Monsters!

I saved the best of the holiday posts for last.

Last Saturday night, Finn and his folks came over to play with Uncle Jeams. Well, Finn did. The rest of us just sort of lounged around and drank the evening away while the guy who would eventually get to go home to a nice, quiet house for a good night's sleep entertained our brood. And entertain them he did.

The boys were playing with flashlights and the light in the dining room was turned off for their benefit. Then, quite out of the blue, Finn pointed his light into the dining room and shouted "Monster in there!" Jamie said he would check it out. He slowly walked around the table and announced, "I don't see any monsters in here . . ." and then promptly fell down to the ground as if the monster had gotten him.

The boys squealed and shrieked, possibly in terror, but quickly recovered as James got up and a new game was born. A new game that would fill nearly the next two hours. Solid. Below is a somewhat long video taken during the adventure.

After some time, we asked the boys what the monster's name was. They said that his named was Fred Ghost. We thought this was an appropriately amusing name. Then we asked what he looked like. He was blue, small, and slimy. That was all the detail we could get out of them, though, and that had to come between squeals and running into and out of the dining room.

Long after we grew tired of the game, and had run out of other options for ending it, each set of parents explained Fred's departure by insisting that he had left to live under the other child's bed. Apparently the kids weren't old enough to understand this concept, however, as neither of them had fearful nights in their rooms in the evenings that followed. This is a good thing. Fun though the game had been, all of its charm would have been instantly lost if our kids had suddenly been convinced that everywhere dark was inhabited by monsters. I expect this will eventually happen anyway, but hopefully not until the kids are old enough to understand the evidence we present to the contrary.

Anyway, enjoy the video.

Despite the Evidence You Are Presented with, Daddy Does NOT Have Boo Boobs (And More Christmas)

For some reason, this morning, Gabe has been obsessed with boobs. I mean, I can't blame him, really. Despite my advancing years, I find that thinking about boobs still fills a respectable portion of my day. But I sort of pegged him as a little young to be spending so much time on them.

We were sitting in the living room, sorting crayons (he got a box of 96, and the box all but disintegrated in the first ten minutes, so the crayons are living in compartments on the little plastic drawing table my folks got him for Christmas), because organization is FUN. He crawled up on my lap and started poking my chest.

"Boo boobs," he said.

I won't go into great detail here, but this is the sophisticated terminology that Gabe and Libby came up with for funbags. One of Gabe's favorite games when he's having his diaper changed is to kick Libby in the rack and say, "Kick boo boobs!" Libby has tried to discourage this game, for obvious reasons, but he persists nonetheless.

Anyway. "No," I said. "Girls have boo boobs. Boys don't." He poked me again. "Boo boobs," he added, matter of factly. I had to continue to argue the fact based purely on technical differences in the biological makeup of males and females, despite the fact that the evidence pointed pretty clearly to his observation being spot on.

It wasn't OVERWHELMING evidence, mind you. Until we got Gabe, I did a pretty good job of staying in shape. I rode my bike with fair regularity and walked about five hours a week. After we got Gabe, the bike rides went out the window (not because I couldn't do it--I could have bought one of those baby carriage ride behind things--but I had a pretty terrible track record of accidents and near accidents and didn't want to take the chance of crashing with a baby in tow), but I still walked four or five hours a week. With Norah's addition, however, I've had to all but give up on the walking. Partly because hauling two kids in a stroller isn't much fun but mostly because her addition coincided with Gabe's realization that the parks we had to walk by were FAR more interesting than riding in a stroller for an hour. Since then, exercise of any organized sort has been pretty much impossible. And it hasn't been TOO detrimental to my girlish figure. Yet. But I have to admit that I am probably sporting a solid A cup at the moment.

Nonetheless, Gabe persisted, despite my protests, and has continued to say, throughout the morning, "Momma has boo boobs" while looking at my chest, as if he's reminding himself of the simple facts of life at the expense of my dignity. It's a good thing that I didn't have much dignity to begin with, I suppose.

And here's some more Christmas pictures and a short video. These are from our visits out to my folks' house. Most of the pictures come from our small family gathering--my folks, my grandma, us, and my brother Jon's family. But I'm going to include some pictures and the short video I took from our big family gathering as well.

Butts in her new bib. People really should send these holiday clothes to kids well before the holiday happens. How appropriate will it be for me to use a "My First Christmas Bib" now that it's not the Christmas season anymore? I WILL use it, mind you, because I don't much care if I'm appropriate or not. But some people worry about such things.

Little Red Riding Butts. Or should that be Little Red Butts Hood? No, Red Riding Hood was actually the kids name in the story, wasn't it. Poor kid. Named after clothing that she is then forced to wear. In that respect, Butts isn't such a bad name.

Gabe, doing double duty with the suckers. I swear, the kid hasn't had more than two solid meals since Christmas thanks to all the sugary crap we have around the house. I could throw it away, of course, but I have a problem with wasting food of any sort. The suckers and most of the Pez are gone now, at least (Mom always gives us Pez for Christmas, and Gabe decided that he simply loves the stuff).

This will take a bit of explaining. Pictured here are the great-grandkids. The ones that were still there or who showed up, that is. I think we're missing at least a half dozen or so, possibly as many as ten. Personally, I don't know the names of more than five or six of them. Our family is HUGE. Dad has six brothers and sisters. With three kids, we have the smallest family. Two of the families have six kids or more (if I'm remembering correctly). The grandkids range in age from about 40 down to something like 10 years old. I am the fourth oldest. Now, most of the grandkids in their early 20s are starting to have babies--and most of the grandkids are in their early 20s. In the next five years, there could be as many as 100 grandkids and great-grandkids. Heck, we might have that many already, I don't know. Our family is populated with EPIC breeders. Of course, there isn't much to do out on the farm but have sex and get drunk. I had hoped that, with the addition of satellite television, breeding habits might change, but so far that hasn't really happened.

And, finally, a video to give an idea of just how huge my family is. We have to rent out an old school so we can have Christmas in the gymnasium. By this point in the day, several people have already left. I have no idea how many, for sure, but I am guessing we're short at least six grandkids and however many great-grandkids that would mean. Ponder on this the next time you're thinking about breeding. This could be your future.

A White and Brown (But Mostly White) Christmas

Bing Crosby was an asshole. There, I said it. And I know that it is probably unfair to lump all of my judgmentalism onto the shoulders of one famous crooner for idealizing particular weather conditions for the "proper" setting of the holiday atmosphere. After all, many people had a hand in it. The screen writer of "White Christmas" came up with the story that necessitated the song. The song writer came up with the song. Various musicians were responsible for playing the score. Even the director could have put his foot down at some point. But I choose to blame Bing. He could have turned down the role, thus forcing the studio's hand to replace him with a lesser singer, which surely would have minimized the movies popularity. Mostly, though, I blame Bing because I don't like his ears.

But the truth of the matter is that snow on Christmas is just one of those things that people always hope for now. Personally, I couldn't remember a time in my life when we actually got snow on Christmas Eve, thus guaranteeing a blanket of the stuff on Christmas morning. I remember a few times when we still had remnants of earlier snows that still existed--just last year I think we still had a few dirty smudges left in some shady places--but never a proper Christmas snow.

But this year we had one. Sort of. We only got about four inches of snow, but the wind was blowing around 40 mph for the better part of two days, so what little we had kept recirculating, so it looked like it was snowing for a much longer time than it actually was. And it never really covered everything (thus the brown reference in the title) because, as soon as it did, it would blow away again only to drift several yards further away.

Nonetheless, it did a bang up job of setting the tone for the holiday. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone who needed to travel even five miles. And THAT is the problem with a white Christmas. People need to drive around on Christmas to see the family that is hither and yon, and blowing snow is decidedly not something people should be driving in. It's much better than ice, of course, but the crap we drove through on Christmas Eve was, quite possibly, the worst winter weather that I've ever experienced from behind the wheel of a vehicle. We couldn't see thirty feet in front of us, the wind was whipping us all over the place, and there were surprise drifts that spanned the entire highway in spots where the wind was partially blocked. It was a nightmare.

And I blame Bing Crosby for that, too. In fact, I blame him for everything bad ever. Weird eared prick that he was.

Anyway, enough of that.

We had a great holiday this year! Uncle Jeams' (he's graduated to something more resembling his name thanks to a few days of constant practice) visit was great. He went above and beyond in his attempts to entertain Gabe, and we really appreciated his being here. It's really too bad that Gabe probably isn't old enough to remember this Christmas forever, because it should go down as one of the best in his books. He had everything. Loads of presents, a near constant stream of activities and places to see and play, and, I think, a pretty ideal array of all of the nebulous this-and-that that supposedly makes a perfect Christmas experience.

