Norah has entered what I think might be the most personally annoying and infuriating stage she has been able to find to date. The "But . . ." stage. And it's a good thing that I don't have any hair left, because I would have torn it all out over the course of this week if I did. It isn't a big deal, I'm sure, but for some reason I would rather go back to changing 30 of the most disgusting diapers imaginable a day than have to endure this stage much longer.
Sadly, there is no way that I could capture this on video to share, so I will have to describe it instead, and I'm sure that, in the end, I will just come out looking like an impatient ass because, really, it just boils down to her making excuses.
This is how it works. Norah does something. She does "something" a lot these days, by which I mean actions that will get her into trouble. She is in what I hope is the peak of her pestering stage right now too. She can't just leave anyone alone. And Gabe especially. Everything he does, she has to be up in his business. Not helping. Not playing along with. But actively disrupting. And often she does things that are just mean. If a bigger kid or a grown up did the things she does, they would likely be labeled a sociopath. It's a little troubling, really.
Here's an example.
Yesterday, Gabe was drawing on the floor. Norah saw him drawing and decided that she needed to be drawing too. There was a tub of markers and ample paper, but she wanted Gabe's marker and Gabe's paper. That is pretty typical, though. She doesn't just want to do what Gabe is doing, she wants what Gabe is using to do what Gabe is doing (until he surrenders it, and then she has no interest in doing it anymore, she just wants to make Gabe give up what he has and what he's doing--see, sociopath!). So Gabe starts to whine. "Norah! No! I'm using that!" I hear it probably three dozen times a day. It might be what is said most often in our household right now.
So, for probably the three dozenth time that day, I went to resolve the issue. "AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!" I screamed as I pulled out all of my remaining hair and smashed my head against the wall.
Not really. While I have to admit that my level of cool is dwindling rapidly with all the fighting and whining and bickering that's going on in my house--I have a very low tolerance for conflict--it hasn't gotten to that point yet.
"Norah! Leave Gabe alone!" I chastised. I pulled her out a handful of markers and a sheet of paper and set them on the floor far enough away that she couldn't just lie on her stomach on the floor to work and position herself so she could put her feet on Gabe and kick him while she works (see? mean!). She sized up the space, I could see it, to decide if she could work and something and pester Gabe all at the same time. She couldn't. So she sat down. I turned around and left. Five steps later, Gabe again screamed, "Norah! No! I'm using that!" I quickly spun around, retraced my few steps around the corner, and there was Norah, with a foot in the middle of his sheet of paper. She looked up and me and made eye contact. She knew I was there watching. And SHE TWISTED HER FOOT. Like a melodrama villain might do to a petition to save an orphanage or something.
"Norah! That was so mean!" I lamented. And I knew what was following.
"But . . ." Every time she gets busted for anything, it's the first word out of her mouth. And there is always a pause as she constructs the excuse she's going to use to justify what she is doing. In this case it was "But . . . I was needing to walk over there," she said, pointing vaguely in my direction. Now, this WAS a feasible excuse. Gabe was directly between where she was and the doorway where I was. However, there was also more than enough room to walk around him and his paper.
"You were twisting your foot to ruin his paper," I pointed out. "That's not walking. Timeout," I added and pointed to the nearby chair. And then she started to cry.
Also the crying. The incessant, needless, constant crying. About everything. All the time.
Ugh, girls.
Anyway, the problem I have with this, and possibly where all the frustration is coming from, is that I really shouldn't have a problem with any of this. As some will recall, I actively encouraged Gabe to make up stories to try to get out of trouble. I WANT my kids to be good story tellers, and trying to get out of trouble is when some of the best stories are born. They are moments of true inspiration. But, for some reason--and maybe it's just because I know she knows better and is doing most of these things just to antagonize Gabe and I, whereas when Gabe does something bad it is almost always due to his basically unobservant nature or because he just didn't think things through--it grates on my nerves when Norah starts with the "But . . . ."
Possibly the worst part is that I have actually had to break out the "But me no buts" to interrupt her, which I still am not sure even makes a lick of sense. Seriously. What does that even mean?
Friday, June 15, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Summer, Birthdays and Slip-n-Slides
It's been a pretty busy week. That's not an excuse for me not getting around to posting an update on here sooner with birthday and such-like pictures. I don't have any good excuse for that. But there's been a lot going on.
First, let me just go ahead and say that future summers are going to be . . . interesting. My kids are only attending school for two mornings a week right now, but I swear to god they are driving me absolutely nuts now that they are home all week. I don't know if its that we all have to see each other just that much more or if they don't have enough outlets for their crazy when they can't get away from me or what, but they are insane. Maybe it's the heat and it's not them it's just bothering me. I don't know, but they aren't even old enough for this to be a thing yet and it's a thing. I can't even imagine, when they're used to having structure and stuff to do five days a week what it will be like trying to keep them occupied for three months. As I said, "interesting" (which I meant euphemistically as "going to suck," in case I was being too subtle).
