And she's off...

Lately I am reminded of something I heard Jerry Seinfeld say when I went to see him perform live in Tucson. After his standup, he allowed some questions from the audience. One guy asked him what his favorite thing was about having children. His reply was "just chasing them."

My niece is nearly 2 years old now, and she can walk. This means that watching the baby is no longer the responsibility of her parents, but the responsibility of everyone in the building. A kid that young you can't just leave alone, unless she's sleeping. And any time she's not sleeping she's zooming around, often in circles through the whole house. That means the job of watching her continually passes to the nearest person who has line-of-sight, often as many as 10 times per minute. If you're not actively playing with her, you are usually witness to seeing her run around and around some part of the house, possibly the chair you are sitting in. If you are actively playing with her, you'd better have a short attention span because you might be doing the same jump-out-from-behind-the-couch-and-scare-her routine for a good long while. Settle in, grab a drink.

On my latest visit to my parents' house, my brother and his wife and baby were there as well. Everyone was staying in the same house and there's not enough bedrooms, so I was set up on an air mattress in the dining room. One of baby's favorite games is to fall down face-first onto the air mattress. Then I jump onto the part next to her and it bounces her way up in the air and she laughs and screams. Again, if I'm not careful, this could go on for days. Well as it turns out, baby loves this game way too much to actually wait for me to get up in the morning before she starts playing. This would not be a problem except that she figured out how to open the folding doors that lead into the dining room. Sunday morning for me began when something small and giggly landed on my feet. It went from sleepytime to playtime pretty quickly after that.

My mom has gone completely baby-crazy. Well, she went baby-crazy about 2 years ago, but it's been escalating ever since. This is the first baby girl in the family since... her, I guess. My mom is doing everything she can to encourage my brother/sister/niece to visit, as often as possible. Her latest scheme is to allow them to leave some of the baby's stuff at her house even when the baby is not there. So there is a full-size crib, changing table, and assload of toys that live at my mom's house now. I'm sure my brother and sister appreciate this, but I think maybe they're also using it as a clever way to dump off unwanted baby crap. I'll give you an example. My mom bought the baby this little toy dog that you can pull by the leash and it has wheels and rolls along, and the rolling activates the voice chip inside and it makes doggie noises at you. Baby dragged it around for about 30 seconds before it capsized, at which point she immediately and finally got bored with it and didn't touch it again. There were many attempts to get her to play with it some more, but they were all for naught. After a few minutes of this, mommy exercised her newly-gained toy-dumping powers and said "Oh boy, doggie is fun isn't he? We'll have so much fun playing with him next time we visit Grandma, won't we?" Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, one less piece of baby crap! A surreptitious parental high-five followed.

I'm not gonna gush about how cute the baby is, but I will say one thing. They got her some shoes that have little squeakers in them. I challenge anyone not to smile when a baby toddles up to you for a hug, huge smile on her face, making squeaky noises with every awkward step.