Now, sadly, I have to listen to the periodic laments of my barely comprehensible, but still inconsolable, child coming from the other room. "Uncle Jeams . . . Uncle Jeams . . . Uncle Jeams." And then I have to explain to him that Uncle James had to go home and we'll see him another time. I'm sort of dreading when we put the Christmas decorations away and all of his Christmas candy is gone. It was the same way when Halloween passed, but at least then we had Christmas to look forward to. Now what does he have? Martin Luther King Day? Arbor Day? Sure there's Valentine's Day and Easter coming between now and summer, but, except for the candy, neither one of them is really that great.

Fortunately, we got lots of pictures and movies to help remind him of just how good he had it.

I hope to sort through all of these pictures and movies over the next few days, and I'll post the best ones on here. Some of the movies are priceless. At least to my way of thinking.

Here are a few pictures to get things rolling:

Gabe and Uncle Pedo. After looking at this picture, Jamie requested we take another one because he looks like a pedophile. We took some other, probably better, pictures, but I like this one best, still.

Cowboy Butts. Keep in mind, this is a hat that Gabe was fitting into about as well at 18 months. I'm starting to worry that she has a giant, Easter Island head that she won't be able to support.

Button's new diet plan. We're thinking of putting her on a strict diet of tissue paper. I'll let everyone know how that goes.

King Gabe. James brought both of the kids cloth crowns. I THOUGHT we had a picture of Button in hers, but I guess not. This was the only one we could snap of Gabe, too, before he snatched it off. He's not much for wearing hats still for some reason. It was all we could do to pull it down on his head and take a quick picture as he pulled it off.

Adorable. She's also wearing a new outfit--we changed her three or four times on Christmas Eve as we opened her presents.

And that's it for now. I'll try to sort through some more later today or tomorrow.

Dammit, Dammit, Dammit

So, I was sitting in here a little while ago, checking email, and heard, from the dining room, Gabe saying, "Dammit, dammit, dammit" while he pushed his dump truck around the room. At least I THINK that's what he was saying. He had his binky in, so I can't be sure that he wasn't saying something completely different.

I blame Libby. I'm pretty good about limiting my curses to under-my-breath utterances whenever I'm around him. Libby, however, is like a salty sailor of yore after having his pecker slammed in a brothel door by a hooker. She lacks the creative flare that my dad had when we were growing up ("son of a whore's ass!" he yelled once as something or other went wrong on the project he was working on in our shop--still my favorite curse of all time), but she makes up for it with the sheer volume of vitriolic words that she spews forth in one breath. She's all "eff this" and "that's ess" and everyone's a "bee" or an "aye" or a "see sucking mother effing ess stained see faced rusty tromboning eff face." I swear, it's a good thing I'm the one staying home with Gabe or he might as well be growing up in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

But I couldn't scold him for saying it because I couldn't be SURE that was what he said. I asked him to take out his binky and say it again. He took out his plug then spouted off some gibberish, so I can't even be sure he was saying actual words to begin with--either that, or he knew he'd be in trouble and was covering it up, he's been doing quite a bit of experimenting with lying the past few weeks. So I had to let it slide. For now.

Gabe has also discovered that his voice sounds funny when his ears are covered up. For some reason, enjoying this new discovery is almost always coupled with a complete spaz out. Last night, he put his fingers in his ear and then rand around the living room and dining room shouting whatever came to mind. I grabbed the camera eventually, but what I got wasn't nearly as entertaining as what he was doing before I started filming--as usual.

I actually took two videos. I can't decide which is better, so I'll post them both.

And, no, that's not a giant opossum running out of the room. That's our twenty-pound cat, Tsunami.

After this first video, I tried a little coaching to see if we could get a better result out of him. Specifically, I recommended that he have a "big finish," which he then began his routine with, and which I missed most of.

Idle Threats

So, for the last month, we've been employing a passive threat system to coax Gabe into doing things that he's otherwise disinclined to do. It started when we found out his uncle James--or Uncle Jeebes, as Gabe called him--would be joining us for Christmas (which he's still planning on doing, provided we don't get nailed with the ice and snow that they're predicting to hit us right about the time he's supposed to be traveling here).

Not surprisingly, James was Gabe's favorite visitor last Christmas. Obviously, I wasn't around to see James grow up since he's just slightly younger than Libby, but from what I've been told, Gabe is a carbon copy of James as a toddler. I'm reasonably sure that Gabe doesn't actually remember any of last Christmas, but he's still be very excited at the prospect of James visiting.

When we first informed him that James would be visiting in about a month, he said, "Uncle Jeebes, two minutes!"

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, "two minutes" is Gabe's negotiating strategy for just about everything--and has been for a month or two now. "Gabe, it's time for dinner." "Two minutes!" "Gabe, we need to clean up your cars." "Two minutes!" "Gabe, we need to get up on the couch and read some books because it will be bed time in fifteen minutes." "Two minutes!" Obviously, his concept of proper negotiating procedures is shaky at best.

Whether he meant that Uncle Jeebes should be arriving in "two minutes" instead of a month or if he was only willing to extend the offer of our house to James for that limited amount of time, we're not sure. I guess we'll find out in a few days.

For the next two weeks, everything Gabe did that required subtle redirection involved a threat involving James. "Uncle James would go to bed when he's supposed to." "Uncle James would eat his oatmeal." "Uncle James wouldn't throw his cars at the television." We knew we were treading on thin ice since, from what I'd been told and Libby vaguely remembered of James growing up, NONE of our statements actually held true. But we did it anyway, and it met with moderate success.

Since then, however, Gabe has discovered Santa Claus thanks to the absolute innundation of the image and likeness of the fatherly Christmas philanthropist just about everywhere that Gabe looks. So we took the opportunity to link the possibilities of Christmas goodies with "being good" and Santa's omnipresent judgementalism. Now we have replaced Uncle James with Santa in all of our threats.

But not just in the threats. Whenever Gabe does something really nice and helpful, we tell him that Santa appreciates his efforts and Libby has taken to picking up the telephone and pretending to call Santa to let him know that Gabe has been a good boy. This, of course, is a bit troubling to me because it sets up a fundamental incosistency in Santa's character. Santa just knows when Gabe is being bad, but we have to call him whenever Gabe is good. This paints Santa out to be a bit of a dick, if you ask me. And his omniscience only applies to naughty acts. Still, I suppose that is all the more reason for kids to act "good" instead, since Santa is guaranteed to see when they are bad, but they have to be conspicuously good--so good that someone calls Santa and lets him know. I suppose we'll see how it plays out over the next few years.

All of these threats are quite toothless, though. Uncle James wouldn't have NOT come down if Gabe hadn't stopped throwing the cars at the television (though, I wonder what kind of mental scars it will create if the weather prevents James' trip and we explain it away to Gabe as a consequence of him being bad--we wouldn't do that, obviously, but I have to wonder all the same). And Santa won't NOT give him give gifts if he's a bit naughty (god knows--Gabe is making out like a friggin Rockefeller this year thanks to the fact that both Libby and I were picking things up for him here and there). I just hope he doesn't figure that out for a good long time.

Butts Passes Out

We stick to a pretty strict nap schedule around here. For one, I think it's good for kids to sleep as much as possible. Apparently, they do much of their growing when they're sleeping (I'm sure I read that somewhere or other--or at least imagine that I read it somewhere), but it also, I hope, gets their bodies accustomed to normal sleeping. If I can't accomplish anything else while raising these kids, I want to pass on to them the kinds of healthy sleep habits that have eluded me my entire life. But another reason that I encourage them to sleep as much as possible is because, well, it's the only time that I get to myself. And I loves some "me time."

As such, it isn't often that they fall asleep just anywhere. Presumably, as soon as they're tired, they're in bed, so there isn't a lot of opportunity for them to doze off here and there. Add to this the fact that Gabe WON'T sleep just anywhere (rarely in the car, even, which can make for some long car rides, and I posted the first, and so far only, time that he fell asleep on the couch), so there aren't many opportunities for cute pictures of them sleeping in unusual places.

But, yesterday, Button supplied me with a cute picture of her in what had to be a terribly uncomfortable position.

The old activity saucer we had--the one Gabe used--was shaped like a car and had a steering wheel and everything. Not having that one anymore denied me the opportunity to colorfully, if unimaginatively, name this post "Asleep at the Wheel." Nonetheless, I did consider "Asleep at the Button," but figured that really wasn't accurate since, you know, she IS Button, so it would be difficult for her to be asleep "at" herself.

