Memory Development

Over the past two days, I think I've figured out why long term memory doesn't develop in humans well past age two. I, personally, only have very vague memories of anything that happened before about the time I started kindergarten--just a few glimpses of events or special occasions that obviously made a significant impact. I imagine it's the same way for most people.

And I've been keeping pretty close tabs on the things that Gabe remembers--because approaching the raising of my children from an observational standpoint, so that I can at least pretend that I'm learning about the development of the human brain, is one of the things I tell myself I'm doing to help keep myself sane. Periodically, I ask him about events or people that he experienced or met in the increasingly distant past, just to see if he still remembers. And I can say with moderate certainty that he really only started storing things long-term about last Christmas (so at about two and a half). He can still vividly remember the Christmas parade that Libby took him to, where Santa was saved by a fire engine from the top of the old movie theater here in town. Other memorable events--Halloween, our vacation last August, that sort of thing--he doesn't seem to recall well if at all (not surprisingly, the only aspect of Halloween that he seems to brighten up at the mention of is the candy, because the boy has a one track mind when it comes to sweeties).

I imagine the exact period when a child starts to remember things probably coincides with other notable cognitive developments, with language development probably playing the most major role since it's probably difficult to remember something if you don't have a way to describe it, even if it's in your own head and you're only trying to explain it to yourself.

I think the reason we don't remember much before age two is something that evolved in us along with our abnormally slow developmental processes. I think it's a self-defense mechanism. If we remembered all the trauma that we went through before we gained substantial control of our motor skills, I think there is a good chance that every person in the world would suffer from some form of post traumatic stress disorder.

I say this because I've been watching Norah the past few days and reflecting on what this stage was like when Gabe went through it, too (though, being tough as hell, he really never cried unless he smashed a finger, and Norah cries if her hair hits the ground too hard). She is to the point now where she is crawling freely, and she is trying her best to climb up on just about everything she can--which usually ends in disaster since she doesn't have the balance or leg strength to keep herself from toppling over one direction or the other (which is why I also haven't gotten a picture of her standing yet, because, by the time I get the camera, she's already crying from whatever she hit on her way down). In addition to this, infants approach the world face and fingers first. Anything that they can do to hurt their hands or faces, they will. She hasn't managed to slam her finger in any cabinet doors yet, but she has managed to catch them in the toy box lid and pinch them in the accordion gates. And everywhere she crawls, her face is the first thing that lets her know she's reached her destination.

In the last two days, she has injured herself in the following ways: she has fallen from her leaning-stand position at least a half dozen times, usually knocking into something; she has high centered herself on one of Gabe's big trucks, ending up with her face planting on the other side of it with her hands trapped underneath it so she was effectively trapped; she has thrown her head back--while sitting, thus throwing herself onto her back--in one of her little mini-tantrums twice, both times landing on something hard that was lying on the floor behind her; and she has pulled one of our living room lamps down on herself (if you're reading this before you come home tonight, Libby, yeah, she busted the shade on the lamp by pulling on the table behind her activity saucer)--she mostly missed herself with the lamp, but the shade bounced off her head on the way down.

And then there is the damage that Gabe has helped to inflict on her. Though we try to keep a pretty close eye on them when they're playing together (because Gabe tends to treat her either like she's as coordinated and tough as he is, or like she's just another one of his toys that can be messed with however he sees fit), I also think it's important that they have moderately unstructured playtime--I want them to work as much out about the best ways to get along as possible since they are bound to remember more if they are learning it themselves than if I'm just lecturing them endlessly. Since yesterday, he helped her meet the entertainment center face first while they were playing with some pillows (yeah, it sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? What could be safer to play with than a few pillows?) and he's bonked her on the head while tossing his toys around. The good news is that, whenever she starts to cry from being hurt, Gabe invariably starts to cry too, which I consider an encouraging sign that he feels bad that he's done something to hurt her.

None of her bonkings and thunkings were anything like severe, mind you, though you'd certainly never believe it if you heard the way she wailed. She had two light bruises last night and both seem to be gone today already (before anyone thinks about calling child services for neglect or something). Realistically, with the way she's getting around now, the only way I could conceivably prevent her from hurting herself would be to either follow her, six inches behind, the entire day so that I could catch her instantly, or for me to wrap her in bubble wrap and strap a helmet to her head. Neither of those options seems particularly workable to my way of thinking, though.

Anyway, back to my point. Now, imagine that YOU had been put through such a physical ringer in just the past two days (well, 32 hours, really), and imagine how that would affect you. Now imagine doing that for a solid six months or so straight. There's no way you'd come out of that unscathed emotionally or mentally. Thus the need for our mind to develop long-term memory skills that much more slowly. I'm sure this isn't groundbreaking news to anyone who's spent some time thinking about how the brain develops and why, but, since I hadn't, at least about the early childhood aspects of it, I thought I'd share.

