The Holidays Begin

We had family in and lots of things going on this last week. It was great fun, but I think we all know how I feel about being busy. It never ceases to amaze me that we, as a society, feel it is OK to put ourselves through the wringer for a little over a 1/12th of the year. We CHOOSE to do this. On the one hand, we have a month that could go by like any other--low stress, low expense, high sleepability since it's dark so much. On the other, we have a month of running around to everywhere to eat too much food, spending outrageous amounts of money on things people will, at best, use a few times before putting it in some closet or thrift store box, and our nightmares are filled with chilling renditions of Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You."

Though, personally, my dreams are always haunted with the Band Aid guilt ripper "Do They Know It's Christmas," which has ruined every holiday season for me since the first time I truly understood what the song was asking in the late 80s. Well, and then I started working retail, which extra-ruined it.

But enough of my curmudgeoning! This is Christmas, dammit, and I DO know it! So I'll just share some pictures and videos of the kids from the last week.

I'm not sure if this is a "wary" or "apprehensive" or "devious" look that she's sporting here, but I like how little cousin Paige seems to be falling gently from Norah's grasp. Norah spent the next several days carrying around and "caring" for one of her baby dolls, which she named Baby Paige. Oh, and Paige wasn't really slipping from Norah's grasp. That's what we in the business like to call an "optical illusion." Kind of like an Escher, only with suspended babies.

See? She's not really slipping closer to the floor, she's just fine. Illusion! And another thing, isn't it difficult to wrap the mind around the idea that Norah used to be this size? I mean, look at her meaty little hand. It's almost the size of Paige's head. And Norah is just a little over two years older. I think it's time for us to consider the very real possibility that she's a giant. Not like a frost giant or anything (come on, be realistic)--but possibly a hill giant.

The kids barely napped through the entire week. This made bedtime a little easier to abide by, but made the hours from lunch through bedtime an adventure filled with whining and crying and hurt feelings--kind of like a Harry Potter book without all of the good characters dying for no good reason.

We had a family meal at Stroud's (where they proudly wear shirts declaring that they "choke our own chickens"--so a classy joint. Libby worked there for a few months after we got married, if that tells you anything about the kind of people they will hire). Here's Gabe and Norah with their cousins Tanner and Sydney. All the girls we wearing pink tutus. Because you can't get away with doing something like that in public for very long and you might as well make the most of it while you can.

Sydney and Norah, posing in an appropriately cute way for a picture.

Tanner and Gabe posing in one of the creepiest ways possible for a picture.

Thanksgiving dinner. The kids are sitting at a bench, not a table. A small, wobbly bench that we scooted up to them after they sat down. Just how bad this idea was occurred to us not long after we took this picture when the contents of both of their plates spilled to the floor when Norah tried to stand up. Which they didn't mind because they are picky shits and didn't want to eat much of the wonderful food put in front of them anyway.

Gabe on Nana and Poppa's Big Wheel. This Big Wheel LOOKS awesome and tough. It makes noises and stuff, too. But it is even less drivable than most Big Wheels. The front wheel refuses to stay straight and requires more strength and coordination than anyone small enough to sit in the seat possesses. But Gabe did a few good pictures sitting behind the wheel. He looks like trouble, though the only trouble it's possible to get in with this thing comes in the form of the terrible crashes that happen whenever forward movement wrenches the wheel from the driver's grasp and jackknifes at top speeds.

I like this picture because it looks as if Gabe is preparing to give another driver the bird. If I haven't taught my kids road rage by the time they are old enough to own their own cars, then I've probably failed as a parent.

"Something Else," will be rocketing up the charts just as soon as I can figure out how to capitalize on my daughter's obvious singing talents. We will also invest in some sort of legit microphone so she doesn't have to sing into (and make out with) deer whistles on the fronts of cars.

There was also supposed to be a video of the kids decorating cookies last night, but I guess it was too big for Blogger to digest. Glad they've worked out the bugs that have been a nuisance since I started this blog almost three years ago. You'll have to either check Libby's facebook page or our youtube account if you want to see it. Stupid Blogger.