There really wasn't any good reason for her to fall asleep when and where she did. She has been fighting considerable congestion and icky feelingness for the last week thanks to the four damn teeth that won't just get it over with, and for the last few days she's been getting to sleep a little later at night and waking up a little earlier in the morning, which is throwing off her schedule, but this happened less than an hour after she woke up from a decent nap ("decent" because she slept for a little more than an hour, and getting more than an hour out of her at a time is about all I can expect).

Plus, she gave me almost no hint that she was tired. She wasn't getting fussy, she wasn't wailing, and she wasn't rubbing her eyes--all of which she's likely to do when it's coming up on nap time. She WAS, however, unusually quiet. As I've said before, she's a talker. Noise of some sort is almost always coming out of her mouth, but for about ten minutes before she nodded off, she was just sitting there, quiet and happy, in her saucer. So I guess I'll have to add "unusually quiet" to the list of possible clues that she's getting sleepy now.

One minute, I turned to look at her, and she smiled over at me. Not two minutes later, I looked over again, and this was what I saw, her slumped over a pile of toys. So I snapped a quick picture then took her up to bed. Ahhhhh. Adorable.

Being Sick Is Stupid

If I ever meet the person who invented kids being sick in a dark alley, I will proceed to kick him or her in the fork. I swear it. With malice aforethought.

For what seems like an eternity, our kids have been sick. The progression of said sickness has been like the tides through this time (and it's dating back to around Thanksgiving now). It will start to taper off for one of them, then the other, then, without warning, a flood of snot and sneezed spit will wash over all of us again and both of them will be worse off than they were before. And we've been completely unable to decide what is causing it.

Towards the end of last week, Gabe started running nighttime fevers. He was miserable and complaining, in his own incomplete and often incomprehensible way, of a sore back and neck. Fever plus sore muscles, we thought, equals flu. Since he had a flu shot a few months back, we began to fear H1N1. But his fever never got that bad and, really, besides some consistent congestion he's not been all that bad off since those first few days of terrible sleep at night. I'm still hopeful that it WAS swine flu, just because that would mean we've all been exposed and, hopefully, won't have any more trouble with it, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

But then he started chewing on just about anything he could put in his mouth, so now we're thinking that he's getting one of his last molars in. And since he's always had a bit of fever and other cold-like symptoms when he's gotten teeth, we wonder if that wasn't the problem.

And then we noticed that Button has some white spots starting to break in on her top row--FOUR of them! All at the same time. I swear I've seen these spots come and go over the past month, though, so who knows if she'll actually get them in. I hope so because she's been so stuffed up that she sounds like a little snorting pig when she's lying in her bed, and I'd hate for her to have to go through all of this again in a few weeks when the teeth actually decide to push through.

And of course they are both irritable and cranky because of the broken nights of sleep and poor naps interrupted by coughs and big balls of phlegm snaking down their throats and out their noses. So that's fun.

Despite his crankiness this morning, Gabe invented a new game with my office chair.

Typically, the best goes he had were before we got the camera running. But he had a grand old time getting the chair spinning then putting his head in the way of it so the back or the arms would bonk him. I'm not sure whether I should be worried or not about the way he abuses his head--and his body in general, really. Somehow I suspect that I'm raising the next Super Dave Osborne.

Alternate Reality Theory and Baking Cookies

Despite my questionable conjunction usage above, my two topics today are unrelated. At least as far as this post goes. Perhaps, in the future, the two can finally be together as nature intended, but not today.

Anyone with even an inkling of interest in science fiction is undoubtedly familiar with the notion of alternate realities as it is a fiction device used with some regularity, especially in television programs. If you follow any science fiction program, there is almost zero chance that they WON'T utilize the concept of alternate realities at least once--and sometimes you can count on it being used a time or two per season. This practice dates back--at least as far as I'm concerned--to the "evil Spock" episode of the original Star Trek series. From that point on, television writers have positively gnawed at the bit for an opportunity to flex their creative muscles in a reality where pretty much anything can happen and the stringent restraints of popular storylines and characters can be thrown to the wind.

The theory is that, for any decision that is made, two realities are created--one that we inhabit and another where the OTHER option was taken. Terry Pratchett like to refer to this concept as the Trousers of Time. This is a colorful metaphor, if a bit imperfect since the action of placing one leg into pants before the other does not really constitute much of a decision. But it is the metaphor that always comes to my mind when I think about alternate realities, imperfect or not. Considering the numerous decisions that are made every day and the billions of people on the planet, there must be a nearly infinite number of alternate realities.

This is NOT the type of alternate reality I'm thinking of.

No, I'm thinking more of pocket dimensions--an idea that also crops up from time to time in science fiction and fantasy. Specifically, I'm thinking of the concept as it pertains to Dungeons and Dragons, a game I much loved to play in my earlier years (and probably still would if I ever had time to sit down with enough friends for a long enough period of time to actually play it--because I'm just that type of nerd). In D&D, one could, quite easily, find or purchase a magic item known as a Bag of Holding (or one of its numerous variations). A Bag of Holding looked like a normal bag, ranging in size from something like a coin purse to something like a burlap sack. The idea was that things put into the bag were effectively reduced in size and weight--or, more specifically, that the area inside the bag was much larger than the area outside the bag would suggest (like the T.A.R.D.I.S.), and the laws of weight didn't really apply normally either. In this fashion, a gamer could store all sorts of crap that he or she didn't want to get rid of without being too overburdened by the weight of said objects.

But these dimensions weren't necessarily limited to these magic bags. Creative dungeon masters could put them just about anywhere using any number of flimsy excuses or faulty logic.

I believe, somewhere along the line, that Gabe has discovered just such a pocket dimension.

I don't know how he found it or where it is in the house, but there is no other explanation for how things can completely disappear one minute and then reappear, quite out of nowhere, some time later. It has happened too many times in our house to be coincidence--on nearly a daily basis.

Take yesterday for instance. Gabe was lying on the couch "snuzzling," (what he calls snuggling, which is something he likes to do for five or ten minutes on the couch as a sort of warm-up to going to bed). He had his binky and his blankie. I went into the kitchen to finish putting away the lunch stuff and came back not three minutes later to find him looking all over for his binky. It was NOWHERE. We turned the living room upside down but couldn't find it. But I'll bet you a dollar it will show up again in a few days when Gabe reaches into his pocket dimension for something else and discovers it there.

Then, while he was napping, I went about the chore of putting away all of the art supplies that he'd had out earlier that morning. And I couldn't, for the life of me, find four of the caps to his markers. Again, I looked everywhere. EVERYWHERE. But found nothing. When he got up, I asked him if he knew where they were and he acted as if he had no idea what I was talking about. After a minute or so of badgering him to see if maybe something would click, I gave up. He went about his business and I stopped watching him closely for just a short time. Then, Gabe walked up to me and handed me the four caps, as if I were an idiot for not knowing where they were.

Twice in one day! Pocket dimensions, I tells ya!

In other news, a night or two ago, Libby decided to make some cookies, and she enlisted Gabe's assistance. Gabe likes to cook. He's got scads of play food and pots and cups and all sorts of stuff and he pretends to cook stuff up all the time. So I feel a little guilty that I really don't let him help me in the kitchen, but I also REALLY don't like a messy kitchen, and messy kitchens are pretty much a guarantee when Gabe is involved. So I guess it's good that Libby doesn't mind.

Anyway, he got to help and he also got to clean off his first spatula. Libby was able to catch much of it on video.

Christmas Memories

In an attempt to get myself more into the Christmas Spirit, I've decided to take a little trip down memory lane and reminisce, fondly or otherwise, about the specific memories I have of Christmas. This probably isn't ALL of my memories of Christmas, but they are the ones that jump to mind first, so it's reasonable to argue that they are the ones that form the foundation for my feelings towards the season (note: these are just the pre-middle school memories, I have more of them from my later years, but they weren't really as interesting).

Memory 1--Waking Up for Santa

I'm a terrible sleeper, and I always have been. Under the best of circumstances--namely, when I don't have anything on my mind and there are no distractions going on around me--I'll wake up two or three times in the middle of the night. Under poor circumstances--like when Santa is coming and there will be fresh loot for me when I wake up in the morning--I might wake up a half dozen times or more in the middle of the night. This was one of those circumstances, and it is the first Christmas memory that I can come up with.

