Everything I Need to Know about Transporting Babies I've Learned from My One Year Old

Since she began to crawl, Norah has been very industrious about how she moves the things she wants to play with from one place to the next. Gabe wasn't really concerned with such triviality. He moved about at a goodly clip and was more interested in finding what lay ahead at wherever his next stop happened to be. Norah, on the other hand, likes to take things with her.

As I've illustrated before, her favorite method of transport has been her mouth. She's stick something in her mouth, crawl to wherever she wants to go, then pull the item out of her mouth. She does this with most things--baby dolls, her bottle, small farm animals, she tried it with our cat Typhoon once (with not-very-good results). If she has more items than she can carry in her mouth that she wants moved, she adopts a scoot and throw methodology that works pretty well--she scoots forward a foot or so, throws the items she wants to keep track of in front of her, then scoots forward until she reaches them. Usually she'll also have something in her mouth while she's doing this. As I said, she's very industrious.

Now we've added a new wrinkle into the mix. She is VERY close to walking (since Friday, she's been working on standing unsupported--and she's quite proud when she does it, smiling big and crowing a bit for whatever audience she has), so we brought out the little walk-along car/scooter/whatever thingy that we got for Gabe. Gabe hardly used it, preferring, instead, to toddle headlong into whatever was in his way, unsupported and uncaring of the consequences. Norah has been considerably more thoughtful in her approach to walking, so she's made some use of the assistance the scooter offers.

Now, however, she has a NEW way to move things from one place to the next.

Queue video:

Obviously, we've got a little ground to cover before she's ready to do any babysitting.

Building Logic

For the past few months, Gabe has been working on his ability to put two and two together, figuratively speaking, anyway. He's beginning to comprehend cause and effect relationships--if something doesn't work, there's usually a reason for it, and identification can lead to a solution. The fact that he is making these progressions isn't particularly interesting. Actually, it's a bit of a problem as he's actively remembering promises or falsehoods that I make and using them against me--which means I'll have to start watching what I say more.

No, this is noteworthy because, like everything else he does, Gabe does logic amusingly. Twice today he used his deductive reasoning to my amusement. Both, actually, happened within about twenty minutes of each other. He was on a bit of a roll.

The first happened while he was in the bathroom. He'd run up to Libby and said, "I need to poop!" with such urgency that we practically burned a trail in the carpet getting him to the bathroom. Then, he sat on the toilet for five minutes and declared that he didn't need to poop. Ugh. So Libby decided that Gabe could keep his pants and underwear off until he needed to poop again (the thought being that he wouldn't do it if it was going to go on the floor instead of in his underwear--a bet that I would never put more than pocket change on). Gabe refused. He doesn't much care for being naked--or even just in a diaper or underwear. He likes to be in his clothes. But Libby stuck to her guns and told him to go play. He ran into the living room. Then, as soon as Libby cleared the room, he walked back into my office and said he needed to wash his hands (something he does something like 50 times a day, the kid might be OCD) so he went back in the bathroom. About a minute later, he called for help.

I went in and he was standing with his underwear tightly bound to his lower calf muscles. He had tried to put both of his legs in the same hole and couldn't pull them up any further.

"Here, let me help. We need to take them off and start over," I said.

"No. I do it," he protested. "I just need a little exercise."

This might be one of those "had to be there," things, but it struck me as very humorous, though I'm not sure why. I don't know whether he meant it in a "god I'm so fat I can't fit in my underwear" kind of needing exercise or if he needed to be stronger to get it up. Either way, it made me laugh.

The second one came shortly after in the living room, and it was actually pretty sound logic, though it was based solely on faulty information provided by Libby.

I asked him to open up the door on our entertainment center a crack to let the heat of the X-Box out (we have so little room in this cabinet that we can only fit the DVR and the X-Box, so we have to use the X-Box as a DVD player, too, and he wanted to watch Fireman Sam, which we only have on DVD--but if I don't want the red ring of death on the machine, I have to get it some air, too), and he pinched his finger in the process. He started to cry and Libby offered him a drink of her Diet Coke, asking, "Will a drink of Diet Coke make your finger feel better?"

He perked up and took a drink, which was a mistake. Give him a taste of a new drink and he'll demand the entire thing, which he did. Finally, Libby dragged the can away and put it on the table. A minute or so passed and he went for the can: "I'm going to have some Diet Coke," he declared, and he went for the can.

"Nuh uh!" we both answered in unison. "Diet Coke is for grown ups. It gives little kids upset stomachs." True? Dunno. Probably not. But he doesn't know that, yet.

He held up the finger that he pinched in the door and said, "I need Diet Coke. It makes my finger feel better." Now, we shouldn't have been able to argue with that logic, since Libby had just suggested that Diet Coke would, in fact, make his finger feel better. Nonetheless, I asked, "HOW will it make your finger feel better." He thought for a bit but all he could do in his defense was hold his finger up some more for us to see that it still hurt.

