Indentured servancy

One of the main reasons Kevin and I decided to have children is for the free labor. Who doesn't want someone to do all that housework? Obviously, it takes a few years for them to be old enough to do the work, but certainly it would be worth the wait. Well, in a sure sign that Lindsay is gifted, she's already helping out around the house.

Scrubbing the kitchen floor:

Getting ready to fix a small toilet back-up:

And, I guess this is dusting?

At 1 1/2, some gifted kids play the piano, some read and some speak 3 languages. Ours? Well, she's well on her way to being the best damn housekeeping toddler a parent could ask for. Although based on that last example, she just may have farther to go than I'd like to admit.

Teenager in a one-year-old body

Each passing day brings a more independent and slightly more, um, let's say "sassy" Lindsay. There is no doubt when something isn't right in her world....she'll let us know. Aside from the vocal notifications, she has started to pick up some very teenager-like mannerisms.

For instance, she loves the car. Not riding in it. She wants to drive. Whenever she is outside when we get home, she insists on testing out the driver's seat.

We are going to have to watch the keys closely, I think.

She is also totally into lounging around the living room....often with an annoyed look on her face when we break out the camera. I believe this is the "Really? We are doing this again?" look.

The day that clinched it for me was when I walked into the living to see her texting. Granted, it is just an old phone we let her play with, but it certainly seems she has the hang of it. 10,000 texts and minutes a month, here we come.

If she starts growing up any faster, I fully expect Kevin to lock her in her room until she's 30. So if you don't see her for awhile, you should know the first place to look.

Don't tell me it's raining

Lindsay has a peeing problem. Nothing medical or serious…she just pees A LOT at night. A few weeks ago Kevin and I woke up to a puddle of pee between our heads one night when she was sleeping with us (yes, we know….her sleeping in our bed is a whole other issue for another day). She had literally peed so much between 9pm and 5am that it had soaked through her diaper, through her pajamas and was being soaked up by our sheets and mattress. Disgusting with a capital ‘D’.

Then it was brought to our attention that they make night-time diapers that are extra-absorbent. And boy are they. I’m convinced these things could hold a gallon of water. So…problem solved.

Wrong.

Yesterday morning she was extra crabby when she woke up, so I sat down with her to cuddle for a bit before doing anything else.

Bad idea.

About 2 minutes into our cuddling session, I suddenly feel as if I’m peeing my pants. There was literally a stream of liquid running down my lap and down my leg. After about 5 seconds, I realize what is likely happening and I lift Lindsay up to see a stream of pee coming through her pajamas and onto my lap. Not wanting to let her pee to stream across the living room and into her room, I’m forced to basically let her finish before moving her. I’m certain the blanket I pulled over the top of my lap and my pajama pants won’t ever be the same.

This kid seriously doesn’t care if her diaper is full of pee or poop. And now, even brimming to the brink of the dam breaking, she has no problem sitting in that mess. I fear for her later in life.

At least I can take solace in that it wasn't poop coming out of the diaper. That is a lot more difficult to clean up than pee and certainly something I don't want to deal with before my morning coffee.

Fashionista

I am staging an intervention. Since the robe and baseball hat day, things have become worse.

Last weekend it was PJ bottoms and no shirt....I hope the urge to not wear a shirt stops by the time she reaches kindergarten.

And the next day it was wearing her life jacket around the house.

I fear we are one step away from her wearing raw food around. I guess we've been listening to a little too much Lady Gaga. Time to turn on the Taylor Swift instead.

White trash party...

I know the saying is, "you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl", but I never figured it would pass to the next generation. Sure, I'll always have those white trash tendencies, but my daughter?

Well, guess what, folks.....it has happened. This is what happens when I let Lindsay pick out her clothes.

She's definitely a Pfeifer. I almost gave her a cigarette to carry in her hand and sent her out to pick up my newspaper. Thought that might shock the neighbors too much though.

Who loves fantasy football?

Lindsay does...that's for sure.

Shortly after our fantasy football draft started, Kevin got called into the hospital and I was left alone to parent AND draft two fantasy football teams. I can hardly find time to go to the bathroom during a fantasy football draft, let alone fit in drafting another team and shoot a glance at my child every now and again.

Good thing Lindsay realizes the importance of my fantasy football team on my fall/winter mood and played quietly....or so I thought. This is her somewhere around Round 7 of the 15 round draft.