I was, probably, four or five years old. I woke up at about 1:00 in the morning and desperately wanted to see if Santa had visited yet, so I got up and went out to the living room. It didn't take me long to see that Santa hadn't come yet, and the reason--though I wouldn't put those pieces together for a few more years--was that Dad was awake and rocking Ben, who would have been 1 or 2 years old at the time.

Because Dad's chair wasn't facing my room, he didn't see me until I was right next to him, and I might have startled him a little. Or maybe he was just crabby because he wanted to get Santa's job done and get some sleep since, without a doubt, I would be up before 6:00 and waking them up for Christmas. Whatever the reason, Dad was in a foul mood.

"Get the fuck back in bed!" I don't really remember him yelling at me. But he did say something in similar fashion, I do remember that.

Of course I couldn't tell him that I was up to see if Santa had come, so I said, "But I had a nightmare."

Not surprisingly, he didn't buy it and sent me back to bed with more harsh words. Probably I cried a little, but I knew I couldn't really argue. I had been busted getting up to check on Santa, and I knew that went against the rules, so I went back to bed and tossed and turned for a few more hours until I eventually woke up and checked on the status of my presents.

Memory 2a--The Mini-Motorcycle

This is a two part memory--at least I THINK it's a two part memory. It's possible that these two memories happened in separate years, but I can't be sure. I want to associate the two closely, so I'm going to pretend that they happened the same year.

I would have been somewhere between six and eight years old. I want to say that I knew there was no Santa by the time I was eight, but I can't be sure. Let's say seven.

That year, Ben and I made up Christmas lists based on the toys available in the Sears catalog (the Christmas Sears catalog would, in fact, be the major source for our Christmas dreams until I was at least twelve--and probably continued for much longer for Ben and Jon since we had few other ways of knowing what toys were available. To this day, I associate the smell of "fresh catalog" with Christmas--just like I associate the smell of a newly opened action figure [a smell that is probably toxic] with happiness). Ben asked for a riding tractor--one of those sturdy, metal John Deere ones. I asked for a mini-motorcycle that, as the product description boasted, could do up to 7 mph. I was seriously excited about the prospects. I could tool around our driveway at faster than walking speeds! It was the thing that I wanted most of all in the world and I put ALL of my hopes and dreams on getting it for Christmas that year. I wrote letters to Santa and was an extra good boy for as long as I could manage it. It's fair to say that EVERYTHING I was, the entirety of my successful existence as a six-eight year old boy, rested on my discovering this mini-motorcycle in the living room on Christmas morning.

And I didn't get it.

I don't even remember what I got, but I know I was as crestfallen and heartbroken as I have ever been in my life. Worse still, Ben got his goddamn tractor. Needless to say, my mind was in turmoil. Santa obviously liked Ben enough to get him exactly what HE wanted, but I didn't get anything like what I asked for. Probably I got underwear, now that I think back on it and choose to remember things only bitterly.

I KNEW the motorcycle was ridiculously expensive--Mom had, in fact, pointed that out several times in what I can identify now as a warning not to get my hopes up because she knew there was no way we could ever afford it. But, I reasoned, price didn't matter to Santa. He was friggin magic, for Christ's sake. He could damn well give me whatever he wanted to, and cost was no matter. So, when he DIDN'T give it to me, after I got over the initial heartbreak and questioning of my value to Santa vs. Ben's value, I began to put two and two together. But it wouldn't be for a few more days until I had the next piece of the puzzle to fully formulate my Santa-non-existence theory.

Memory 2b--Clues (and a TREASURE) in the Trash

This is awesome. My memory makes me out to be some kind of Encyclopedia Brown. That's wonderful.

So a day or two after Christmas, for reasons unknown to me, I decided to go digging through the trash outside. Because we lived on the farm, we didn't have any kind of formal trash pickup. We had a giant barrel that we dumped our trash into and then burned every couple of weeks. When the ash built up too much, we used the scoop tractor to haul it to a hole in one of our pastures and then, eventually, we covered it with dirt. Environmentally friendly? Almost certainly not. But, then, we're talking about a culture that STILL runs the sewage from their houses out a pipe to dump, without so much as a cesspool, into a nearby field (don't even get Libby started on that--she started to cry when I told her that was how they did things, and this was just a few months back. And she verified with my folks that this is still the primary waste disposal method).

Anyway, there in the trash, right on top, was the apple that I had left out for Santa on Christmas Eve. I recognized it immediately because it was huge, and I had purposely picked out the biggest, most scrumptious looking apple for the man (probably in the hopes that he'd see my healthy gift as a wonderful alternative to the sugary crap everyone else was leaving him and be even more likely to leave me the motorcycle). And there it was. In the trash.

I also found a Playboy. Dad didn't usually have such reading materials in the house, so it was a real treasure, indeed. This wasn't the first Playboy I'd seen (an uncle had a stash of them in his bathroom cabinet, and I'd looked through them several times before), but it was the first one that I ever called "mine." I pulled it from the trash and found some tall brush behind one of the cattle pens--a place nobody ever went for any reason whatsoever--and buried it beneath one of the pine trees in the nearby shelter belt. I visited that shelter belt many times over the next few months until, eventually, the magazine was unreadable thanks to the numerous rains and snows (one of which buried it completely and I had to dig it out). I can't remember much about the magazine except there was a woman on the beach. She was covered in sand. Having been to the beach at least once before by this point, I wondered at how she could stand having sand in all of her nooks and crannies. I knew from experience that this was a very unpleasant experience. But I can't say as my shared displeasure stopped me from very closely examining said nooks and crannies.

Anyway, I presented mom with my apple evidence. The apple had been gone on Christmas morning, presumably Santa had taken it with him for a later snack or to feed one of the reindeer (oh, wait, maybe THAT was what the apple was for, Rudolph. Maybe there were cookies for Santa and an apple for Rudolph--and to hell with the other, lesser reindeer, they wouldn't let Rudolph play their games, so Rudolph could play the eating-the-apple game right up in their grills. Yeah, so, amend what I said earlier. I wasn't concerned with Santa's health. The fat bastard could get Type II Diabetes for all I apparently cared back then).

At first she denied it, but, after another day or so of my constant harassing--and because I was also trying to convince Ben there was no Santa so we could form a united front against our truth-covering parents--Dad eventually took me aside and confessed. He then convinced me to tell Ben that I'd learned the truth and that Santa DID exist, Rudolph just didn't like apples, so Santa had tossed it in the trash in the hopes that we wouldn't see it. From that day on, I became a co-conspirator.

Memory 3 and maybe 4--Sleeping under the Stairs and the Millennium Falcon

These two probably happened on different Christmases, somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12 (because, by 12, I was into Transformers and Star Wars was pretty much a thing of the past), but I can't be sure, so I'm going to lump them together.

Long before Harry Potter made it fashionable, we had a big closet under our staircase that we used to sleep in--or "camp" as we called it, since we NEVER did any real camping of any sort (I was in college before I slept in a sleeping bag outside for the first time). And Christmas night was our favorite night to sleep in there. The problem was, this closet was only one room away from our living room, which was where "Santa" (by then both Ben and I knew, and it was just the two of us who were sleeping in the closet) left our gifts. I'm sure our folks hated it, since it meant they had to sneak around even more than usual or run the risk of waking us up and having to do Christmas in the middle of the night.

All I remember from that mostly miserable night of sleep was the constant bonging of our grandfather clock, which was about six feet away from the closet door. Eventually I would grow used to it, but it didn't happen that night.

That morning (or some other Christmas morning within a year or so), I received my favorite Santa present of all time--the Millennium Falcon. It was in terrible shape, and I hardly ever played with it (honestly, who ever thought that a toy that measures a solid 18 inches long, is awkward, and heavy would ever be all that much fun to play with?), but I loved it anyway. Mom had undoubtedly found it at a garage sale (by that point, I doubt itwas available new in stores anymore, but, even if it had been, we wouldn't have been able to afford a new one). The big bottom door was glued shut, pieces were missing, and there were other pretty obvious near-breaks and problems with it. Nonetheless, it was my favorite toy for quite awhile and is still the toy I remember most fondly (with Optimus Prime being a close second). That Christmas morning still ranks among my happiest ever.

And I suppose I should leave it at that. I have some other vague memories, too--of Christmas songs being sung, of midnight masses, of watching the Christmas specials on TV, of eagerly waiting to see the local Santa Claus (and Toy Boy) in his daily thirty minute airing, of staying up late, all by myself, to sit in the living room and stare at the flickering Christmas lights on the tree while everyone else slept, and the like--but they're all too vague or boring to share. So I guess I'll just ruminate on them the next time I find myself awake in the middle of the night for no good reason.