Gabe and Fire

I'm going to go ahead and make a prediction here. Either Gabe is going to be a firefighter, an arsonist, or he is going to be paralyzingly obsessed with fire danger/safety when he grows up. The kid has a thing for fire.

And he has since he's been able to process the things that are going on around him. He loved fire trucks first, which wasn't odd. Most boys do because they are big and red and make a lot of noise. And he's had his Truck Adventures video that I had to find on Ebay because we checked it out of the library as often as they would allow us to for six months. And then there was his Fireman Sam phase . . . .

Interesting side note. Gabe is over Fireman Sam now. But Norah LOVES him. Can't get enough of the show. Every time she gets to pick a show to watch, it's Fireman O'Sam, as she calls him, and has been for about three months now. But where Gabe liked the show because of the firetrucks and the "daring" rescues (it's a Welsh pre-K show that runs on PBS here, so it's not what you'd call intense), I'm pretty sure Norah has other reasons to fixate on it. If I wanted to be optimistic, I'd say she's going to love firefighters in a probably unhealthy way. But if I wanted to be realistic, I'd say she's mostly interested in learning the tricks of the trade from Sam's primary antagonist, Norman Price. Norman is a little delinquent who causes the majority of the problems that Sam has to deal with. I swear, if he had an adequate latchkey system or some reliable adult supervision, the fire department in their town certainly wouldn't need four people in their employ and they'd have little use for the rescue helicopter and other odds and ends that must be depleting the town coffers. And I'm pretty sure Norah is taking mental notes for when she's older.

Anyway, and he's had his volcano phase and presently, pretty much every night, he wants us to light a fire in our fire pit outside so he can watch it. All of these seem kind of normal and boy-ish to me. Fire IS awesome. There's no way around that fact. He's just given himself over to its awesomeness.

But he's also had some kind of, well, darker obsessions with fire over the years. Like when we had to leave the daycare we liked because Gabe couldn't get over the presence of the fire alarm in the room. One day while he was there they ran a fire drill, and the sound of the fire alarm sent him into panic mode. And for six months after that, every day when we dropped him off he pointed at all the fire alarms and then cried fiercely when we said goodbye to leave him alone with the big, bad, noisy thing. Until we finally had to leave because he just wasn't improving.

Then things went pretty normally for quite awhile, until a couple weeks ago when preschool had its F week and fire was discussed. Since then, Gabe has been all about fire safety. Hardly a day goes by where he doesn't ask me some what-if question. "What if a fire traps me in my room?" "What if you and mama are asleep and can't hear the fire alarm?" "Where will we live if a fire burns down our house?"

Last week, he asked Libby that last question and Libby said, "We'd probably stay in a hotel." "What's a hotel?" Gabe asked (we've only stayed in one with him once, and that was over a year ago, so he doesn't have much frame of reference). Faced with having to explain the concept of a hotel to a four year old--think about it it and tell me that is an easy concept to explain when you want a child going back to bed soon--Libby changed her mind and told Gabe we could sleep in his playhouse.

It was pretty cute, actually. He went back into the bedroom and, on their monitor (which we still keep on, not so much because we need to be able to hear them but because they say some pretty amusing stuff up there now before they go to sleep), we heard Norah say, "What her said?" Obviously Gabe had been sent on a fact finding mission and was reporting back.

He's also decided that, in the case of a fire that is burning downstairs while they are trapped upstairs, he will break out the window next to Norah's bed so they can escape. This SOUNDS like a good idea, until you think about a four and two year old plummeting from a second story window into some bushes below. So I took him around the front of the house the next day and showed him how high up his room was, then I pointed out that the window from Norah's old room went out onto the porch, which sloped down some and only had an eight foot drop or so. Still probably a leg breaker, but not AS dangerous. He was entirely unimpressed by that notion and swore that he was sticking with Norah's window instead.

Oh, yeah, this is where that whole candle starting the entire house on fire thing came from, too. I'm just putting that together now--that would have been just a day or two after the fire safety thing at school. Duh, Dad.

Finally, tonight, I just couldn't take it anymore. Most of his fears revolve around the idea that nobody will know if there is a fire. That somehow none of us will realize it's happening until everything but Gabe's room is engulfed in fire. So, when he came down tonight, again, to ask me what would happen if we slept through a fire, I hit the test button on the fire alarm on the stares. "Too noisy!" he said. "See? Nobody is going to sleep through that, and it goes off if we burn something in the oven."