Exhibit 1 in her case against us when she's a teenager. But hopefully by then she'll realize how important it was for me to be able to draft Matthew Stafford as a potential keeper in the later rounds.

Mr. Hankey's home

Our little gal is now walking. And it is totally awesome, but it brings a host of problems with it. First and foremost, she is basically a ninja. Turn your head and she's gone....and made no sound leaving. When she was crawling, her hands would make a noise as she put them on the floor. No more, folks.

Case in point.

A few mornings ago, Lindsay and I were sleeping in bed (our bed, not hers). I was awake and decided to get up and leave her there. I turned on the monitor and in my best dork impression, hooked it to my pants like those folks that hook their cell phones to their belts. I put some laundry in the washer, did the dishes and made some coffee. While waiting for the coffee to finish, I go to the bathroom to find Lindsay in there. Total ninja move because the monitor didn't go off at all!

Now if that were conclusion to the story, I wouldn't have told it. Any guesses as to what she was doing in the bathroom?

If you guessed unrolling the toilet paper roll, you'd be partially right.

If you guessed taking that toilet paper and dunking it in the toilet water, you'd again be partially right.

If you guessed taking that toilet paper out of the toilet and sucking the water out of it, well, then you'd have hit the nail on the head.

That's right. Our cute little girl likes drinking toilet water as much as our dog, Kip. Only in our house. At least it had been cleaned the day before, I guess.

And if you are wondering why there is no photographic proof, well, I guess she found one of my boundaries of where I stop the action before taking a picture.

Monkey business

As exciting as all these stages are, the more mobile our little punkers gets, the more terrifying she becomes. Earlier this month, Lindsay figured out how to get onto the couch without our assistance...which isn't that great because I can't count the number of times she has already fallen off the couch. And those were with our supervision. Great supervision, I know.

But now, she can do it on her own. She pushes her little toybox over to the couch, then pushes her little music table over next to it. From there, she crawls into the toybox...

...and then crawls on top of the music table.

After that it is a small hop up to the couch.

What you see above is actually our ottoman. But from there she can crawl onto the couch and as of today, crawl onto the coffee table. No lie, two times today, when either Kevin or I was in the bathroom, we came out to her sitting on the coffee table. Which means she got into the toybox, onto the music table, onto the ottoman, crawled across the couch, over the arm of the couch and onto the coffee table. When Kevin came out of the bathroom, he found her dunking her hand in his coffee.

Awesome.

Thankfully it wasn't hot anymore and there weren't any burns.

Now that our little girl is on the verge of walking, I will never again think an infant is difficult. Mobility is awesome to watch, but basically a nightmare. If nothing else, however, we've determined she should be quite the problem-solver and puzzle-solver.

It probably wouldn't be so bad if once she was on top of higher ground, she sat and played. Instead, she continues to be a dare-devil once on top of the couch or table or TV stand.

Just yesterday we watched her crawled up to the couch and then stand up tall on top of it. I'm sure that is safe.

I wish I could say this is the worst of her climbing and daredevil behavior. I'd be lying if I told you that. We are clearly awesome parents.

Who needs toys?

Kids get a lot of toys. I mean, A LOT of toys. We've hardly purchased any toys ourselves, yet she has a toy box full, a bin in the living room full and numerous "big ticket" toys that take up half our living room. One would think with all those toys, our little child would never be bored with the colors, noises, textures, etc. Yet every time I look her way, she isn't carrying a toy in hands...instead she has yet another object in her mouth. You name the item and she has played with it despite being told no.

Computer and computer cord? Check.

Dog bowl? Check.

Empty pop bottle? Check.

Of course, these are just a sampling of the non-toys she insists on playing with. I've walked in with her chewing on rawhides (who knew they were for kids too?), pens, shampoo bottles, digging in the bathroom garbage, carrying our shoes and slippers, darting for our adult beverages and dragging around folded laundry (well, folded before she got ahold of it).

But the other day I learned the importance of getting my groceries put away immediately. After a trip to Target, I came home and set the bags on the floor so I could get dinner started and change out of my work clothes. After what amounted to about 90 seconds out of the room, I came back to this:

She managed to find the box, open it up and pull out a tampon. Simply amazing. If I had asked Kevin to get one out of the box for me, there's no way he could've had it done in 90 seconds. I guess I now know who to go on those tampon runs for me. Guess that "birds and the bees" talk may have to come quite a bit earlier than expected.

