They Grow Up So Fast

Sigh.

Norah has been doing something pretty funny for about a week now. Because she still hasn't figured out crawling and is likely a ways from being able to sit herself up, when she's lying on the floor, she'll squirm around until she's resting on one arm to allow her to look up at things. When she does, she inevitably crosses her legs and rests her upper arm on her hip--effectively creating a "sexy" pose.

"Where is that cabana boy? It's so hard to find good help these days. Someone come change the channel on this radio!"

I like this one because of the stern, perplexed look she's giving me--a look that I'm SURE I will see a lot of over the years. Especially the perplexed part. I get that a lot from people.

To go along with this picture I had originally intended to write up a brief discussion of all of the various and sundry problems there are in the world today with kids and sex and with them being throw into situations that are mature beyond their years.

But just pondering on the notion of the future pitfalls of adolescence and early adulthood gave me a little sick feeling in my stomach and I had to take a pass.

JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR, WORLD: THIS GIRL IS OFF LIMITS UNTIL SHE'S OUT OF COLLEGE! DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! KEEP YOUR DISTANCE!

I doubt the world was listening, it never does, but I feel a little better for the attempt.

Still, pretty funny pictures.

Norah's Hygiene Is Called into Question

Earlier today, Norah was fussy. It tends to happen with fair regularity these days because, for some reason, she won't take decent naps for me. For the last two weeks, I'm lucky if I can get her to stay down for forty-five minutes--which, in terms of "me time" barely even registers, in case anyone was wondering, but that's beside the point.

To combat her ennui today, as most days, I ran her through the usual cycle of different changes of scenery--her "gym," the floor, my lap, the floor again, the floor again (in a slightly different part of the room), her gym, and finally her Johnny Jump Up. I always go to the Jump Up last because it's kind of a pain in the butt to get her in and out of. Whoever would have thought that a glorified crotch support suspended by a strap would be difficult to hold still while maneuvering a squirming infant into it? Obviously not the contraption's designers. And it's just as difficult to get her out of, mostly because her softball sized thighs (no, I'm not exaggerating, they are that big) don't like coming out of the leg holes). Usually we end up a tangled mess and one or both of us are close to tears.

But I go to it when nothing else seems to be pleasing her and the various parts of the floor are failing to offer her sufficient distraction.

While she was bouncing away in there, Gabe grabbed his blankie, wrapped himself around the straps of the Jump Up, and started jumping up and down with her. Which she absolutely loved. Then, for reasons only his mind could comprehend, he held his blankie up like a curtain around the outside of the straps and started saying, "Take a shower, baby!" while they continued to jump.

I managed to get a video of him sort of doing it. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I feel as though I should admit that this video was fabricated. By the time I went into the office, pulled the memory card out of the reader, put it in the camera, and made it back into the dining room, he was done with the game. So I asked him to do it again. And he did, so we're taking some strides in the right direction as far as our director/actor relationship goes, but the recreation seems to be lacking an "organic" feel. It feels a little forced. And to top it off, he was more interested in SEEING himself in the video afterwards than he was in actually putting on a good performance. Such an ego. So we have a few hurdles still to overcome, but I suppose there's time. By my figuring, he's still got a good year or so of training before he can be a replacement child for one of those add-on kids they throw into sitcoms that start out as a baby then, inexplicably, a few months later, they are nearly ready for kindergarten (I seem to recall this happening in Family Ties, the Cosby Show, and in the soap opera mom used to watch when we were growing up--though the soap opera one-upped it by advancing the child into her teen-aged years--but I'm sure there are other examples). It's good to have goals.

Norah's Big Day

It's finally happened! Button has done something worthy of her own blog post! I know she's HAD her own posts in the past, but those were usually of the updating variety. This time she actually did something funny enough to get her own premiere spot! I'm very excited about this, and hope it is a sign of things to come. I would love it if I have TWO hilarious children. Up to this point, Norah has been more sedate than entertaining. Don't get me wrong, I'm good with sedate, too. It's sort of nice to have a foil for Gabe's high energy approach to life. But sedate is pretty lacking in entertainment value. So I guess we'll just have to see.