The kids' birthdays have now come and gone. It's actually pretty sweet having their birthdays almost perfectly spaced at the halfway point to Christmas. Figuring we can start the behavioral blackmail about three months before the event, we can use the "you better be good or you won't get any presents" threat for fully half the year! Pretty wise approach, really. I'd fully recommend trying to plan on a June or July birthday, if at all possible.
Anyway, it was another unnecessarily awesome birthday celebration for our kids. They have to be the most spoiled children anywhere, really. Libby simply does too much for them. She duded up the backyard with an obstacle course that ended with a big pool of water for them to play in. And she baked these two incredible cakes.
I mean, come on! Each year she seems to outdo herself. Which is all well and good, except how can she possibly continue to do that? And mostly I fear that all of this effort and awesomeness is being wasted anyway since they likely won't remember much of anything from these early birthday parties.
Personally, I believe that children should get maybe two birthday parties in their lives. They should happen when they are old enough to have, say, three friends over to spend the night. They should involve a store-bought cake and ice cream, and that's pretty much it. That's what I got (except for the one trip to Showbiz Pizza) and I turned out fine. Anything more than that is showy and unnecessary.
Naw, I'm just complaining. It was great. The kids had fun. It didn't last long enough for the parents to want to scratch out our eyes. It was great.
And, most important of all, it's over for another year! Having two kids with their birthdays three days apart is also kind of awesome. Sure it means that Norah pretty much has to open all of her presents on Gabe's actual birthday or she loses her mind with jealousy and then has nothing on her real birthday to do. But, otherwise, it is working out pretty well so far. I imagine things will get more complicated as they get older and have more closely knit groups of their own friends. We might end up doing two separate parties just a few days apart--and if that becomes the case, then having two children with birthdays three days apart is a TERRIBLE idea and nobody else should ever do it.
Finally, the slip-n-slide. One of our friends gave the kids a slip-n-slide for their birthday and we broke it out a couple days ago to give it a try.
To me, the slip-n-slide was always the Phantom Menace of summertime, water-based, fun-time activities. It looks AWESOME. From the pictures on the box and the commercials, it looks like doing a log jam where YOU are the log. You run and you slide on this perfectly lubricated surface, stirring up a wake of awesomeness, until you splash like an extinction-event asteroid hitting the ocean into the pool of water at the end of the slide.
But in reality, the slip-n-slide never even comes close to living up to the hype (thus my Phantom Menace reference). There are almost no spots on the run that are perfectly lubricated. Instead, most of the surface is made up of nipple-erasing bare rubber. The track is also perilously narrow, meaning you have to PERFECTLY aim your approach or end up with the worst kind of grass burns all over your body as you careen helplessly off the edges. And, if you are lucky enough to reach the reservoir of water at the end unscathed, then one of two things happens. Either you get mildly wetter or you shoot right off the end like helpless human torpedo. If you're lucky, all the water you've been running through it has created a mud hole that will at least partially cushion your deceleration. If you're unlucky, say goodbye to the skin on your belly.
The kids, however, love the thing. And unlike the two or three slip-n-slides we've bought them over the past couple years, this one is an ACTUAL slip-n-slide and not some knock-off brand. Which means it's actually somewhat durable. Besides being pretty awful at putting water onto the slide, the cheap ones tend to fall apart whenever they are used by anyone even a little bit. But this one has held up to several uses already, and the kids have not been the least bit gentle.
Anyway, here are some videos. The kids are actually pretty amusing while they use it--and Gabe got this weird catwalk, "sashay" thing going that we have absolutely no explanation for.
First, let me just go ahead and say that future summers are going to be . . . interesting. My kids are only attending school for two mornings a week right now, but I swear to god they are driving me absolutely nuts now that they are home all week. I don't know if its that we all have to see each other just that much more or if they don't have enough outlets for their crazy when they can't get away from me or what, but they are insane. Maybe it's the heat and it's not them it's just bothering me. I don't know, but they aren't even old enough for this to be a thing yet and it's a thing. I can't even imagine, when they're used to having structure and stuff to do five days a week what it will be like trying to keep them occupied for three months. As I said, "interesting" (which I meant euphemistically as "going to suck," in case I was being too subtle).
The kids' birthdays have now come and gone. It's actually pretty sweet having their birthdays almost perfectly spaced at the halfway point to Christmas. Figuring we can start the behavioral blackmail about three months before the event, we can use the "you better be good or you won't get any presents" threat for fully half the year! Pretty wise approach, really. I'd fully recommend trying to plan on a June or July birthday, if at all possible.
Anyway, it was another unnecessarily awesome birthday celebration for our kids. They have to be the most spoiled children anywhere, really. Libby simply does too much for them. She duded up the backyard with an obstacle course that ended with a big pool of water for them to play in. And she baked these two incredible cakes.
 |
| Norah's castle cake. |
 |
| Gabe's Green Ninja from Ninjago cake. |
Personally, I believe that children should get maybe two birthday parties in their lives. They should happen when they are old enough to have, say, three friends over to spend the night. They should involve a store-bought cake and ice cream, and that's pretty much it. That's what I got (except for the one trip to Showbiz Pizza) and I turned out fine. Anything more than that is showy and unnecessary.
