bjarvis | Three Men and a Baby

Granddaughter Elodie is visiting with us this week, Tuesday to Tuesday, while her parents take advantage of a use-it-or-lose-it vacation package her mom won from her employer for sales volume last year. Elodie is only a couple of weeks shy of her first birthday --and that's awkward in so many ways.

I'll start by saying she's a delight and I'm tickled to have her here. The snag is that we all have jobs already, so fitting in baby care is a bit of a challenge in our otherwise adult lives, even if two of us typically work from home. Being a toddler, she needs constant care & supervision; even without a fulltime job, that's a major undertaking.

Elodie also can't vocalize her needs or complaints except by crying, wailing or shrieking in a fashion which may yet crack some windows but it's not always clear what is irritating her at a given moment. We have learned the "my poopy diaper needs changing *now*" scream, as well as the "I'm scared of strangers" and "I feel abandoned" cries. Her "I'm hungry" cries are harder to identify as they come across more as general irritability, so we need to monitor feeding times so we can hypothesize whether hunger is an issue.

We've also found that she has a real problem with people entering or leaving the room where she is located at any given time. She might be playing in the living room with one of us, then she becomes generally stressed when either of the other granddads enter the area, although she'll calm down in a couple of minutes. But once she's accustomed to your presence in the room, you can't leave the area without a mournful multi-minute cry of infinite sadness.

Seriously, once I manage to leave the room, I make a point of not stepping back into her visual range again unless I'm certain I'm going to stay with her for at least an hour. If I even suspect I may need a bathroom break in the next half-hour, I'll hide in the kitchen for as long as needed. Even today, rather than go up the stairs from the basement computer bunker to the middle bedroom to get some papers, I unlocked the basement backdoor, went up the outside stairs, unlocked the kitchen backdoor, and had Michael distract the baby while I dashed into the bedroom to grab my papers. Only when he indicated Elodie was distracted again did I risk dashing through the hall again, then retracing my steps to the basement.

I'm skulking around like a thief in the night. In my own house. Because I'm scared of a baby. OMFG.

Elodie has a mixed track record being introduced to strangers, but in general, she finds the experience upsetting: she hides her face, flails a bit as though she's trying to run away, and being angst-ridden crying. I'm not exactly sure what has caused this behavior, but we have to work with it somehow.

Tonight, we're trying a little experiment: Elodie will be joining us for our C2 square dance in Arlington, VA. We hope she'll acclimatize to the situation after a few minutes of angst, but are braced for the possibility she will be utterly inconsolable until we get her home. Depending on our degree of success, we may bring her to John Marshall's A2 dance Friday night and the DC Lambda Squares' Advanced & Challenge afternoon on Saturday, as well as the Mid-Atlantic Challenge Association board meeting on Sunday. This may be an utter disaster, but there's no way to tell until we try.