Anyway, not much of a setup needed for this video. She was eating some crackers and baby cookies and decided to start being intentionally messy.

I think she's got a future as a trumpet player.

Gabe's Rocketship

Friday afternoon, right after his nap, Gabe had a bit of a freak-out. Something TERRIBLY important was missing and his circuits were in a bunch that this something needed to be found.

"Rocketship part missing!"

"What?" I said, having absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

"Rocketship part missing!"

So I set about my daily job of trying to decipher what he's saying in a way that keeps him happy long enough for me to either successfully change the subject to something I CAN understand or figure out what he wants. This time he wouldn't let me change the subject, so I had to focus on sussing out his want list.

I started with the obvious choice: Libby. If I had no idea what Gabe was talking about, and he was THIS adamant about it, chances were good that it was something that he'd glommed on to at an earlier time, which meant Libby had been the one around when he discovered his new "thing." Sadly, Libby was away from her desk at work, so that wasn't an option.

"Can you show me what you want?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "In kitchen."

"Huh," I said to myself. Rocketship part was in the kitchen. What the hell was this kid talking about?

I soon found out. What he was looking for was a handle. For a broom. That he'd broken off the broom head. And he wanted to use this broom handle in conjunction with another broom that was still together. To create a rocketship. Duh. Of course. I must have been stupid not to know what he was talking about right off the bat.

Oh, and Libby had no idea about it either. This was something he'd come up with out of the blue and decided it was important enough to throw a fit about.

Then he went about launching his rocketship. I caught a portion of it on video.

She's a Sitter

So, it's been ten days to two weeks since Norah became a consistent sitter, and I'm just now getting around to mentioning it. It's sort of a big deal, really.


For one, it means that we can sit her down when we bring her somewhere instead of having to lie her on her back. This opens up a wide variety of options for places that she can be, now. Also, it meant that we could swap out her baby carrier for the car for a car seat. Technically, we could have been using the car seat all along because it's a transitional one that can be used from infancy up to like three years of age. That was what we did with Gabe, but we frequently regretted it through much of that first year. On the one hand, it's nice not buying a car seat that you're going to have to get rid of in a few months (because the damn things aren't cheap). On the other, you're stuck with a loose baby everywhere you go. With the carriers, you have a handy, dandy storage space for your infant. You can set it on a high chair if you're in a restaurant, you can balance it on the "child accommodation" built into shopping carts, you can use it to prop open a door while you carrying things in from the car. There's no end to the uses--but the most important part is that you don't have to carry the baby ALL the time. After buying one for Norah, I would have to say that, despite the fact that it was only useful for eight months, it was definitely worth the money. We were actually able to eat out a few times with her--something we didn't do with Gabe until he was old enough to sit in a high chair on his own because the prospects of trying to hold a grabby child on our laps while we ate was about as appealing as a dried fish sandwich.

Now that she can sit on her own, though, we decided it was time to upgrade her seat--and not a moment too soon, really. As big as she is, she was positively spilling over the edges of her carrier.

She still can't crawl, only scoot herself backwards, but she's made it to the "revving" stage--where she'll get herself up on her hands and knees and rock herself back and forth. Gabe never really did this. He preferred the "high centered" stage where he laid on his belly and flailed his arms and legs around like he was the world's foremost expert on the perpetual, inverted snow angel. That didn't last long, though, as his eagerness to get at everything soon coaxed his motor skills to exceed their natural development speeds. Well, sort of. He DID tend to crawl his way into a lot of head first collisions with the walls and furniture, so his motor skills weren't ALL there.

Now that she can sit, though, it probably won't be long before she figures out how to crawl. Frankly, I'm looking more forward to her figuring out to move from being on her belly to sitting and vice versa. Right now, when she gets tired of sitting, her preferred method of proning herself on the floor is still the Nestea Plunge her way backwards, usually onto whatever toy she's thrown behind her. This leads to much crying and gnashing of teeth. And a few bumps on her head. I keep thinking that each painful experience will HAVE to be the one that will teach her the valuable lesson of "looking before she Plunges," but so far it hasn't.