The obstacle course.
Naw, I'm just complaining. It was great. The kids had fun. It didn't last long enough for the parents to want to scratch out our eyes. It was great.
 |
| The day before his birthday, Gabe decided to mildly disfigure his face. Fortunately, it's not bad enough that you can really notice it unless you're looking. He put a long piece of yarn in his mouth and then pulled it out really fast, like he was trying to start a lawnmower. So he has two stripes of rope burn on his cheeks. Boys sure are dumb. Entertaining as hell, but dumb. |
 |
| I've decided that the official name for a group of children is an insanity. This is a picture of an insanity of children. And the presents. Dear god, the presents. Again, our children are ridiculously spoiled. They will never value anything because they just keep getting more and more stuff. We are, I'm sure, creating materialistic monsters. But we just can't help ourselves! We want them to have the things they want if we can afford to give it to them (and, with Gabe at least, I want to play with his toys, too). |
 |
| Eating the cake. |
Finally, the slip-n-slide. One of our friends gave the kids a slip-n-slide for their birthday and we broke it out a couple days ago to give it a try.
To me, the slip-n-slide was always the Phantom Menace of summertime, water-based, fun-time activities. It looks AWESOME. From the pictures on the box and the commercials, it looks like doing a log jam where YOU are the log. You run and you slide on this perfectly lubricated surface, stirring up a wake of awesomeness, until you splash like an extinction-event asteroid hitting the ocean into the pool of water at the end of the slide.
But in reality, the slip-n-slide never even comes close to living up to the hype (thus my Phantom Menace reference). There are almost no spots on the run that are perfectly lubricated. Instead, most of the surface is made up of nipple-erasing bare rubber. The track is also perilously narrow, meaning you have to PERFECTLY aim your approach or end up with the worst kind of grass burns all over your body as you careen helplessly off the edges. And, if you are lucky enough to reach the reservoir of water at the end unscathed, then one of two things happens. Either you get mildly wetter or you shoot right off the end like helpless human torpedo. If you're lucky, all the water you've been running through it has created a mud hole that will at least partially cushion your deceleration. If you're unlucky, say goodbye to the skin on your belly.
The kids, however, love the thing. And unlike the two or three slip-n-slides we've bought them over the past couple years, this one is an ACTUAL slip-n-slide and not some knock-off brand. Which means it's actually somewhat durable. Besides being pretty awful at putting water onto the slide, the cheap ones tend to fall apart whenever they are used by anyone even a little bit. But this one has held up to several uses already, and the kids have not been the least bit gentle.
Anyway, here are some videos. The kids are actually pretty amusing while they use it--and Gabe got this weird catwalk, "sashay" thing going that we have absolutely no explanation for.
Gabe, sort of figuring it out.
And, apparently, I can't caption a video except the first time when I upload multiples at the same time. Dear Blogger, stop sucking! Anyway, the second video is Norah army crawling her way over the slide, and then we get into the kids just being weird, especially with Gabe's silly walks. The last video I included so everyone could see exactly how "sweet" Norah is most of the time.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The Story Telling of My Youth
I gotta tell ya, I'm feeling a little adrift on the proverbial sea of not-knowing-what's-whatishness. I'm sure you remember that proverb. It's the one with that guy. A good proverb. Very proverbial and adagey and stuff. My lostitude stems from the staples of my childhood, how awesome they were in my memory, and how not entirely awesome they actually were.
As I've discussed on here numerous times, I've been introducing Gabe to many of my childhood loves for the better part of the last year. Transformers and Star Wars were the biggies (G.I.Joe and Thundercats also fall into this category, but, honestly, I enjoyed the cartoons growing up but didn't get into the toys all that much), but we've recently been plumbing our DVD library trying to find some stuff that is rated PG and appropriate for both of them to watch (figuring that they've seen Star Wars and seem none the worse for wear). And we also bought The Never Ending Story off the bargain rack the other day as it was one of the movies Libby and I watched a thousand times and loved.
And, you know, these movies and shows--the things I loved so much while growing up, these things that defined much of my youth--really weren't very good. Studios really didn't try very hard with the stories or to make sure there weren't any gaping plot holes or continuity problems. Technically speaking, Transformers was so poorly done that characters would change their colors (effectively making them different characters since many of them were only differentiated by their colors) or their bottom halves would be missing. And from a storytelling point of view, there was simply no rhyme nor reason to almost anything that happened in the episodes. I could provide a systematic deconstruction of an episode as an example, but I don't think it would be time well spent for either of us.
Even Star Wars . . . . Oh Star Wars. I hate to admit this, but . . . . Well, I hadn't really watched any of the original movies, from start to finish, since college. Even once Gabe started watching them, I usually just turned them on and then came in from time to time to watch a few minutes. I mean, I've seen them so many times that I can just about speak the dialogue verbatim as it's going, so it's not like I really NEED to see them anymore. But Sunday, Libby and I sat down with Gabe (and Norah--poor, poor Norah, forced to like everything Gabe does because she just doesn't like enough of her own things yet to provide alternatives) to watch A New Hope (which, since I'm opening up here, is a pretty stupid name for a movie--just calling it Star Wars, as I have done all my life, is a much better option).