The Magic of Christmas

Libby walked Gabe downtown last night to meet up with Jessica and Finn for the town's Parade of Lights--a Christmas parade hosted by the area's Lion's Club. She bundled Gabe up in Randy from "Christmas Story" style for the affair.

They PROBABLY could have stood back up under their own power if they'd fallen down, but it's tough to say for sure.

Button and I stayed home because it was FAR too cold to get her out and about just to see some floats and watch the fire department rescue Santa from the roof of the Fox Theater (which left an impression on Gabe, he's been talking about it over and over again ever since). Not surprisingly, Gabe loved it. He liked the floats and he especially enjoyed it when the float riders tossed candy his way. Unfortunately, most of the candy they tossed was candy canes, which are notoriously fragile, so he ended up coming home with a pile of candy cane crumbs--but he'll be joyously snacking on them for the next week or so nonetheless.

This morning, Libby mentioned to me that this holiday, because of Gabe, was shaping up differently than any of the seasons we've shared together in the past. She said for the first time in a VERY long time, she was beginning to feel the magic of Christmas again, and she pulled up a photo of Gabe and Finn that she took last night to illustrate it:

Standing in front of the thrift store's window, looking in wonder at a display of "antique" toys (some of which Libby remembered having when growing up).

This was, she noted, something that we haven't had in our Christmas seasons yet--a REASON to have a Christmas season. Until this year, Christmas has been more of a chore that we've gone through the motions of because we felt we SHOULD go through the motions, not because we really wanted to. And, as the years have passed, we've gone through fewer and fewer of the motions--we've stepped down from a real tree to a fake tree to another fake tree that stands only four feet tall, we've put up fewer and fewer decorations, we've all but stopped decorating the inside AND the outside of the house. Soon, however, we might have a reason to want to put some real effort into our decorating again.

Not just yet, but soon.

For my part, I haven't quite come around yet. Growing up, I always enjoyed Christmas, but I've never been anywhere near fanatical about it. Then, for five years, I worked in a camera store in a mall, and that pretty much destroyed every positive feeling that I had for the season. If you want to hate Christmas, work in a mall (or, I imagine, one of the "big box" stores).

Christmas starts November 1 in the malls. It starts slow. Some of the shops start breaking out the decorations, which usually takes a week or two to get set up. And, while they are getting set up, the mall itself starts its gradual transformation. Crews start putting up the gaudy decorations and the music begins to shift.

Oh, the music. That more than anything killed the Christmas spirit in me.

At first (this is the day after Halloween, mind you), they started to "casually" slip in a song or two during the loop of music they normally ran--one song every five or six normal songs. Then, as the days passed in November, they phased out the normal music until, eventually, they had a loop of about two hours of music that they ran endlessly. And they only had ONE loop. And they never played any GOOD Christmas music. They focused almost entirely on the schlocky or the hackneyed or the "popular" music of the time--playing abominations like "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" or "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" or an old standard that has been atrociously modernized by some currently over-saturated pop moron. And then, for some reason, they snuck in ONE song that I still sort of like "Do They Know It's Christmas," the hopelessly depressing--but supposedly motivational--Band Aid charity song from the 80s. But even that song I got a little disgusted with because, despite its message, it was STILL being used to shill the spirit of the season.

Five years of hearing the same songs droning on, over and over again, darkened my soul towards the season. I think that's pretty understandable. NOTHING is good when you get too much of it. Everything has to be enjoyed in moderation or it eventually becomes either a habit or distasteful.

But that was some years back, now, and I'm beginning to move on. I'm still not there, but having children in the house who will genuinely enjoy the old Rankin/Bass specials or Charlie Brown's Christmas, or who might stare in wonder at the silently glowing lights of a decorated tree, or who can be subtly impressed by the rescue of a low-budget Santa from the top of a local historical theater might just help to de-Scrooge-ify me.

Staying out of the malls will help, too.

Syrup

Just another little quickie because this made me laugh.

Gabe walked up to me in my chair. He spit on his hand and looked at it. "Syrup," he said.

"No," I replied. "That's not syrup. That's spit."

So he licked his hand and held it up to me. "Syrup. Mmmm!" he insisted.

"That's spit, and it's gross, hun," I said. "Nobody wants your spit."

So he licked his hand again. "Syrup, Daddy. Mmmm!" And he held the hand up. "Daddy, syrup!" he said, offering me a taste. "Daddy, you, syrup. Mmmm!" He was very insistent.

What could I do? I took his hand and examined it. "How about some french toast?" I said as I wiped the hand down the front of his shirt.

"French toast. Mmmm!" he said. And that was the end of that. Thankfully.

My First Lego-Related Accident

Legos are such a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they are wonderful little building blocks that encourage imaginative creation. On the other hand, they are a blight on unsuspecting feet everywhere.

Actually, what I had a little while ago wasn't, technically, a Lego related accident. We haven't quite graduated up to Legos just yet. For ages--probably since Gabe was about a year old--we've had a few sets of the really big Lego-style blocks for Gabe to play with. Duplos, maybe? Who knows. There are so many knock-offs and I'm far too lazy to go upstairs and try to find a logo somewhere. But these blocks were pretty giant and, for most purposes, not terribly practical for building things other than what Gabe euphemistically calls "castles"--big, unwieldy constructions that resemble later 20th century American architecture for it's bland blockiness and general disinteresting qualities. These inevitably end up crashing under their own weight, which is just fine for Gabe. He only builds things so he can destroy them, anyway.

But, last night, we started sifting through the various nooks and crannies in our house to find our Christmas decorations, and we stumbled upon a container of Mega Blocks--another knock-off that falls somewhere between a Lego and a Duplo in size. I'm guessing they were a gift from someone last Christmas and, since Gabe was full-on putting everything into his mouth still at that time, we decided to shelve them for awhile. Then, of course, we forgot about them. But, last night, we found the container and pulled them out for Gabe to play with.

He's been having a grand old time with them since. These blocks, being only slightly more well-designed than the Duplos, still only offer limited creative possibilities. In addition to the more traditional "castle," we are also now able to create an "airplane" and a "rocket" (the former a big block with stubby little wings jetting out to the side and the latter a tower that comes to a sort of point). Not surprisingly, Gabe is still more interested in destroying these things than actually building. "Daddy. Rocket," he'll demand. So I build something of a distinctly un-spaceworthy nature, then he knocks it over and breaks it apart. "Daddy. Airplane." And the process repeats.

This was the second picture I took of the offending little buggers. The first one was just the blocks. Seeing me take a picture, though, Gabe said, "Me picture," so I had to take one with him in it, too.

After doing that a few times first thing this morning, we paused for breakfast. Being an idiot, I didn't bother to clean up the blocks. Instead, I brought his highchair with his oatmeal into the living room and set the chair right over the blocks. The saying goes, "out of sight, out of mind," but to my brain's way of thinking, it's always been more "out of the way, out of mind," so I rather forgot they were there.

Breakfast finished and I cleaned Gabe up, took him out of his chair, then picked up the chair to take it back into the kitchen. At that point, the blocks truly were out of sight because the highchair was completely blocking them from my vision (nevermind the fact that I actually noticed them AS I WAS WALKING OVER TO TAKE GABE OUT OF THE CHAIR, that was a full twenty seconds earlier, so obviously I would have forgotten that bit of information already).

I picked up the chair and took a step towards the kitchen--not a ginger, I-don't-know-what-might-be-on-the-floor-so-I-better-be-careful kind of step, either, it was a rest-my-full-weight-on-my-traveling-foot-like-I-don't-have-a-care-in-the-world kind of step--right into the middle of a minefield of Mega Blocks. The pain receptors in my right foot registered at least four pointy corners at the same time. Instinctively, I pulled the foot back up in pain, which made me lose my balance and my footing. I stumbled forward, and surely would have ended up in a tangled, broken mess on the floor with the highchair, except one of the living room chairs caught the base of the high chair and stopped my forward movement after just a few inches. It didn't, however, stop my momentum. I ended up jamming the tray into my abdomen, knocking the wind from me a little, and my left foot, trying to catch up with my body to regain my balance, smashed into the front base of the highchair, peeling off nearly a quarter of the toenail on my big toe (though, strangely, not producing any blood--it was more like it split the top layer of nail or something, but I can't remove it because then it WILL bleed and it will probably hurt considerably more than it does right now). "Mmmm!" I groaned, partly because I'm still trying really hard not to yell or curse in front of the kids, but mostly because I didn't have enough air in my lungs to form a proper curse, and I hobbled the chair out of the room so I could examine the damage.