Honestly, every day I marvel at the fact that our species has survived when we are so completely stupid and useless for such a long period after we're born. I mean that in the nicest way, of course. I don't hold it against infants for being stupid and useless, I'm just stating an indisputable fact. A baby foal can walk within a day. A DAY! How is it that we have fallen so far down the evolutionary chain when it comes to our development? Is it our big brains? Did our stupid opposable thumbs set all this in motion? I'm sure it's the big brains. Of course it is. Stupid brains. Nothing but trouble. What I wouldn't give, sometimes, for the simple life of walking when I'm one day old and not having to worry about anything but finding a puddle of water to drink from and a shady patch of grass to eat. Instead, I have TOOLS!

Wow, that was quite a digression.

Anyway, here's a video of Gabe "reading" to Norah. When I took the picture of her, he insisted that I take one of him, too. Instead, I talked him into reading to her, sort of.

No donuts or cupcakes followed. He had a bit of a weekend of gorging. With all the family stuff going on, we had cake and donuts and what-not all over the house, and Gabe ate more than his fair share. Before I took this video, though, he had already eaten the last cupcake, and the last donut had been eaten the day before.

Butts No More!

Well, that's not entirely true. She'll probably go by Butts here at the house for awhile still--until using her name becomes important to get her attention. But as far as the web site goes, I now feel comfortable calling The Baby by the name that she will OFFICIALLY go by as soon as we get all of the red tape sorted: Norah.

Yep. We had our meeting with SRS today and we have become the official adoptive parents of our Buttsy Bear. This is one of the big steps in the process, and one that has taken us quite a bit longer than we originally expected (but not NEARLY as long as it took with Gabe, which was a relief). From here we have to wait for the various agencies to get their paperwork processed, then we'll have to meet with a lawyer, then the Adoption Day will be set. But this step was important because it more or less eliminates the possibility of complications (except on our end--meaning if the court should decide we're unfit parents or something like that, and I can't imagine that would happen) by ending all ties with the biological parents and family.

Up to this point, I chose to refer to Norah strictly as Button or Butts because, as far as the official world was concerned, her name wasn't Norah (technically it still isn't, and won't be until Adoption Day, but she doesn't need to know that), and even though there has been little doubt that we would be adopting her eventually, it's better safe than sorry. We did the same thing with Gabe, calling him almost exclusively Bubbie for the first year in the off chance that he would go back to his parents and have to figure out why nobody was calling him Gabe anymore. It was a judgment call on our part. If it had looked like he WAS going back, we would, of course, have called him by his original name. Anyway, that's just one of those silly little complications in life that we don't have to worry about anymore. Thank god.

So now we wait another 6-8 weeks, probably, for things to be made official. Hurray (I'm not cheering the additional waiting, of course, but for the ending that is now in sight)!

There's that, then. From now on, in these posts, she'll go by Norah. And I do have some other updates and such to share, but I figured this deserved a post all on its own.

Hi, There

So, how's it going? We never talk anymore. Things are going pretty well here. Things are happening, and I mean that in the '70s-est sense of the word "happening." Here I could even make probably the only now-relevant reference to the character Rerun that I will ever get to make in this blog. Which I guess I just did. By saying I COULD make a reference to him, I made a reference to him.

But enough about Rerun, even though he was the first non-cartoon African-American television character that I related to as a child. I'm not sure WHY I related to him, but I did. I still think back fondly on the Rerun heavy episodes of "What's Happening." The first African-American character that I related to was Fat Albert. Hmm. I'm seeing a repeating theme here (big, larger than life characters). I bet some therapist somewhere would have a field day with that.

But enough about Rerun and Fat Albert. Let's talk about you. How's the family/pets/cell mate? How's that thing you do going? How are the herpes? No flare ups, I hope?

Well, that's enough for now. I've got some bigger updates in the pipeline, but I just haven't had the gumption to sit down for long here lately--and I haven't had the camera going much with pictures to go along with the stories. I'll try and fix that here in the next day or two.