The Art of Lying Pt. 2

Over the years, I developed something of a skill for lying thanks to nearly constant practice at home. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I pretty much hated growing up on the farm, and there was a very specific reason that I hated it: the work. Always there was work to do. Since we raised cattle AND farmed, the year was pretty much consumed with something going on (whereas a person who only farms could, for the most part, find a second job from fall until spring and cows are pretty low maintenance from spring through fall), and I did everything in my power to get out of that work. My farm equipment had more "breakdowns" than anybody else's. Eventually, the family started to catch on so I had to work some minor sabotaging skills into my repertoire as well so my lies were technically truths.

Anyway, the next Big Lie I told--and the first one that I remember getting away with--came my sophomore year of high school.

Since I went to a small school, there were only three sports offered over the course of the year: football (volleyball for the girls), basketball, and track. I hated all of them on principle, but I hated basketball the most because, well, it's a stupid sport--nothing but endless running and throwing a ball at a metal ring attached to a piece of plywood, what could be less fun? As such, I went out for football and track (again, to get out of work, since playing in sports was an acceptable excuse to get farm kids out of doing farm work, and I was willing to play a stupid sports game in order to win the getting out of work game).

Just about everyone went out for the sports that were available because there's not much else to do out there, but the kids who didn't were able to ride the Pep Bus to an away game if another ride didn't present itself. Usually, if I went to one of these away games, I rode with someone who had a car or, when I could drive myself, drove myself because, let's face it, Pep Buses are lame. But one time, several upper classmen and I (mostly them, since they were seniors and I was just kind of along for the ride, so to speak) devised a brilliant plan. One of the finest aspects of going to an away game was the getting liquored up part, but that meant either driving home drunk or having a designated driver. How could we ALL get drunk and not run the risk of killing ourselves or getting arrested?

The Pep Bus! We could be chauffeured to the game and back home while we partook in our beverages of choice in the very back seats!

It was ground breaking in its stupidity, of course. School buses in the winter are not what you'd call well-ventilated. If someone farts in the front row, before too long, everyone in the bus gets to share in the ass-airy goodness. To make matters worse, we chose the stinkiest of alcohols: bourbon. Everclear we might have gotten away with. Bourbon, not a chance.

Our plan sounded like a good idea when we discussed it initially. We brought a half case of soda and a big ass bottle of Wellers with us. We drank the soda down a third of the way or so then we topped it up with the bourbon. Of course this only served to "breath" the liquor more and spread the smell of it throughout the bus. We were scarcely twenty miles from our home town when the chaperon and the bus driver started actively scanning the bus for where the smell was coming from.

Long story short, despite the fact that we managed to sneak the bottle of bourbon out of the bus with us and throw it away, we didn't think to bring the empty cans, which still reeked of booze, along with us, so we got busted. But, then, considering we were stupid enough to try it in the first place, it wasn't too surprising that we compounded our stupidity later on.

We all got in school suspension for it because one of the kid's moms ratted out everyone involved instead of just letting her kid suffer the consequences. I, however, didn't get into too much more trouble at home because I lied to my folks. I swore up and down that I didn't drink any of the bourbon, but I had helped them sneak it onto the bus because I was the only one carrying a bag that day. There was an ounce of truth to this lie, which made it all the more believable. I told them I didn't drink because I had to pee almost as soon as we left town (and I have a notoriously small bladder that my folks had to stop for probably a thousand times while I was growing up). So they bought it. I still got grounded for being a dumbass, which I deserved, but it was a fairly mild grounding compared to what it would have been if I'd been busted for actual drinking.

Note: Actually, I didn't drink that much on the bus because, after the first can of soda-booze, I DID have to pee really bad, but I did drink, so I did lie and I did get away with it. Finally, about five years ago, I admitted to Mom that I had been drinking on the bus, too, but by then she couldn't really do much more than laugh about it. In your face, Mom!

Eventually, lying became something of a game for me thanks to the concept of Excused Absences in college. Most of my teachers only allowed us one or two unexcused absences over the course of a semester, and I hated morning classes and did everything in my power to figure ways out of them without hurting my grade too bad. But I couldn't just keep calling in with fevers or really bad colds (which are hard to fake on the phone anyway) all the time. I had any of a number of non-fatal ailments while I was in college, as far as my teachers were concerned. But, before long, that grew boring to me and I began a contest with myself to come up with the most believable excuse that I possibly could that was complete and utter bullshit.