That movie . . . oy. It is a mess. I can't stand to go into it too much. It just breaks my heart. But so much of what happens just doesn't make much sense or stand to any sort of reason. And throw into the mix everything that happened in the prequels (which doesn't pan out AT ALL with what is said and done at the beginning of New Hope, proving that Lucas didn't have a clue what was going to happen in those movies before hand, as he's always insisted), and I spent about two hours of the run time internally sniping at obvious problems. I still believe that Empire and Jedi hold up a little better in terms of simple storytelling (ignoring the Ewoks, of course), but still.
The one bright spot in all of this is The Princess Bride. I'm happy to say that it can safely be called one of the best movies of the 80s. Yes, the ROUS's look like pigs wrapped in dog skins by some sadistic taxidermist. Yes, it's an undeniable fact that Andre the Giant would have never gotten work if he wasn't enormous--you can barely understand anything he says throughout. And the baseball video game at the beginning of the movie is pretty hilarious. But that's kind of it. Everything else has held up amazingly well. Even Fred Savage has grown up to be, by all accounts, a pretty swell guy--which is a pretty amazing accomplishment for a child star from the 80s.
What has changed? Were we such slathering primates back then that we watched everything, no matter how terrible it was, and thought it was wonderful? Or was everything from that decade just awful and, since it was all we knew, we didn't know that shows could NOT suck? I mean, across the board. Everything from my childhood that I thought was great I can only appreciate now if I write it off as "campy." A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Mork and Mindy (oh. my. god. They just started showing these on The Hub recently. I watched an episode. How did we EVER think Robin Williams was a viable option?), and on and on and on. All awful. What was wrong with us?
But even that is just looking back on my childhood with a doubtful, disappointed, and mildly ashamed eye. What is truly rocking my world is MODERN storytelling. Ever since Jurassic Park came out, I have been complaining that movies (mostly--there are exceptions) have used special effects in place of storytelling. The most glaring example of this--and it is 100% true still, even if I analyze this according to ANY criteria--is the Star Wars prequels. Lucas was just throwing shit onto the screen because he could, not because it was the least bit necessary. HUGE segments of each of those movies could have been removed entirely because they were nothing more than eye candy--actually, they were often eye candy that just complicated or confused the already convoluted story all the more.
But I digress.
I just don't know anymore. Sure there are plenty of movies where the special effects ARE the story. But there are plenty of movies that have storytelling that is FAR better than it was in the 80s. And the kids' shows? They are SOOOO much better than what we grew up with. I can watch these new shows now--being the person who tears apart the stuff I watched as a child--and not have many problems with the storytelling. The new Transformers series is pretty good. There are a few pretty glaring plot holes (if Megatron, who has always controlled a MUCH stronger force in all of the series, really wanted to end Optimus, then why not just launch a huge assault on Earth, drawing the Autobots out, then wipe them out completely--tactically speaking, Megatron is either an idiot or the writers take some liberties just to play up the "hopelessly outgunned" trope that a tireless number of shows use these days), but if you can suspend just a little bit of disbelief, then you can get through pretty well. And then there are shows like Phineas and Ferb, which actively points its own plot holes out for viewers to question and/or enjoy. That's some complicated storytelling for a cartoon targeting the under-10 crowd.
I don't know where I'm going with this. It was just something I was thinking about after seeing New Hope and Mork and Mindy these past few days. I guess if I need some sort of Big Wrap Up, then I should throw out something hopeful about the future. We obviously think that this current generation of children will be a bunch of shiftless lay-abouts. Because ALL current generations of children will grow up to be a bunch of shiftless lay-abouts. But, honestly, if our kids are processing complicated story elements like this, and paying this much more attention to the stories that are being told--to the point where the writers actually have to put forth a little effort--then maybe, at least, they will get some good stories written up while they are shiftlessly laying-about.
As I've discussed on here numerous times, I've been introducing Gabe to many of my childhood loves for the better part of the last year. Transformers and Star Wars were the biggies (G.I.Joe and Thundercats also fall into this category, but, honestly, I enjoyed the cartoons growing up but didn't get into the toys all that much), but we've recently been plumbing our DVD library trying to find some stuff that is rated PG and appropriate for both of them to watch (figuring that they've seen Star Wars and seem none the worse for wear). And we also bought The Never Ending Story off the bargain rack the other day as it was one of the movies Libby and I watched a thousand times and loved.
And, you know, these movies and shows--the things I loved so much while growing up, these things that defined much of my youth--really weren't very good. Studios really didn't try very hard with the stories or to make sure there weren't any gaping plot holes or continuity problems. Technically speaking, Transformers was so poorly done that characters would change their colors (effectively making them different characters since many of them were only differentiated by their colors) or their bottom halves would be missing. And from a storytelling point of view, there was simply no rhyme nor reason to almost anything that happened in the episodes. I could provide a systematic deconstruction of an episode as an example, but I don't think it would be time well spent for either of us.