Famous Uncle Ben

He exists! And he and his lovely wife Skye are in town (not MY town, but in someone's), and they stopped by yesterday to say "hi" and see the kids. Yeah, I sort of forgot to mention that. And, yes, Gabe still calls him Famous Uncle Ben for reasons that we can't even fathom. We've never heard that phrase on any of the shows he watches or on any commercials--the only we could think of would be for the rice, but I can't imagine they advertise on any channels Gabe watches. It's just one of those mysteries. And I should have mentioned that. I was distracted when I posted that first one by the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and probably should have just waited until tomorrow to post, possibly finding some sort of inspiration to tirade on "bad" foods in my sleep. Oh well. Lesson learned. But I DID get to post twice in one day this way, and that doesn't happen very often.

High Fructose Corn Syrup by the Foot

So, we're not really the kind of people who buy the "popular" foods. Eventually, this will be a point of contention, I'm sure, as our kids see things on TV, or see other kids eating certain foods, and they realize that THEY don't get those things at home . . . .

I don't have any idea where I'm going with this, really. Maybe I was going to lecture on how terrible processed foods are, or maybe I was going to, once again, dwell on how deprived I was as a child and claim that I never had all these fancy, new-fangled foods. I honestly can't remember where I was going with this. It's late in the day (almost 8:00, now, which is practically midnight now that I'm old), and I can't remember what my point was going to be. Consarnit! And, really, I LOVE me some processed foods, so it's not like I have a soapbox I can stand on there. Chances are pretty good, though, that our kids WILL complain that we don't buy them the popular foods, because I'll try to avoid it, at least until they start bitching too much and I get tired of hearing it.

But Gabe was able to enjoy a Fruit by the Foot roll last night because some UNGOOD parent (unlike me, who is very good because, as I stated earlier but gave no good reason for, I don't buy these kinds of foods for our kids to eat) bought them for her kid to bring to daycare for Valentine's Day. And we took a video of it because he decided to eat it from one end to the other and we found it amusing.

BONUS!

Here's a picture of Butts after a bath!

We had one of those guilty moments, one of those ones where we say to one another, "You know, we really need to take more pictures of the younger one, too." So we took a picture of her after her bath.

I'm Gabe, I'm Spiderman (and Blankie Is a Rocketship).

You know, someone needs to invent a camera--or a series of cameras--with face recognition software built into them. Parents can buy and install these cameras to put up around their house and the cameras will be programed to follow their kids around. This way, whenever something funny happens, the parents will be able to record it for posterity (who posterity is, I'm not sure--so far, we haven't done much going back and watching the hours of video we've recorded so far, but I suppose it's comforting to know they're there should we ever decide to). I know that if I had a dollar for every time Gabe did something funny, then I ran to get the camera, tried to get him to repeat it, but failed, I'd probably have enough money by now to buy one of these fancy theoretical closed circuit recording services.

And today it happened again. A few months back (maybe his birthday last year, I really don't know because it's an article of clothing I'll be talking about, and I couldn't even tell you when I got MY clothes much less when the kids got theirs), Gabe received a little long-sleeved hoodie. It's read and blue with a Spiderman design on the front. Best of all, though, the hood has a little mask built into it so, when the kid pulls the hood over his head, the mask covers his eyes, sort of like a Spiderman mask.

Right now, it's probably Gabe's favorite piece of clothing. This morning, after I put it on him, I pulled the hood up so he could play with the mask, and he started pulling it down over his face then back over the top of his head and repeating "I'm Gabe. I'm Spiderman," over and over again--much to the enjoyment of Button. As soon as he started--well, after I'd laughed at him a little bit--I ran to find the camera and tried to convince him to do it some more. With limited success. Here's what I got.

New Orleans Owes Me

Last night, like most of America, I tuned in to the Super Bowl. I am, at best, a lukewarm football fan, but I tend to at least partially watch the Super Bowl every year. Mostly for the commercials, I suppose.

