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.