Christmas, Christmas, Christmas

This is the part where I go through our camera and post anything interesting or amusing that we've accumulated over the past week or so.

It was a busy week or so, too. Remarkably, as busy as it was, the holiday season this year paradoxically seemed to last forever while managing to go by in a flash. If I think back, it seems like it's been at least a year since Thanksgiving. Yet, at the same time, it seems like just a few days ago when we put the Christmas tree up. Weird. From the 24th-27th, though, this can easily be explained. Those are the evenings that Uncle Jeebes was staying with us--and all of those nights (and a few of the days) he and I spent fairly inebriated. And time spent drunk does have that strange way of seeming to fly by while taking forever. As for the rest of the season, I have no explanation.

This was a special Christmas season because, for the first time, Gabe was actually able to grasp the concept of Santa. He understood the "comes in the middle of the night to leave presents" thing. Last year, Santa was just some nebulous fat man who seemed to be everywhere. Gabe still loved him, because he loves old people, but he never really understood that Santa was coming to our house with presents on Christmas morning. This year he did and he loved all the little things that went along with it (like the half eaten cookie and partially drunk glass of milk on the table--but, mostly, he LOVED all the presents).

When he woke up yesterday, he said, "Did Santa come with more presents?" Ever the optimist. "No," Libby said. "It's going to be a whole year before Santa comes again." "Ohhh," he moaned. Then he brightened up slightly. "I'll check under the tree, just to make sure." When he didn't find any presents there, he didn't even get upset. Of course that had more to do with the fact that the giant bowl of Christmas candy is still under the tree and he started to stuff his face before we could tell him no, but there you have it.

Though we'd already been to, I don't know, ten other Christmas parties--maybe more, maybe fifty, I can't even remember, but I do know that we rarely in our own house in the evenings, and if we were, other people were in our house too--this was the night when Christmas officially started, at Nana and Poppa's. This present was the clear winner for Gabe this year. It's a Toy Story . . . factory . . . thing. It has a grabber crane thingy! Gabe had a meltdown wanting it early in December, so Mom and Dad got it for him. It is his favorite toy from Christmas.

Here is a picture of my armpit. You're welcome.

Dinner that night (Ah, Blogger, you are so wonderfully awful. Now you are underlining and refuse to let me change it. Fantastic). As Gabe does, he put all his foods together--blueberry muffing, homemade applesauce, mashed potatoes, and sausage. He went on to eat some of it. Yet he won't eat pizza. Makes one wonder.

Wonderful. It switched the color to blue up there when I tried to get rid of the underline and won't change it back. Yet, now we're back to black and bold. Excellent (that had a sarcastic ring to it, in case anyone missed that). Here's the picture of all of us with our favorite Christmas presents. My favorite present is down in the front, next to Gabe's factory. Can you see it?

Here's a (oh, great, back to blue and underlined again) priceless picture that accurately displays the only reason why anyone buys a Shake Weight. Hilarious. It's an awful piece of exercise equipment, but it sure makes for funny pictures. Because we're cheap bastards, the adults on my side of the family draw names and only buy one present, roughly $20, following a theme. This year was "As Seen on TV." The Shake Weight won the prize for Best in Show.

The next night, Christmas Eve, we spent with Libby's family (I'm not even going to try and change the color on this one. Screw you, Blogger). We didn't get many pictures (but two of the videos below are from that night). You can't see them very well because of the lighting, but Norah is wearing antlers. And drooling. Still. I'm not sure it's ever going to stop. More than likely, she will be the only child in middle school who has to wear a bib every day. Poor kid.

Gabe wearing (oh, great, back to normal, this is exciting now, it's like a stupid lottery where the prize, instead of being stoned by your fellow citizens is consistent font coloring) the crown from his Christmas Cracker. The Christmas Cracker is a tradition in much of the English speaking world, sent to us by Libby's folks. We don't use them here in the states because Burger King has a monopoly on the manufacture of all paper crowns. Crackers also contain really bad jokes--like the ones on a Bazooka Joe wrapper or that might appear on a popsicle stick.

