Can't Catch Me

This afternoon, we're having some weather. It's the second time this week. Tornado warnings have been issued and funnel clouds have been spotted. Hail the size of tennis balls has been spotted. So far, we've gotten a sprinkle out of it. Such is the roller coaster ride of Kansas weather.

Despite my attempts to explain to Gabe the possible severity of the situation (I've got the 24 hour local radar channel that runs non-stop weather coverage when storms are near on in the background), complete with a detailed explanation of how he can best interpret the radar and our location on the map relative to Wichita (where the weather is being reported), Gabe took a Nero-esque approach to the chaos that was going on around him. Only, since he doesn't have a fiddle, and his Gabba guitar is, blessedly, upstairs where we don't have to listen to it all the time, Gabe did what comes naturally to him instead. He ran around in circles. He was obviously trying to stay away from Norah, though she really didn't show all that much interest in pursuing him.

I started this video about two minutes after he started, I estimate. By this time, Norah was already starting to lose interest, but Gabe wasn't.

After five minutes of not filming, I decided to go ahead and start it back up again because he was STILL going. And, I decided, that I was going to film it every five minutes until he stopped.

Oh, and excuse the dining room table. It's a disaster. It's Gabe's "big boy table" where everything non-Norah friendly has to be kept. So, not surprisingly, it's always covered to the point of being unusable. That's not an excuse for the rest of the dining room and living room being a mess, of course. For that I only have my frustration at the futility of keeping things clean all through the day--which ultimately led to me giving up on it entirely until bed time--to blame.

After this go, we had a little break. Rather, Norah and I did. Gabe kept trying to convince both of us that we should be chasing him around the table. But, honestly, how interesting is THAT? Norah and I had the right idea to move on.

However, she started doing something pretty weird herself. As she rolled around on the pillows in the living room, she started making this weird noise. I couldn't figure out what she was doing at first. But I did manage to get it on video.

This is her new trick. She's been doing it ever since (about two hours now, more or less continuously). Guess it's nice she finally found a use for all the slobber she's got going for her.

And, then, Gabe started running again. He didn't stop until Libby got home from work. By my count, he spent almost forty-five minutes running around the table, only stopping occasionally to beg Norah or I to chase him (I didn't bother to stick with my "every five minutes" thing because, frankly, I got bored and he wasn't being as entertaining as I'd hoped he'd be).

I'm not sure how we're going to contain this kid's energy once he has to start sitting in a classroom all day. That will be fun. For this he added the slipper running shoes and decided that, if Norah wasn't going to chase him, he'd use her as a hurdle. And, clearly, I shouldn't have chuckled when he threw the first truck. He's been trying to throw his trucks ever since.

The Scrunched Up Smiling Face Is Universal

When Gabe was about a year old, he started doing this weird smiling face. We got gobs of pictures of him doing it, but this was by far the finest:

This picture is awesome because it looks like he's responding to the big monkey butt in the window, though I somehow doubt that is the case since he STILL doesn't laugh at farts (which is beyond comprehension to me), so I doubt he was grasping such butt humor around one year old.

And, just because I was looking at old pictures, I'm going to include some others that made me smile. This might not LOOK like a smile, but it was. Gabe was not a naturally smiley baby, so I assume he just stuck with what he knew--frowning--and ran with it.

My kids are a mess.

That should proof beyond a doubt that it wasn't a fluke. He did it pretty regularly when the camera was in front of him.

Naturally, I assumed it was just Gabe. He's always been a ham, so I just figured these were the first signs of his hamming nature. But now I have indisputable proof that it's something ALL babies do because Norah has also started doing it (thus, 100% of all of our babies do it, and you just can't argue with those percentages).

Now, Butts IS a smiley baby, so she's got it down right from the beginning.

And just to prove that it wasn't a one time occurrence, I went ahead and took several pictures of her. Each time she presented me with a similar "cheese" face.

Please excuse the nastiness on her shirt. It's chocolate Cheerios. They make her drooly. Possibly because the box is almost two months old. She's the only one in the house who will eat them. Even Gabe thought they were gross (and I've always hated chocolate cereal--which is the exception to the Pat Loves Sugary Cereal rule).