I thought teething was about teeth

Teething...seems pretty self-explanatory, right? Baby gets teeth. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Actually getting the teeth is the least memorable part of the experience....and when I say memorable, I don't mean it in a good way.

Yes, Lindsay has teeth. But the 2 weeks it took to get them was a remarkable journey. Our sweet, little, perfect baby turned into a whiny, sick, oozing monster.

The first clue that something was up is that she became incredibly needy. Once able to self-entertain for quite awhile, the second we set her down, she starts screaming and giving us a look like we killed her puppy. Here's where I'd normally insert photographic evidence, but the look breaks us down so fast that we could never actually get a picture of it. It's impossible to not pick her up immediately. She wins this battle everytime. We are suckers.

The next clue was a slight fever...and now we can see the teeth trying to push through. Fever = bad. Not necessarily for any reason other than a fever means no daycare. No daycare means no work. No work means no money. So now the teeth are hitting the pocketbook and they aren't even through the skin yet. I thought that at least wouldn't start until a trip to the dentist was in order.

Finally, the most bizarre symptom of teething...diarrhea. Serious diarrhea. And this one makes no sense to me. How a couple teeth pushing through the skin in her mouth could cause diarrhea, I have no idea. But it happened. A lot. And in disgusting fashion. Three separate times during a 2-day period, this was our reality...

Check out all the poop in the water...we aren't talking about just a little mess here. These were two-step baths. Rinse the poop off, drain the water and then fill up the bath with more water and give an actual bath. Absolutely disgusting. I'm just amazed we were lucky enough that it happened somewhere with a bath each time. What would I have done if we were at a restaurant or something?

If you look very closely at this picture, you'll see what all that fuss was about...two little teeth poking through on the bottom of her mouth. Yep...only two teeth that are only about 1cm big thus far. How many teeth do kids get again? Because I think I might ship her off during those couple weeks each time another set starts sprouting.

Mother's Day...I like it

Growing up, we didn't have Mother's Day traditions (sorry Mom). It usually was a pretty typical Sunday Funday for the Pfeifer clan. We'd load up in the Ford Escort Wagon, three kids in the back sharing two seatbelts and make the hourlong trek to Minot to spend the day with the extended family...grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins. That was what we did most Sundays I was growing up -- and in fact, my grandma's house still hosts every Sunday. Pretend the actors and actresses from the movie Soul Food are white and you have a general idea of what I mean.

So coming into my first Mother's Day, I didn't really know what to expect. There are tons of commercials on TV and the radio and people kept asking "Do you have big plans for Mother's Day?" It clearly must be a big deal. Despite all that, I didn't have any plans. No brunch reservations, no trips to visit family and no activities in mind.

Turns out, that was a pretty darn good decision. First, I woke up to Kevin (and Lindsay) making me waffles and eggs while I read the newspaper and drank coffee. I could handle that everyday. Then the day was my oyster...or something like that. I decided on the zoo. After a pit stop for a beer and apps at my favorite restaurant, off to the zoo we went!

Anyone that knows me, knows I love the zoo. In particular, I love the bears and the tigers. The bears were a little standoffish, but what a treat we got when we got to the tigers! One was pacing right in the viewing area. Just in case you can't tell from the picture, there is glass between Lindsay and the tiger...I didn't throw her inside the cage.

After the zoo, we had great intentions to head home, grill some dinner and call it a night. Instead, it was so nice out we got the firepit rolling and decided to order pizza instead! That may have been my slickest effort at getting out of making dinner ever! So we had a few drinks around the firepit before calling it a night. Lindsay particularly enjoyed her first "bonfire".

I keep telling her she needs to lay off the bottle a little, but clearly I'm losing the battle.

After going inside, Kevin even picked the "chick flick" of our Netflix movies to watch that night. Let me tell you, "Rachel Getting Married" is no chick flick. It's damn depressing is what it is. But despite the downer of a movie, the day was awesome. We may not have started any traditions, but I'd take that day all over again every year. Can't wait to drag Lindsay to the zoo when she's 16 and make her sit around the firepit with her lame parents.

What attitude?

So those that have known me for a long time will tell you I have a bit of an attitude sometimes and have a tendency towards independence. Well, I may have had my first "like mother, like daughter" moment this evening. I was trying to help Lindsay stand against the couch this evening and she got mad at me every time I tried to help. No lie...every single time I reached out to help her, she gave me a look that screams "touch me again and this is over." You be the judge and tell me whether this was her giving me attitude or not...I tend to think yes. The first of many times, I expect.