Even Star Wars . . . . Oh Star Wars. I hate to admit this, but . . . . Well, I hadn't really watched any of the original movies, from start to finish, since college. Even once Gabe started watching them, I usually just turned them on and then came in from time to time to watch a few minutes. I mean, I've seen them so many times that I can just about speak the dialogue verbatim as it's going, so it's not like I really NEED to see them anymore. But Sunday, Libby and I sat down with Gabe (and Norah--poor, poor Norah, forced to like everything Gabe does because she just doesn't like enough of her own things yet to provide alternatives) to watch A New Hope (which, since I'm opening up here, is a pretty stupid name for a movie--just calling it Star Wars, as I have done all my life, is a much better option).
That movie . . . oy. It is a mess. I can't stand to go into it too much. It just breaks my heart. But so much of what happens just doesn't make much sense or stand to any sort of reason. And throw into the mix everything that happened in the prequels (which doesn't pan out AT ALL with what is said and done at the beginning of New Hope, proving that Lucas didn't have a clue what was going to happen in those movies before hand, as he's always insisted), and I spent about two hours of the run time internally sniping at obvious problems. I still believe that Empire and Jedi hold up a little better in terms of simple storytelling (ignoring the Ewoks, of course), but still.
The one bright spot in all of this is The Princess Bride. I'm happy to say that it can safely be called one of the best movies of the 80s. Yes, the ROUS's look like pigs wrapped in dog skins by some sadistic taxidermist. Yes, it's an undeniable fact that Andre the Giant would have never gotten work if he wasn't enormous--you can barely understand anything he says throughout. And the baseball video game at the beginning of the movie is pretty hilarious. But that's kind of it. Everything else has held up amazingly well. Even Fred Savage has grown up to be, by all accounts, a pretty swell guy--which is a pretty amazing accomplishment for a child star from the 80s.
What has changed? Were we such slathering primates back then that we watched everything, no matter how terrible it was, and thought it was wonderful? Or was everything from that decade just awful and, since it was all we knew, we didn't know that shows could NOT suck? I mean, across the board. Everything from my childhood that I thought was great I can only appreciate now if I write it off as "campy." A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Mork and Mindy (oh. my. god. They just started showing these on The Hub recently. I watched an episode. How did we EVER think Robin Williams was a viable option?), and on and on and on. All awful. What was wrong with us?
But even that is just looking back on my childhood with a doubtful, disappointed, and mildly ashamed eye. What is truly rocking my world is MODERN storytelling. Ever since Jurassic Park came out, I have been complaining that movies (mostly--there are exceptions) have used special effects in place of storytelling. The most glaring example of this--and it is 100% true still, even if I analyze this according to ANY criteria--is the Star Wars prequels. Lucas was just throwing shit onto the screen because he could, not because it was the least bit necessary. HUGE segments of each of those movies could have been removed entirely because they were nothing more than eye candy--actually, they were often eye candy that just complicated or confused the already convoluted story all the more.
But I digress.
I just don't know anymore. Sure there are plenty of movies where the special effects ARE the story. But there are plenty of movies that have storytelling that is FAR better than it was in the 80s. And the kids' shows? They are SOOOO much better than what we grew up with. I can watch these new shows now--being the person who tears apart the stuff I watched as a child--and not have many problems with the storytelling. The new Transformers series is pretty good. There are a few pretty glaring plot holes (if Megatron, who has always controlled a MUCH stronger force in all of the series, really wanted to end Optimus, then why not just launch a huge assault on Earth, drawing the Autobots out, then wipe them out completely--tactically speaking, Megatron is either an idiot or the writers take some liberties just to play up the "hopelessly outgunned" trope that a tireless number of shows use these days), but if you can suspend just a little bit of disbelief, then you can get through pretty well. And then there are shows like Phineas and Ferb, which actively points its own plot holes out for viewers to question and/or enjoy. That's some complicated storytelling for a cartoon targeting the under-10 crowd.
I don't know where I'm going with this. It was just something I was thinking about after seeing New Hope and Mork and Mindy these past few days. I guess if I need some sort of Big Wrap Up, then I should throw out something hopeful about the future. We obviously think that this current generation of children will be a bunch of shiftless lay-abouts. Because ALL current generations of children will grow up to be a bunch of shiftless lay-abouts. But, honestly, if our kids are processing complicated story elements like this, and paying this much more attention to the stories that are being told--to the point where the writers actually have to put forth a little effort--then maybe, at least, they will get some good stories written up while they are shiftlessly laying-about.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Gabe Is Pre-K Out
About two months ago, Gabe started referring to his preschool graduation as Pre-K Out. We're not sure why he started calling it that, but it's stuck and now many of the adults in and around the school are also calling it that. The kid's got a knack for coming up with catchy phrases, I guess.
Last Friday, they had their yearly program for the graduating kids. I'll post it here for anyone who is interested (and if Blogger will allow me to put all the videos up). The ceremony is cute and what-not, but there wasn't anything crazy or hilarious that happened, that I remember. Anyway, here it is.