Though, I don't see how stale cereal could possibly make a baby drool more than usual. We THINK she's getting those next four teeth in--the four teeth that she started the first part of the year. The damn things started to break through then sucked back in. Now they appear to be breaking through again. They better commit this time because it hardly seems fair that she'd have to suffer through the discomfort and sleepless nights more than twice with a single set of teeth.

Actually, I hope this is a sign that she will also be a ham. I love the idea of having two entertaining kids.

Beige Is My Favorite Color

One of the best things about Gabe being conversationally fluent in English is, well, the conversations. Finally, we've progressed to the point where I'm doing more than endlessly repeating words so that he can learn them and we can actually have some back and forth communication. And often it's awesome.

This afternoon, for instance, I sat down with Gabe at the dining room table (which is unsuitable for eating at now thanks to the inundation of every surface with play-doh and play-doh accessories) to play with his play-doh. We opened the containers which, not surprisingly, all contained roughly the same color--a kind of mottled light brown thanks to the colors not ENTIRELY mixing yet. Every day he complains that he wants different colors, and then, every day, when two colors are opened, he proceeds to mix them together without a second thought. Some day he'll put the elimination of his color options together with his careless mixing--and, frankly, that's a day I'm eagerly awaiting.

Anyway, Gabe is very familiar with the color beige thanks to the show Imagination Movers. On the show, there is a character named Knit Knots. His only goal in life is to be incredibly boring (he's actually a pretty amusing character, some times, as in the time he decided to make a music CD of very boring music. The music was a single note played on a tuba that he modified so it only COULD play one note--B flat. "The "b" is for boring, and the flat makes it EXTRA boring." For some reason, that made me laugh. Probably because my standards for humor, thanks to nothing but preschool programming, have sunk to record depths). As part of that goal, he only wears beige clothes. ENTIRELY beige clothes. The movers even have a song about creating the proper beige color, and in the song, as they are mixing colors, they announce that their end goal is to make "boring, boring, boring, boring beige."

Because of this, Gabe has stopped calling beige, "beige" and, instead, has renamed it "boring." When identifying the color of something light brown in or around our house, he'll point at it and say "That's boring!"

So, right after I got the play-doh out, I identified it as beige and then, rather off-handedly, I added, "Beige is boring, isn't it."

Then, in a rather stern voice that pulled off an admonishing tone that I was rather surprised he accomplished so well, Gabe corrected me by saying, "Beige is a NICE color, Daddy."

I quickly corrected myself by saying, "Some people really like beige, you're right."

"Beige is my FAVORITE color," he declared.

Hmm. This one loses a little something in the retelling. It struck me as very funny at the time. Perhaps I'm just a little punchy today. Norah was up with her teeth until about midnight last night then woke up from 4:00-6:30 this morning, slept for a little over an hour, then was in a pretty god-awful mood the rest of the morning. But neither Libby nor I got much sleep last night (contrary to what she'd have you believe, SHE was the one that got more sleep last night because I stayed up with Norah until midnight--so I do my part, sometimes anyway).

I forgot that Gabe stole (supposedly was "given," but I have my doubts considering his sticky fingers) a tub of orange by Finn Wednesday night, which he opened up and added to the beige melange. Thus the extra color. I'm not entirely sure where he got his paint mixing information, but it seems a bit faulty, too (though he MIGHT have been talking about mixing all of the colors together to make beige, because that's what they did in the song on Movers). And, as usual, Norah was close at hand. Her favorite thing to do right now is to sit at Gabe's feet while he plays at the table. I'm not sure what I should read into that, but I'm pretty sure there will be no hint of "subservience" in her personality as it develops. She's pretty firmly established herself as the boss of our household and seems all too comfortable with that role. Also, at the end there, if anyone has any idea what he's saying, I'd love to hear it. I think I made out "white and boring makes green," but that's about it.

The Things That Scare Kids

Over the past few weeks, Gabe has been waking up and saying he's scared, suggesting that he's been having some nightmares from time to time. Every time I've asked him (until this afternoon), he's not been very forthcoming on what, exactly, he dreamed that scared him. One time, I'm pretty sure I know what it was, even though he couldn't describe it to me. Last weekend, we decided to let Gabe watch the new episode of Doctor Who with us. By Hollywood standards, it was a pretty tame episode, but Gabe was up in the middle of the night with a nightmare, so maybe three years old isn't QUITE old enough for science fiction monsters and robots.

Anyway, this afternoon, when I went to get him after his nap, he said, "I was scared."

