Gabe's First Tea Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gabe Sums Up His Existence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Experiment to Prove That Dogs Are Smarter Than Infants

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

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

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

Video and Picture Round-Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hurray for People Who Are Smarter Than Me!

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

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

Our Special Little Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back, Sort Of

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

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