Alert the press. I have taught the baby how to make coffee. I have the world’s first accomplished fifteen-month-old barrista. And, perhaps, the cutest barista in existence because she says “Da!” to everything.

It all started when she was quite bored and it was time to make my evening coffee to facilitate my day’s unwinding. I find a good cup of Costa Rican, combined with good company (my lovely, witty wife) and a good DVD (Farscape recently) really makes an evening worthwhile. So, before we take the kids upstairs for the bedtime ritual and our daily installment of whatever Lemony Snicket book Matilda and I are reading (Starting “The Hostile Hospital” tonight) I make a pot of the good stuff.

Now, by good stuff I don’t mean the coffee that you can buy in the bins at your local grocery store. No, this comes from a very small specialty shop run by a husband and wife team who, I think, may be planning on leaving me the store when they die. When I went to pick up coffee at the supermarket, it was done so anonymously. Like I was soliciting a caffeine-laced hooker in a dark back alley and I told her my name was Billy Pilgrim. When I go to my little store they call me by name, talk about how cute my kids are and how beautiful my wife is. We joke. We argue about politics. It’s an hour trip minimum to get a few pounds of coffee. When we buy a house this summer I know that no matter where I live, I’ll make the trek for this coffee. It’s that damn good. One sip and you’re crying with joy. Plus they have 40 non-flavor, caffeinated coffees to choose from. Thems good slurping. It’s the best way to get my C₈H₁₀N₄O₂.

Anyway, the night I taught the baby to make coffee she was in a particularly bad mood. Now, it wasn’t because she was disagreeable or had a bad attitude. Rather, at that age life actually becomes overwhelming by the end of the evening. Think about it. You don’t really know anything for certain. You can’t even be sure that you have hair. Nothing is a constant except that your pants suddenly get soggy every few hours. You’re not sure why. Food is mush, and everything from carpet to dirt to paper actually tastes good. Plus, to top it all off, you can’t figure out what the hell anyone is saying. An odd word here and there, sure. But to communicate with the giant creatures who imprison your body in cloth and wipe you constantly? Impossible. Here’s what it sounds like to the little ones:

“Blahblahblahstopblahblahnoblahblahblahcookie. Gabba gabba hey.”

So, Gertrude was tired. She wanted to turn off the world and give her poor little brain a rest. And who could blame her? She has a weird family.

“Gertrude, do you want to make coffee with Daddy,” I asked, thinking there was no chance in hell that she would. Dads are like the smelly person you work with. You recognize their brilliance, but you simply don’t want to spend time with them until they hit 70 and suddenly become interested in fishing and skeeball. So the fact that Gertrude stood up, giggled and ran to the kitchen amazed me.

For various reasons. One, that she wanted to spend time with me that didn’t involve wiping her snot in my hair and two, that she knew where we made coffee.

When I met her in the kitchen, she was standing and pointing to the freezer, where we keep the good beans. Hmm. She knows where we keep it. That’s not good.

The first time making the Joe was a little rough. She ran away from the grinder, drooled into the grounds and hit me in the face with the scoop. But she closed all lids and put the coffee back for me. As time went on she knows when to get the filter, when to turn on the grinder (she does it herself) and when to turn on the machine. If she were a little taller, say about four feet, she could be doing this all on her own.

I’m just happy to have these few moments alone with my baby. I get to share in her joy of learning how to do something that requires finite motor skills while enjoying a nightly ritual that I find an integral part of my day. It’s soothing. Plus we share all sorts of hugs and shouts of joy. Or shouts of “Da!” depending on who’s doing the talking.

Now, I know what you anti-drug people are thinking. You think that it is wrong for me to give this baby a positive association with coffee. Because that will eventually lead her down the same slippery slope that lead to my own addiction.

“I don’t know doctor,” she’ll say to her rehab therapist, “I always knew my dad was different. I mean, he actually phased in and out between corporeal and solid. I had no idea that he had so much caffeine in his system that it had affected him on a cellular level. Now he’s entered into a temporal shift and spends most of his days bouncing around a quantum timeline that allows him to visit various times in history. He seems happy because he finally got to see every episode of Hogan’s Hereos, but is that anyway to live? Besides, he owes me money and because he isn’t solid he can’t pay me back. He just laughs as he phases out of this plane of existence and tells me to clean my room.”

But to you caffeine Nazis who think that I’m frying my brain by drinking so much coffee I say . . . Well, I forgot. But the whole thing isn’t about caffeine.

No, the next step is teaching Gertrude how to make teriyaki chicken. Then rice. Then to do the dishes.

Because damn it, I’m tired. Somebody has to do this work and I don’t think she’s been pulling her weight around here.

Discuss