Last Friday, they had their yearly program for the graduating kids. I'll post it here for anyone who is interested (and if Blogger will allow me to put all the videos up). The ceremony is cute and what-not, but there wasn't anything crazy or hilarious that happened, that I remember. Anyway, here it is.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Gabe's Movies
Gabe has recently discovered movie making. Well, actually, he's discovered playing with his toys while we film him and he gets to watch the movie played back. Which, really, isn't all that different than what we've been doing with the camera and him for the past almost five years, I suppose.
But instead of just him acting like a goof in front of the camera and then wanting to watch it because, I assume, he wants to take some notes on his performance for future reference, this time he's trying to tell a story with his toys which he can watch to take notes on their performance.
So here's some video of him making a Star Wars movie. But Gabe really isn't what's going on in these videos. Norah is.
Effing Blogger. They still haven't fixed the thing that's not letting me post more than one video at a time (if I'm uploading it--I might be able to if I felt like uploading everything to youtube first, which I don't). God, I swear, how has this blogging site stayed around for this long, it's been garbage this entire time.
Well, there's ONE video of Gabe and Norah doing Gabe's movie. I guess I won't be loading anymore for the time being.
Stupid blogger. OK, so they will let me load videos again, but I have to load all the videos together, then there's a weird block of them and they can't be separated. Moreover, I can't type AFTER the videos now either. But, here are the other two videos of Gabe's movies.
But instead of just him acting like a goof in front of the camera and then wanting to watch it because, I assume, he wants to take some notes on his performance for future reference, this time he's trying to tell a story with his toys which he can watch to take notes on their performance.
So here's some video of him making a Star Wars movie. But Gabe really isn't what's going on in these videos. Norah is.
Effing Blogger. They still haven't fixed the thing that's not letting me post more than one video at a time (if I'm uploading it--I might be able to if I felt like uploading everything to youtube first, which I don't). God, I swear, how has this blogging site stayed around for this long, it's been garbage this entire time.
Well, there's ONE video of Gabe and Norah doing Gabe's movie. I guess I won't be loading anymore for the time being.
Stupid blogger. OK, so they will let me load videos again, but I have to load all the videos together, then there's a weird block of them and they can't be separated. Moreover, I can't type AFTER the videos now either. But, here are the other two videos of Gabe's movies.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Norah's Double Standard
Potty Training Report.
Yes. It's that time again. Now it's Norah's turn. Let me just say that I am REALLY looking forward to the day when I no longer have to mess with diapers. They have become such a mainstay of my life for the past FIVE YEARS that, honestly, I'm not sure how I'm going to process them going away.
I mean, I'm super happy about it. Not only will we save a gob of money every month, we'll also free up a cubby hole in our entertainment center where we've been storing diaper stuff for half a decade for . . . well, the kids' clothes probably because I am too lazy to take their clothes upstairs after each washing and have to go back upstairs two or three times a day whenever they need different clothes. It's one of my great failings, but there you have it. There's also a chance that we'll put entertainment related stuff in there. Who knows. Doors will open and we will have options.
But, on the other hand, it's also been a pretty major part of my household duties up to this point. I will lose one of my major bargaining chips in the family. I won't be able to say "But I've had to change thirty diapers this week, YOU do _____ (whatever I want to get out of doing)." And then there will be the sense of loss, the sense of something missing from my life. Even bad things have a way of becoming part of what's normal, and, when it's gone, its absence is felt.
Diapers signify babies, and not having to change them anymore is undeniable proof that we don't have babies anymore, we have big kids. Our sweet little baboos are getting big! Sometimes, it's all too much to take . . . .
Naw. I'm joking. I can't wait for them to be in school. They're driving me crazy. And I will NEVER miss diapers or changing them. Sure watching them get old so fast is a bit tough. Most notably I am affected by how quickly they move from one favorite thing to the next. It's kind of depressing, really. Just when I'm getting the hang of Gabe loving Power Rangers or Star Wars or Norah loving her little people and animals (she was pretty obsessed with all things small for awhile there) or Polly Pockets, they couldn't care less about those things anymore and I'm left wondering how long it will be before I, too, am obsolete. It's a little sad.
But god I won't miss the diaper changing. Now I just need to get through a year or so of butt wiping and finally, dear god, I will only have my own waste disposal to worry about. It will be a blessed, glorious day.
Anyway, I should probably also address the whole boy vs. girl potty training truism--that girls are easier than boys to potty train. Honestly, I don't know. Gabe was awful, there's no denying that. It took forever (almost a year from the time we started trying to coax a toilet visit out of him until he finally was doing it on his own reliably enough that he didn't need to wear a pull-up to bed). And there were, of course, many disaster stories with him (refer back to that year long period of awful here on the blog). But I'm wondering if how bad we thought it went was just a product of how hypersensitive we were to him NEEDING to potty train and not really knowing what to expect from the process. Now, obviously, since we've been through it, we're just sort of letting it happen with Norah.
And it is just sort of happening now. Finally. The thing is, it's taken very nearly as long as it did with Gabe. We started her on the road to using the toilet last fall. We've been shifting her between pull-ups and diapers pretty much that whole time and trying, entirely in vain, to get her to use the toilet whenever she's had a pull-up on.