"Do it again!" Gabe chimed from where he was standing in the middle of the room. And I probably will, but it will have to wait, at least until I can figure out a way to trim this nail down enough to get a sock back on without tearing it all to hell.

The Holiday Week

Not really much of an update to make here. It's been a bit of a rough week. Libby's been off work, which has been great, but pretty much everyone in the house is sick. Button and Gabe are running at the nose, and Libby and I have been fighting congestion, headaches, and other nonsense.

Button has been absolutely miserable all week. She must have a sore throat because she half-chokes every time she starts to drink something then often refuses to eat any more. This is odd considering the girl's fondness for the food up to this point. She's not getting regular sleep because her stuffed nose wakes her up and she really won't go down for naps during the day.

Gabe's dealing with it a little better. He's content to sneeze occasionally and launch a snot rocket or two from his nose. Then he laughs. We ask him to wipe his nose on a kleenex, so he grabs one, and smears the glop all over his mouth and cheeks. Good times, good times.

Thanksgiving was yesterday, and we had a good afternoon with my family. I probably have some pictures I could post, but the camera is MIA for the time being. Maybe later.

Neither Libby nor I will be doing any shopping today because it is my long-held belief that anyone who leaves the house on Black Friday who isn't working is only adding to the problem. The economy can stick it up its butt for all I care. I might, however, do a little online shopping--once again sticking it to the economy by not doing it on Cyber Monday when I'm supposed to, so the economy's butt is going to be chock-o-block full when I'm done with it.

Hope everyone had a good holiday!

Bringing the Noise!

Button has reached a new stage in her linguistic development--nearly non-stop noise production.

This is a stage that we're pretty unfamiliar with. Gabe has always been a noisy guy, but it was mostly activity-generated noise--knocking things over, yelling as he's running around the room, doing noisy things to get our attention, that sort of thing. As I've said before, he wasn't really interested in communicating anything but his extreme dislike for whatever he was doing at the time until he started to walk. Once he could get around and do whatever it was his brain deemed interesting, he wasn't interested in sharing his thoughts or feelings on the subject with us, either. So, he pretty much went from screaming and crying all the time to trying his hand at talking.

Button, on the other hand, is a talker--or she probably WILL be. For now, she's just a constant noise-making machine of nearly epic proportions. Finn--Gabe's preordained BFF--is like this too. He will start making noise, for no apparent reason sometimes, and he won't stop until he's found a good enough distraction or he runs out of steam. It's really quite impressive, and not a little annoying. It's like he's giving a speech to the masses, but there are no masses and he's usually not using any words that anyone other than he understands (on more than one occasion we've compared him to the Jodie Foster movie character Nel because it seems like he's invented his own language).

Last night, Libby and I sat down to watch the new Star Trek movie about forty-five minutes before Gabe went to bed. Gabe will let us watch our shows from time to time, but he doesn't like it, and he often makes his discontent known by doing everything he possible can at a loud volume, which he started to do. Then, out of nowhere, Button chimed in. She started bellowing and groaning--as you'll get a taste of in the video. Between the two of them, we couldn't hear a thing from the movie, so we had to stop the movie. Already they are conspiring against us doing anything that doesn't directly entertain them. Kids.

Sadly, we didn't get any video of them both working their mojo last night, but I got a little video of Button doing her thing, sort of, this morning. She was really going good until I got the camera in there, then the flashing light from the camera distracted her and she didn't really work up a full head of steam again while I had it running. But you get the idea.

Using His Powers for Good

For, well, as long as I can remember, I've been trying to focus Gabe's seemingly boundless energy into service for the powers of good. He's a smart kid, and that coupled with a short attention span makes him a prime candidate for many less than savory outcomes in life. I'm not talking ADD or ADHD, which are, of course, still options, I'm talking about super villainry or some other nefarious outlet.

Think about it. What do all super villains have in common? They are super intelligent, singularly determined, and they spend their time coming up with one plan after another to destroy whatever it is they are bent on destroying only to be thwarted because their plan wasn't foolproofed well enough (that sounds like an attention problem if ever I've heard of one). And WHY do they turn to a life of crime? Because they had bad parents, that's why.

Or maybe they're sociopaths. Whatever.

All I know is I don't want news crews beating on my door thirty years from now asking questions like, "Why didn't you do more when he was young to distract him away from the wiles of a life of crime? Why didn't you focus his energies towards the cause of good?" So I've been working with him.

Specifically, I've been trying to get him to entertain the baby.

Now, I KNOW there are those out there thinking, "But, Pat, you're not doing that to deter him from a life of crime, you're doing that because you want some help keeping your infant distracted!" To you I say, "Pah!" And I don't really have any further follow-up after that. It is, after all, a pretty damn good argument you've made based on sound observation. Jerk.

But the other day, my Good Guy Training began to pay off as Gabe spent a solid ten minutes playing with the baby's toys, mostly for her benefit. Button, for her part, LOVED it.

As a backup plan, I've also been training Gabe to be a rock star. I know this isn't a very GOOD backup plan, since, in many ways, rock stars are very much like super villains--in mentality, megalomaniacal tendencies, and short-sightedness, specifically. But, the way I see it, at least it's a happy medium. Rock stars might not be fighters for truth and justice, but at least they don't have to worry about Batman spraying Shark Repellent in their faces or Spiderman webbing them up in a ball to be hung for the police to find from a street lamp.

So far, I think he's leaning a bit more towards the rock star option, but it's still probably too early to tell.

Unfortunately, this isn't the best video of him playing his Yo Gabba Gabba guitar. He was really jamming, up to the point where I got the camera, then he jus continued half-heartedly for a bit. I do like that he's working on his stage antics already, though, by using the furniture to his advantage. Then, of course, he moves on to the drums, which are probably the ideal instrument for him, unfortunately. Drummers don't get the chicks, guitar players do. Ask Phil Collins.

Solid Food Is for Winners! And the Dumb Donald Babies Torment the Cat

Messy, messy winners.

Our battle with solids is slowly starting to ebb. Butts still doesn't particularly LIKE to eat her food, but we've at least started to move past the stage where everything that goes into her mouth comes immediately out again at high velocity.

For weeks, every time we've coaxed her to open her mouth long enough for us to sneak food in, she's quickly closed her mouth around the spoon and pushed everything right back out again, usually with an amusing "yucky" face. We would persist to feed her about half a container of food--which took no less than twenty minutes--then give up and call it a day.

Now, however, she's gotten to the point where we can feed her an entire container of 1st stage food and at least 2/3 of it goes into her stomach. The rest, of course, goes EVERYWHERE else. She's especially fond of rubbing her face with her sleeve and then rubbing her sleeve on whoever is feeding her. Or sticking her hand in her mouth while it's full of food then flinging her hand around her head like an interpretive dancer. It's all very exciting.

Button during her epic battle with a small tub of carrots.

And a quick video of the altercation.

In Gabe-related news, Finn came over Saturday evening and the pair discovered the fun of robbing their sense of sight and running around.

Obviously, because they had stocking caps pulled over their faces, various Fat Albert references were made.

Growing up, I was no fan of the show. I WATCHED it, of course, because I watched pretty much everything that was available to me--which, because we never had cable, was not very much. The show itself never bothered me--it might, in fact, have been amusing to me at the time. What bothered me was the similarities between the main character's name and my own. It was a very short trip indeed between "Hey, hey, hey! It's Faaaaaat Albert!" and "Hey, hey, hey! It's Paaaaaat Albers!"

Oddly enough, nobody but me ever made this connection until I was a freshman in high school and Fat Albert was little more than a blip on everyone's cultural relevance radar. The first person to make the connection was a senior. I can't remember, exactly, who the guy was, but I do remember that he wasn't what one would be tempted to call an "astute observer of the human condition." And because, by that point, I wasn't a fat kid anymore, the connection quickly faded into the background and, really, nobody ever made the reference again, except maybe in passing.

In grade school, though, I was a chubby kid. My jeans always had elastic waistbands and, more often than not, were of the Husky brand. That is, by the by, one of the WORST, unflattering brand names ever. It's almost as bad as having a women's clothing store named Dress Barn. Anyway, somehow, none of my childhood tormentors ever made the connection between my name and the name of Billy Cosby's famous, morbidly obese cartoon character. And, for that, I'm ever thankful.

I wonder what ever happened to Fat Albert. I wonder if the Diabetes ever claimed his feet. Poor guy. I bet he's a shut-in now and that's why we never hear anything about him. They'll probably have to tear off his roof and pull him out with a crane when he dies--or burn the house down around him Gilbert Grape style. Sad.