I actually should be more of a football fan than I am, and, in fact, it is the sport that I pay the most attention to. Though, that is like saying I pay more attention to truffles than any other expensive delicacy--it might be true, but it doesn't take into account the fact that I have almost zero access to, or interest in, expensive delicacies. I have about that much interest in sports. There are many reasons for this, but foremost among them is my complete lack of connection to sports. I am terrible at them, thus I tend to ignore them. I am almost completely devoid of a competitive nature (which makes me an excellent opponent because I've learned to be a very gracious loser), and I have the physical aptitude of a bucket of parsnips. As I think I've stated on here before, the only "sport" that I've ever shown any moderate skill for was bowling, but I feel a little guilty even suggesting that it might be a sport.

Nonetheless, I played football in high school, so I SHOULD have somewhat more attachment to it than to other sports. No, I'm being too generous there. I didn't PLAY football in high school. I went out for it. And, by my senior year, my coaches put me in almost exactly the requisite number of quarters to get me a letter--which is a courtesy they extend to all of us losers who go out for sports but are terrible.

In my defense, though, playing football is a terrible idea. I can't think of any other sport that hurts as much. And I got to feel just about as much pain as any of the people who played regularly. As a second or third (or maybe fourth or fifth) string player, I was best suited to the role of slightly mobile tackling dummy. During our daily practices, I was assigned to play running back and put behind an offensive line of mostly freshmen who were, no matter how you judge them, absolutely terrible. Then we ran plays against the starting defense. The freshmen inevitably got blown off their assignments by the much bigger defensive starters and then I was usually dogpiled about three seconds after I was given the ball. It was great fun, and by the end of the week I was a battered and bruised mess.

Strangely, I don't miss that much.

In all honesty, though, I only went out for football because it got me out of work. I also went out for track for the same reason (I was a "weight man," performing in the almost completely undemanding events like javelin and discus--it was a great scam, really, because those events were among the first ones at track meets and then I was free to wander around the rest of the day talking to girls or playing cards [we even took to bringing a Monopoly board at one point, such was our dedication to how well the others from our school were fairing in their events]). It was simple, really. Sports kept me at school until about 6:00, instead of getting out of class at 3:30. And playing sports was viewed as an acceptable excuse for not being home to do farm work. So that's exactly what I did.

Kind of boggles the mind, really, that I would be willing to sacrifice my body just to get out of about three hours of farm work every day for a few months. I still have terrible leg joint problems (knees, ankles, even my thighs from time to time) from the abuse my legs took, and my butt always hurts when I sit for more than an hour at a time (the only "major" injury I sustained during my years of playing was a cracked tailbone--yes, I broke my butt, and it was one of the most painful things I've ever known, the butt, after all, being one of the things one tends to use many hours every day).

Anyway, despite my background, I never had much interest in football after that. But I still watch the Super Bowl because it is my obligation as an American consumer. I think they might send out S.W.A.T. teams to houses that don't have their TVs tuned to the game. I'm not sure. I've never tested the theory.

And last night, something amazing happened, and I think Mitch Landrieu, the newly elected mayor of New Orleans (he reads this blog, right? I don't see any reason why he shouldn't), owes me some kickback for my contribution to the Saints' win. I was, for lack of any real interest in either team, rooting for New Orleans last night. The Colts have been to a few Super Bowls in the last decade and, frankly, I always root against good teams who have been good for more than a few years (and I root against the Cowboys and the Raiders because both teams are assholes, or so my background has led me to believe). Unfortunately, teams that I root for tend to suck. I am a "luck sink." It is a sad fact, and a terrible fate, but it is a fact of life that I have come to reluctantly accept. If I root for a team, they lose in spectacularly unlucky ways.

And that's what would have happened to the Saints last night. While I watched attentively through the first quarter, the Saints were abysmal. Then, as my attention started to wander, they started doing better. Eventually, it got to a point where they only did well when I left the room. EVERY fortuitous play the Saints had last night happened almost immediately after I left the room. Libby commented on it the first two times it happened, and laughed because she thought it was funny. But, then, when the Saints intercepted a pass and ran it back for a touchdown THE SECOND I left the room, she labeled me and my awful curse "creepy."