This seemed to put his mind at ease, so he went back to bed. Where this exchange, which has nothing to do with fire, but which amused us greatly happened:

Norah, "It goes like this, Beep! Beep! (imitating our fire alarm)."
Gabe, "Shh! I'm trying to sleep."
Norah, "It goes like this, Beep! Beep!"
Gabe, "Shh! I'm trying to sleep!"
Norah, "It goes like this, Beep! Beep!"
Gabe, "Shut your pie hole!"

Libby had to inform him that this wasn't an appropriate thing to say--which we have to do FAR more often than can possibly be good. Though neither of us uses this particular phrase enough that Gabe should have picked it up, he does have a knack for hearing something we say once, out of nowhere, and then repeating it a few months later. But I prefer to blame it on the kids at school instead. EVERYTHING is the fault of the kids at school from here on out, I'm sure.

That last little bit didn't have anything to do with fire, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway.

Chinese Feet and Pooping Out Wubbies

Again, unrelated topics, but I enjoy the image juxtaposing these random things creates.

A month or so back, Gabe demanded that he be able to wear footie PJs like Norah had. So Libby went out and bought him a couple pairs. Size 5s. And they mostly fit, at least as far as the length is concerned. But one of the pairs had a glaring deficiency--the feet were too small (and here is where the first part of my title becomes relevant as I am making an implied--well, now expressed--commentary on the manufacturing of these PJs in China and the fact that the children who doubtless tried these clothes on to size them had much smaller feet than Gabe. Yes, I know, anything that requires this much explaining isn't worth the trouble, but now it's been done and it would be even MORE trouble to go back and erase it all. Such is life).

Every time Gabe wore them, he'd wake up in the middle of the night complaining about how bad his feet hurt. So Libby would just strip him naked and put him back to bed. But now that it's gotten pretty chilly at night, that's just not an option. So she decided to "adjust" the feet so they would fit on Gabe.

Gabe is on the left. Norah refused to have a picture taken that she wasn't a part of. Libby only snipped the foot open, she didn't cut off any cloth. So, basically, the feet on this pair of PJs was that small on him. Gabe does have big feet, but come on. It's like they fitted these for Pan or some other hooved man-beast-child.

These were the first pictures that I got. My instructions were, "Gabe, come here so I can take a picture of your feet." They both ran into the room and started posing. So I'm sharing.

And here is a video of Norah pooping out her Lulu. I don't think it needs much more buildup than that.

The Weird Things That Scare Kids

Up to this point, I think we've been pretty lucky on the whole "scared of things" issue. Gabe has not had too much trouble with it, and Norah hasn't really been verbal enough to truly express her fears. Gabe doesn't much care for total darkness, and Norah obviously didn't like to be alone in her room (proven by the fact that she stopped shrieking through the night as soon as she and Gabe shared a room). We've never had monsters under the bed or bogeymen in the closet or anything like that to deal with. They wake up from nightmares from time to time and we have to talk them off the ledge, but that's about it.

Or, rather, that WAS about it. Earlier in the week, Gabe had his first of what I have to assume will be many scaredy cat moments.

It was naptime. About thirty minutes after I put them down, Gabe came down the stairs and informed me that he needed to pee. Like usual. I was trying to nap on the couch, so I just turned my head and said, "Go pee, and go back to bed!" over my shoulder and tried to go back to sleep. After a bit, I heard him go back upstairs.

But the damage was already done. I had dozed off before he came down, and now that I was fully awake again, there was no going back to sleep. About fifteen minutes later, I got up. As I walked by the stairs, something caught my eye. Gabe was sitting on the top stair in the dark.

"Gabe, go back to bed. Go to sleep. No more noise, just sleep." I instructed and walked into the office. Two steps into the office and I hear bitter sobs coming from the top of the stairs. I back out of the office and look up the stairs.

"What's wrong?" I ask in the most caring voice I can muster through my annoyance at having naptime, once again, ruined.