The trick is to pick something that nobody would ever doubt you were lying about. Admit to something that nobody would ever admit to, and people will believe you. I had some doozies.

But I will just share my crowning achievement. The best lie I ever told that was completely believed by the person I was telling it to (at least as far as he ever said anything about it to me, anyway). It got me out of a choir practice, of all things, so in that sense it was totally wasted.

My choir director knew my parents were farmers--he had grown up on a farm, too, so he had a pretty good idea of what went on there. I used this knowledge to craft the most perfectly believable but utterly ridiculous balderdash lie ever. I told him that a shipment of bull semen was coming in for my dad at the airport during class time and he had a cow with a prolapsed uterus at home that he couldn't leave to make the trip into town. So I had to run to the airport to pick up the jug of sperm. For this lie, I got to go back to bed for one hour. Win!

I love that lie for all its many parts. It is my crowning achievement in life.

You can't see me now, but I'm bowing to the crowd of adoring fans gathered around me. Thank you very much.

Kids Stand Up for Jell-O

Just a quick interruption. Last week, Gabe decided that he loved Jell-O, so he pestered me until I ran to the store and bought a pre-made tub of "parfait"--chunks of Jell-O mixed up with a Jell-O/whipped cream mix--for him to eat. Then, after one serving, he decided he wasn't all that interested in it anymore. So, being the loyal garbage disposal that I am, I've been working on it periodically.

Just a little bit ago, I pulled out the tub and a spoon and sat down to watch Monday's episode of Chuck (Gabe's still sleeping and Norah is too young to complain that my shows are boring, so it's tough being a baby). Seeing that I had food, Butts crawled her way over to my chair and started doing her little bobbing-up-and-down-while-kneeling-in-front-of-my-chair begging that she usually does when she sees I have food. I gave her a taste of the Jell-O, and apparently she liked it. Since I was still watching Chuck, I wasn't really paying much attention to her. Instinctively, I scooped her out a tiny portion of Jell-O to share and moved it to her mouth . . . which seemed higher than it had been a few moments earlier.

Lo and behold, she wasn't kneeling anymore, she was standing!

So, mark it on your calendars. Not only did Norah reach the milestone of being able to pull herself up to a standing position today, but, for the first time ever, I actually managed to log the day for all posterity! Hurray for both of us!

Sorry, no pictures. She promptly fell down as soon as she had a mouthful of Jell-O to appease her and then hasn't gotten back up again since (probably because I put the food away).

The Art of Lying Pt. 1

Ben's comment on my post yesterday set me to thinking about some of the finer lies I've told in my life--and some of the terrible ones that helped me become the accomplished embellisher that I have become today. And since I'm thinking about it, I figured I might as well share.

As Ben mentioned, I have something of a sordid history of "storytelling." Ben, of course, isn't really one to cast aspersions for such storytelling as he, himself, has been caught in a few doozies in his time as well. I seem to recall one time when he came home drunk, in high school, and tryed to convince Mom that he was entirely sober. Because I am old, I can't remember most of the specifics anymore, but I think there was something about him wearing his jacket upside down (or maybe it was inside out) and repeating some line or other over and over again while trying to convince her that he wasn't drunk. Crap I wish my memory was better. Hopefully he'll feel obliged to set the record straight and reply to this post with an accurate reminiscence.

Anyway, the first "big" lie I remember telling happened when I was about six or seven years old. Or maybe I was five or eight. Who knows. Without some sort of definite landmark event like a school event or a vacation, all of those early years sort of meld together. I was young, though, I know that, because I was still naming the calves I was tasked to take care of things like Flowers and Stick and Red (Flowers and Red actually stuck around in our herd for quite some time--Red even making it well into high school or early college when another cow, also named Red, would replace her as My Cow [each of us would be given our own cow until the time Dad gave up on cattle all together]). If memory serves, Red was the very calf that I was supposed to be feeding on the night of the Whooping.

Perhaps just a touch more build up is required. Just about as early as was feasibly possible, all of us boys were assigned Chores that we were to do on a daily basis--usually once in the morning and once in the evening. These Chores tended to center around whatever young animals we had that needed special care--rabbits or sheep when we were showing these in 4-H or, more usually, baby calves that, for one reason or another, needed to be fed formula bottles until they were old enough to wean (an interesting side note, baby formula actually smells almost identical to the stuff that we used to feed calves, so ponder on that for awhile). Often we were also responsible to feed some alfalfa or grain to some cows or other as part of these Chores, and it was one such responsibility that I decided to shirk on the night in question.