So, to benefit the Saints, I left the room frequently. And each time I did, something good happened. If I had stayed, there is no doubt in my mind that they would have lost the game. Thus, mayor Landrieu, I would like my reward sent to me as soon as possible. I will accept cash, but I would prefer something more creative. Perhaps you could send me a supply of one of the things that your lovely city is best known for. Like exposed breasts. I'm quite fond of those. But not JUST the breasts, please, that is considerably less appealing.

Sorry, no video or pictures to include with this one. Gabe started playing football at one point and we coaxed him into doing a touchdown dance, but then when we got the camera and tried to get him to repeat it, he refused. Oh well. It wasn't very well choreographed anyway.

A Culinary Mystery

I can't, for the life of me, figure out the reasoning behind the tastes of a child. Quite regularly, Gabe will turn his nose up at something, as if his tastes are too refined to possibly consider eating it. "Fish sticks, ewww!" he will declare after devouring six fish sticks not two days earlier.

And yet, from time to time, he will eat something utterly disgusting with the kind of gusto that should be reserved for the finest deserts (never mind the fact that we're talking about the same kid who will eat his lotion or scrape out the bottom of the sink and taste it as I've covered in previous posts).

An example of this last happened with dinner last night.

Let me explain what's on that plate. For dinner last night, I made him hot dogs, tater tots, and yogurt. No, the yogurt isn't the disgusting part of this picture. It's SUPPOSED to look like that. It's a "kids" yogurt with swirly colors--and it tastes as terrible as it looks, though Gabe tends to love the crap.

After eating only two of the pieces of hot dog that I'd cut up, Gabe decided that the ketchup and the yogurt would be best if they were mixed together. So he scooped several spoonfuls of the pink and blue gunk into the puddle of ketchup and mixed them together. And then he ate it. This was a "during" picture. By the end, everything on his plate but the corner of just yogurt was gone. He dipped first his hot dogs and then the tater tots into the ketchup and yogurt mix and ate every bite of them. Then he spooned up the remaining ketchup/yogurt monstrosity and ate that by itself.

And this from the kid who took one bite of the bierock I gave him last week, chewed it once, then spit the partially masticated mess out--not onto his plate but off to the side to make the most dramatic, messy statement about it as possible. Then he acted like I'd tried to poison him. A bierock! One of nature's perfect foods! Truly, it boggles the mind.

Note

I put up the post with Gabe and his tools just now, but because I saved the draft of the post when I started working on it Tuesday, it's actually AFTER yesterday's post. So be sure to scroll down and take a look at it.

A Diatribe about Baby Clothing

This was supposed to be a post about Gabe and his tools, and I might be able to post that one tonight or something. The video, I guess, was too long for Blogger's tastes. Two attempts to upload and four wasted hours later, I'm giving up. Maybe if I give it all night to load it will be successful.

Instead, I'm going to rant for just a minute about baby clothes.

For anyone who is having a baby or shopping for someone who is having (or has) a baby, I have a piece of advice. Don't buy outfits. By this I mean don't buy any of the clothing that comes in two parts with shirts and pants that require socks to keep the baby's feet warm. These clothing, while cute, are the least practical articles of clothing ever conceived by human beings. Yes, they look adorable when you dress them in these clothes, but there is absolutely NO practicality about them.

And I am very practical when it comes to dressing the kids--some might equate that with laziness, but I don't. For one, who sees them but me? It's not like I need to impress our cats by getting our kids out of their PJs as soon as they wake up in the morning. They're just going back to bed again in a few hours anyway, then they either have to sleep in less comfortable clothes or we have to change back to PJs again. Time and energy wasted, I say. For another, and this is especially true with babies (less so with toddlers as they are at least able to cooperate somewhat), dressing in complicated clothes is a traumatizing and unpleasant experience for everyone involved.

