" Oh, that's a different question. A spiritual, cosmological, how-did-we-get-here kind of question. "well," I say, "That's something that a lot of people have a lot of different ideas about, and I don't really know. A lot of people believe that there is a creator, and a lot of people believe that we evolved, but there's a higher power that makes it all work, and some people that believe we just are. That's something called religion, that you kind of sort yourself out by what you believe about that." Alex: "But who made us?" Daddy: "well mommy and daddy made you, and our mommies and daddies made us, so people made us." "Oh," says Dear Alex, "But where did we come from?" (she's not going to give this up)"we just are." I say, "but this is something we can talk about when you get to be a bigger girl, because it's a very good question, and we can talk about it a lot." She asked, I danced, she asked again, and I danced some more - it's a great question, and the directness of her asking it repeatedly was something kind of startling to me - I haven't thought about life and existence from that direct a perspective in a long, long time, and I'm truly not one to dwell on the spiritual - but oh yeah, "Who made us?". I have to give her credit for asking an obvious question that'll make me think for a little while - I haven't really thought about what I believe beyond "we just are" for a very long time. For both of us, I guess it's something to sleep on.

Rite of passé

A little running around to shake off the pre-performance jitters.
I love her confidence in this picture.
















No caption necessary, really.













A moment of repose during the performance, Dear Alex is the one in the middle.




Five years ago, if someone had told me that someday in the hazy future I'd be going to a ballet recital - my own daughter's ballet recital on a cold day in January, I'd have probably gently changed the subject to something about motorcycles or airplanes or the weather.
It is sort of a rite of passage, I guess, for any father of a daughter - both the ballet classes and the inevitable performance of what they've learned. I know Dear Alex really enjoys her ballet class, she's surprised me many times with her dance vocabulary and impromptu performances at home of various moves and leaps accompanied by shouts of "sautée!" (jump up in the air) and "relevé!" (stand on your tippy-toes, arms up) all done with the approximate grace of a forklift - not that I'd do any better. It seems that Dear Alex has inherited my dance gene, or should I say, my lack of one. Not that it matters, of course, and I was relieved to see that she wasn't the only little girl that was - uh, movement-challenged. It's a three-year-old thing, I guess. The mind and the heart yearn for what the body can't yet do, but for some reason, there's real satisfaction in the attempt.
The group of five girls in the class (including Dear Alex) was easily the most disciplined group of toddler/pre-schooler's I've ever seen - they sat quietly, performed on cue with little direction, and stayed pretty well focused on the task at hand. There was a real charm in the collective performance today, the unselfconscious artlessness of the little ballerinas and their clearly heartfelt desire to get it right - it gave me a funny feeling. I think it might be pride for all of them.
Ballet is definitely not my thing, and I don't really think that it's going to be Dear Alex's thing either, but for now it's giving her discipline, a new vocabulary*, and something to be proud of - I saw that in her smile and confidence today, and it's one more thing to add to her list, my firefighter pirate princess ballerina. She may not be the picture of grace, but she's got a lot of heart.

*A lot of very fancy words like allegro and adagio and jete and passé, that I'm learning to love - Dear Alex is learning and using "terms of art". I love that.

King Daddy

I was talking to Dear Alex this afternoon, and she let me know that if I wanted to, I could call her Princess Alex. I think I will for a while, just to see how it goes. Shortly after BW and I put her to bed, Dear Alex called "daddy" back in for another goodnight hug. She reminded me that I could call her Princess Alex, so I said "Goodnight Princess Alex" and she said "Goodnight King Daddy". I'm still smiling.

The very next day

Watching The Little Mermaid for the 37th time













The Tickle Monster's next victim















She actually asked me to take her picture -
probably to prove to mommy that I let her take her hat off...