"Of what?" I asked.

"The door," he said, pointing at the door into his room. "It changed to green and then to yellow."

And that, apparently, was it. It's too bad I paid for the whole seat, because I only needed the edge.

But I can hardly fault him for being scared of something so mundane. I have a very clear memory of the first nightmare that I found so terrifying that I couldn't go back to sleep. I'm guessing I was four or five years old. My cousin Renee (who was my only friend until grade school, just one of the drawbacks of growing up on a farm) and I were exploring this house. The house wasn't particularly spooky, as I recall. Just a house. But it was empty, except for a single chair in a big room. As we approached the chair, it started rocking by itself. And I woke up terrified beyond anything that I had ever known before. I wasn't thinking ghosts or anything spooky like that, either. I clearly remember that I was scared because the rocking chair started rocking all by itself, and that was the entirety of what was frightening about it. Weird.

But it did start off a string of bad dreams that really didn't stop until I was in high school. Somewhere about middle school age the dreams shifted from scary dreams to falling dreams--and I stuck with those pretty much exclusively throughout my life. I don't have many anymore, because I hardly ever remember my dreams now, but if I DO wake up from a dream, falling is involved.

Back to the earlier nightmares that I had. I was, apparently, a sponge for scary images growing up. If something was even mildly disturbing or possibly threatening, my subconscious incorporated it into some harrowing event. Three characters in particular kept cropping up, too. The first was Darth Vader when I was about seven or so. I didn't see the first two Star Wars movies until they made their way onto network television (I did see the third one in the theater, though--I remember counting telephone poles on the way home from the theater in Wichita, don't ask me why), but Darth stuck in my mind. Of course, like most boys my age, I was VERY into Star Wars, so it's not surprising that Darth worked his way into my dreams from time to time.

The second character was the werewolf from American Werewolf in London. The summer I turned ten, I was allowed (by my aunt and uncle, who I thought were the coolest ever since they let me watch stuff like this) to stay up late and watch American Werewolf on HBO. I regretted it for much of the next year. Werewolves were everywhere. But, then werewolves are pretty goddamn scary. Pretty much the most terrifying of the undead, if you ask me. All the fangs and claws and lightning fast movements. There isn't much you could do if one decided it wanted to see what your jugular looked like. So I can't fault myself for having those bad dreams. I'm a little surprised that I still don't.

And the third character was a clown. I might have mentioned the clown nightlight my grandma made for me when I was six or seven. It was something she made in a ceramics class. It stood about eight inches high and had all these little glass balls all over it that let the light out. So it was ALWAYS clearly visible in the darkness of my room, which meant that it was usually the last thing I saw before I went to sleep. I used to have dreams that the creepy little thing would use the electrical cord attached to its base (the clown itself was removable, so the light bulb inside could be replaced) to climb down from my dresser and down onto the floor. Since it didn't have a light inside it anymore at that point, I couldn't see it anymore and I always lost track of it. Then, it would proceed to move all over my room with the intent of causing mischief and harm, popping out of the dark just long enough for me to be terrified. I hated that goddamn nightlight--and I still hate clowns because of it. I hated it so much that I still have it somewhere on our property (but it's safely locked up in a big plastic container, wherever it is). I'll be damned if I'll let that thing get TOO far away from me. Who knows what damage it might cause.

Actually, I blame that dream, at least in part, on an episode of Fantasy Island in which this big collection of dolls started to come to life in order to cause menace. I've always wanted to see that episode again, just to see if it was even the least bit scary, because it sure caused me trouble over those early years. But I'd really rather not start remembering my dreams now that I've put all the nightmares behind me, so maybe I better not try to find it.

Update: Gabe just informed me that there were also dinosaurs involved in his dream. He accused Norah of being one of them when I brought her down from her nap. He said that I brought her down from his room, where the dinosaurs were hiding. Now, dinosaurs I have NO idea why he'd be scared of. He's seen plenty of them, of course. Preschool shows are FULL of them. But all of those dinosaurs are nice and not the least bit scary. Another one of those things that he's learned that I'll be damned if I know how. But dinosaurs are certainly worthy of a few nightmares. They rank right up there with werewolves in terms of how quickly a normal person SHOULD fill their pants if they were ever to come face to face with one.