But because of my familiarity with the show, I am among the few people who know that it was NOT Mushmouth who wore his stocking cap over his face. It was Dumb Donald. Here's proof. Is the distinction important? Almost certainly. At least it is to someone like me who is a stickler for the accuracy of obscure cultural references.

The Ugly Months

It's been a little while since I've had a good Button update, so here goes.

First, no, I don't mean SHE'S ugly--she's still cute as a button. Big as a garbage scow, but cute as a button.

We were finally able to pull the box out from under her feet and leave out the blanket "stuffing" around her belly, which means she's actually big enough to be in this contraption we've been putting her in for a good month or two now!

No, I'm referencing the ugly period in a baby's development when nothing is right for them. Now, I'm not one to make a habit of posing generalizations--ALL generalizations are stupid--but, since we've had two kids now, and both kids have exhibited this behavior, I have to consider this the norm. There will, of course, be exceptions to the rule, but there always are.

And maybe calling it "ugly" isn't quite fair either. What I mean is "The months when you will have to give your child your undivided attention or he/she will be a whining, crying, unhappy child." I suspect this mood is brought on by the fact that the babies are learning to do things but are frustrated because they can't do what they WANT to do. What that might be is a complete mystery to me because NOTHING you help them do will make them happy for very long.

The bottom line is that the kid will either be attached to you or unhappy. I had hoped that it was just Gabe and most babies could be trusted to go about their business more or less quietly off in some corner of the living room. That, apparently, isn't the case. Gabe was needy from the get-go, and he really didn't get out of his Ugly Months until he could walk and very nearly talk. So, more like an Ugly Year and a Half.

Butts' Ugly Months started about a month ago, but they are REALLY kicking into high gear these last few weeks. I've developed a little rotation of activities to try and keep her occupied. Sadly, some of them can't be done when Gabe is awake, which only makes matters worse. For her, at least.

We start in her activity saucer where I hand her a half dozen or so toys to fumble around with. She will maul these toys about a bit, throw them into the air--usually hitting herself and making her cry--pick them up again, then throw them on the floor. I can repeat this process once, maybe twice before she is bored with her toys and moves on to the next most interesting thing to her, self-abuse. If left to her own devices without a shiny to latch onto, she will grab her ears or her hair and pull like there is no tomorrow. When we grab her hands to try and prise them free, she pulls even harder. She is, of course, crying the entire time and gives US a look like we're the ones causing the pain. Or she'll bite her fingers--though it's generally much easier to pull her fingers out of her mouth to stop her doing that.

After the saucer, we move to the floor on a blanket. We start on her back, but she doesn't usually stay there for very long. She's a very accomplished roller by this point. But she doesn't know what to DO when she gets over on her belly--she still hasn't figured out getting back onto her back and she isn't even trying to crawl or anything. I will flip her back over and the process will repeat. After the third time on her belly, she hates it and she'll start trying to eat the blanket underneath her face.

So we move to the couch where I sit her up in the corner and let her sit like a big girl for a little bit. Usually I put a crunchy baby book in her lap so she has something to grab onto. This is good for about five minutes or until she decides that she wants to start kicking around. Kicking around leads to either her sliding down the corner of the couch or leaning forward, where she'll tip forward and try to face plant on the floor.

Keep in mind, these are the "on her own" places she visits. Between each step there is usually a period where she sits on my lap or I carry her around until she gets too bored and squirmy.

Anyway, then we move to her little floor gym or her bouncy chair--or sometimes both. These were her mainstays just a few short months ago, but she's just about had as much of them as she can handle, so neither one of them offers her much distraction for more than a few minutes, tops. The bouncy chair is nice, though, because it's the only thing we have that I can sit her in if we go out to the backyard. Sadly, we can almost never do that because it's ALWAYS windy, and about five minutes is all she can take of the wind.

So, hand her a toy, flip, carry, repeat. And this will carry on until she can crawl, which, god willing, will be SOON. For Gabe it was a new exploration of freedom. For Norah, it's tough to say what it's going to be--we can hardly let her pad around on the floor with Gabe running all over the top of her. Probably it will be a new exploration of her play pen--or the Play Penitentiary, as I like to call it.

Obviously, I'm rooting for her to be, developmentally, at the 18 month stage before Christmas.

Gabe Discovers Electricity

A few months back--I honestly can't remember how long ago at this point, but probably early summer or so--my Mom gave me a bug vacuum. She bought it because it was an "As Seen on TV" product. I love me some TV products! She knows this and, every chance she gets, she picks them up for me and gives them to me on my birthday or Christmas--or, sometimes, out of the blue, as with this gift.

Now, don't misunderstand me here, I don't love EVERYTHING that's advertised "As Seen on TV." Popular or possibly useful items, like, say, the Snuggie--though I am most certainly NOT suggesting it is useful, it is an abomination of ridiculousness--will never have a home in my house (the one notable except is Oxyclean, which I've found to be a quite useful cleaning supply--and it's been used to remove red wine, cat shit, cat puke, and grape juice from our carpets and dozens of various stains from our clothes--and the popularizing of which is surely the late Billie Mays greatest legacy). No. I'm only interested in the crazy crap that was "seen on TV" only be terminal insomniacs or lovers of the assorted home shopping channels during their down times. Silly, bizarre, and utterly, ponderously useless, that's what I'm interested in.

I have no great love of OWNING these items, of course, because they are, as a rule, useless beyond measure--unless their sole purpose for existing is to take up space, in which case they are resounding successes. Nonetheless, Mom buys them for me and, after I marvel at their inherent oddness, they usually take up residence on the bookshelves in my office until the next time I do some cleaning and they are either given to a thrift store or, if I feel too guilty saddling them with something they will never sell, I just bypass the middle man and toss it in the trash.

The bug vacuum, however, did not get the chance to live on my shelf because Gabe was there when I opened it and he fell instantly in love with it.

The concept is simple: a weak, nearly non-existent vacuum is built into a handle, which is then attached to a clear plastic tube about eighteen inches long. It looks rather like a toy lightsaber, only shorter. The driving principle behind this vacuum is to offer the consumer an alternative that is both sanitary AND humane. Not only do you not squish the invading bug, leaving a mess to clean up, you don't even kill it! You suck it up in the tube and leave the vacuum running while you go to the door and return the little bugger to the nature whence it came.

Side Note: this is the CORRECT usage of "whence." "Whence" means: "from what place, what source, what origin, etc." Thus, when people say "from whence," what they are saying is "from from what place," a redundancy. Yet, EVERYBODY says "from whence." What is happening is people are using it as a replacement for the word "where," possibly so they can sound intelligenter than they usually do. But you don't, fool! If you're going archaic, at least know how to use it properly!

Anyway, bug vacuum. Great fun for Gabe when the flies were infesting our house and yard back in July and August. He very nearly wore out the batteries on the thing he used it so much.

Or, battery, rather. One 9V battery, to be exact. And it was this battery that Gabe discovered how to remove from the handle the other day. And it was this battery that he used to discover electricity this afternoon when he touched both nodes to his tongue.

WHY he did this, I'm not sure. I have used this method to test a 9V in the past, but probably not for a dozen years or more. Now I have a much more sophisticated method--I try to run whatever the battery is supposed to be energizing, and if it doesn't work, I throw out the old battery and replace it with a new one. Test complete and no numb tongue. So, he's never seen me do it before. I suspect he just did it because putting things in his mouth to prove their existence is still one of his favorite things to do, and he just got lucky that he put the business end into his mouth.

The look on his face was priceless, and I wish I could have captured it. He was both surprised and intrigued at the same time, and he continued to put the battery to his tongue for almost a minute after the first try.

So I got the camera. Of course, by the time I got the thing up and running, he was done. I DID manage to catch the last time he put it in his mouth, but only just. It's the first few seconds of the video. The rest of it, I kept hoping he'd put it back in (and even encouraged him a little--don't worry, the battery is so dead he isn't feeling but the slightest tingle, I know because I tried it myself later, just to make sure), but he never did. Instead he moved on to doing other Gaberific things with the battery and the bug vacuum. Enjoy.

Ending on a High Note--A Shrill, Piercing, Shrieking, Every Hour and a Half High Note

There was bound to be a correction: a yang to the previous night's yin. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

The night before last went about as well as I could have hoped. In an attempt to reduce Button's feedings from three back down to two, I took her up a bottle when I went to bed at 10:00. It worked better than I expected it would. She woke up once at 2:00 then didn't wake up again until 6:00--and Gabe was getting up then anyway, so I can't count that as a through-the-night feeding. As such, I actually got a decent night of sleep (well, about five hours, but that was about as much as I could expect to get).