Despite the fact that the Chore was really rather simple--put about four inches of grain in a bucket and dump it in a trough--I decided that I didn't want to do it. As dark approached, Dad asked if I had done my Chores and I claimed that I had. At first, it seemed like I'd gotten away with the lie because Dad left it at that, but about five minutes later he found me and asked again if I had done my chores. I stuck with my story and he notified me that he knew I was lying. Apparently, it's pretty easy to tell when a cow hasn't been fed when it is standing expectantly by the gate, waiting for food, AND none of the buckets or grain show any signs of being disturbed since the last time Dad had used them earlier. How was I to know that Dad was actually paying attention to things? Stupid observations.

Anyway, he gave me a chance to get my story straight, which I stubbornly declined, and then I received the Whooping. I received many such whoopings as a child, because I was a bit of a turd, but this is really the only one that sticks to memory. Perhaps it was the story that went along with it, or perhaps it was the setting--a cool, spring evening. More than likely, it was the one inch thick yard stick that Dad used to administer my punishment. It was a freebie from a booth at the State Fair--and I've spent much of my adult life trying to find a replica of the thing for my personal collection of obscure reminders of my youth, without success--and from that point on it would be my least favorite measuring stick in the world.

Upon reflection, I'm sure Dad didn't whoop me THAT hard. There was no bruise afterward, but I do remember stripping down and looking at my bare ass and seeing a red mark there shortly after the incident. So it was a substantial whooping. Regardless of its actual intensity, it was a Whooping that stuck with me, and from that day forward I went from Casual Liar to Accomplished Falisfier for fear of future retributions--as NOT lying was clearly not an option. I made sure to think through my options as clearly as possible before trying to lie my way through any given situation. And, for the most part, it's worked out pretty well for me.

To date, I've never again been caught in another big lie (though, really, there is only one other Big Lie that I can think of, and that will be a story for my next post).

True Confessions of a Three Year Old

Gabe has been really working on his lying skills the past few weeks. For instance, just last week, he spilled a mess of jelly beans on the floor and I got all up in his business about it.

"We have to pick those jelly beans up off the floor. They're too small for Norah. If she gets a hold of one and puts it in her mouth, she might choke," I chastised.

He gave me one of his serious, frowny looks and said, "I didn't spill jungle beans (that's what he still calls them, for reasons known only to him). DADDY spilled jungle beans."

Now, obviously, he's starting to show some promise in his skills. He's beginning to grasp the concept of blaming someone else for something that he's done. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't really have anyone to blame that is believable (a problem I shared with him on Sunday when I ate one of the cupcakes Libby bought for later that night, and, when she found out, I had to claim that Norah got into them because it was only the two of us in the house at the time of the incident), but as that circumstance changes, I will have to use my not substantial deductive skills to try and keep up with his story telling.

Anyway, despite this growing proclivity, his natural inclination is still to tell the truth. This is something I've tried to encourage by desperately avoiding getting angry or showing him that he's in big trouble when I ask him about something that he's done and he admits to it. It stands to reason that if he gets in more trouble for getting caught in a lie than for telling the truth, he'll naturally choose to tell the truth when he gets busted and take the lesser consequence. At least this is the working theory. In reality, all it will do is make him a better liar--as it is infinitely better to take NEITHER consequence. But I suppose that's not a bad skill to teach a child, considering the best liars in the world also tend to be the most successful people. I don't like that truth, but I have to accept it, and I should be doing all I can to give my kids a leg up in the world.

Sometimes, though, he'll start spouting off confessions, more or less out of the blue, for no good reason that I can discern. Perhaps he has the three year old equivalent of a guilty conscience. Or maybe, as I think was the case today, it's just something that he's thinking about and the pathways between his brain and his mouth are like new freeways--completely unobstructed by the hazard, reconstruction, and repair obstacles created necessitated by decades of use. Whatever the reason, while he was eating his lunch and I was sitting in the other room feeding Norah, he made an interesting admission, which I was able to coax out of him again in front of the camera.

Obviously he wasn't too concerned about this little tidbit of information. And it came as no surprise to me, either, as I've seen him perpetrating various versions of these crimes several times. He's still a notorious everything taster (over the weekend Libby caught him carefully picking sand off his tongue, which he openly admitted to having just eaten). I'd say it's proof that he's a slow learner when it comes to foods that are and aren't good to eat except he'll remember foods he doesn't like instantly and after only one tasting. Probably it's just a "weird" thing.

News flash! I started this post while both of the kids were sleeping and they woke up when I still had a few paragraphs left. I brought them down and set them to work watching Dora so I could come in here and finish. Right after I uploaded the video, Gabe came up to the gate between my office and the dining room and said, "Baby got something something something." "What?" I said. "Norah got something something something" (we still lean heavily on context to put together much of what Gabe's saying at this point, and without that, I had no idea what he was trying to say). So I got up and went into the living room to see what he was talking about.

