Semisolids are forthcoming

Andrew Hicks

Procrastination is my forte. I’ll explain more later.

Okay, fine. I’ll explain more now. Silas, who turned five months last week, has been fed cereal once and baby food zero times. He’s old enough for both, I just constantly finding myself taking forever to implement any kind of change. I’m like Barack Obama without the change you can believe in… what? Oh, make that simply, “I’m like Barack Obama.”

Silas lost his appetite when he was sick last week, but he’s back sucking down formula bottles at full tilt. And it’s time to sit his big-headed infant body up in the highchair and start getting him messy with semisolids. Sarah was a good cereal and baby food eater. I think the only baby food she didn’t like was peaches, but she was down with other Snooki-colored foods like squash and sweet potatoes.

Speaking of Sarah while we’re speaking of procrastination, I finally converted the second crib into a toddler bed today. Me vs. Any Kind Of Handyman Activity is usually a long, drawn-out battle – first, to get me to attempt to fix or assemble something, and second, to actually get it assembled correctly. I use the assembly instructions as a crutch, but I never seem to read them thoroughly enough to get it completely right on the first try.

On the other hand, I’m not one of those dudes that refuses to ask for directions. I’ll ask for directions to the same place ten times from ten different people. If I can’t immediately find something around the house, I ask Tiffany if she knows where it is before I even look in a second spot. Which drives her crazy.

Tiffany also has problems with procrastination, which makes a lot of little things take forever to get accomplished and a lot of big things just keep looming in the distance. Considering how long it takes us to do things, getting married after knowing each other for three months was probably the most out-of-character thing either of us ever did. Our wedding, by the way, cost $148 and lasted less than a half-hour. I’ve spent more getting my oil changed. Which is an entirely separate personal issue.

In the case of Sarah and the toddler bed, I likely could’ve procrastinated right up until the hypothetical day Sarah climbed out of her crib and landed on her head. A broken water main ended up coming to our rescue – Tiffany got yesterday and today off work because the main burst right under the ground floor at her job. Thousands of gallons of gushing water were let loose in the vicinity of the company’s computer servers, necessitating evacuation and cleanup. And I thought I sucked for spilling an ounce of formula into my laptop keyboard a couple months back… and then waiting a month to fix the problem.

We put Sarah down for her nap in the toddler bed about 90 minutes ago. Tucked her in with her favorite pink fleece blankie, her Lily singing frog doll and a bottle*. Kissed her goodnight. Walked out of her room and closed the door. Ten seconds later, Sarah was beating on the closed door with her palm. Went back in, laid her back down, explained to her that she had to stay in bed because it was night-night time.

Ignored her tapping on the door more and calling for daddy and mommy. Eventually heard her rustling the plastic shopping bag that was in the trash and realized we hadn’t fully baby-proofed the new room she was sleeping in. Walked in and saw Sarah had found a pen and drawn on her white sheets and grabbed and strewn a bunch of my photos. Put her back in the original crib in the original bedroom. That was 15 minutes ago, and now the familiar sounds of nap-silence are emanating from her closed bedroom door. We’ll put her in the toddler bed later.

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*Sarah does still drink from a bottle when she’s lying down for her nap or for the night. Procrastination here too? Probably, but we have broken her of her once-rabid binkie habit. Now Sarah goes without a bink unless one of Silas’s binks is within her reach. Then she does an instant stealth Yoink! followed by an immediate “I’m trying to get away with something I know I shouldn’t” glance toward mom and/or dad. Sarah always seems entertained by the two-step process of me first reminding her that’s her brother’s binkie then her handing it back to me.

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BABY PICTURE OF THE DAY