But, then, she was a turd most of yesterday. She only took one nap halfway through the day for about an hour and a half, then she refused to take her normal, mood stabilizing hour-long nap in the late afternoon. Subsequently, from about 4:00 until she went to sleep for the night, she was an inconsolable mess. I hoped this would mean she'd sleep better through the night, since she was obviously tired already.

It didn't. Instead, she woke up every hour and a half, on the dot, starting at midnight. And this despite me feeding her a 10:00 bottle when I went up to bed.

In other words, Libby can't get home soon enough.

Gabe's First Lie

It was only a matter of time. I knew this day was coming sooner rather than later. As often as he does things he gets in trouble for, I figured it wouldn't be long before Gabe started to master the art of lying. And he took his first, awkward step forward today.

Because I'm a sucker who doesn't learn lessons any better than my son does, I let Gabe get his markers out a little while ago. I sat down with him at the table for a few minutes and reviewed the guidelines: "Markers stay on the table. Markers only mark on paper. Markers are not food. Gabe's face and hands do NOT look better in six different colors." I gave him some paper and set him loose.

Oh, and I came up with another, BETTER justification for leaving him unsupervised while he does these things that will inevitably lead to messes--because he'll never learn responsibility or independence if I'm hovering over him, correcting his every move. That sounds like a real reason, right? I might have pulled that right out of Dr. Spock's ass for all I know. And now it's the excuse I'm going to stick with.

Anyway, he markered up the paper quickly enough, and took to other activities with the markers. He started by putting them all together to build a "magic wand." That was a new concept as far as I was concerned. I'm not sure where he came up with that one. Dorah, maybe. Or maybe it was from our latest shared viewing of the Dungeons and Dragons movie (best. movie. ever.--with Jeremy Irons and a Wayans in it, anyway). At one point, he was on the floor playing with them and I went into the dining room, picked up the markers, put them all back on the table, and reminded him of the rules.

Then I got distracted by emails for no more than five minutes. Mind you, I could sort of see him out of the corner of my eye the entire time since my office desk is right next to the dining room door, but somehow I didn't manage to catch him, once again, drawing on the wood floor.

"All right!" I said in my best authoritative voice--which, because I sound a little like Kermit the Frog, isn't really all that authoritative to anyone but Gabe, and only to him because he hasn't heard that many REAL authoritative voices in his life to compare mine to--"No more markers! And no markers TOMORROW either!" I declared.

He walked into the living room as if to say, "Whatever, old man." I started to gather up the markers, but most of the caps were mysteriously missing. "Gabe, come in here and help me find the caps so we can put these markers away." By this point, his attention was focused solely on Dorah, so I had to repeat my demand. Three times. Finally he turned and wandered non-committally into the dining room. He walked over to the gate that blocks the stairs and pointed over it. "Caps," he said, and he walked back into the living room. I picked up those caps, matched them up with the markers, and we were still two short.

I called him back into the dining room and asked him, again, where the caps were. I showed him the colors he was looking for.

"Mail truck," he said.

"What about the mail truck?" I had no idea what he was talking about. This was the first I'd heard anything about a mail truck all day from him.

"Caps in mail truck," he claimed.

"Really?" I said. "How did they get in there?"

"Caps in mail truck," he repeated, following the Fox News method of journalism where, if you say something over and over enough times, it becomes "truth."

"Cookie Monster pieces in mail truck!" he added, as if this somehow explained everything. Again, no idea where that one came from. We haven't had his Sesame Street character puzzle things out in a few days.

I spied the caps on the floor under one of the chairs behind the table. I pointed them out to him. He went around and picked them up and handed them to me.

"See, they weren't in the mail truck, were they?" I corrected.

"Caps in mail truck," he said with finality and he went back into the living room. And I have to give it to him, at least he didn't cave under the pressure or give in under the crushing weight of my evidence. The kid might have a future in broadcasting or politics some day.

Mama Home. Yay! (Mama Gone. Boo!)

So, Libby drifted through our lives last night, and left this morning, like a merchant marine on a brief shore leave (only with none of the boozing and lechery and far more of the going to bed early and sleeping--so, maybe like a seventy year old merchant marine on shore leave).

As the first four days of Libby's hiatus from home passed, Gabe's joyful bursts of "Mama home, yay!" grew somewhat more frequent but decidedly less hopeful and exuberant as he came to expect the inevitably level explanation from me that "Mama isn't home, but she will be soon" to thwart his every expectation. By yesterday, he was repeating his mantra on an hourly basis, and I dutifully counted down the hours for him until Libby would return. Then, surprisingly, when she DID get home from work, he blew it all off pretty nonchalantly and his only utterance for her was "Fingerpainting?"

I am mostly to blame for this--though Gabe's uncannily good toddler memory could also have a finger pointed at it.

Round about 2:00 yesterday afternoon, Gabe insisted that it was time to fingerpaint again. "Not a chance," I informed him. "I already told you we were done with art for the day." And as far as I was concerned, we were. Shortly before nap time yesterday morning, Gabe had taken up marker and paper and decided to create yet another masterpiece of modern scribble art. Then, within about ten minutes, he decided that the paper was a limiting and disappointing canvas, so he took his art to the streets. Or, more specifically, to the wood floor in the dining room. He scribbled and markered like there was no tomorrow, using all seven colors at his disposal, to completely deface our floor.

Now, I'm sure there are those out there pointing admonishing fingers and wagging them tellingly at me. "What did you expect?" they ask. "You can't leave a toddler unsupervised with art supplies! Surely you've learned that lesson time and again--or at least you SHOULD have since you've documented Gabe's art adventures quite thoroughly on this page numerous times." To which, I would say, "Get stuffed."

If there is one thing that Gabe and I share, it is a short attention span for things that don't really interest us. And, frankly, toddler art doesn't really interest me that much at this point. Currently, he plays with either his markers or his crayons two or three times a day. He KNOWS he's not supposed to do certain things with them, and, even though I suspect he probably will do those things nonetheless, since he doesn't about 75% of the time, I just can't muster the energy to stay 100% focused on his activities every time he goes for his art supplies. Yes, it is a failing as a parent, but for the sake of my sanity, it is a necessary one. And a pretty minor one. It's not like I'm leaving him alone with a paring knife and the cats. Plus the markers are washable, so he really can't do any damage that a wet cloth can't fix.

Admittedly, this time I had another excuse beyond simple disinterest. I was also making lunch. But saying I had a legitimate excuse outright wouldn't have been nearly as interesting.

Anyway, the first time he asked for the fingerpaints, I said, "Nope, sucka. You lay that sass on your mama when she gets home," only I probably said it with slightly less slang. And, even though he only asked one more time to remind himself of my suggestion to ask Libby when she got home, he somehow managed to remember it.

It kind of sucks that he's getting old enough to remember these sorts of things. Gone are the days of the empty promise, I suppose. Now when I say, "We can go to the park after your nap," I'm going to have to expect to follow through on that promise or pay the consequences. Damn you, brain development, for keeping me true to my word!

While fingerpainting, Gabe did do something new and interesting, though, so I better share that. He took his art to the next level and created facepainting. No, not painting his face. He's done that plenty of times before. He discovered painting WITH his face. After applying generous amounts of paint to his face, he put it to paper.

The first time he did it was the best. Libby and I watched him as he spread his paints on his face then slowly, with purpose, he lowered his face onto a piece of paper. It caught us so off guard that we exploded with laughter, then, of course, I got out the camera. His next application of paint wasn't nearly as good as the first, but you get the idea.

My favorite part of this video is that, the first two times he goes to put his face down on the paper, Libby looks as though she's going to smack his face down to get a good print. It reminds me of grade school. We used to play a game called "Guess Who?" The rules were simple. You smacked someone on the head and said "Guess who?" It could be the front or the back, but it was most fun when you smacked someone who was reading an assignment on the back of the head, which made them smack the front of their head on the book. Then you got a twofer! Probably not the most sophisticated grade school game ever, but it certainly might be a contributing factor towards the lower than average level of academic excellence in the place where I grew up (this isn't just me slandering my redneck roots, either. Here's a telling example. I was my class' salutatorian. And I graduated with a 3.5 gpa. Yeah. I think our valedictorian had about a 3.75. No battle between 4.0 students in MY class. We'll stick to our head smacking, thank you very much!).

But now Libby is attending a work conference until Saturday night, so we're pretty much back at square one, except that NOW Gabe has had a taste of Mama being home. So we'll see how that pans out tonight when she doesn't come home from work like normal again.