Forgetfully, I left a little bowl filled with peanut shell remnants (my favorite snack because I'm an old man) sitting on the end table, well within Norah's range. As she's wont to do, she pulled it down and then went ahead and spread the shells all over much of the living room carpet. While I was cleaning up the mess I figured I'd make it a teaching moment by saying, "Oh, no. Daddy did a bad thing. I left something messy in Norah's reach. I know better than that."

To which Gabe replied, "Daddy did a bad thing. You need to go to time out chair."

"Oh?" I said. "How long do I need to sit there as punishment?"

"Three hours," he stated plainly. Obviously we've got a little more work to do on our time recognition. Either that or he really wanted me out of his way for the rest of the afternoon.

A Mystery

Button woke up about 7:00 this morning (yeah, in addition to not sleeping during the day or going down when she's supposed to at night, now she's getting up early in the morning, too), and promptly went about the three minutes of cooing and playing that she'll do in bed before she gets bored and takes to exercising her lungs until we go get her. So I went up and got her.

When I got in there, she was kneeling up in bed, looking at me with a big smile. She was holding something in her hand that I couldn't quite make out, so I carefully pulled it away from her for closer examination.

It was a munged up chunk of fruit bar.

I have no idea where it came from--or where it COULD have come from. It was still freshish. She HAD eaten a fruit bar last night. And, admittedly, it's not unusual for her to have bits of food about her person. She's a notoriously messy eater and, I think, she likes to slobber up food and purposefully stick it to parts of her body so that she can pick them off and eat them later, but that couldn't have been the case with this bit of food. She'd had a bath and a fresh outfit put on her right before bed last night, and though she might have voluminous folds to hide food in, being a baby giant, I find it highly unlikely that we could have missed such a sizable chunk of fruit bar in the bath. Where else it could have come from, I have no idea. She hadn't had any other fruit bars this week, and we just washed her bedding last weekend. A mystery. A gross, sadly typical mystery.

In other news, I feel sorry for Gabe. There is a good chance that his life is going to be one of constant torment by his younger sister. For the past few months, nothing has pleased Norah more than to mess with Gabe. Her favorite game--which we caught a bit of in the video below--is to mess with the boy. But, even when Libby isn't controlling the activity, Norah will go out of her way to torture Gabe. Say he's lying on the floor for a diaper change. No matter where she is, Norah will quickly make a beeline straight for Gabe--while he's lying there, exposed and vulnerable--and start climbing all over his face. She makes it LOOK like she's just trying to get at his binky or whatever he might be holding onto, but the fact that she does it even when he's not holding anything or using his binky pretty much proves to me that she does it just because she derives great pleasure from his pleas for mercy. Life should prove interesting with these two around.

Norah! Norah! Norah!

Sigh. I'm a little sad that I had to use that title already. I'd been sitting on it for, well, about as long as we've had Norah, and now I've used it. And I feel like it's wasted. I mean, how many other moderately obscure movie titles can I directly reference with one of my kids names? I could do Gabe and Norah's Infinite Play Time (or something to that effect). And there have been several movies named "Gabriel," but here's how an allusion to that title looks when it's typed out. Gabriel. Come on! Don't you get it? It's a reference to the movie! Philistine! But that's about it. So I sat on Norah! Norah! Norah! for quit some time, and now I'm using it because I don't have anything better coming to mind for a title. Double sigh.

Anyway, Libby tells me that there is a demand for more pictures of Norah. So I'm obliging. And a video of her (and Gabe) playing in the sand box a little while ago. You're welcome.

Less than a week ago, I realized that we hadn't yet taken any pictures of Norah sleeping in her bed. We had taken several pictures of Gabe doing the same by the time he was about a year old. And we felt a little guilty. Then I remembered the reason WHY we were able to take so many pictures of Gabe--once he went to sleep at night, he stayed asleep for at least four hours and nothing short of a few minutes of urgent jostling would wake him up. So we could go into his room on our way up to bed and look at him sleeping and "ooh" and "ahh" at how adorable he was while asleep.

Not so with Butts. Getting her to sleep--at night or at nap time--is becoming more and more of a chore every passing month. She still wakes up three or four times every night, same as always, but now she also won't go to sleep until about the third time we put her in bed (or if Libby rocks her or snuggles with her for an hour). I'm lucky if I can get her to sleep an hour during the day, and we're both lucky if we can get her to go to sleep by 10:00 at night. PLUS, she wakes up at the tiniest little sound most of the time. So, yeah, we've not taken many pictures of her sleeping because, as tough as it is to get her to that stated, we're not taking any chances waking her up.