There haven't been many disasters. Just one, really--last Friday, she had a pull-up on for nap time. When she came down, she said she needed to potty, so she went into the bathroom to use her little training toilet. She demanded that she could pull her pants down on her own, so I left her to it. About a minute later she called out, "I've got poop on my finger." Uh oh, I thought. So I went in and, sure enough, she had poop on her finger. And another finger. And pretty much all of her fingers. And her hand. And her leg. And her back. And her pants. And all over her training toilet. And on the floor. And in the trash can. Apparently she had pooped during her nap. And despite that she poops just about every nap time now (ruining almost all of them), for some reason I didn't think to check her pants before she pulled them off. And when she pulled them off, poop pretty much went everywhere. To her credit, she tried to cover up the mess by cleaning it up as best she could, putting the pull-up and one of the big piles of poop in the trash. The rest of it, however, was everywhere.
But somewhere in the last four days or so, Norah has begun to take this potty training thing seriously. She's been good about getting in there when she needs to go (and we've been asking her every hour or so to make sure she hasn't forgotten). Today, though, I haven't even had to ask. The timer on the stove hasn't been able to go off to remind me to ask her (because I need these kinds of reminders to keep something at the front of my mind--but I've addressed the seriously addled state of my brain before, so no need to beat that dead horse). She keeps coming up, about once an hour, and tells me she needs to pee. So we do. There hasn't been any poop yet, and I'm putting her in a pull-up for nap time, just to make sure her bed doesn't end up smeared with it.
Pretty major progress. And on the timeline, Norah is a few months ahead of where Gabe was at this age (it was July or August before Gabe really got the hang of it, after he turned 3, and it's still a month before Norah's 3rd birthday). That point alone would seem to suggest that girls are better at potty training than boys are. But I think there are also extenuating circumstances to consider. Gabe was the oldest, thus there were no older kids coaxing him on or being "big kids" for him to want to impress. He also didn't have any big kids to watch going regularly so he had a clear idea of what was expected. I think having an older sibling more than anything made the training process easier.
But we'll see. If Norah doesn't have an extended bout of unreliability like Gabe did--where he was, for instance, pooping while standing in the middle of the library--then I'll be willing to declare girls easier to train than boys. Secretly, I hope it's not true because, let's face it, girls don't need to be better than boys at anything else. They've already got pretty much every advantage in those formative years.
Oh, right. The title. Double standard. Kind of forgot about that.
Really, it's not the least bit worthy of a title for a post, but for some reason it's what I ran with.
Yesterday, Norah was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom and she kept insisting that I go away and give her privacy. Being not-quite 3, she failed to see the irony in this as, time and again, we ask her to leave us alone while we're in the bathroom and she, instead, insists that she should watch us closely (usually trying to stare between our legs into the toilet to watch as it happens, mortifying as that sounds) or do a dance for us. So, to demonstrate how annoying that can be when a nice bowel movement is all we want to have, I refused to leave her alone. And I did a dance for her while she went to the bathroom. She was not the least bit impressed. But, considering how I dance, I can't really blame her, I suppose.
Yes. It's that time again. Now it's Norah's turn. Let me just say that I am REALLY looking forward to the day when I no longer have to mess with diapers. They have become such a mainstay of my life for the past FIVE YEARS that, honestly, I'm not sure how I'm going to process them going away.
I mean, I'm super happy about it. Not only will we save a gob of money every month, we'll also free up a cubby hole in our entertainment center where we've been storing diaper stuff for half a decade for . . . well, the kids' clothes probably because I am too lazy to take their clothes upstairs after each washing and have to go back upstairs two or three times a day whenever they need different clothes. It's one of my great failings, but there you have it. There's also a chance that we'll put entertainment related stuff in there. Who knows. Doors will open and we will have options.
But, on the other hand, it's also been a pretty major part of my household duties up to this point. I will lose one of my major bargaining chips in the family. I won't be able to say "But I've had to change thirty diapers this week, YOU do _____ (whatever I want to get out of doing)." And then there will be the sense of loss, the sense of something missing from my life. Even bad things have a way of becoming part of what's normal, and, when it's gone, its absence is felt.
Diapers signify babies, and not having to change them anymore is undeniable proof that we don't have babies anymore, we have big kids. Our sweet little baboos are getting big! Sometimes, it's all too much to take . . . .
Naw. I'm joking. I can't wait for them to be in school. They're driving me crazy. And I will NEVER miss diapers or changing them. Sure watching them get old so fast is a bit tough. Most notably I am affected by how quickly they move from one favorite thing to the next. It's kind of depressing, really. Just when I'm getting the hang of Gabe loving Power Rangers or Star Wars or Norah loving her little people and animals (she was pretty obsessed with all things small for awhile there) or Polly Pockets, they couldn't care less about those things anymore and I'm left wondering how long it will be before I, too, am obsolete. It's a little sad.
But god I won't miss the diaper changing. Now I just need to get through a year or so of butt wiping and finally, dear god, I will only have my own waste disposal to worry about. It will be a blessed, glorious day.
