Oh Yeah

I forgot. THIS happened this morning, too.


This is how he came down from bed this morning. All he needs now is a tan and a few gold chains and we're set.

ADHD

Hardly a week goes by that Libby and I don't discuss the possibility that Gabe is ADHD. Mostly, this is just us being overly paranoid and perhaps a bit over-zealous about staying on top of things so we can give him whatever tools he needs to cope effectively and have as happy and successful a life as possible (in other words, we're TOO good at being parents, but that is our burden).

But our paranoia isn't entirely unfounded or unreasonable. Anyone who has been around Gabe for even five minutes knows that he can't sit still and the concept of focusing seems to be about as far beyond his grasp as the reality of ice breath.

And then, every once in awhile, he'll surprise us with a feat of mental focus or stay-in-placeitude that gives us hope, or at least momentarily distracts our own short attention spans.

Yesterday, the kids received a package from Grammy and Grandpa containing a little princess crown for Norah and a squirt gun for Gabe.

Norah in her crown.

Norah was quick to put on her crown and give us a sort of dance (I got a video, but it really ended up being pretty boring--she stopped dancing as soon as I started the camera and then just kind of ran around for a bit, so I won't include it). And then we set up a little game for Gabe in the bath tub.

Libby put some shaving cream soap on the wall in the tub and Gabe, while sitting on the edge of the tub, shot the soap off with his water gun.

A pretty simple game, and considering how much time he gets to spend outside playing in mud puddles and getting properly soaked (and playing with his other numerous water guns), it didn't seem like this game should hold his interest that long.

He spent nearly two hours in the bathroom last night doing this. TWO HOURS. And one of the times I went in there to check on him, he gave me further evidence that maybe, just maybe, he can focus on things well enough to get through life. I asked him what he was doing, and he replied that the soap on the wall was lava running down the mountain and into a river. "And this is a flume," he said.

"A flume?" I asked, trying to make sure I heard him correctly.

"Yeah. A lava flume."

So, I guess he was paying attention to those volcano specials that we've been watching the past few months. And I also guess that the trick with him will be to keep him working on things he is interested in. Cause he doesn't have any focus problems when it comes to guns or volcanoes. Probably this will make him an ideal candidate for G.I. Joe, as I can't remember them having any volcano specialists on their team yet. I mean, there was Barbeque, but he had a flamethrower. They used him as an expert on all things burning, but he really couldn't be expected to know how to fix a flame thrower AND to know where it's safe to step when walking over a lava field. It's a niche thing, obviously, and we'll have to hope no other volcano experts come along in the meantime, but at least there is SOME hope.

Gum and Pirates

Just scrolling back and looking at the posts I've had for the past two months, it seems rather clear that one of two things is happening. Either my kids are being less amusing, or I'm not doing such a great job of capturing their funny parts. Either way, I'm going to blame the heat.

But yesterday the kids did a couple noteworthy and amusing things.

The first I posted on Facebook, but I will repeat here for those who don't pay attention to the facebook news feed or, more likely, have blocked me because I post a lot of pointless garbage. The second happened at the dinner table and I managed to get some video of it!

Monday, we went to my nephew's birthday party. Both kids received little goody bags, and inside those bags were several pieces of gum. Gabe has not really had much experience with gum yet. He's gotten a couple small pieces from the gumball machine at his dentist (sugar free--kind of like chicklets, which aren't really gum, more like a bit of bread dough with a coat of industrial strength varnish), and he's always just chewed them like candy and swallowed them.

In general, though, I've been trying to avoid exposure to gum. It falls into the category of Low Payoff for High Risk of Mess. Other things that fall into this category include . . . well, children. The list would take too long to flesh out, so let's just sum it up by saying that it's better to keep children in a sterile environment, like the Bubble Boy, and, preferably, sedated.

But, not being able to do that, I've mostly contented myself by keeping some of the worst mess makers, like gum, out of reach. Gabe, however, has been insistent on trying, and he was able to see what was in his goody bag before I was able to secret out all the gum and dispose of it properly. So there was no escaping it.

