One year later, and little Noah Mackenzie is leaving babyhood behind, and entering toddlertown. We find ourselves asking what exactly it means, “to toddle”, the verb that applies to these lumbering little creatures who spend all day doing it, whatever it is, and the best we can figure is that it means to walk unsteadily, slur incomprehensibly with occasional deafening shouts, carry a bottle where ever they go, bump into things, fall down, stagger back up, and go on — Crikey, Noah’s a wino!
Onwards —
Contents Herein
Facts, Figures, Charts & Diagrams
Parents’ Sleep/Awake Time, 2006
The Year in Mobility
Highlights of Noah’s First Year
Interlude: The Year in Literature
A Short Dramatic Narrative Demonstrating Precisely the Devolution of Sensibilities that Occurs in Parents’ Conversations with Themselves and Others in the First Year of Their Little Angel’s Life
Days on Which Noah was Voted “World’s Loudest Baby”
Obligatory Poop Joke
Results of Last Quarter’s Contest
Errata
12 Months of Sleeping, Caterwauling, Quizzical Looks, Skepticism, Giggles, Bemusement, and Chicken Hats
Facts, Figures, Charts & Diagrams Updated
| full name | Noah Mackenzie Baker-Noyes | ||||||||||
| current weight | about 21lbs, but man, after an hour in the Snuggly, it feels like 50 | ||||||||||
| eyes | two, both blue | ||||||||||
| hair | quite blonde now, and either curls are starting to show up, or she has some serious bad bed head most mornings | ||||||||||
| teeth | four at the moment | ||||||||||
| speed | sweet Jesus | ||||||||||
| is most like mom: | disarming smile | ||||||||||
| is most like dad: | two words: early riser | ||||||||||
| burps | More than Dad Less than Dad | ||||||||||
| passes gas | More than Dad Less than Dad | ||||||||||
| cries | More than Mom Less than Mom | ||||||||||
| noah’s achievements: updated |
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parents’ sleep/awake time, 2006
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| nicknames that stuck (), nicknames that didn’t () |
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The Year in Mobility
Highlights of Grumpus’ Noah’s First Year
| Date | Prominent Event |
|---|---|
| January 22nd | 5:01 am: Noah Mackenzie born. |
| January 23rd | Stephen Harper elected Prime Minister of Canada; Noah cries for two hours — is there a connection? |
| January 24th | Noah comes home. Mommy and Daddy kind of stare at each other for a bit and wonder “what now”. |
| January 26th | Daddy notices that Noah’s ears aren’t quite symmetrical; he figures maybe she got one from each parent, and then gets obsessed with the idea that maybe no-one has symmetrical ears, culminating in Daddy twisting his head from side to side as fast as he can in the mirror to verify his suspicions. One year later, there are no firm conclusions. |
| January 28th | 2:16 am: Daddy coins the nickname “Princess Fusspot”. |
| January 29th | 1:30 - 5:00 am: Daddy coins the nickname ”Noah Krakatoa”. |
| January 31st | 4:22 am: Daddy coins the nickname “Devil Child” for the first, and so far only, time. |
| February 14 | Mom’s note in her daytimer: “Difficult evening....postpone Valentine’s Day”. |
| February 22 | Noah celebrates her first birthday2 with a bath (not her first, though given the state of the bathwater afterwards, you’d have thought otherwise at the time, for sure. |
| March 1 | Mommy takes Noah to “Movies for Mommies’” screening of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. |
| March 19 | Noah’s first laugh; happy by herself for all of twenty minutes. |
| March | Many of March’s entries just say “Noah fussy today”. |
| April 3 | Noah and Mommy photographed by Vancouver Sun while playing on park swings; no idea if the pic was ever used by that rag. |
| April | Noah likes dancing and music; rocks out with Queen and David Bowie. |
| April 17 | Noah grabs her pink bunny/bear Birnam and stuffs his ear into her mouth... a beautiful friendship begins. |
| April 27 | Mommy’s daytimer note: “Noah howled: opening act for Motörhead”. |
Interlude: the Year in Literature
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| May | Noah starts stealing purple flowers from the community gardens. Why purple, we can’t say. |
| May 6/7 | Noah’s Hard Weekend: loud, louder, loudest. Daddy’s spirit is broken, and he’s ready to give her away to first taker, or trade her in for a nice piece of fish. |
| May 17 | Baby-Tossing, Sport of Kings™, begins in earnest. |
| June | Daddy is told by staff at Zara’s Pasta on Granville Island not to even bother showing up without Noah. |
| June 20 | Noah kicks Mommy and Daddy out of the bedroom, henceforth known as “PrincessFusspotLand” |
| July 11 | Mommy calls Noah a “bad baby” and declares “I’m not speaking to you” while banging on Starbucks’ door at 5:57 am. |
| July | Slightly shocked at just how loud she can be, Daddy starts introducing her as “the Noah triplets”. |
| August 5 | On Mommy & Daddy’s anniversary, and Grandma Lorie’s birthday, Noah has the beginnings of a sharp little bottom tooth.... |
| August | Noah’s first summer vacation; tocques and sweaters abound. |
| September 5 | Heather, Noah’s Responsible Person, starts taking care of Noah for several afternoons a week. |
| October 11 | Noah starts clapping for the first time, when Mommy stops paying attention to her in a coffee shop. |