Sunshine and fresh snow and princess sunglasses













Screaming and spinning all the way down


It snowed all day on Saturday, a fine light snow from a heavy gray sky that made it the perfect kind of winter day to do nothing; We played "tickle monster" and "lump", We looked out the windows and watched the snow fall, and Beautiful Wife and Dear Alex spent a lot of quality time on the couch under blankets, watching "The Little Mermaid".
BW insists that this is an important part of her acculturation, and I'm inclined to agree, though I feel obliged to protest. All the kids are doing it, and if it weren't for mommy's support and guidance, Dear Alex would be hearing about princesses on the street or from her friends at school. It's something that we can be supportive about, and let her make her own choices... Dear Alex and I have had quite a few conversations around what I'll call the taxonomy of princesses, and deep conversations about her favorites, and which princess I like better and why. Dear Alex prefers Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) because she has "yellow hair", while daddy likes Princess Jasmine (Aladdin) because she's kind of spunky and has long black hair like mommy. Dear Alex is a little mixed about Princess Ariel (Little Mermaid) because of her red hair and "big eyes". But she likes all the princesses, just "Sleeping Beauty" best. I can't wait to throw Pocahantas (because she's the spittin' image of BW) and Mulan into the mix.

We did manage to go outside and get all wet and cold, and try out the sled, which was a lot of fun for both of us. Sunday turned out to be a perfect cold clear after-the-snow day, so we spent a lot of time making and using a sled run from the driveway towards the lake - hilarious to hear the girl sliding down the hill giggling to the bottom, only to say "again!" as soon as she got there. I did the daddy thing, and made the run longer, which just made the giggling and screaming go on longer - until Dear Alex decided it was time to go inside. Perfect, her red cheeks, snot running down her face and a smile that wouldn't quit.

Beautiful night

We tried to leave the city early today, to get a head start on a weekend away at the house in the country, a constant antidote to the mid-winter grimness that seems to have settled in to New York to stay for a while.

There's a promise of snow, real snow this weekend for Dear Alex to see and play in, something that both Beautiful Wife and myself love and encourage, probably for reasons of a certain nostalgia too deeply buried to name. I know I loved snow, snowy days, and the real warmth of returning inside after hours of play, numb and red-cheeked and soaked.

It started off with a good plan, but devolved into a bit of a struggle that ended with a late departure and meeting Dear Alex and Nanny J. uptown at a 'playdate'. Beautiful Wife went in to collect Dear Alex, and returned a few minutes later - we bundled the girl into the carseat, loaded up and set off to get out of town only to come up against that late-Friday-afternoon traffic of others fleeing the city. A few minutes into the drive, BW noted that she might have stepped in dog-poop somewhere along the way, and almost instantly I caught the first whiff of that mournful smell of regret. A great conversation with Dear Alex ensued about the nature of dog poop and it's disposal, and how silly it was that it was on mommy's shoe, and more importantly how mommy should always look out for dog-poopie and you should step over it and not in it. The kid can be really funny. She was in a great and happy mood to be traveling tonight with us, and stayed awake long enough to see and comment on a beautiful full moon on the rise, chasing us as we headed west across the George Washington Bridge and into the night.

This post is about nothing, really, but the beauty of this night and a way to ease myself back into trying to write more regularly and clearly and well about the life and times of Dear Alex, to take notes on her quirks and my various fascinations with them.

Tonight, I wish I could wake her up and show her the biggest full moon of 2009, and take her outside to feel the dead cold and see the magic of this night as bright as day, with the trees sparkling in their coating of ice from the storm of last week. I would say "shhh - listen" and we could share the deep subsonic booming sounds of the frozen lake settling in for the rest of the winter, and the loud crackling of the deer walking through a neighbor's frozen backyard.

For now, Dear Alex sleeps, probably dreaming of princesses and bunnies. We'll get outside and enjoy the snow and the world tomorrow.

Change

In the context of a blog about a three-year-old, the title could mean almost anything, as change is what Dear Alex is all about these days. I went away for a week and came back to a slightly more Alex version of Dear Alex, a little bigger, a little smarter, a little wiser. It's no single thing that I can put my finger on, but she grew, and there's a bit more personality there. Or maybe I just missed her, and have been watching more closely over the past few days, to see if she'd noticed that I was gone. She's been a little closer and a little more loving around me, so I'm guessing that she noticed - and we've talked about California, and the delights of video chat (that's really fun for a three-year old, by the way - seeing herself and daddy on a computer screen - it stuck with her a little bit.) "Am I in the computer?" "Yes you are, big girl."