James might not be drunk yet at this point (probably around 10:00 or so in the morning), but it would happen soon enough. This was pretty typical through James' stay. Gabe rarely left his side if he could help it.

The factory was the winner with Gabe, but this dollhouse won the day with Norah. I found it at the thrift store for $3. Win! We got her some sets of people and furniture to go in there, and she's been playing with it more or less non-stop for the past few days.

Behind the couch with Uncle Jeebes. That sounds like the name of a public access TV show. Gabe has really been making use of his space behind the couch since Christmas. He's been sneaking candy from the bowl back there to eat when nobody is looking. He has definite hoarder tendencies.

The booze. This was probably around noon on Christmas Day. By this point, these boxes are already missing two bottles of champagne (consumed), a bottle of Crown Royal (have gone), two bottles of red (on the counter so they didn't get too cold--we just left all the rest of this outside since there wasn't nearly enough room in the fridge), and two bottles of wine James gave as gifts. By the time Jamie left, some of the beer was all that was left out there. Read into that whatever you want because I don't have enough brain cells left to read much of anything.

A mask, given by Aunt Molly. These masks were awesome, but I think they were designed by molemen who didn't need to use their eyes. The eye holes weren't spaced properly, weren't big enough for people eyes, and didn't have any kind of stiff backing to keep the felt from sucking straight back into one's eyeballs, making it effectively impossible to open one's eyes. We made some modifications, though, and now Gabe can be a disco superhero just like he's always wanted!

Norah on her homemade blankie (also from Aunt Molly). This blanket is awesome and clearly NOT made by molemen.

Actually, the cheap sets of Legos that Libby bought Gabe might have been more popular than the factory. Christmas day, he spent nearly six straight hours sitting at his little desk in the office working on his Legos. The look on Jamie's face her is priceless, as all three of us adults had it at one point or another while trying to put together the vehicles these sets made. I have given up entirely on putting them together now. They take a little over a half hour of close attention to put together, and Gabe invariably breaks the end product in less than five minutes. Now he has a box full of very small Lego pieces to stick together in random shapes. And we step on them a lot. Hurray for Lego!

James modeling his new clothes. By this point in the day, we were well and truly drunk. Shortly after this, I took a short nap and woke up, at 3:00 p.m., with a hangover. I went on to get drunk and sober up one more time that day. Glorious.

Just to prove that we aren't entirely negligent parents. We DID get the kids out to play at least once over the holiday weekend. Well, not "at least" once. JUST once.

Video from Kent and Kathy's house (Libby's aunt and uncle). The kids were already wound for sound. The videos are pretty self-explanatory, just Gabe and Norah being dorks.

Apparently the "spinning until you fall down like a drunk" thing wasn't just Gabe. It must be a universal toddler thing. I would have thought for sure Norah would be more sensible. Guess not. Definitely still pretty funny.

And, finally, further proof that we got the kids some exercise. Or, at least, that they were chased around our yard for twenty minutes or so.

The Fourteen Year Itch

Fourteen years ago today, at this very time (9:30 a.m.) I was already starting to get drunk for the first time. Mid-afternoon, I would get married to my first wife (who is determined to be my last wife by driving me to an early grave), and then I would get drunk a second time that night.

I would not get drunk twice in one day again until last Saturday (Christmas Day), when Uncle James and I spent much of the sacred day bombed off our asses. Around 3:00, I laid down for an hour long nap and woke up with a hangover--the first time I've ever had one in the middle of the afternoon. But I soon drank it away and everything was better. It was a truly blessed day (and I will put up a big long Christmas post filled with several days of pictures and videos at some point in the next few days--whenever I get more than a few minutes to sit at the computer).

But back to my 14th anniversary today.

