Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Today was Kaylani's first Saint Patrick's Day, and she did something that Daddy didn't do...wear green (Daddy didn't wear green for most of the day, but of course changed into green for photos as you can see). To be honest, I don't really know what today is all about, but we celebrated it anyways. I mean, I understand that we're celebrating Saint Patrick, but was Saint Patrick responsible for bringing us the color green, beer, and corned beef and cabbage? If not, then I really fail to see the connection.

It's things like this that I'm going to have to learn within the next 2 years. 2 years from now, as I've learned from my nieces and nephews, Kaylani will most likely be asking me questions like "why are we celebrating Saint Patrick's Day" or maybe just "why?" My job as a Dad is to know the answer, or to at least be able to make something up fairly believeable. Personally I think the fact that Saint Patrick brought us the color green, beer, and corned beef and cabbage is fairly believable, but I guess I should make them fairly appropriate too.

Luckily Kaylani is far removed from being able to ask those complex questions so Daddy didn't have to think of something believable and appropriate today, but we still did celebrate. Kaylani wore her cute little St. Patrick's Day outfit and bib that we bought her, Mommy and Daddy dressed in green for pictures on the green couch in the green room, and we even had homemade corned beef and cabbage that Mommy made for dinner (and by we, I don't mean Kaylani). Kaylani will get some corned beef and cabbage while she nurses, but for dinner, she had a much thicker rice cereal tonight (which she gobbled up with MUCH less mess).

Anyways, instead of looking up the true meaning of Saint Patrick's Day so I have an answer in 2 years, I uploaded pictures of her in her special outfit for today, as well as videos of Kaylani eating her watery cereal from yesterday and her first trip to the pool in PR to YouTube. So enjoy Kaylani's first "solid food" experience in all it's messiness!

I have no idea what I'm doing...

This morning I was coming back from Princeton where I got my haircut finally. During the drive I did some more thinking as usual, and I was thinking how glad I was to get my haircut, and how we need to find time for Mommy to go get her hair cut too. She just wants to cut the tips a little bit, and maybe put in a color or two, or highlights, or something like that. And that's when it hit me...I have no idea what I'm doing.

For the past 6 weeks, I've been winging it as the Dad of a little baby girl, but this is the easy part. What am I going to do when it's time for her first haircut, or her 10th haircut? She's going to say she wants to cut the split ends off, or ask me to take a quarter inch off, and add a mix of two colors to highlight her hair, and I'm going to say something like "What? Come again?"

I don't know anything about girls. Wait, let me rephrase. I have no idea how to RAISE a girl. I started hanging out with girls when I was 14. Prior to that, they ignored me, and I hounded over them, but from that point on, a good majority of my friends were girls. I know exactly how to raise a teenage girl. I'm going to lock her in her room so that no teenage (or older) boys can get to her. But what do I do up until then?

About a year ago, I was playing with my niece and she just got a new dress up doll toy. It was a picture of a doll on a board, and she had a ton of different outfits (pants, shirts, blouses, shoes all separate) that you could magnetically put on her. We spent 20 minutes just switching outfits back and forth. "Tio, I think this shirt would look good. And then these pants. And now this shirt. And these pants. Oh, and these shoes. With these pants. But this shirt. Now these pants again." Seriously, 20 minutes, during which the only thing I said was "okay" or "cute." Whenever I made a suggestion, she said "Tio, that's silly" and went back to changing more outfits.

Dolls, hair, shoes, makeup...oh man, the makeup. What the heck do I know about makeup? Does this lipstick go with this blush? What about the mascara? Or the foundation? What color foundation goes with this? Forget that, what's foundation??

Depsite my gentle personality, and my love of cheesy romantic comedies, I am less of a girl then people think I am. And when it's time for me to do little girl things with my little girl, it's going to be overly apparent to everyone around. For once in my life, feeling like a "manly man" isnt' going to feel so good.

Alright, well it's time to call it a night and get ready for the festivities. Tomorrow, my whole family comes into town, as do Mommy's parents, so we're going to have a full house and get Christmas started! Check out these pictures from the last 2 days, and check back soon for pictures of our first Christmases (yes, that's plural).