One of the first things that Beautiful Wife and I did when I got back was to fulfill another promise that we'd made to Dear Alex - that she would get a real bed. The move from sleeping in a crib to a 'toddler bed' was something that Dear Alex had been looking forward to for a long time, and had even worked for by being reminded that all she had to do was not wake up screaming for mommy and/or daddy in the middle of the night for a few weeks. That worked wonders for us, as she got it and stopped the middle of the night wakings - and it worked for Dear Alex as she'd proved that she was big enough for a bed. She took to it immediately, and is so proud that she has a 'toddler bed' It's great to see how eager she is to show everyone and anyone her bed, and the night table next to it that she built with BW for her night-light candle and her cup of water and her box of tissues. The kid is definitely a Virgo, and has to have a well-ordered place for everything (and everything in it's place) If only I could get her to be that way with the rest of the things in her life. The bed thing has done wonders for her confidence and sense of control, and she mostly stays in it and best of all, actually sleeps. It's a funny thing, how little milestones help you see change so clearly - giving her a bed, and dismantling the crib just confirmed something that I've known for a while - Dear Alex really isn't a baby anymore.

Of course, there's that other Change:

Though lil'screamie is apolitical, I'll out myself and say that I wept with joy over the stunning victory speech of President-Elect Obama. After 8 years of W, I think we the people collectively had enough of the slow erosion of liberty, the dissembling and the lack of a forward-looking vision of the world and how it could be. I'm sincerely hoping that we as a nation have turned our backs on the narrowness of living in fear, and will be open to embrace the changes that will surely be needed to move from where we've been stuck for the last few years.

We need to rejoin the world as leaders and friends, and this election did a little ( I hope) to prove to the world that we're not closing up shop as the last bastion of hope. It's weird to say, but as a parent I want to live in a world that looks forward, is open , and most importantly has the willingness to try. The campaign and election of this new president proved to me that there is still room for hope and optimism in this country, that's what I support, and that's the kind of place I want my kid to live in.

It's my turn to travel

Note Knuffle Bunny over Dear Alex's shoulder

-a lilscreamie file photo

Knuffle Bunny buys a computer from MacEnthusiast on Pico Blvd.

It was a tough call.

Knuffle Bunny sees the sunset from Santa Monica

I've been away from Dear Alex and Beautiful Wife for the last few days, on a business trip in L.A. to do some of that creative director thing for a TV spot. It's been a long strange trip so far with incidents and accidents that left me wondering how it would all turn out. It started on an awful Sunday afternoon flight to LA - I'm wedged in the middle seat in the far-back of the plane - tiny seat, passengers on either side. Early in the flight there was a bit of turbulence, and one of my seat-mates accidentally spilled a cup of water on the keyboard of my computer. Moments later, the screen went black.

I spent the next day visiting the Apple store in Beverly Hills, and was floored by the damage done and what it would take to get up and running again - lots of money and a lot more time than I would actually be here. It turned out to be faster and cheaper to simply buy a new laptop, copy over my old hard drive, and just get on with it. 

After the drama and delay, it was a relief to get back to work and email. Even with the business of work and the drama, it's been surprising just how much I miss Dear Alex and Beautiful Wife, and how frequently they come up in the course of my days.

It's occurred to me just how important this thin connection by technology is - and how good even a little of seeing the kid can make me feel. It's been a long few days, made easier by that connection and the little bit of home that Dear Alex put in my bag just before I left - Knuffle Bunny, one of the many in her ever-expanding collection. I found Knuffle as I was unpacking and it made me cry. It's funny how you take the daily connection and simple presence for granted, and I've realized that this has been the longest continuous stretch that I've been away from Beautiful Wife and Dear Alex for three years. I've taken to taking pictures of Knuffle Bunny at various places in my travels here in California, to show my girl and share my stories with her when I return. It's a little thing, but it makes me smile.

One thing that I've noticed is that as Freelance Dad, I've had the joy of nearly constant presence with Dear Alex, and I sort of take it for granted just how special that is, but it robs you of the perspective of time and distance that makes you fully appreciate just how fast they grow. We had an almost-coherent conversation at 5:30 this morning, and it struck me that she somehow got smarter over the past few days - "daddy are you in california? I'm wearing corduroys just like mommy. I love you. Mmmmmwah!" (sound of a kiss)

I've been enjoying the work and this time among adults, but I'll be more than happy to get on the plane tonight and fly east through the night and into the dawn to rejoin my life.