But, then, these past two days, I've had two opportunities to take pictures of her while asleep. Yesterday, her nap didn't take until the fourth attempt, and by that point it was past 2:00 in the afternoon (with the first happening around noon, when Gabe is pretty much done), so she was absolutely zonked. She went down hard and actually managed to sleep for two hours (which we paid for last night when she didn't go to sleep until nearly 10:00). She might have slept longer, but I decided that I had to wake her up at 4:00 or she'd be awake until it was time for Libby to go to work the next morning. I went up to her room and turned on the light, which usually wakes her up with like a charm, but she didn't even budge. So I brushed the hair away from her eyes (don't get me started on the hair in her eyes, it has been a point of contention between Libby and her "never going to cut her hair" theory and my belief that not giving children bangs is cruel and unusual since they don't know how to keep it out of their eyes--and she DID eventually relent last week and snip some uneven bangs, but there are still hairs that hang into her eyes), and not even physical contact woke her up. So I grabbed the camera.

This is usually how she sleeps, like a wino cuddling up with a stray dog. She's even got the rosy cheeks like she's been hitting the bottle pretty hard.

Then, today, I put her down at noon again and promptly had to go back up and get her five minutes later as she started shrieking (which made Gabe decide that, if she was going to be awake, he didn't have to nap either, so he refused to take a nap, too) and brought her down. I told Gabe that he could stay up for one episode of Yo Gabba Gabba and then he had to go back to bed (he did go back, but still refused to sleep, which always makes for a long afternoon because if he doesn't get a nap, he's a mess the rest of the day). I put Norah in her activity saucer with a few graham crackers and a bottle of juice, and I excused myself to the office for a little bit to read emails and waste some time looking up movie titles that have "Norah" or "Gabe" in the titles.

Fifteen minutes later, both kids were being VERY quiet, so I went into the living room. This is what I found:

"Gabe," I said, "look at the baby. She's asleep in her gym." Gabe looked away from the TV and laughed and laughed. He thought it was hilarious. He hadn't noticed her up to that point, even though he was lying on the couch not twelve inches away from her head. Such is the power of television, people. She wasn't even resting her head on anything, she's just leaning back with absolutely no support, balancing in her sleep. Put her in a comfy bed with a bottle and Mozart playing and she screams. Put her in her baby gym for fifteen minutes with a graham cracker to smear all over her face and giant puppets singing about their love of balloons and she's out while leaning against the air. Kids are weird.

And, then, the sandbox stuff. Butts is actually progressing pretty nicely in the sandbox. She didn't even put a handful of sand in her mouth this time. That's always nice.

Not what you'd call an "action" shot, but pretty cute.

That "singing," as Libby calls it, is ambient Butts noise. Several times a day, for up to a half hour at a time, she will make this noise, pausing only for breath. To be honest, I didn't even hear it until Libby commented on it, such is my ability to completely ignore the noises around me.

Gabe's First Tea Party

And, no, this wasn't Gabe's first attempt at organizing a group of people protesting the existence of the government agencies and services that all of them, ironically, would be very angry about losing in an attempt to stave off "socialism" and other trendy bogeyman ideals that they imagine are destroying their nation despite the complete lack of any evidence to support the notion. Nope. This was a traditional, sit on the floor on a blanket and feed your stuffed animals some pretend tea kind of party.

Where he got the idea for it, I'm not sure. We've not done anything like it before. And, though I remember Ruby having a tea party on Max and Ruby once, we haven't seen that episode in weeks and, to my knowledge, none of the other shows he's seen have suggested the idea. The kid is starting to come up with crazy ideas all on his own, and I definitely appreciate that development because it means more organizational duties for me to arrange the things he wants but less initial creativity for coming up with the ideas (something I've always been a bit lacking for, at least as far as children's games go).

So, I sent Gabe upstairs to get everything he thought he'd need to have a tea party for Norah, him, and me--then we added Burgess and Amy, two of his favorite stuffies, a little while later. After about ten minutes, he had gathered six cups, one plate, a wooden spoon, and a plastic slotted (or is it slatted?) spoon. Not EXACTLY a successful first attempt, but not too shabby. I sent him back up for four more plates and tried to talk him into bringing down some of his play food. He managed two more plates but then promptly lost interest in getting any more supplies. So we got started.

Pretty much immediately after he brought down the last plates and we set them on the floor in an orderly fashion (Gabe deciding that he wanted to sit in the middle of all the action instead of around the Kung Fu Panda blanket we used for our picnic), Norah decided that she could contain her participation no longer. I didn't even have time to grab the camera and capture a picture of the setup for posterity.

Once we were set up and ready to go, we began our party.

Chaos ensues. Perhaps tea parties are still a bit advanced for the participants involved.