Before giving him the gum, though, I prefaced its eating with some guidelines and warnings for Gabe. 1) He would have to eat it at the table. He couldn't get up while he was still chewing it. 2) When he was done chewing it, he would spit it directly into the trash can. Never was the chewed gum to touch anything but his mouth and the inside of the trash can. 3) He would chew the gum and then spit it out, meaning he would not swallow it. I avoided telling him that the gum would sit in his stomach for seven years, not digesting (as I had been told as a child) because I can't see how that could possibly be true. But, despite the fact that there might not be any harm in swallowing it, I still don't think it should be done. It doesn't seem proper. 4) If I ended up finding gum stuck to something, ANYTHING, other than the inside of the trash can, there would be undetermined hell to pay.

And then, just to solidify this last bit in his mind, I told him a few horror stories from my childhood--possibly true, probably not--about my brothers and I getting gum stuck in our hair. In these stories, we had peanut butter smeared into our hair, used liquid nitrogen to freeze it, and then ended up still having to remove large swathes of hair from our heads. I tried to draw him a mental picture of a hideously mangled head of hair, with mangy bald spots and ratty ends, and how the kids at school ruthlessly and endlessly teased us. How we cried and cried and gnashed our teeth and rung our hands and pulled even larger chunks of hair out of our heads in frustration.

Well, maybe I didn't go into that much detail. But I did tell him that we had to cut chunks of hair off our heads and we ended up with bald spots. To which Gabe had a wonderful response:

Me: "If you get gum stuck in your hair, we'll have to use the scissors to cut it out and you'll have big bald spots on your head."

Gabe: "Did you get a lot of gum in your hair?" he asked as he looked at the top of my head.

Now, there are clearly two ways to interpret this question. Either he was responding to the story I had just told him, where I had gotten gum in my hair and had it cut out, and he was just clarifying that, at some point in my history, I had gotten a lot of gum in my hair. OR, my kid is a snarky smart ass who was taking a jab at all the hair that's fallen out of my head (pretty much entirely since we became parents). Obviously I'm hoping for the second option.

So there's that.

In other news, at the dinner table last night, this happened:

Arrrrgh!

Making Love to the Camera and Chickens

I wish my two topics were more closely (though not intimately!) related, because those two topics together makes me laugh. I imagine some scene with Gonzo posing his chickens in some boudoir setting. Sick but amusing to me.

Anyway, unrelated topics, but I had some stuff on the camera to share.

I worry about a lot of things. It's what I do. Pretty much every day I worry that I'm not having the right kind of influence on my kids. That they'll be too . . . whatever isn't ideal and whatever can be traced by to me. The list is long and undistinguished. But one of the things that I worry about every time I pull out the camera is what kind of kids I'm creating by always having the camera close at hand.

My kids both learned from an early age how to ham for the camera. It took Gabe a bit to get into it, but Norah starts to put on a show just about as soon as she sees the camera now--and she has been doing that for several months now.

I worry that I'm creating narcissists who constantly crave not only the attention of being in front of the camera but of being able to go back and see and admire themselves in the results.

Did I mention that Gabe is pretty obsessed with his Baby Gabe movies? They are pretty much the only thing he wants to watch right now. I burned one of Norah's first year and a half (yeah, poor girl, Gabe had two DVDs worth of material for his first 18 months, and Norah only got one DVD), and he watched it through once, but only because I told him that he'd be in several of the clips. He obviously didn't feel as though he was in ENOUGH of them, though. And Norah didn't really care to sit down and watch herself either. So that movie has received tepid reviews so far.

But I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing. On the one hand, I do worry that I'm creating monsters of some sort. But I worry about that no matter what I do. Every action I take on a daily basis--to my mind, at least--is going to result in my children climbing a bell tower. And this kind of monster, at least, might be able to get an acting or performing job of some sort. Which brings me to the possible positive outcomes. I might also be creating entertainers, and though entertainers are certainly prone to troubles of their own, everyone loves them. At the very least they are sociable people who aren't afraid to engage with people they don't know, and I can't stress enough how much I hope my children are not like me in this sense.