Let me paint you a picture. Imagine a piece of rough silk has been cut out into a baby shape (or whatever the process would be to make a rough silk baby--you figure it out), complete with chubby little arms and legs and a giant head. Now, stuff that full, to capacity, with dry rice. Now you have a rough approximation of a baby, at least in terms of how cooperative they are to get dressed. Imagine dressing your rice baby. It will be unable to support itself, it will completely fail to help you put legs and arms into the holes for the clothes, and you will have perform an awkward half-hold/half-application of clothing to get anything done. To get the leggings on, you will have to coax and squirm the rice baby's legs into the pant legs. To get the top on, you will have to first awkwardly tug it down, through a head hole that is FAR too small, over the baby's giant head (invariably causing great discomfort to their ears since it will be all but impossible to hold the baby upright AND hold the head hole open with both hands to slip it over painlessly). Then you will have to squash and manipulate the baby's arms into the arm holes, remembering that the baby won't close its (remember, rice baby, which is an "it") hands to keep from snagging its fingers and thumbs, so you could very easily bend them back or get them caught up on something. Then apply the socks, which won't stay on its feet because they are too small for the socks to fit properly on.

In short, who ever thought baby outfits were a good idea? And we probably have $300 worth of the damn things cluttering up our house right now! The worst part is, I WANT to put them on because we--and others--have spent so much money on them and I feel like I should get some use out of them. But I refuse to, for the sake of my sanity and for the comfort of my child.

And that's not even accounting for the fact that you will have to repeat the process for the legs and the socks every single time you have to change a diaper.

Conversely, consider the sleeper. All of the baby's parts are kept warm. The clothing is easy to get the child in and out of (except for the ones with buttons instead of snaps or a zipper--the person who designed that style of sleeper should be executed in an amusing and humiliating way). The baby can be laid down on the sleeper to dress them, which means you don't have to spend most of your time and energy trying to figure out how to prop them up to get the clothes on. Diaper changes are far simpler because the baby's legs can be easily pulled in and out and the whole thing closes easily when you're finished.

And you know what? Your baby doesn't care what he/she is wearing! As long as it keeps them warm, they don't care if it's cute or not. They sleep in their own crap for god's sake! Dress them in something easy and spend the rest of the time you would have otherwise wasted on an outfit tickling them or doing something else equally un-traumatizing. Probably they will grow up to be much happier in life if they spent that extra five or ten minutes--during an important developmental time--laughing instead of experiencing excruciating discomfort for the sake of the parent's vanity.

And if you're shopping for someone else, buy them sleepers. A baby needs ten or so of them unless the parent is going to do laundry every other day, and they grow out of them in two or three months. Believe me, any sensible parent will be very appreciative of that kind of gift instead of another cute outfit that they will feel obliged to dress the child in once--and probably only once--so a picture can be taken as proof that it was used. And the baby has got to appreciate it too. If it could talk, I'm sure it would agree with me.

Now, go drop that rice baby in a pot of boiling water and make up a nice stir fry for the thoughtful people who didn't give your baby an outfit for his/her special occasion!

Practical English

Every semester when I was teaching, I started the first day with a brief history of the English language--paying particular attention to the fact that my language is practically nonsensical in many of it's practices. As I liked to say, "The only rule that will ALWAYS apply in English is that the semicolon is a superfluous piece of punctuation." And even that isn't entirely true (though, I have successfully managed to NEVER use a semicolon in ANY writing that I've ever done, which would seem to prove the point). Nothing stands to reason in our language. I blame the French and their influence. And the Germans. Most everything bad in the world can be traced to one or the other, I find.

The inconsistencies in our language are especially evident now that I have a toddler trying to suss out the many esoteric rules and regulations. All the time I hear him saying something that SHOULD make sense--irregular verbs changed into regular verbs, tenses shifted, word forms pronounced as they probably should be. And Libby finally caught an example of it on video.

For Christmas, I made Gabe a toolbox. First, we filled it with real tools (rather, Libby did, I knew it was a bad idea from the beginning), but that lasted less than an evening as he took the little hammer and started to bang on the furniture and jammed the screwdriver into a few things. The next day, Libby ran to Sears and picked up a set of plastic play tools which we replaced the other stuff with (except the tape measure, which we let him keep so he could be Measure Man still). We carefully went through the tools, several times, in fact, and named them all out.

He has since renamed some of them in a way that, really, makes sense. If you think about it, most of our tools end in "er." Pliers, hammer, screw driver, and so forth. Gabe extended this unwritten rule to the other tools that DON'T normally end in "er."