And for the record, after taking this picture, I left her to her own devices to figure out the standing against the couch. About 5 seconds later, she looked down, lost her balance and fell facedown onto the floor. I felt bad, but she continued the independent attitude by not even crying.

I can't wait until the teenage years.

Crawling in my skin

So here we are. 8 1/2 months into this journey and we still have a mostly stationary baby. She scoots backwards a little and gets stuck under furniture and screams, but other than that, she pretty much stays wherever we set her down.

I'm a little torn on the whole crawling thing. On one hand, it will be super exciting to see her moving around the house and following us a around. On the other hand, it is awesome to be able to set her down on the floor, go into the kitchen to check on dinner and know she'll still be sitting in basically the same spot when I get back.

The funny part about the lack of crawling is that I'm pretty sure she is playing us. I think when we are not looking she might be zooming around the room and getting back to the spot we left her in when we walk back into the room. We get sneak peaks of her when we are in the room and she'll be up on all fours, but when we turn to watch her, she tricks you into thinking she might and then smiles and lays down. Per usual, the photographic evidence:

Step 1: Eye something across the floor we'd like to play with (usually a dog toy).

Step 2: Make a move towards said object.

Step 3: See you looking at her and cast a coy smile.

Step 4: Lay down, laugh and know you have won again.

.

Just in case, the baby gate is going up tomorrow (hopefully), but I'm pretty convinced she is playing us so we'll continue to pick her up and move her to where she wants to go. She's either really lazy or is onto something.

She looks like a deranged Easter Bunny

One of the coolest parts about being a parent is that you can dress your kid up anyway you want and they don't know the difference...at least for the time being. They also can't tell you no. So far, my favorite has been the mini-version of one of Ralphie's gifts from "A Christmas Story."

I can just imagine in about 10 years I'll send her upstairs to put on a bigger version of this outfit because some crazy relative sent it in the mail. And she better not question me about it, or she'll be wearing it all day.

The Many Faces of the Baby

Getting a good picture of Lindsay has proven to take a minor miracle. The kid literally smiles non-stop, but you pull out the camera and she freezes up. Based on the early results, I don't see the second coming of Heidi Klum in this one. Adorable as she is, I fear modeling and acting may be something we already have to cross off the list.

Here's a sampling of a photo shoot we went through the other night. Her and I were sitting in the chair and she was being hilarious as usual...until the camera light went on. You will see I did eventually get the shot I was hoping for, but it was about a dozen pictures in. All I can say is god bless the invention of the digital camera. Otherwise I would need to take out a second mortgage to develop film.

I promise I didn't even feed her any booze before these...she just has a natural inebriated look to her a lot of the time.

Grabby

I don't advise "googling" the above word, but that is the only word I can use to describe the stage Lindsay is in right now. She grabs absolutely everything in reach...sometimes creating a lot of pain for the person within arms reach. Her little razorblade fingernails dig into your skin and feel like papercuts. It's the least cute thing she does. Don't get me wrong, she starts out cute....

...but check out that look in her eye. Ten seconds later she pulled his beard and scratched his face. She's sneaky abusive.And don't even get me started on eating. After being the best eater ever, now the spoon is just another toy to grab at. We used to be able to get through dinner without even putting a bib on her. But take a look at dinner from one night last week.

Take a close note of the food that is above and off to the side of her eye...we are talking some serious flinging here. And if you think that looks messy, you should see the floor, table and walls. You'd think Pollack was painting in our kitchen.

The worst part of the grabbiness is the fact that it isn't limited to when she is sitting safe and sound...she is now insistent on grabbing everything around her on the changing table too. If you look close, you'll see our new "safety first" method of changing her. I guarantee she's taking a header off that table at some point though...her little booty dances fling her all over the place.

But at least she's proud of herself after she gets ahold of the item she's reaching for...

The one thing we did learn about her new skill is that she likely would be better at grabbing fumbles than the Vikings...look at the focus on the ball. AP, come over to our house and she'll give you a lesson on holding onto things.

Of course, the above evening ended up in severe disappointment. In hindsight, I should've done what Lindsay did with about 4 minutes left in the game. I could've avoided a lot of heartbreak. She's apparently already learned that nothing good can happen when the ball is in Brett Favre's hands with the game on the line. Guess she's smarter than the rest of us fools.

As you can imagine, the mood around our house has been somber this week. Even the dog's are feeling it.

Until next time, rest those weary eyes.