So maybe I'm not destroying their futures by putting them in front of the camera on a regular basis. Or maybe I am. There's no telling. But at least they are producing some worthwhile pictures/videos along the way (so far, the Baby Gabe and Baby Norah videos are actually proving rather interesting to watch--they've both been pretty entertaining kids so far).

First, here's a set of pictures that I got of Gabe the other day. I was sitting here in my office and picked up the camera to check and see if I had anything new to post on here. While I was holding it, Gabe told me to take his picture. And he started creating these various poses for my benefit.

Is this gangsta?

This one is definitely gangsta. Not sure where he's getting these poses. It's not like he spends his time watching . . . I don't even know. What kind of show would have people posing for pictures like this? Is he interning with one of the half dozen photographers here in town that keep using the alleyway behind the bookstore for senior picture poses (I guess because the bricks look "fatigued" or "oppressed" or whatever the term is for when it starts to chip and look chic)? I don't know where this stuff comes from.

The poses with the phone were a little weird. He sure does like having his phones around, though. Again, something I worry about (is he TOO familiar with technology? Can one be too familiar with technology these days? Should one be too familiar with technology? Someone get me something for these ulcers that I'm getting).

Phone as hat. This, I'm guessing, is his "think piece."

And then there's Norah. Sweet, adorable, bitchy Norah. She's getting to be quite the cheeser, too. Though she hasn't started in with the interpretative posing as Gabe has.

This may be one of the most adorable pictures ever taken by anyone.

Finally, the chickens. Libby and Gabe went out and bought replacement chickens last night (remembering that our last six all got eaten by something). She made some modifications to our storage shed in the back. Permanent modifications of the cutting-a-hole-in-the-side-and-building-a-roosting-nest-inside variety. Probably not ideal, but I suppose it's better than having an entirely new chicken coop built in our backyard for the buggers.

As they came home, Gabe came up with some names for his chickens. We kept two of his original three and helped him come up with a third.

Here are the chickens and Gabe sharing their names.

In case you couldn't make out the names, the black and white one is Bucket Truck, the orange and black one is Fire Hose, and the orange and white one (the one on the far right) is Volcano. Originally, Volcano's name was Firetruck. But we thought it would be too confusing to have a Firetruck AND a Fire Hose, so we convinced him to come up with a new name.

Now we just wait for these to die as well.

The Price of Sleep Deprivation

If you've ever read this blog or spent more than about five minutes around me, I'm sure you've heard about my complicated relationship with sleep. I hate doing it. It hates me doing it. Sleep and I hold each other in deep contempt. To say we "loathe" each other might be a bit strong, but I have to admit that I wouldn't mind seeing sleep die. One has to feel pretty strongly negative about something to wish death on it. And I'm pretty sure sleep has been trying to kill me for decades now, so the feelings are obviously mutual.

But, despite the fact that I have never slept well and often don't get more than a few hours in a night, I somehow manage to function. Well, mostly function. Function by the definition as it applies directly to me, which is probably about the same functionality one would expect from a hobbled helper monkey.

How do I do it? How have I been able to adapt to get to a place where I am not suffering severe effects of sleep deprivation on a daily basis? Or have I? Am I actually a complete mess and, if I was just sleeping properly, I would be some kind of hyper-functioning super human?

I've been pondering on these thoughts since last night.

Libby went out of town for a few days to stay with her sister Molly, who just had twins.

Side note: congrats, Molly, though I doubt you'll be finding yourself with the time or energy to keep up on this blog anymore! And thanks for having Libby out. I think, until this trip, Libby was secretly harboring a wish that we could adopt another baby here in the not-too-distant future (despite my numerous and often emphatic protestations). After spending a few days remembering how exhausting babies are, she has decidedly shifted into the No More Babies camp. Thanks and good luck!