As I'm sure everyone already knows, the 14th anniversary is the "ivory anniversary." To celebrate, I have a special treat in store for Libby when she gets home from work tonight. It's taken a little doing, but I've managed to set up a two-shall-enter-one-shall-leave style Mad Max Thunderdome in our backyard. Only, this time, three shall enter and I shall leave as I use a walrus as a club and beat an elephant to death with it. Then I will take all of their tusks and build Libby a series of fourteen stylishly scrimshawed bird cages that she can hang around our yard (probably in the non-Thunderdomed parts). Then, every time a songbird takes a shit in one of these birdhouses, Libby can think of me. Very poetic and appropriate, I think.

And that, I think, does a pretty good job of summing up how great the last fourteen years have been. Thanks, Libby! You're a peach and WELL worth the effort of beating an elephant to death with a walrus!

The Day I Dropped the Bomb

A little while ago, I noticed that our Christmas tree was out of place. For the past few years, we've been using a little four foot "porch tree" as our only Christmas tree. The reasons for this are twofold: 1) it can be placed up on a table away from our children, and 2) we are lazy and a small tree takes far less time to decorate. This year, we have it up on a cabinet in our dining room. It's high enough that Norah can't reach it, and we didn't figure we would have as much trouble with Gabe this year. Last year, we had the tree behind the couch in the living room and, by the end of the season, he wasn't messing with it anymore. We figured he had moved beyond that stage where he had to mess with the ornaments all the time.

Not so.

A couple times this week I've noticed the tree pulled out to the edge of the cabinet, and it's been turned a few times. Gabe has obviously been doing an inventory of the ornaments and pulled the tree out so he could reach more of them. A few times, I've found little, unimportant ones (the ones we purposely put close to the bottom of the tree) lying on the floor, and each time I've picked them up, chewed Gabe out, and hung them back up. After the first few times, I threatened to put the Christmas tree away if he didn't stop.

And it sort of seemed like he had. Until today. When I went over to push the tree back against the wall, I noticed that it seemed kind of thinly decorated. Closer inspection showed that, indeed, more than a dozen ornaments were missing.

I immediately went to the first place that I now look for ANYTHING when it's gone missing in our house, behind the couch to Gabe's little hoard. He is keeping everything back there now. Food, drink cups, trash, toys, books, more trash, vermin, you name it. After pulling out all the blankets and pillows, I quickly spotted a couple of the ornaments. I called him over and told him to find them all for me.

For ten minutes, he found ornaments. Lots of them. Some not in the best of shape anymore, and all of them missing their hooks, which I'm sure will end up in my foot at some point in the not too distant future. He had, apparently, been stockpiling them every time I wasn't paying close enough attention and I just hadn't noticed since not TOO many of them were missing.

The end result. It was quite a collection, and I'm pretty sure there are still several back there.

As he kept pulling them out, I made the ultimate threat. The child threat equivalent of the nuclear option. I built on my previous threat of taking down the tree thusly:

"That's it!" I said. "I'm putting away the Christmas tree, and if we don't have a Christmas tree, then Santa won't know to come to our house. No more Santa! No more Christmas!"

Not surprisingly, Gabe started to cry. He sobbed and bellowed and made some excuse about needing more light to see the ornaments and that was why he took them back there. The kid is improving slightly on his lying skills, but he really needs to work on his concept of plausibility. I let him cry for a little bit and then he promised that he wouldn't take down any more ornaments. I agreed that I wouldn't take the tree down and end Christmas, but if he touched even one more ornament, Christmas was over and all of his presents were going to Finn (in retrospect, that was probably not a good threat as it might make him start to hate Finn--but I know from experience that he doesn't understand the concept of "the less fortunate" so I had to go with something I knew he'd get).

So now we see how well the nuclear option really works. It's been clearly placed on the table, and now I just have to hope that he doesn't force my hand, because I have several presents in here that I really want to open up.

Dad-Type Man Strength to the Rescue

There are advantages to having a stay-at-home dad around the house as opposed to a stay-at-home mom. Probably many advantages--though I can't really think of any others, and even this one is an incredible stretch.