"I-I-I'm-m-m scared," he stammered.

"Scared? Scared of what?"

"The-the-the c-c-candle!"

"What? The candle?"

"Yuh-yes!"

"A candle. You're scared of a candle?"

"Yes!"

"OK. Let me come up. You're going to have to show me."

I went upstairs and went into the extra bedroom, where he takes naps.

"Show me what is scaring you."

And he pointed at, sure enough, a candle. It was a medium sized, I don't know what you'd call them, canister candles? One of those bigger ones that are sold at candle parties that smell like something "wonderful." This one smelled like baby powder. Libby bought it when Gabe was a baby. Apparently, at the time, we weren't smelling enough baby powder as it was.

Anyway, I looked at him. He was dead serious. This candle, which was sitting on top of a small desk in the bedroom, was the cause of his worry.

"Why are you scared of this candle?"

Through his sobs, this is the message that I was able to translate, "Because the candle will start on fire and then it will burn down the entire house."

After wasting a couple minutes trying to explain to him that things don't just start on fire, and pointing out that this particular candle, even if we WANTED it to burn, couldn't because a year or so back Gabe had personally dug out both of the wicks with his tiny little fingers and spread what wax he could all over the furniture up there, I gave up and put the candle in another room.

But now I'm afraid we've opened a floodgate and the irrational fears are going to rush in and sweep us all away. As long as whatever they are afraid of keeps being amusing, though, I guess I won't take it too personally.

To Think Like a Child

I wish I could think like a kid again. Years of experience and education have jaded me to the wonder and discovery of childhood. And I miss it. Having the ability to think like a child again would certainly make communicating with my children easier because, for a change, I'd be able to figure out just what the hell is going through their heads that made them believe what they just did was a good idea.

Take, for instance:


Yesterday afternoon I found this stuck to my rocking chair. It is a lime green lego. At first I thought it was just sitting in the crease there, precariously resting. Which would have been a little strange as, even then, one of the kids would have had to set it there. But when I pulled it off, I noticed it was sticky, and that stick was keeping it on the chair, not gravity and luck. Upon still closer inspection, I saw what looked like remnants of gum on the lego. But Gabe hadn't had any gum in awhile. He did, however, still have some stuff left in his Halloween basket (specifically, the stuff that neither Libby nor I have much interest in eating).

"Gabe, is this taffy on your lego?" I asked.

He kind of squished up his face a little bit, giving me my answer.

"Did you stick this lego in your mouth while you were chewing taffy and then stick the lego to the chair?" I further deduced.

"Yes," he openly, and I think proudly, admitted.

"Why?"

"I don't know." I wish that made sense to me.

Earlier still, I opened the refrigerator and found a stick from our yard nestled between two gallons of milk on the top shelf.

"Gabe, why is there a stick in the refrigerator?" I asked.

"Because I wanted a cold stick," he answered plainly enough.

"Huh," I replied back, because what else could I say?

Well, I also told him that all he had to do was leave the stick outside and it would get plenty cold as winter was rapidly approaching, but that doesn't make for a very entertaining narrative.

At least the little stuffed penguin we found in the fridge last week made sense. Penguins SHOULD be kept in the fridge. Sticks, not so much.

Learning One of the Most Important Social Skills

As we grow, we learn thousands of different social skills. We learn them from keys we pick up along the way (or, in the case of my children, through constant, nagging reminders delivered at varying pitches and volume, sometimes accompanied by largely idle threats of future repercussions or denials of privileges). They vary wildly in their importance. From learning to put the toilet seat down whenever supposedly liberated women are also in the household (come on--I have to put the toilet seat UP, so how is it not equally fair for someone else to have to put it DOWN?) all the way up to knowing when not to sock someone in the nose when being annoyed. Most of us learn these skills through one method or another. But what is the most important skill?

Gauging importance is difficult and there are many different qualifications one could use to rank these skills. For instance, if living together in a large, happy society is considered the most important qualification, then perhaps politeness, empathy, or an ability to fart discretely might be the most important skill to learn. Or if the child in question is being groomed for a life of super-villaindom, then an ability to manipulate or dominate another's personality would be the most important skill. For the sake of this post, I've decided to go with what I think is the most key element of social interaction--the very survival of the human race. What are the most basic and, thus, most important skills that we need in order to survive as a species.