Anyway, over the weekend, the kids went out to Nana and Poppa's house. While they were there, they stayed up a couple hours late both nights and didn't take naps. By my figuring, Gabe ended up about three hours short (six hours if you figure the naps, but he isn't a super reliable nap taker anymore and might go an entire week without one) and Norah ended up at least six hours short. They both sleep about 9-10 hours a night now. In other words, they went two days getting about 7 1/2 to 8 hours of sleep (well, they slept in a little, too, so not even that bad, I guess).

Yet, despite only getting down to a sleep period that is considered a fantastic night of sleep for an adult, Gabe had what can only be called a Complete and Utter Shitstorm Meltdown last night. It was a rough afternoon all the way around for both of them. They were at each other's throats. They were crying about anything and everything. They were refusing to cooperate. But by 6:00 Gabe was effectively done. He threw a tantrum about taking a bath--an activity that he loves. Everything made him cry. He worked himself up to the point where he couldn't breath properly (actually, we're going to need to talk to the doc about that, he might have some asthma or something). He was a complete wreck. Norah was a little better but that might just be because, like me, when she's tired, she just turns into a lump. She had resigned herself to just sitting in one place in the living room hours before and hadn't really ventured from that spot for most of the time we were home.

So that got me thinking. Here he is, four years old, and being only a couple hours net sleep off normal over the course of two days has turned him into a little monster. If that's the case, then what has not having a regular night of sleep for the past four years been doing to Libby and I? maybe we would be beautiful, wonderful, endlessly patient human beings if we'd only been getting ten hours of sleep every day. Maybe ALL people would be beautiful, endlessly patient human beings if we'd only get ten hours of sleep every day!

That's really my only thought for the day. Someone should try to sleep that much every night for a week or so as an experiment because, lord knows, even if the kids and my wife would let me sleep that long, I wouldn't be able to anyway. Because I'm absolutely sure that if I gave myself over to sleep for that long, it would take the opportunity to kill me.

I Get It Now

Libby's family has some great stories. They could write a book. Actually, John should write the book since he plays prominently in about a third of them. But one of the first stories that I heard, and one of the stories that has stuck in my mind most clearly, is a little number about lima bean casserole and a feat of seemingly Herculean, rage-fueled strength.

As I remember it, the story goes something like this.

Karen (Libby's mom) had prepared a lima bean casserole for dinner. The family had always stuck with a family-dinner-at-the-table routine through the years, and Karen always did a great job of providing a variety of home-cooked meals, making use of whatever was available in the pantry and freezer. Usually, the meals were pretty well received. This particular meal was not. The children (I'm not sure which ones were involved or what ages they would have been--that bit of information has faded into the ether of my brain) ranted and raved and whined and moaned about the casserole, ultimately refusing to eat it.

This infuriated Karen. She snatched up the casserole dish, brought it into the kitchen, and then slammed the dish down over the center divider in their kitchen sink, breaking the casserole dish in twain. And, I'm sure, silencing her children.

The story has been told many times and is used as an example of Karen's rage at the children getting just a touch out of hand. As a young man, I shared in the good chuckle at Karen's expense, dismissing the incident as, perhaps, evidence of her mildly high-strung personality type. This response, while foolish and naive is, I'm sure, the same kind of knee-jerk response that pretty much anyone who has heard the story (but who don't have kids) would have.

As the kids have grown older, I've grown more and more dismissive of the events in the story. Having a toddler and an infant, there were a few moments where frustration took hold and I felt like checking out, but even then, things never reached anything near a boiling point. For that to happen, I think you have to be dealing with children of at least toddler age and above. But, even still, a small portion of my brain held onto the notion that "Maybe she over-reacted just a touch."

Until yesterday, when I came to fully relate and appreciate what she might have been going through. I did not break a casserole dish, but that's only because I did not have one readily available. If I had, I was in such a state that I might have tried to break it over my knee instead of having the sense to take it to the kitchen sink.