Potty Training Is Stupid

I don't think there's been anything more irritating or frustrating that I've dealt with in regards to the kids than trying to potty train Gabe. I mean, there are certainly more irritating or frustrating MOMENTS, but nothing that's been such a protracted and seemingly hopeless battle as trying to get him to use the toilet. Except maybe their sleeping. But I can't really complain too much about that since Libby has been handling the night time duties almost exclusively for the past several months.

I don't get it, either. He's been able to recognize when he's gone or going to the bathroom since he was about 18 months old--several people even commented that he would be a breeze to potty train because of this fact. But that has been anything but the case. He does recognize when he's gone, but he seems incapable of identifying the feeling BEFORE he goes, and we've tried all sorts of gimmicks to coax him into cooperating. Even asking him every ten minutes if he needs to go until he finally does often doesn't help.

I tried that yesterday. I put him in a pair of underwear instead of his diaper or pull-up and asked him about every five minutes if he needed to go. Then I took a break from asking while he ate his dinner, and, sure enough, he peed all over himself and the dining room chair he was sitting on. And today, Libby took him out in the back yard to play in the sandbox, again wearing underwear. Eventually, she got tired of asking and just took off his pants so he'd HAVE to see when he went. She tried to get him to pee on all sorts of things, but, in the end, he had to sit down on a part of his sandbox and pee out into the yard. Even though he pees standing up as soon as he gets into the bath every time (usually after he spends a few minutes sitting on the toilet, not peeing)!

And forget about poop. He doesn't seem to have a clue what that feels like before it happens. Ugh.

To be honest, I spent a goodly portion of my waking hours worrying about all of the various things he's not getting done, and potty training is always at the front of the pack. I see him wearing a diaper in kindergarten, being relentlessly teased by everyone there--even the teacher, since he/she will have to do the cleaning up and will be understandably resentful. I remember in kindergarten, one of my classmates still dropped his pants and underwear all the way to the floor when the school year started, and most of the rest of us boys made fun of him until he cried. Kids are terrible human beings! But that kid wasn't even wearing a diaper, he was just dropping his pants to the floor! Gabe will be saddled with the stigma of being a poopy pants for the rest of his life! Argh! The stress of it all!

So that's fun.

We also got a few good videos tonight. Libby, in her infinite patience for mess making (though, admittedly, I'm the one who got to clean it all up, which probably helps her motivation for such tasks), helped Gabe make a chocolate pudding pie tonight. He had a ball, and the video might be one of the more amusing ones we've gotten of him in awhile.

(So, this video was too long to upload onto blogger, apparently. Instead, I posted it on youtube. Here it is.)

My favorite part is how he had to keep looking for clean arm spots to wipe his mouth on. Then, when he ran out, he started to lick an arm clean. Surprisingly, after dinner, he wasn't all that interested in eating any more, since he'd probably had half a package of pudding by that point.

Shortly after dinner, Gabe and Norah started a new game, where she opened up the diaper cabinet (her favorite toy right now, god knows why), and he ran over and closed it. I like the shit-eating grin on her face each time she opened it and turned back to see what Gabe was going to do about it. I tell you, she's going to be trouble for that boy, and she's going to be trouble on purpose.

Norah Eats Babies (and Stands Long Enough for a Picture)

It's weird. Boys and girls really DO seem to be hardwired to like certain types of toys more than others. Being a very metrosexual (following the "sensitive guy" meaning, not the fastidiously hygienic sense) fella, I've rather gone out of my way to try and avoid gender stereotypes or force gender roles onto our kids, choosing, instead, to let them find the toys that they identify with on their own (and avoiding pink with Norah, even though people keep buying the light red crap for her to wear!). To give them a fair shake, we've supplied both with ample toys that are generally associated with one gender or another (obviously Norah is WELL stocked with "boy" toys since Gabe's had two more years of collecting than she has had).

Gabe had an abundance of stuffed animals and a few "baby" dolls as well as TONS of play food and other cooking paraphernalia (by the way, what's up with that word? What's that "r" doing in the third syllable? I think someone just misspelled it in a dictionary and it stuck). He's played with the food off and on, and he has his few favorite stuffed animals that he sleeps with and occasionally snuggles with on the couch when he's watching a movie, but there's no denying that cars and trains and other things that "go" are by far his favorite toys--and he didn't have but one or two cars until his first birthday. There is no denying that he naturally gravitates towards the boy toys--especially considering he's already holding up his fingers and making laser gun noises, despite the fact that, to my knowledge, he's never seen anything with a laser of any sort in it yet.