Gabe was incredibly disappointed that the cups were empty and refused to grasp the concept of imaginary tea, insisting, instead, that I fill his cups with water. I compromised and put a little water in one of his cups but told him he had to drink it up at the table (which is currently functioning only as a play-doh station right now). Not surprisingly, this ended in disaster a few minutes later as his game shifted from "tea party" to "pouring the water from one cup to another and then all over himself and the furniture." This is exactly the reason why I only put about an inch of water in the cup, because I suspected that he wouldn't be able to follow the "water isn't a toy" rule.

It didn't take long for Norah to take over the proceedings, as is almost always the case. Less than three minutes after our tea party started, it was over. Five minutes from the start (and about a minute after I stopped filming), Gabe was soaked in water and Norah had bonked herself on the head with the metal cup she was playing with and started crying (she's a bit of a sissy--or, at least, she seems like one when we compare her to Gabe when he started getting around. Unless he pinched a finger in the door or hit something HARD, he barely shed a tear, but she'll cry if she tips over and lands on a cushion). Oh well.

Gabe Sums Up His Existence

A revelation! Moments ago, Gabe pretty accurately summed up his entire purpose in the world as he sees it.

After handing him one of his last packages of Easter pez, he began to unceremoniously tear into the paper around the chalky little candies. He dropped the first piece on the floor as I watched.

"Uh, uh," I chastised. "Trash doesn't go on the floor."

He looked down at the piece of paper and moved a foot on top of it. "All gone," he declared.

"Just because I can't see it right now doesn't mean it doesn't exist," I explained. So he picked up his foot. Of course, the piece of paper stuck to the bottom of it, meaning it was still nowhere to be found. "All gone," he repeated, satisfied.

He tore off another piece and dropped it on the floor, too. "Pick those up, please," I said. And then he laid on me his purpose in life.

"I throw trash on floor. It's my job."

And who was I to argue. If it's his JOB, well, there's nothing for it but to clean up after him, I suppose. A boy's gotta work.

An Experiment to Prove That Dogs Are Smarter Than Infants

Now, it probably doesn't come as any surprise to anyone that your standard issue dog is smarter than an infant. Babies are notoriously dumb. Show a dog an electrical socket and it will look at it quizzically once and then roll over to have its belly scratched. Show one to an infant and he/she will find a metal hanger to stick in the hole--and then, worse, will eagerly do it again if given the chance. By ten months, most dogs are about as smart as they're going to be and will know what is and isn't food, but a ten month old baby can barely understand the concept of "pie," much less Pi.

Nonetheless, I decided to run a little experiment the other night with Norah. She was crawling into my office with some ring toys dangling from her mouth--which prompted in me the comparison to a dog. To test her cognitive ability versus a dog of a similar age, I conducted a "fetch" test--fetch being a game that dogs can master as early as six months after being born. Here are my results:

Clearly, the results of my test did not work out in Norah's favor. She was far more interested the cord to the vacuum cleaner that I broke earlier in the day by sucking up a booster seat strap (proving that I, myself, am probably STILL not much smarter than your run-of-the-mill dog).

Video and Picture Round-Up

It's been a busy past couple of weeks, and the loss and recovery of our hard drive was an unfortunate addition to the mix, so I've been a bit remiss in posting. Now it's time to get a little caught up.

Easter came and went and, along with it, a new exposure to the wonderful world of Easter candy for Gabe. Since they start selling Easter candy just as soon as they clear off the Valentine's Day crap--sometimes even before then--Gabe's had PLENTY of time to grow to love the various sugary options available to him (he's still working through the last of his candy, but I expect there will be a serious backlash when he's finally out and there's nothing in the house to eat but graham crackers again).

We went out to my folks' house to join the community at large for their yearly egg hunt. The hunt is held on the football field. In the past, they've done a pretty good job of spreading stuff out into two separate, easily identified sections: one for kids under 3 and another for the big kids. This year, not so much. They tried to separate everyone, but there were no clear boundaries, so the big kids were pretty much everywhere and the little tikes were left to scrounge for whatever was left. I've included a short video, just to illustrate the utter chaos. I didn't film long because, well, first, it was boring, and second because it was so windy it was terribly noisy.

He didn't get much of a haul out of this, but he is still young enough to not realize what he's missing out on by lazily picking up a few pieces of candy here and there. We'll really have to work on that killer instinct that will get him pushing and shoving his way to an Easter basket full of goodies.

Norah didn't really get to participate in the big egg hunt, but we let her have some fun with her basket anyway.

Later that day, we did a plastic egg hunt at Mom and Dad's, and Butts did get to help with that one--in that we put a plastic egg in front of her while she was doing her "sexy pose" and snapped a quick picture.

