As many of you probably know by now, Abigail escaped the womb early in order to take full advantage of the excellent NICU spa treatment offered at Salem Hospital. Over the course of her nine day resort vacation, Abigail lounged under blue ray tanning lights, enjoyed regular sea salt sponge baths, and wiled her minutes and hours in fresh-from-the-oven warm wraps. She enjoyed her stay immensely and she has constantly whined to return; here is her first visit.
Unlike the spartan lifestyle faced by your average rehab-bound celebrity, NICU staff kept bottles ever on hand for whenever Abigail felt like sucking back a warm one, and every finished bottle was succeeded by several rousing cheers and a Swedish back massage continued until leche-addled Abigail attained both burp and unconsciousness.
As you can see here, Lisa can barely hold the now massive Abigail. Abigail’s milk-based Fatkins diet has led to exponential weight gain, so Lisa has wisely adopted the two-handed short yardage football carry to accommodate Abigail’s new found bulk.
Many new parents try to keep the floor and their new infant separated by towels, blankets, or reasonably clean newspaper. Having infants on the floor is, ironically enough, comforting to new parents, since one of the recurring nightmares new parents face is the vision of their child falling from any of the myriad of high altitude perches at which children spend their early days (cribs, hopelessly under-reinforced bouncy chairs, countertops, local bars, black jack tables, human arms, etc.). Cultivating activities that originate and take place on the floor eliminates the worry that a child will arrive at the ground from height with speed, but as anyone who has had an untimely visit from the Department of Social Services will attest, there should really be an expanse of colorful, educational fabric between your child and whatever toxins and unholy essences call your floor home.
We use the cushy, pastel zoological mat pictured here, and at first glance it may appear to be entirely adequate for infant floor exercises. Once you’ve stared at it for a few unbroken hours (or at least the portions of the mat not covered by your motionless child when she refuses to do even one more head up or roll over), you may notice that the artist’s grasp of the animal kingdom is at best vaguely creationist, and at worst frankly dangerous to young, developing minds. It’s clear that whoever manufactured and distributed this “play and learn” mat never spent any time in the African bush and probably never consulted so much as a zoo, a library, or an animal cracker box.
A short list of animal kingdom errors should convince you to choose your mats with better discretion than our early effort documented here.
Not the floor, but not much better. Let’s take a closer look at the gross zoological errors perpetuated on the young.
Flying monkey? Maybe in Oz. Flying giraffe? I don’t think so.
The rare, tuskless, peek-a-boo elephant harvesting poppies! A poacher’s nightmare!
Giraffe-riding kneeless chimp? How convenient for Noah’s roundup!
Pink-maned smiling jungle cat? When did lions become petting zoo critters?
Toothbrush mohawked, pink toed, flower eating zebra? Surely this is a herd of no more than one.
People are always asking me, “Abigail, how do you keep yourself looking so suave and dapper all the time even though you spend the bulk of your day pooping and peeing in your diaper, spitting up all over your jammies, and rolling around on the floor?”
It’s really pretty simple as you can see from the shots above! If you have the means, I highly recommend that you get yourself one or two of these giant servants. I couldn’t imagine my day without staff… I just couldn’t imagine!
We have a Canon PowerShot SD750 Digital ELPH and the experience of taking over 35 million pictures of our Rhodesian Ridgeback in various stages of sleep, so though we would never go so far as to suggest that you “not try this at home,” we’re pretty sure that your efforts wouldn’t produce the same bar-raising photographi(que) awesomeness… at least not at first. In the following sequence of shots, you can clearly make out the furious side to side and threatening down to up movements exhibited by the rather-be-sleeping wee one during parent-mandated exercise session #2.
Shift for leverage!
Rock to side!
Full power!
Completed head up!
Get up and do it again!
As hummingbirds hover at a flower or feeder, their wings can beat up to 80 times per second, which produces their signature hum, and you must take a similar approach with you when filming Abigail. To the naked eye—and often to your naked or poorly dressed camera—the wings (or the arms! or the legs!) are just a nauseating blur. Often the first question I’m asked by the ubiquitous cult of the amateur is what shutter speed I use to tame this ludicrously fast action sequence. Ha! Shutter speed schmutter speed… everyone in the know understands it’s all about the high speed flash! Come on now!
Whether you’re capturing the in flight humming bird wing or the inclined domestic Abisaurus doing head ups during tummy time, it takes immense photographic skill and timing to isolate the beasts’ fast-twitch muscle movements enough for the human eye to perceive, let alone to enjoy. There are no shortcuts! But never fret, kind reader, because here at Moorezilla.com we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you!
We’re all about balance, bed time, and “fang” shui these days. Here we see ridiculously large Hogan hanging with ridiculously small Abigail chaperoned by ridiculously small medium-sized Emily.
Tiny baby tires out massive dog.
Perhaps hidden to the casual viewer of this picture is the great chain of exercise. Hogan does absolutely nothing, but as you can see, he is utterly exhausted from watching Emily watching Abigail do little baby pushups during doctor-ordered tummy time.
Baby Abigail pwn you! All your base are belong to us!
Sleep? Sleep, friends, is for when it’s light outside! Those wide open, unblinking shark eyes assure you that when it’s dark outside it’s wakey wakey scream and shaky!
What does approximately five and a half pounds of milk-drunk hyperactive Mooreling look like at the first minute of the spanking new day? Umm… she looks like this —–>
Total Abby minutes awake from 9:00am to 11:59pm = 6. Total Abby minutes awake from 12:01am to 8:59am = 527.2! And it’s another new Abigail night time record! Only brief, predictable dairy comas cut into the night time seconds available for parental torture.
I cornered, captured, and consumed my first delicious diaper today. Emily, foolish wench, was so jealous that she hysterically screamed obscenities and rudely attempted to snatch away my fairly found diaper. Her regrettable actions forced me to eat it too fast and I have made a mental note to bite her later.
Although my contraband diaper was quite delicious, I now find myself unable to move from my leather lounger for any length of time without feeling sharp pains in my stomach; I think they may be hunger pangs… hunger pangs for more diapers. No matter… I will sleep this diaper off, dream of dirty diapers not yet made, and seek out new dirty diapers tomorrow.
And I will bite foolish Emily when I feel better, as I think I may have mentioned, for trying to take my dirty diaper away. Or… or… maybe I will just lick her. I am undecided. I will sleep and ponder this quandary.
As Emily and Abigail deftly demonstrate in this photo, the bulk of childcare consists of precious little more than lounging around on the couch and half-conscious cuddling. Our Abigail is pretty much self-sufficient at this point, requiring from her adult handlers only an occasional warm meal, dry wardrobe change, or gentle poke with a sharp stick to test developing reflexes.
Actually, none of that is true. Abigail is instead a miniature, deep-lunged vampire, sleeping quietly all day only to wake screaming at darkening dusk to suck in fifteen minute increments the life out of her parents. You may see a child sleeping comfortably, a suburban Rockwell moment, but this is the nap that powers the monster’s night-long assault on everyone’s sleep in the household save the ridgeback. Hogan, charmed canine, still rises but in the late morning and for no one not named breakfast.