And now Norah, despite having SO many cars and trucks and trains and what-not to play with easily within her grasp, seems to be gravitating towards the "girl" toys. She hasn't shown much interest in the general population of stuffed animals, yet, but she does seem to have a special inkling towards any of the baby dolls that we've got. She's even gotten to the point where she tries to carry them around with her from room to room.

Thus the name of this post.

Since she can't walk, she only has three ways to move an object along with her. She can throw it in front of her, scoot it along in front of her (or, sometimes, let it snag under her belly and drag it under her), or carry it in her mouth. The babies she usually carries in her mouth, like a very slow moving mama cat.

Mmmm. Baby hand.

She was carrying this baby by the hand, too, but dropped it while I ran to get the camera and picked it back up by its tag instead. Still, that tag is PART of a baby doll, so I imagine having it chomped on would hurt just as much as having a hand or foot bitten.

And then I also managed to get a picture of her standing up in front of the TV cabinet. She's actually progressing VERY rapidly--surprisingly rapidly, really. It hasn't even been a week since she pulled herself up for the first time and already she's starting to pull herself up on all sorts of furniture, she's taken a few steps in either direction to move towards something, and early today she climbed a stair. While we were vacuuming the lower level, we foolishly let her roam around for a bit and she found the un-gated stairway. Up to this point, when she's found it, she's spent most of her time trying to pinch her fingers in the gate, but this time she decided to climb. She made it up the first step when we saw her.

Gonna have to keep a close eye on this one. She's trouble.


And speaking of trouble, get a load of this:

He's even wearing Uncle James' old helmet. How appropriate!

Nap Motivator

So, today I stumbled upon what appears to be a good motivation for Gabe to take a nap. Sadly, it's not one that I can use very often, but I'll take what I can get.

There is a car show of some sort in Newton today. This isn't surprising. The good people of this city will use pretty much any excuse to get their classic cars out to parade around town. Despite their frequency, however, we've not taken Gabe to a car show yet. Today that will probably change (I say "probably" because it is entirely up to Libby, since she's the one who thought it would be a fun idea--and now that I've promised it to Gabe, it will be her that dashes his dream, not me, which is a nice change as I'm usually the one who has to say "no" to whatever whim he fancies). As Gabe was finishing up his lunch a little while ago, I said, "And if you take a good nap, Momma is going to take you somewhere for a treat this afternoon."

"A treat?" he asked, his eyes lighting up. "For me?"

"Yep. A special treat."

"Is it candy?"

"No. She's taking you some place special."

"Is it a toy?"

"Nope. It's a surprise."

"Surprise? What's that?" He likes to ask that question even though he knows the answer, so I simply bypassed a real explanation since the concept of "surprise" is a bit on the nebulous side.

"It's some place special, but you won't know where it is until you get there."

"Is it candy?" Here we went into a rather lengthy back and forth while he made multiple guesses. I'll skip my responses, but I'll share his questions because some of them were pretty funny.

"Is it a toy? Is it pie? Is it ice cream? Is it candy? Is it a toy? Is it a robot? Is it a toilet? Is it candy?" I'm not sure how the robot and toilet work into his concept of "treat." Who knows how his brain works. It certainly is candy-centric, though, there's no denying that.

This guessing game was one of the funnier things we've done lately and I would have encouraged him to keep guessing for a few more minutes, but eventually ALL of his guesses were either "toy" or "candy," so we moved on.

"It's a surprise, but it won't happen until AFTER your nap, when Momma gets home."

"Oh," he said. And I went into the kitchen to rinse his lunch dish.

When I returned, he was looking for his blanket. "I need to take a nap now," he informed me. And so, at HIS prompting, we got his things around and tucked him in for a nap, thirty minutes earlier than normal. Now I just have to see if he'll take an actual nap or do one of his "quiet times" where he lies in bed for about thirty minutes then starts calling me up with declarations of "I sleeped!" I tried to emphasize that the condition of the treat shortly following the nap was that the nap needed to be a REAL nap, but I'm pretty sure all he was thinking about was candy and toys, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out.

And I'm going to have to start coming up with suitable bribes to get him to volunteer for naps more often, I think.