Anyway, I should probably also address the whole boy vs. girl potty training truism--that girls are easier than boys to potty train. Honestly, I don't know. Gabe was awful, there's no denying that. It took forever (almost a year from the time we started trying to coax a toilet visit out of him until he finally was doing it on his own reliably enough that he didn't need to wear a pull-up to bed). And there were, of course, many disaster stories with him (refer back to that year long period of awful here on the blog). But I'm wondering if how bad we thought it went was just a product of how hypersensitive we were to him NEEDING to potty train and not really knowing what to expect from the process. Now, obviously, since we've been through it, we're just sort of letting it happen with Norah.
And it is just sort of happening now. Finally. The thing is, it's taken very nearly as long as it did with Gabe. We started her on the road to using the toilet last fall. We've been shifting her between pull-ups and diapers pretty much that whole time and trying, entirely in vain, to get her to use the toilet whenever she's had a pull-up on.
There haven't been many disasters. Just one, really--last Friday, she had a pull-up on for nap time. When she came down, she said she needed to potty, so she went into the bathroom to use her little training toilet. She demanded that she could pull her pants down on her own, so I left her to it. About a minute later she called out, "I've got poop on my finger." Uh oh, I thought. So I went in and, sure enough, she had poop on her finger. And another finger. And pretty much all of her fingers. And her hand. And her leg. And her back. And her pants. And all over her training toilet. And on the floor. And in the trash can. Apparently she had pooped during her nap. And despite that she poops just about every nap time now (ruining almost all of them), for some reason I didn't think to check her pants before she pulled them off. And when she pulled them off, poop pretty much went everywhere. To her credit, she tried to cover up the mess by cleaning it up as best she could, putting the pull-up and one of the big piles of poop in the trash. The rest of it, however, was everywhere.
But somewhere in the last four days or so, Norah has begun to take this potty training thing seriously. She's been good about getting in there when she needs to go (and we've been asking her every hour or so to make sure she hasn't forgotten). Today, though, I haven't even had to ask. The timer on the stove hasn't been able to go off to remind me to ask her (because I need these kinds of reminders to keep something at the front of my mind--but I've addressed the seriously addled state of my brain before, so no need to beat that dead horse). She keeps coming up, about once an hour, and tells me she needs to pee. So we do. There hasn't been any poop yet, and I'm putting her in a pull-up for nap time, just to make sure her bed doesn't end up smeared with it.
Pretty major progress. And on the timeline, Norah is a few months ahead of where Gabe was at this age (it was July or August before Gabe really got the hang of it, after he turned 3, and it's still a month before Norah's 3rd birthday). That point alone would seem to suggest that girls are better at potty training than boys are. But I think there are also extenuating circumstances to consider. Gabe was the oldest, thus there were no older kids coaxing him on or being "big kids" for him to want to impress. He also didn't have any big kids to watch going regularly so he had a clear idea of what was expected. I think having an older sibling more than anything made the training process easier.
But we'll see. If Norah doesn't have an extended bout of unreliability like Gabe did--where he was, for instance, pooping while standing in the middle of the library--then I'll be willing to declare girls easier to train than boys. Secretly, I hope it's not true because, let's face it, girls don't need to be better than boys at anything else. They've already got pretty much every advantage in those formative years.
Oh, right. The title. Double standard. Kind of forgot about that.
Really, it's not the least bit worthy of a title for a post, but for some reason it's what I ran with.
Yesterday, Norah was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom and she kept insisting that I go away and give her privacy. Being not-quite 3, she failed to see the irony in this as, time and again, we ask her to leave us alone while we're in the bathroom and she, instead, insists that she should watch us closely (usually trying to stare between our legs into the toilet to watch as it happens, mortifying as that sounds) or do a dance for us. So, to demonstrate how annoying that can be when a nice bowel movement is all we want to have, I refused to leave her alone. And I did a dance for her while she went to the bathroom. She was not the least bit impressed. But, considering how I dance, I can't really blame her, I suppose.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Gabe Goes to War and Norah Keeps It Classy
Just a few quick uploads.
Gabe rediscovered his army guys the other day and set up some pretty impressive battles in the rock bed off our front porch.
Gabe rediscovered his army guys the other day and set up some pretty impressive battles in the rock bed off our front porch.
And another . . .
Or maybe not yet . . .
Blogger has updated. After, what, four years of using the same format, which has always sucked butt, they've finally changed it. Now, when I add a picture, it adds it to the place where I want it to go, it doesn't just dump the picture at the beginning and make me move it around. Which is nice. The video upload seemed a little bit faster and more reliable at first, too, then it refused to upload a second video for me. Great. So I'll move on then try to upload the second video later, I suppose. Glad Blogger is keeping on the cutting edge of sucky blog technology, though.
So, there's also this:
Norah's new floatation device. She decided that she needed to wear it around for a half hour or so after we gave it to her. And she refused to let us pull down her shirt for some reason, too, so we took a picture for posterity instead.
And Blogger is still refusing to let me upload the second video of Gabe playing with his armies. Stupid Blogger. Oh well, I suppose it was just more of the same, but still. Eat it, Blogger!
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