Today, we had our first real emergency in quite some time. We've had many minor emergencies. Like when Norah discovered that she could climb over the back of the couch on the short ends and ended up toppling head first over the back. She landed without harm thanks to the pile of blankets and pillows, but she also landed with her head buried in the pillows so she couldn't move and had a proper freak out because of it. Valuable lessons about gravity and chubby, not entirely dexterous body parts learned. And there have been plenty of slammed fingers or pushings or pokings or what-have-yous. But no proper emergencies of the get-the-blood-flowing variety.

Until today. I left the kids upstairs to play for a little bit while I came down to sort some laundry. Norah's been enjoying the time up there for the past few weeks and Gabe loves it when I leave them alone up there because he can get up to no good without me noticing right away. And that's what he was doing. He decided that he needed to get into the drawers in the armoire. Yeah, the same armoire he broke the door off a few weeks back. The thing is proving to be quite a lot of trouble lately.

Anyway, he had no reason to get in the drawers because they just have some baby clothes we haven't gotten rid of yet and some extra sheets and stuff in them, but he likes to do things he's not supposed to for no other reason than to do them. And, of course, Norah joined in on the fun because she just loves to do whatever Gabe is doing.

"Daddy!" I hear from upstairs. "The door is stuck and Norah is trapped."

"Huh," I think. "That's not one I hear every day." So I run up the stairs figuring he's just closed a door tight and can't turn the knob for some reason or other.

Not so. What he had done, in fact, was close the door to Norah's bedroom. And, while the door was closed, Norah pulled the big bottom drawer in the armoire out behind it, effectively locking the door shut.

Now, as a stay-at-home DAD, I was able to perform a feat of strength that, I think, most women would not have been able to perform. Sure, sure. You hear the story about the adrenaline fueled mother lifting a car off her infant, but this was a different situation entirely. There was no real and immediate danger. Norah was trapped, and she would have gotten very unhappy about it before too long, but she wasn't in any danger (at least not until I started performing my feat of strength, then there might have been the potential for danger), so there wasn't an adrenaline surge to work with.

Because this armoire backs up to the headboard of the bed in the room, and that headboard has a slightly recessed area into which the armoire was backed into, I had to effectively push both the armoire and the bed back by sticking my arm through a three inch gap in the door. And I did. It took much grunting and Gabe probably picked up a few new curse words in the process, but, by god, I saved my child from a boring death in her own room! Hurray for brute man strength saving the day!

Now, this, of course, ignores the fact that my options for opening the door went as such.

First, upon seeing what was keeping the door from opening, I tried to push it in--resorting to man strength immediately to fix the problem. It did not budge easily. It didn't, in fact, budge at all (this was because it wasn't just the armoire but the bed--both of which are pretty hefty and I was completely lacking for leverage). So light exertion man strength wasn't going to solve the problem.

Second, I tried to push the drawer back into the armoire, thus allowing the door to freely swing open. This MIGHT have worked, except that my strengthy man arm was too wide to get in but a very short distance and I couldn't touch the drawer without pushing the door firmly against it. Thus, I couldn't close it because my own brute man strength was exacerbating the situation (at this point I actually thought to myself, "I wonder if I could call Libby and get her home before Norah completed freaked herself out since Libby has such nice, skinny, girly arms that could probably squeak past the door and move the drawer out of the way," but that is beside the point of all this entirely, I believe).

Third, I briefly considered finding something that I could slide in the crack in the door to latch onto the drawer and close it. This would have been physically impossible to do, however. And not even a woman could have done it. There was just no way to maneuver something around that tight of a corner, latch the drawer, and pull it closed. Directions and mass and propulsion and inertia all probably would have played a part and only a stay-at-home inventor could have figured out a way around it. So I put the plastic hanger down that I grabbed to try to do the job.

So, finally, with my options effectively being to call the fire department, call Libby and hope she could get home quickly, or give man strength another go, I went with man strength, hoping that I didn't hyper-extend myself or dislocate my brain pan and have to rely on my three year old to find the phone and dial 911 to save us all.

And I won! Take that stay-at-home moms who could not have done this thing I did!