Clearly this list could be argued and many nuances could be debated along the way. Loyalty and dependability are important skills to learn, and without them we cannot form cohesive bonds with other people. So those seem rather important. Being able to comprehend abstract notions of justice or fairness also seem as though they would lend themselves well to forming permanent bonds and creating lasting interpersonal relations.

But let's face it. Basic survival relies on our ability to live with one another. To not be actively repulsed by the people we share space with. On a Maslow's-type scale of importance, loyalty and fairness and all of those other skills would make a showing, but I think there can be little debate that the very foundation of the scale has to be our Ability to Not Excrete on Other People. Few other skills, it seems to me, can illicit a more negative reaction in another person than a lack of this one. And, in fact, if humans had no ability to control such things and divert away our various yucks, then society as a whole would quickly devolve. Nobody would want to have anything to do with anybody ever.

But I will take this one step further. Waste excretions are a problem. Few people want to be peed or pooped on--and those that DO want such things have MANY social problems of their own and likely aren't what you'd call "built for society" anyway. They are anomalies, and they deserve to be peed and pooped on for being so weird. That will teach them. But waste excretions are more or less contained by our inability to survive without clothes. Run around naked such that you could pee or poop on someone else freely and chances are pretty good that you'll be dead from exposure or some infection before you've had the chance to loose your bowels on many unsuspecting folks--not that they'd let you get that close anyway since you're naked and probably covered in your own filth. Thus, that problem eventually takes care of itself.

Then there's puke.

An ability to puke other than on the ones we love is, I think, the most valuable skill that we learn growing up. What is better than not being puked on? Nothing, that's what. Nothing makes me want to love and nurture someone else more than the safe, comfortable feeling I get from trusting that, no matter what, they will choose to puke on something other than me. And I can't wait until my kids learn that skill.

Not that I, personally, get puked on all that much. I would rather have my children puke on EVERYTHING in my house that isn't me. I'm a bit squeamish about the vile stuff. But Libby is a real champ about it. She has, on many occasions, put herself between our belongings and one of our kid's upchuck. She probably deserves some kind of honorarium for it. Maybe someday I'll build her a small statue, or not puke on her myself the next time I'm sick, in appreciation.

All of this is a round-about way of getting to the day of Halloween activities that Norah decided to make more interesting with the zesty combination of stomach contents that she yacked around a few different venues yesterday.

I know, I know. Poor baby. It sucks to be two and to not be able to describe what is wrong because you not only don't have the words to describe it, but you also don't have the frame of reference to understand what is wrong. Sure she used to be a major puker, but she doesn't remember any of that anymore. It's been, what, five months since she used to work herself into a puking state every time she started crying in bed. She deserves sympathy. But so do her parents. Especially me, because I am writing this down and clearly play some part in it all no matter how little I was actually barfed on.

She spent most of yesterday lying pathetically curled up in my rocking chair (which, thankfully, only smells a little like ralph today), and it looked as though she was going to keep the two of us home while Gabe and Libby made the trick-or-treating rounds. But, right at the last minute, she threw a mighty tantrum that convinced me that, no matter how much she threw up on everyone and everything along the way, that would be a lesser evil than trying to keep her home while Gabe was out doing something fun.

So we all went out and she rallied beautifully. Over the course of the day she had managed to only eat one bite of breakfast with a few sips of milk--which ended up on her shirt and in a bowl while we were at the bookstore for a "spooky story time"--and drink a glass of water and a glass of Powerade. Yet, while we were making the rounds in the neighborhoods, she managed to suffer through whatever candy she could get her paws on and then ate an entire bag of popcorn before we got home.

This, of course, she bathed herself and her bed in about 1:00 this morning. Despite a thorough washing of EVERYTHING around her bed, their room still smells like a frat house minus the desperation.

The start of our day. See? Perky, bright eyed, not the least bit looking like a vomit factory. We even managed to get her in her fairy princess costume. Though she takes after me in many ways, we don't share a love of costuming yet. She is not much of a fan of dress up. Probably she thinks there are enough REAL problems in the world to be adding fits of whimsy and fantasy into the mix. Kids these days.