It was a very bad day.

Also, I wouldn't have had a casserole dish anyway because our stove is broken. It is just one of the things that has broken in the last month (stove, garage door, both cars, one car twice, air conditioner for the second time this year, both laptops, one laptop twice, the refrigerator and my desktop computer are both making weird noises . . . and I just can't go on any longer). I blame summer because it is a godless season where nothing good ever happens.

But the stove didn't break yesterday. Nonetheless, many other things went rather poorly.

First, two of our three big chickens were eaten by something. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not fond of chickens and, while I had grown to accept the existence of these three chickens in my life, I was hardly attached to them. But this was an ominous start to the day.

For some reason, we started the day by showing Gabe some of the videos from when he was a baby. He was enthralled. Couldn't get enough. He sat in front of my computer for almost a half hour while I ran him back a selection of the movies from his first year. Then I got bored with that. He didn't. So I told him I would try to burn him a DVD so he could watch the movies at his leisure somewhere other than in my office.

But I didn't have any DVDs. Nor did I have any idea how to make a DVD. Despite the fact that DVD burning technology has been around for something like a decade, I have never done it myself. I've had interest, but I just haven't had the gumption to actually do it. Or learn anything about doing it. But I decided that yesterday was the day that all that changed.

So we ran to Wal-Mart and I bought some blank DVDs. While we were there, I decided to be extra nice and I treated the kids to some new play-doh and some cheapish toys. It was going to be the best day ever. They'd get to watch home movies and play with new toys and then create something wonderful with their play-doh. They would love me forever and this day would stick in their minds as one of the best.

So we got home and I set to work on making the DVD while they played with their new stuff. I've never purchased a GOOD piece of DVD creation software, but I figured there would be something on the computer. DVD burners are standard now, so it made sense there would have to be something on the computer. I started out with Windows Movie Maker.

As it turns out, Windows Movie Maker DOES make movies out of clips, but it DOESN'T burn them onto DVDs unless you buy an upgrade. I didn't find this out until I burned what I thought was my movie onto what I thought was a blank DVD. Turned out it was just a Windows movie on a CD-R. Apparently, while looking at a box of DVDs, I bought a box of CD-Rs instead. So even if Windows Movie Maker did make DVDs, it wouldn't have done me any good.

So, after wasting a good hour on that, I gave up. We had lunch and I put them down for a nap, hoping to get a nap myself because I'd not had a very good night of sleep (probably I was hearing the chickens being slaughtered but didn't realize it). Neither of them slept. For two hours I fought with both of them to get them to lie down, shut up, and go to sleep. And, even though I knew they were both tired, they wouldn't do it.

So no nap and two hours of fighting small children had left me in a bit of a funk. All the same, I decided that I was going to press on and get the DVD made. So we ran out to the store, again, and this time I made sure I bought DVDs. I found another program on my computer, Roxio, that would burn DVDs. And I started the whole process over fresh with that program, inserted the blank DVD, and discovered that, for reasons I still can't understand, my computer was reading the blank DVDs as having zero available memory. No matter what I did, I could not burn anything on these DVDs.

So I decided to try it on my laptop. I had to install a newer version of Roxio, but I was able to make it work (but not until Gabe had already gone to bed--yes, I spent ALL DAY yesterday creating one 90 minute DVD).

Around 3:00 I decided to ride the stationary bike. I usually do it at 3:00 because that's when Wow Wow Wubzzy is on. I usually ride for about a half an hour, and Wubzzy is one of the few shows that they will both watch and be mildly distracted by. While I was riding, I heard this "tink, tink, tink" noise coming from what I thought was just outside the window. After it kept happening for a few minutes, I got up and looked outside to see if a bird was knocking around on something. Then I noticed that the sound was coming from under my feet. Specifically, from the heat register. And I could also hear laughter coming through it. Ugh.