Why Teachers Should Make Doctor Money

As the days pass, I am becoming increasingly convinced that, once he's in school, Gabe is going to be "that kid." You know the kid I'm talking about. The one who, at the school program, is dancing in place or pulling someone's hair instead of singing the song he's supposed to be singing. The one who never sits still and, several times a day, gets in trouble for disrupting class. The one that teachers have to plan their days around.

He's got all the marks of being "that kid." He's pretty smart. He's high energy and doesn't care for sitting still. And he's got a short attention span and gets bored easily. He's going to be a handful for all of the teachers he has, probably until high school.

Now, to my reasoning for the title of this post. I have to find ways to keep Gabe at least passably entertained every day. It's not an easy task--and I have to admit that I spend a great deal of my energy trying to steer him towards activities that will keep him in one place and get him used to the twelve years of school he's going to spend sitting in small desks--but I only have ONE other child in the house that I have to keep occupied at the same time. Imagine trying to juggle a classroom full of children, all with different needs, AND having to contain/entertain/contend with one or more of "those children." These people should be living sumptuous lives of luxury when they aren't working, and that's all there is too it.

Anyway, I had all these thoughts after watching Gabe at his pre-school program yesterday. It was short, about ten minutes. They prepared a few songs that they sang along with their teacher--which they'd obviously been working on for a little while at least--and it was, of course, adorable. Libby got some video of Gabe's "participation" throughout. Watch the videos and tell me that I'm wrong in my assessment of his future school life and how much his teachers should be making for dealing with him and the other kids that are like him.

Kids Say the Creepiest Things

Very brief post.

Libby got home from work a little while ago and had to pee. Gabe ran into the bathroom to pee first then was standing around waiting for Libby to go.

"Leave the room please, while I go to the bathroom," Libby said.

"I want to smell you," Gabe replied.

No further elaboration needed.

Down at Fraggle Rock

In an attempt to make Norah look more like Boo from "Monsters Inc.," Libby pulled back her first pigtails yesterday. Pigtails on little girls are, of course, an adorable staple. There is, however, one minor consideration that must first be addressed--is the hair actually long enough to pull it off.


In this case, I'm going to have to go with "no."

This picture is the one that prompted the title of this post. After getting the pigtails up, Libby decided that Norah looked like a Fraggle. This made me laugh. Maybe her name could be Buttser.

Yesterday (and today, and probably tomorrow, if I get right down to it) was Baking Day. I have not done a major Christmas baking day since the year before Gabe was born. Small children have a way to distract away from any desire to spend a few days cooking (though, I have to admit, that they are a GREAT reason to want to stay isolated in a kitchen for an entire day--seriously, I totally understand why earlier generations spent so much time cooking from scratch. I mean, besides not having fast food and prepackaged meals to buy at the store. It was the best way a mother could distance herself from her children and not be frowned upon by judgmental neighbors. I get that now. I really, really do.). But, this year, I decided it was time to revive the tradition.

And, because Gabe loves to help, I tasked Libby with the job of assisting Gabe in all of the cookie cuttering that needed to be done. Not surprisingly, since he's probably clocked about 1000 hours of Play-Doh cutting, he did a very good job of cutting out the Christmas shapes. The two of them worked on the dining room table.

None of this is particularly interesting, I know, but I needed to lead in to the picture I took.

After they finished the first few dozen cookies, Libby got tired of messing with it and moved on to other things. But she left the flour on the table, figuring she would come back to do more cookies later. In the interim, Gabe decided to play with it. About ten minutes after they were done cutting cookies, this is what I found.

The baby is obviously the creepiest part of this little tableau, with its head turned all the way around, resting in a pile of scattered "flour." It's like a scene out of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" or "Trainspotting."

Urine Is Sterile, Right?

Last night, when I took Gabe up to bed, he crawled in and did his standard inventory of friends and sleeping accessories, finding his binky and blankie and flashlight and the old cell phone that he calls Poppa or Fireman Sam on and his half a dozen books and the dozen or so friends that he's decided he simply MUST have in bed at all times. After that, he looked at me and asked, "Can you empty the pee pee out of my potty?"