I'm not sure if he does it or not in this video because I haven't watched it all the way to the end (because it's so long and I'm a busy person), but he usually calls his pliers by the name of the character in Handy Manny, Squeeze. Except, usually, he even adds the "er" to the end of that, calling them "squeezers." (Note: after four attempts and about ten hours of letting Blogger try to figure out how to upload the original video, I caught Gabe while he was playing with his blocks and convinced him to list his tools for me. It's still long, but about a minute shorter than Libby's version, so hopefully it will work. Also note that Butts is making a cameo in this in her Johnny Jump-Up in the background. She loves the thing--unlike Gabe, who hated every second he was in there--but she's a bit sleepy as she's been a pretty horrid nap taker for the past few weeks and tends to run out of steam by 5:00. So don't expect her to "wow" you with her antics.).

Snow, Costumes, and Eating

Figured I would put up a multi-purpose post with some catch-up pictures and a video of Gabe playing in the snow.

I'll start with Button's eating (because it's the last thing I mentioned in the title, and I like to be a "maverick" in the sense that people tend to use that word these days, in that I'm just kind of annoying).

Eating a saltine, her favorite kind of cracker (which is great since 1000 saltines cost as much as ten zwieback toasts).

Here's an interesting "behind the scenes" snipit that I'll be sure to include on the DVD commentary of my life: this is USUALLY how Butts looks in her pictures. She hates the flash and I usually have to take a half dozen pictures of her before I get one that she doesn't look like a stoner in.

Not surprisingly, she's really taken to food. I mean, she EATS. If we let her, she would do it all day. She's getting quite good about feeding herself, too. Actually, she prefers it, which is weird to us. Gabe took to feeding himself slowly--I tend to think he just liked other people to do the work for him. Actually, from time to time, he'll still refuse to eat until we feed it to him, probably just to keep us in our place. But Butts will often refuse baby food when we're trying to feed it to her but will shovel whatever food she can handle herself into her mouth. She's currently digging on cheerios, but she's really doing well with just about anything we hand to her that she can chew slowly or suck on until it dissolves. So, I guess our baby is still more advanced in the eating department than most other kids are. But, then, her size suggests she would be.

Here's a cute extra picture. She's still not figured out how to crawl forward, but she's working on scooting backwards. She's especially fond of scooting herself under our furniture. This was about thirty seconds before she got angry that she could no longer roll like she wanted to and demanded that I move her to the middle of the floor again.

Now for the snow stuff because that mucks my original order up the most. Last Thursday night we got a fairly substantial snow storm, and Libby took Gabe out to play in it during one of Butts' naps. He had a grand old time.

If you need proof that Butts was sleeping, listen closely at the beginning. Libby has her monitor strapped to her belt and you can hear the music box that we have attached to the side of the crib playing. That factoid also should make the DVD commentary. Probably I'll have to get Ken Burns to do my life story to accommodate the sheer volume of useless information I intend to include.

Gabe, pleased as punch to be in the snow.

I can't even imagine being covered in snow like that and finding it enjoyable anymore. It just looks cold and uncomfortable and I can clearly envision the puddles of melted snow on the floor that will be soaked up in my socks later in the day. I guess that's the difference between being a kid and being a grizzled old fart.

And, finally, the costumes. We received a package from Libby's folks that had some fun outfits for the two of them to wear. So, Libby dressed them up for some pictures.

Is this an Emperor Penguin? Dunno. I hope it fits her for awhile, though, because it will make excellent headgear for when she starts walking and plowing head first into everything in our house. Much more adorable than putting a helmet on her.

I like this picture because Gabe looks exactly like every kid who has been dressed up for the sole purpose of taking a picture, which is unusual for him. Usually he hams it up, and he's all too happy to cooperate when a camera is involved. Here he looks like he's barely tolerating the experience, and I can appreciate that.

I have no idea why this is sideways. It isn't saved that way and even when I tried rotating the original file it kept coming up sideways on here. Stupid blogger.

But wait, there's more! I've also got a video of Gabe playing with his tools. But, because Libby took the video and she has no concept of how long it takes to upload or download videos on the internets, it's super long. So, tune in later in the week for that one.