My Experiences as a Father... October 5 to November 4, 2000 (18th month)

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Tuesday, October 31, 2000
Maeve had a good Halloween.  We were going to make her a parachutist.  We put on Maeve's body harness that she wears for airplane rides, a backpack and her bicycle helmet.  We tried to figure out how to get a parachute to float above her.  Our idea was to get a sheet with some helium balloons under it.  Jill bought a dozen balloons, but the sheet was too heavy.  We tried a plastic garbage bag, but that was too heavy.  We ended up just having the parachute hanging out of the backpack.  It didn't turn out as good as last year's sniper, but it was a good idea.

I would like to say, "We'll try again next year", but Jill is already talking about some frilly girlie thing.  If I get any sort of respectable costume I think I'll be lucky.

My office had a cubicle decorating contest.  I wanted to be the grumpy old man who hated kids.  Of course such a person has to receive the wrath of hoodlum children on Halloween.  Jill made me a window with poster board and wax paper, and I egged it.  I had extra egg shells on the floor.  I strung toilet paper over the cube, and put up signs saying, "Go Away - No Candy" and "No Trick or Treaters".  I didn't place in the top three, but I did get "Most Original".

In the afternoon, employees' kids were invited to Trick-or-Treat through all of the cubicles.  Maeve had a pumpkin basket.  By the time it was done, she figured out that she should put the candy in the basket.  There were some people with extra candy left over, so they were trying to get Maeve to take half of what they had.  With candy bars, Maeve would take one out of the bowl, bite it through the wrapper, put it in her basket, and repeat the process with another candy bar.
 

Sunday, October 29, 2000
Daylight savings time ended today since it was the last Sunday in October.  We explained to Maeve that the clocks would be moved back at 2 AM, so she should sleep an hour longer.  She didn't listen.

I was thinking it would be nice to get back at her on the first Sunday in April, but we didn't have to wait that long.  It wasn't intentional, but we went to a dedication of our church's new addition tonight.  We decided to leave at 7 PM, but around 6:50 PM Maeve reminded us that she thought it was 7:50, so it was only 10 minutes away from her bed time.  Ooooops.
 

Friday, October 27, 2000
Sometimes Maeve hides her pacifier and likes us to look for it.  Tonight she pulled her hand back into her sleeve for some reason.  I asked where her hand was.  She made her "I don't know" gesture, and waited for us to look for her hand.  After we found her hand, she pulled her sleeve even further down so we had to look for her entire arm.
 

Wednesday, October 25, 2000
Jill said that she had to go to the bathroom.  Maeve must have thought that Jill would be a while because she went over and picked up two magazines for Jill.
 

Monday, October 23, 2000
Maeve found the old toothbrush that I have in my tool bag for cleaning parts.  She combed her hair with it.
 

Friday, October 20, 2000
When we say grace at dinnertime, Maeve thinks we should pray several times.  If we finish too soon, she will try to grab our hands.  We finish up with the "God is great..." prayer, and she likes the rhythm.
 

Tuesday, October 17, 2000
Maeve has started "hiding" her pacifier and wanting us to look for it.  Once we find it, she will walk a few steps, throw it behind something, and then run around making the "I don't know" gesture, expecting us to go looking for it again.
 

Wednesday, October 11, 2000
Maeve is having some issues with going to sleep.  I don't know what is causing this, but she doesn't always want to sleep, even if she is very tired.  When we point out people/bears/etc. on TV or in books that are sleeping, she starts crying.  Jill pointed out the sleeping bear on Maeve's diaper.  That also started her crying.  When it was time for a nap, I thought that I would let Maeve see me getting into bed, so she would think that a nap is a good thing that everyone does.  That didn't work.  It just made her start crying.

Of course, this all depends on Maeve's mood.  There are also plenty of times that she will stand at the bottom of the stairs and point to her bedroom when she is tired.  Other times we will be trying to read her a bedtime story and she will either lay down with her blanket on the bed, or will try to close the book and will point at her crib.
 

Monday, October 9, 2000
Something that Maeve really enjoys is when I lay her on my head and run around yelling, "I have a baby on my head, I have a baby on my head".  Today she put one of her dolls on her head and started running around.
 

Sunday, October 8, 2000
Jill was making dinner when Maeve came into the kitchen and got two towels from the towel drawer and went back into the living room.  Jill wondered what Maeve was doing so she took a look.  Maeve had spilled a cup of water and was cleaning it up.
 

Thursday, October 5, 2000
I usually try to put a second keyboard on the desk when Maeve wants to work on the computer.  The last time that I didn't she pressed buttons to delete icons from the desktop and a few other things that I didn't want her to do.

Jill decided to let her use the regular keyboard.  Jill opened Microsoft Word, figuring that Maeve can type all she wants in Microsoft Word without hurting anything.  Maeve turned out to be smarter than that.  She put the computer into Standby mode twice.  She was pressing lots of Ctrl-key and Alt-key combinations.  Jill said, "I don't know how you did that, but it's pretty cool."

When Maeve did type regular characters, Jill said it looked like a programming language, and that I was warping Maeve's head by trying to teach her what I am working on.
 


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