"Why?" I replied. "I just emptied it out before your nap today. Did you fill it up already?"

"No," he said, trying to sound innocent. "Can you empty my pee pee?" he repeated.

So I opened up the potty and peered in. "Oh, Gabe," I said as I inspected the inventory within.

I spied one of his binkies and a pepperoni from a Melissa and Doug play pizza set of his. And two white, porcelain balls that I couldn't immediately identify. They looked like handles from a dresser or small doorknobs or something.

"What is this stuff?" I queried. "And why are they in your potty?"

"That binky is broken," he answered by way of explanation. Clearly, when a binky has reached the end of its line, a heavy soaking of piss is what it needs before its send off to the landfill.

"What is this other stuff?" I continued. "Where did these white balls come from?"

"The curtains," he said, and I realized what they were. We installed curtain tieback bracket thingies (whatever they're called, I'm too lazy to look it up) on the walls so we could pull the curtains over and hold them there. Each of them had a little decorative ball screwed into them. He had unscrewed them, during his nap yesterday afternoon when I THOUGHT he was quietly sleeping. Then, for reasons that he was unable to elaborate on, he'd put them in his potty.

Needless to say, we had a discussion of the inappropriateness of storing household items in a potty full of pee. How he managed to nearly fill it in one nap time is another matter for consideration later on.

Sadly, when I brought the potty tray downstairs, I was a bit irate, so I didn't think to take a picture. It would have been a quite interesting tableau, perhaps even delving into the realm of art. Too bad I wasn't thinking more clearly.

I did, however, snap a picture of him this morning that was a bit amusing.

He wore this basket on his head for about fifteen minutes. When I asked him why, he said, "It's my fireman helmet." This is especially odd because the ACTUAL fireman helmet, the one from his Halloween costume, was lying on the floor in the dining room the entire time. He might have kept it on longer but he realized, after that fifteen minutes, that he wasn't wearing it so much as it was stuck on his head. A short, panicked (for him) scene followed this picture a few minutes later when he realized this fact and I had to pry it loose from his head.

Is This Goth?

Over the past few months, Gabe has somewhat gotten out of the habit of joining Libby in the bathroom for "makeover" in the morning. Once upon a time, he would stand at the gate into my office and call out to Libby, about every minute, if she was ready for him to come in and join her. Every morning. For the hour that it takes Libby to get ready.

Maybe he got bored with the waiting or maybe he's just got better things to do now, but he has decided that makeovers are just a sometimes obsession now. Today was one of those days.

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this about Gabe, but he lacks a certain . . . subtlety. Everything he does, he does full bore, all or nothing, balls to the wall, or any of the other dozen or so cliches that I could throw out here.

What does "balls to the wall" mean, anyway? In what circumstance would one's balls be against a wall and how would that in any way encourage overt action? I guess, if I found myself in that awkward position, I might work as quickly and efficiently as possible to NOT have my balls against the wall, but, really, that would only require one step away from the wall-hardly something I would consider an overly active option. Our language is weird.

Anyway, when Gabe puts makeup on, he makes sure its noticeable. Here's his application from this morning.

Our first picture. He wasn't looking at the camera, so we tried another one.

But then I took this picture, which is hardly better. He looks like a bare knuckle boxer. I went with the "goth" angle in the title, even though I haven't said anything else about it (because I don't in any way, shape, or form relate to goth, so I'm really not interested in discussing it in any depth), because I didn't think it was appropriate to relate his makeup application to a pair of black eyes, which is what it really looks like. Maybe he's got a future in special effects (or cosmetology).

I had also hoped to get an adorable video of Norah doing her new thing. I'm sure she picked it up from me because I have a nasty habit of doing it myself. Sometimes now, when I ask her a question, she'll cock her cute little head to one side and say "Huh?" Then she'll walk around for a bit with her head tilted and keep saying it. Really, it's one of the cutest things ever, and I'd really love to get it on video. Sadly, that didn't work out. Instead, you get a video of Norah sitting at the table doing moderately cute things.