I went into the living room and both kids were huddled around the heat register. For the past five minutes, they had been dropping ALL of their small toys down into it (they also removed the cover and broke both of the little flaps off it). Many were lost forever, I fear--too far into the pipe for me to reach. The rest of them were covered in dirt, food scraps they'd been dropping down there for years, and dead moths. I spent about ten minutes cleaning the stuff out during which time I sat the kids down in separate chairs and demanded that they sit quietly while I fixed and retrieved things.

When I was finished--bike ride aborted--I decided to see about setting up the laptop and burning that DVD. So I worked on that. Not five minutes after I finished cleaning out the heat register, I heard splashing coming from the other side of my office wall. The cat water.

I went around the corner and Norah was playing in the cat's water bowl. She had dumped a cup full of hard cat food in there and was splashing around, knocking soggy cat food and water all over herself and everything else. With forced calm, I stood her up, told her in no uncertain terms that we don't play with the cat water, escorted her into the living room, then went back in to clean out the water bowl. I picked it up and dumped it into the toilet (which Gabe had just peed in--and for some reason he refuses to flush these days, I guess to make up for the fact that he did nothing BUT flush it for nearly two years). Once it was all in there, I noticed that several of Norah's little toys were floating around in with the cat food. Several of her little toys that she has become VERY attached to. Several little toys that I"e spent many minutes searching for over the past few weeks. Several toys that I knew I couldn't flush down the toilet. So I stuck my hand down into the pissy cat food water and sifted through it for toys. I found a couple, but I fear I didn't find them all. So far, if I didn't, she hasn't noticed yet.

I sighed, cleaned off the toys, filled up the water bowl, and put it back. I closed my eyes and counted to ten (I didn't really because counting to myself does nothing but make me angrier because, let's face it, at that point all I'm doing is adding the waste of several seconds counting onto whatever is already frustrating me, but I did metaphorically count to ten by not punching the wall or doing something equally rash or violent). Then I sat down to try to focus on the DVD burning to at least get it started.

Two minutes later (I am not kidding here, it might have actually been less than two minutes because I had only JUST sat down), I hear splashing again. She had dumped another cup of cat food into the bowl.

I lost my mind a little and told her to go into the dining room and play. Gabe was in there playing with the play-doh at the table. While I was still dumping out the water bowl for the second time, I hear shrieking and screaming and whining, at great volume, coming from the dining room.

And then I actually did lose my mind. I won't go into details, but nobody was hurt and nothing was broken. The kids did spend twenty minutes sitting quietly in separate chairs in the living room with nothing to play with and no TV on. If you know how well my kids sit still, I think you might have a pretty good idea just what kind of impression my total lack of composure had on them. They were seriously not going to fuck with me anymore.

And they didn't for the rest of the day, which went rather well. I finished the DVD. They went to bed early and fell almost immediately to sleep because they hadn't had naps. And I got to spend a few quiet hours alone (oh yeah, did I mention that Libby worked until well after the kids are in bed last night?).

Lesson learned. Two lessons learned, actually. Lesson One: don't judge another person's loss of composure until you've been in their shoes (and, still, Karen had FIVE kids to deal with, I only have two, so I still don't have any real idea). Lesson Two: I don't care what the touchy feely parenting guides say. For being nice and keeping my cool I was rewarded with bratty children that kept pushing and pushing throughout the day. For losing my cool, I was rewarded with a few hours of peace and quiet and children who did what they were told to do. So, make of that what you will.

Oh, and the last chicken was eaten this morning, the garage door broke, my hot tub cover is falling apart, and when we went outside to play, within five minutes, the kids got into a sand throwing fight that resulted in Norah being pushed face first into the wet sandbox. So today isn't really shaping up to be any better. If they don't take naps, we might run to the store so I can buy the cheapest casserole dish I can find to shatter in my sink.

