STATUS REPORT
Child: 2 years, 4 months
Parent: Operational
Stair Operations: Successful
Pull-Up Deployment: Upgraded
Independent Dressing: Emerging
Turkey Pasta: Initially Rejected
Penne: Accepted
Protests: 1 (Resolved)
Emergency Room Visits: 0
CPS Calls: 0
Controlled Substances: None
Handoffs: Successful
Dad Lab 2.0: Online
System Status: Stable
Picked up Nina from daycare for her first evening at my new apartment.
Dad Lab 2.0 was officially online.
I had her walk up the stairs to my unit. At the old place, she’d been spoiled by the elevators, although at least she’d learned how those worked.
Time for more reps.
Taking it step by step. Literally.
She spotted the unit number above my door.
“One!”
Then the number across the hall.
“Two!”
Correct on both counts.
When we got inside, Omen greeted her.
“Kitty cat!”
Correct.
I told her to take her shoes off.
“Papa shoe off.”
Apparently, standards applied equally around here.
I took mine off.
Next came the diaper change. I’d upgraded her to pull-ups, which introduced a useful new feature: she could theoretically put the damn things on herself.
Theoretically.
She managed to get the pull-up around her ankles.
“Pull it up.”
“Papa pull it up.”
No.
I shut the door on her ass to foster independence and build character, two core tenets of my rough parenting™ methodology.
“PAPAAA!!”
A little while later, I peeked through the door.
Pull-up successfully deployed.
Nice.
I ran the same loop with her skirt.
Also successful.
She could apparently manage both tasks. Whether shutting the door helped or she simply decided to get dressed remained unclear.
Either way, I’d confirmed the capability.
I washed her hands and moved on to dinner.
Tonight’s offering was turkey pasta, a dish I’d named Green Penne because of the spinach.
She inspected it.
“TACO RICE!!!”
Ah, yes.
She wanted my famous ground beef taco rice bowl instead. Her favorite meal and apparently the only acceptable item on the Dad Lab menu.
Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t running a restaurant.
I wanted her to get used to eating other things.
Then came the formal rejection.
“NO TURKEY PASTA.”
Excellent.
Except she started eating the penne anyway.
Once the pasta breached the perimeter, I offered her some of the remaining turkey and sauce.
She ate that too.
Dinner went from categorical rejection to successful consumption without changing the meal.
Good to know.
Sometimes the objection is to the presentation, not the food.
Or she’d just gotten hungry enough.
Both possibilities remained under investigation.
After dinner, I changed her into her llama pajamas and brushed her teeth. Then we wound down with Fucker and Friends.
At some point, she announced:
“Go to Mommy’s house.”
There it was.
New stairs. New bedroom. New surroundings.
She knew the old setup. This one still needed to become familiar.
Dad Lab 2.0 had passed its initial operational tests: stairs, pull-ups, clothes, dinner, and bedtime preparation.
But familiarity wasn’t something I could install in one evening.
The lab was operational.
Home would take longer.
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