The next week, my Dad turned 60. To surprise him, cousin Amy flew in to help celebrate. We didn't tell Mom or Dad that she was coming, and we worked it out so that all of us were at their house as they were getting home from work last Thursday on his birthday.

While we waited, Gabe played with Tanner and Sydney in the basement. Entertaining only because three kids are spazzing out.

When Dad got home (since he teaches, he gets off earlier than Mom), the kids all hid in a closet to surprise him. Amy was sitting on the couch, acting nonchalant. We wanted to see how long it would take Dad to notice her (he is a bit notorious for being unobservant, a trait that I've sadly inherited). His reaction is pretty good, and it took him FAR too long to see her sitting there, especially since he looked at her at least once.

The next weekish, Amy stayed and we spent a goodly amount of time inflicting our children on her. She left Tuesday night, but she made enough of an impression on Gabe that he was actively pissed off all day yesterday that she wasn't still around to entertain him and his only option left was to deal with me.

There's Amy next to my Dad. I include this picture because it is the only one we got with her in it (and, as I learned when Famous Uncle Ben visited, if I don't include pictures of the people who visited, then I hear about it). I guess she got the rest of the pictures with her in them.

Gabe wearing Dad's hat. Notice Libby's hand. He has an aversion to hats and she's holding it on his head long enough for me to take a picture. I think he has a promising career as a chimney sweep ahead of him.

And, finally, a video that I think helps to illustrate why eating out with kids isn't really that much fun. Gabe is actually pretty sedate at this point--mostly because three of us are paying attention to his entertainment needs. As we tried to talk amongst ourselves, he took to running around the table and crawling on everything. By this point we hadn't even ordered food yet. Good times.

And that's our last two and a half weeks!

Hurray for People Who Are Smarter Than Me!

Yesterday, we heard back from the computer guy who had been working with our hard drive for the past week or so, and he was able to recover everything from our hard drive. Hurray! We didn't lose all of our pictures and movies! I'm very pleased.

I haven't had much time to post things this past week. Cousin Amy from California has been visiting, and I just haven't had much chance to sit down at the computer. We have gotten some video and pictures from this week, though, so hopefully I'll be able to find something entertaining enough to warrant including on here in the next couple of days. Most notably, she's been trying to teach Gabe how to say, "That's what SHE said," as a response to pretty much anything that we say to him. So far, it hasn't caught on, but if it does I'll hopefully be able to catch it on video because the chance to laugh at it will surely be the only good thing that will come of it.

Our Special Little Man

Gabe was sitting on the floor in the living room with his juice cup in hand, sort of half watching Yo Gabba Gabba (which we watch about four times a day because it's Norah's favorite show--she likes to dance to it), and I was helping Butts with some crackers and some little puffy snacks.

I looked over at Gabe and couldn't tell what he was doing, so I called him over. He was holding his hands half-cupped together, and sort of half-eating out of them (at least that's what it LOOKED like he was doing). I say "half" both of those times because he was also sort of NOT doing this. Or at least he was trying to act like he wasn't doing that, which was what got my attention. I figured he was eating something he wasn't supposed to have and was trying to be sneaky in his not-the-least-bit sneaky almost-three-year old way.

"What do you have in your hands?" I asked.

He held out his sort-of-cupped hands for me to see. There was about an adult man's hocking worth of spit in the palms of his hands. Apparently he had been, very silently, spitting into the palms of his hands for a few minutes.

"Eww," I said. "What are you doing with your spit?"

"I rub it in my eyes," he said. And, sure enough, he did. He put both hands up to his face and proceeded to rub the spit all over--but especially over his eyes.

Obviously, I asked him why, but the only response he gave was that he needed to get a wet-wipe out of the cabinet to wash his hands. Apparently spit is good enough for his face, but too dirty to stay on his hands for very long. Not surprisingly, he had no interest in doing any of this in front of the camera--which is too bad, it could have been our first new video since the computer crash last week, and it would have been a keeper.

Back, Sort Of

We got our computer back yesterday. Hurray. We're short on just about everything we USED to have, but what can you do. Recovery of the old hard drive is still under way--if such is possible. A special thanks to John for letting me know that I could find the pictures I've posted on here on Picasa. That's good to know--though I would much rather have several pictures OTHER than the ones of the stuffed animals I posted on here. But what can you do? The movies are another thing entirely. I haven't been able to discover any way that I can download the movies from Blogger, but I haven't tried THAT hard yet, either. I'm waiting for the final verdict on the old hard drive before I start frustrating myself with my options--or non-options--for online recovery.

We'll be spending the holiday weekend visiting my folks out on the "farm," so if something interesting comes of that I'll be sure to share.