The Prissy Prissy Princess

Since the beginning of the summer, Norah has really started to blossom as a princess. I'm not sure how it has happened. I am not a fan of princesses. Or pink. Or things that are prim and proper. And, honestly, I had every intention of raising a daughter who wasn't a big fan of those things either. While I'm sure there is a place in the world for princesses and pink and frilly bits, I had hoped that place was other than my house.

Don't get me wrong. If you want a princess, more power to you. I just don't.

Yet, somehow, that's what I'm getting. Part of it is everyone else's fault. People LOVE to make little girl princesses--even Libby keeps buying princessy crap for her. Time and again, people give us frilly pink clothes and Barbie dolls and other ugh. And she eats it up.

Now, I'm not saying that boy toys are somehow superior and that Norah shouldn't be allowed to play with girly things or that somehow she'll grow up to be superior if she ignored all the girly stuff and became a tomboy.

Well, really, maybe that is what I'm saying. Boy toys ARE superior. Transformers? Come on! Look at the engineering that is involved in creating a toy that can be a robot AND a vehicle. Now look at the engineering involved in creating a Barbie. Yawn. Even a straight comparison of "action figures" vs. "dolls" comes out with action figures in the lead. Look at their accessories! Trucks and airplanes and guns and bases and rockets and lord knows what all. Now look at the accessories for dolls. Chairs and food and pink cars and clothes. Yawn. She'll have the rest of her life to think about where to put the ottoman, why waste childhood on that kind of garbage? Childhood is for adventure and fantasy and imagination! And boy toys whip hell out of girl toys for that.

And, I have to admit, because of Gabe's interests and the fact that he had a two year head start on building his toy collection, Norah does spend quite a bit of time playing with boy toys and, at least, incorporating them into her little doll worlds. And she's at least passingly accepting of watching his shows--though, the older she gets the more she realizes that she would rather be watching something else and, being the vocal type, isn't afraid to whine and pester Gabe and I until she gets what she wants.

But she is decidedly squeamish about many things. Rather strangely so, actually. Nonsensically so, even. Take bugs for instance. She hates them. In fact, she just hates the IDEA of bugs so much that, without rhyme or reason, that's the place her brain goes whenever she sees something she can't readily identify if it's roughly bug sized. Say there is a piece of lint on the floor. She doesn't really have the world experience necessary to understand why lint is, so, when she sees a piece on the floor, she's not sure what she's seeing. So she shouts "BUG!" and runs as far away from it as she possibly can.

And dirt is another thing. Time and again she complains about dirt and mud and being sticky or dirty. She claims to hate it. But she is completely inconsistent about it.

I've had videos on here before of them playing in the mud, so this is hardly news. And, really, I don't have anything NEW to add this time. But we filled their pool again the other day and then ran a little more water onto what used to be our lawn (which, thanks to this heat wave and the fact that we haven't had any measurable quantities of rain since May is mostly a crusty wasteland). And Norah went to town.

Here are some videos of them playing and stuff. I'm sure there is commentary that I SHOULD add, but I can't really remember the specifics of what was going on. Such is the state of my mental capacity these days, that I can't even remember what I record just a couple days later.

So there's the video. I got a few pictures of her just playing in the mud, too, and there IS a point that I'm going to make in relation to these pictures.

Splashing in a mud puddle. Not so prissy.

Further splashings.

Ah, adorable. Actually, she wasn't making some sort of coquettish pose here. She was trying to dig some dirt out of her mouth. But that's the nice thing about still pictures. They can be whatever you want them to be.

And NOW we get to the point . . . .

See this water? Norah refused to play in it. She declared it to be "too dirty." Note that this water GOT this dirty because they were playing in mud and then washing themselves off in the pool. Still and all, even though her logic eludes me, I AM happy that she's willing to play in the mud still without any problems, even if she won't get into muddy water. So maybe I'm not losing the princess battle entirely.

Yeah, I know. That wasn't much of a point to be making, was it? Kind of a lot of build up for not much payoff.

How about a picture of Gabe with a dirty Hitler mustache and soul patch? Does that make this whole thing more worthwhile? I thought so.