Semantic Satiation

Semantic Satiation is an interesting phenomenon that I learned about way back in college in a linguistics class I took.

The premise is simple, even if the words used to name it aren't. If you say a word enough times, generally in quick succession, they will start to lose their meaning for the person saying it and (and usually for the person hearing it, too) until, eventually, it is nothing more than a repeated sound (and, before too long, it will become difficult to even say that sound coherently). We used to do it with the word "cup"--and, every once in awhile, just to remind myself what it's like, I will sit in one place and say that word over and over again for a few minutes. It might SEEM crazy . . . . Well, probably it is. We also used the word "fish" once to the same effect, but I imagine just about any word would work. Longer words work more quickly as the added syllables quickly becoming confused and nonsense ensues.

This all is relevant to something besides me being able to whip out an esoteric terminology that I learned over a decade ago.

I think my children are suffering from semantic satiation. It started off simple enough. I was saying the word "no" so often that it began to lose meaning to them. When a soft tone no longer elicited the response I wanted, volume increased. Eventually, that didn't make any difference either (actually, Norah seems to do things BECAUSE I tell her "no" now). That's not TOO surprising as I have to tell them both "no" about an infinity number of times a day. It practically is a constant, repeated stream of the word.

But, lately, it seems as though ALL words I say have been repeated so many times that they are losing their meaning to my children. "Eat your dinner." "Don't throw food on the floor." "Don't color on the windows." "Stop pushing each other." "Don't wipe your hands on the furniture." You name it, and I've chastised for it. It's a never ending stream of redirecting and admonishing comments coming from me.

Before, they would occasionally try to appease me by moving to another part of the room and doing something else they weren't supposed to be doing, but, now, it seems as though they just sit there quietly long enough for me to shift my attention and then they go right back to doing what they were doing.

Well, not Norah. As I said before, she seems to derive great pleasure out of being contrary and doing exactly what I just told her not to. She'll smile at me and slowly move her hand back to whatever she was doing. If she's coloring on the window (which, I swear to god, I've stopped her doing AT LEAST a hundred times now) and tell her "no," she just smiles at me and lets her hand make a few reactive streaks with the crayon across the window. So I take the crayon away and she bawls and shrieks and throws herself onto the ground for ten minutes.

It's all very frustrating, but it has led to some interesting moments with Gabe, who has heard me say the same things over and over enough that they are ingrained into his brain. Just last night he said, "Oh my god," when he saw the candy that he got from the Christmas parade. His context was confused, as it usually comes out something like "Oh my god, Gabe, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" when I say it, but there's no denying where he got the phrase from.

But there is something good that's come from it. My mom used to say "I should just make a recording and play it back for you boys." And now I understand what she meant. I SHOULD make a recording and just play it back for them. Maybe then I wouldn't run as much risk of the words losing meaning to me as well.

Rockin' the Belly Shirt

It's been awhile since I've taken any embarrassing pictures of Norah. Oh, wait, she's been about the only one I've taken embarrassing pictures of for the past week. Oh well. I have another.


On the one hand, I'm a little disappointed at her lack of shame. But, on the other, I suppose I should be proud that she's happy with who she is and isn't afraid to let the world know.

This, by the way, is a 3T shirt she's wearing. It's not that the shirt is too small, really. It goes down well below her waist when pulled down. The problem is that girls' clothing is all too tight. She doesn't have this problem when she's sporting one of Gabe's 3T hand-me-downs, it's just with the stuff that we buy for her. What does this say about society? Are we training our girls by the age of two or three to expect to wear form fitting clothes instead of loose, comfortable clothing that doesn't ride up over your formidable gut when you move around? I'm not sure it's right or proper.

But it is pretty amusing to take pictures of.

At least she had her finger MOSTLY out of her belly button. It's one of her favorite places to explore right now. That and her nose.

Oh, and please note that I didn't make this a post about wet t-shirt contests, which I could very easily have done considering how drenched she's made herself in the HOUR that she's had that shirt on. I feel as thought I took the high road on this one.