Less than thirty minutes later, she was weepy and moping in Libby's arms at the store. This was after she demanded we take off her costume, but before the spewing started.

Spooky story time. About some poor woman who is being set upon by haunted clothing. Then she industriously invents the scarecrow with them. I question the authenticity of this story, though, for several reasons.

After story time, we took Norah home and Libby stayed with her because any suggestion that I stay home elicited shrieks and hysteria. Gabe and I went to his preschool for their trick-or-treeting event. His school is so cool. His teacher had each of the kids stand by her easel while she drew pictures of them in their costumes.

Fast forward to about 6:00. Norah is apparently feeling better as being around people other than me and Gabe has pushed the icky feeling stomach into the back of her mind. She REFUSED to be dressed in her costume, though, so the hand-me-down Spiderman hoodie had to suffice for dress up. Gabe, in case you're not up on your terrible 5-10 aged programming, is the Red Power Ranger. Finn is Bumblebee from the never-should-have-been-made movie version of Transformers. Gabe, it should be noted, HAS accepted my love of costume. Perhaps a bit too much. He would have worn that costume every day since we bought it six weeks ago if we'd let him. Though he claims not to be the Red Ranger in it. He thinks the Red Ranger is kind of lame. He wants to be the White Ranger (there isn't one in the show he's watching--yet), but I keep trying to explain to him that being White is even more boring than being Beige and he should pick a more interesting color. Say, purple. Or go way out there with a hunter-safety orange. He'll have none of it.

Speaking of Gabe and Power Rangers, I don't think I've shared what he wants to be when he grows up. When he first discovered the Power Rangers, he declared that he wanted to be one when he grew up (which wasn't surprising since he'd already said he wanted to be a Transformer and a G.I. Joe when those shows still caught his fancy). But the first few times he wanted to watch P.R., he caught on to the obviously negative vibe I was sending out about the show. If you've ever watched any of the early incarnations of the show, you know how bad it is. And, currently, it's even worse than it used to be. And he picked up on my snark. After a week or two, he decided that he didn't want to be a P.R. anymore because I didn't like them--those were his actual words.

I felt pretty conflicted about that. On the one hand, I had dashed my young son's dream of being a P.R. with my off-handed negativity. On the other, I had dashed my young son's dream of being a P.R. with my off-handed negativity! I was molding his taste and, hopefully, encouraging him to like things that didn't suck so hard and so fast! Nonetheless, my sense of guilt outweighed my hope that my kids won't like stupid things, and I carefully explained to him that just because I didn't like something didn't mean that HE couldn't like that thing. And that if he wanted to be a P.R., I would be very proud of him and help him keep his suit clean and his big mechanical animal thing serviced.

But he had moved on already. He decided that he wanted to be an artist. Which lasted a couple weeks. Now, he's decided that being an artist might not be that exciting, so he wants to be the first Power Ranger Artist. We'll see how that works out.

Anyway, Norah and May (she's a red crayon) in the wagon. The girls were having a tough time keeping up with the treating pace the boys were setting, so they got to ride to most of the houses. I'm actually a little apprehensive about the day when the boys are big enough to go off t-or-ting on their own. If they kept their focus and really applied themselves, they could easily cover a few dozen blocks and strip the population of a trash bag full of candy. We hit about six blocks--pretty sporadically participating blocks--and they filled their candy buckets before we quit.

Power Ranger and Transformer, bromancing and working together. It's a magical world we live in.

At the last stop of the night, Gabe was asked by our friends to show us his muscles. This is the pose he chose to do it. Not shown in the picture is Norah devouring an entire bag of microwave popcorn.

And, finally, a non-Halloween picture that I thought I would add because I saw it on the memory card and figured I would never remember to talk about it if I didn't do it now. Libby's cousin Kelly is a cheerleader for the Chiefs (I know, pretty cool, right?). Her folks, Kent and Kathy, sent the kids some Chiefs gear, including this little cheerleader outfit for Norah. And this picture makes me laugh because she looks a little psychotic. Cute still, but psychotic also. Which made it worth sharing.