| December 25 | Noah’s first Christmas, and she’s more entertained by all the receipts in Mommy’s wallet than in any of the toys or books waiting for her. |
| Late December | Grandma Barb’s cousin Alison sort of teaches Noah what may become her first phrase: “Uh oh.” If they indeed prove to be her first words, at least they’re useful ones. |
| December 30 | Daddy goes to Granville Island Market without Noah, and gets busted. |
| January 22 | We made it. |
A Short Dramatic Narrative Demonstrating Precisely the Devolution of Sensibilities that Occurs in Parents’ Conversations with Themselves and Others in the First Year of Their Little Angel’s Life
| Mom (bursting in the front door) | Hey, how was the grocery store? |
| Dad (wearing an old t-shirt and gym shorts and looking not unlike the gangsters at the end of Pulp Fiction) | Swell. We got everything for dinner, but I was smelling something kind of fishy doesn't begin to describe it, so I looked down, and Noah had well, made a mess, really, all down my leg, so I hobbled over to the checkout and paid for everything, hoping no-one would notice the dripping “stuff”, then walked the five blocks home with a foul but serene Noah, got home, cleaned up the cabbages growing up to her armpits and the antelope behind her ear, threw out the bathwater, washed up with lots of hot water!, found her a clean sleeper, and put her down. |
| Mom | Wow. |
| Dad | And now I can’t ever wear those shoes ever again. |
| Mom | Huh. |
| Dad | Say, let’s not talk about poop for a bit. |
| Mom | Okay. |
| Dad | Okay. |
| Mom | (pause) |
| Dad | (pause) |
| Mom | (pause) |
| Dad | (pause) |
| Mom | (pause) |
| Dad | (pause) |
| Mom | (pause) |
| Dad | (pause) |
| Mom | (pause) |
| Dad | (pause) |
| Mom | (pause) |
| Dad | Would you look at that, is it time for bed already? |
Days on Which Noah was Voted “World’s Loudest Baby”
** Tie with a fellow baby we won’t name here.
† Crawling like a puppy dog, Noah spends most of the day with either a sock or magazine in her mouth, muffling the usual volume somewhat.
Obligatory Poop Joke
For those of you with a delicate/refined sensibility, the following is hidden and you should skip to the next bit; for the rest of you (you know who you are), select the text to reveal.
If #1 is a wet diaper, and #2 is slightly dirty, number of times Noah reached the Legendary #7: once.
Results of Last Quarter’s Poll
Well, the votes are in, and we think the results speak for themselves:
Eleven votes for “Way Cool”, and not a single vote for otherwise.3 That’s like, what, eleventy-billion times more? Eleventy-billion billion? This is exactly the kind of mathematical stumper that’ll keep Noah up at nights, on her way to that Nobel Prize....
Errata
- Giving Noah that curried chicken soup that time, no matter how pureéd, was probably a mistake.
- That time we took Noah to the beach, and she just wanted to eat sand, man, that wasn’t our best idea ever.
- That idea of Daddy’s, to just yell louder and longer when Noah yelled, in hopes of shutting her up, we couldn’t say that was his moment of genius in this life.
- Deciding to host a small dinner party the day we brought Noah home from the hospital was, in retrospect, an error. 4
- Some say that the difference between American film-making and European cinema is that American films feature a problem that needs to be solved, while European films feature a dilemma that is explored; in that international sense, burdening Noah Mackenzie with a boy’s name is perhaps not a mistake, exactly, but has certainly been a dilemma to some of you out there.
- Making a brunch date for Noah’s original due date was not exactly a mistake, more wishful thinking perhaps that she’d live on Mexican time, much as her mother does; not even considering that she’d have her dad’s sense of promptness and punctuality, let’s just call that more of a, you know, oversight.
12 Months of Sleeping, Caterwauling, Quizzical Looks, Skepticism, Giggles, Bemusement, and Chicken Hats 5
| 2 days | 2 weeks | 2 months |
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| 3 ½ months | 4 ½ months | 6 months |
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| 7 months | 8 months | 9 months |
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| 10 months | 11 months | 1 year |
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Notes
1 Not as many times as we would have wished for, at this point, to be blunt. ↩
2 We counted every week at first, mostly as an excuse to get cake, then progressed to every month on the 22nd, a tradition we intend to keep up as long as the cake lasts. ↩
3 The short-term results of Daddy’s gloating on this one was that whoever bathed the baby should get to style her hair, but guess just how many baths occured before Mommy reneged on this quite sensible and fair arrangement? It sure wasn’t eleventy-billion, I can tell you that.... ↩
4 Thing is, we had just bought the salmon like the day before she was born, see, and all these ingredients for risotto, cause what else are you going to make the day before your baby is due but a nice finicky rice dish? But anyways, we were in total shock at that point anyways, so having some grandparents over wasn’t such a bad thing, and damn if that automatic rice cooker didn’t do a better job on the risotto than Daddy ever did standing at the stovetop, that bit of information right there was worth the chaos. ↩
5 And one day of like totally wicked hair. ↩