Hmm. I don't know. Neither of those stories has the punch it seemed to earlier. Either neither event was very funny originally or my narrative is off tonight. I'll put the blame on myself. Since both of us laughed at both stories when they happened, I have to believe they were funny. The fault is mine.

Oh well.

How about a video of Norah playing peek-a-boo? She's sort of figured out how to do it on her own.

Feeding the Less Fortunate

Times are tough. There's no way around it. Jobless rates are at a level unseen in decades, homes were lost due to mortgage schemes and income loss, and 3/4 of the Golden Girls are dead (though, now that I think about it, the fact that they mostly survived for another two decades after the end of the show's run, considering the concept of the show, is a pretty remarkable thing). And even here, we've taken a few hits--the tough times are hitting close to home.

Last Friday, Stuffie Time Theater began anew! I'm not entirely sure what kind of time or interest I'm going to have in creating stories for the kids to briefly act out, but considering how little else I have going on to pass the time, there's a pretty good chance that this will be the first in a resurgence of storytelling.

It will take a little doing. Norah is not the least bit cooperative, and Gabe is a little TOO cooperative. Not to mention the fact that I really don't remember any of my previous storylines anymore. I remember something with fish sandwiches, time travel, and the Russian mafia. And Karl Weathers. Actually, I'm going to have to do some research to even remember the names of all of his toys--lord knows he doesn't know who most of them are. AND we've had at least a dozen stuffed animals added into the mix that will need some establishing.

Anyway, the story that we began Friday went something like this:

Soupie the super dinosaur and Amy Horsie are a couple. Yes, yes, I know. Dinosaurs and horses should NOT cross-breed. That would be a nightmare. But there you have it. The heart wants what the heart wants. These two stuffed animals are still two of Gabe's favorites (though, that list is fluid and he's got about a dozen of them that he takes to bed with him, any of which might end up being his favorite on any given day), and Amy doesn't really have any story yet, so it just made sense that they would hook up. Really, MORE of his toys are going to need to start hooking up if I'm going to keep the drama off life support. Sadly, that's just the way of storytelling. No matter how ridiculous most story romances are, if one isn't included, people aren't interested. People are weird like that.

So, Soupie and Amy shacked up (they DO share a bed every night, and have for some time--I shutter to think about the kind of stuffie orgies that take place in Gabe's bed while he sleeps) and bought a house. Probably from that same shady realtor I used in that subprime storyline (was that the screaming monkey? Can't remember). It is a well-known fact that superheroing pays terribly. Just ask Spiderman, who has to whore himself out by taking pictures of his own fights to sell as Peter Parker just to make ends meet.

And Amy, for her part, isn't able to contribute much financially either. See, Amy started her career out as a prancing show pony in a circus. Every night, acrobats and other sordid near-carnies road out on her back during the various processions into the arena. She hated the work, but it was steady and didn't require TOO much from her, allowing her to focus much of her downtime energy on supporting her man--mostly on an emotional level, though she did need considerable first aid skills, as well--at home. It was the way she was raised, unfortunately. Very provincial. She always secretly wanted more for herself, but saw her role as supportive wife as primary to her way of thinking.

Everything was working out, if not working out well, until that night when she was injured by a sad clown. It began with a terrible juggling accident. Culminating in a volley of little people being shot from the cannon into a stack of Chinese acrobats. Much carnage. It breaks the heart. During the chaos, Amy's leg was badly injured.

Now, we know what happens to horses with bum legs. But that's NORMAL horses with bum legs. This horse had a superhero husband at home and she could, presumably, talk and do other anthropomorphized things, so it's not like anyone was going to put her to sleep or something. Instead, she went on disability because she could no longer work.

Amy's terrible leg wound. Note that the band-aid really doesn't even adequately cover or keep the wound closed (actually, that band-aid has been on there for over a year now, so that says something about the sticking power of your average band-aid). Very sad. She's like the Fisher King with her gaping, open, never-healing leg wound. Probably that kind of storyline for her would have been more interesting, but it is what it is.

For a time, they were able to scrape by. Thanks to the mortgage they signed, they were only making partial interest payments in the beginning, which they could JUST afford, but those payments quickly ballooned out of their price range. The house--a nice little ranch style in the suburbs--was quickly foreclosed upon and they were left high and dry.

"Surely," you might argue, "Soupie would be able to make a living. He DOES have super powers that he could make use of during his day job, making him a possibly invaluable asset to some construction company or other. At the very least, the community should help foot his bills so they can continue to benefit from his crime fighting." You'd think that, wouldn't you? It makes sense.

So, anyway, there they were, completely destitute and wandering the streets, homeless. They briefly considered a life on the rails, but hoboing is such a non-starter these days thanks to observant rail authorities and impossible to access rail cars. Instead, they just started moving from homeless shelter to homeless shelter until they were taken in by Gabe, a benevolent man-child who swore to care for them in their time of need.

The only catch was that the couple would have to serve as his "babies." He would feed them--even going so far as to acquire their favorite foods--but only on the condition that he could strap them into seats and feed them like babies. Such a humiliation for a superhero and his disabled wife!

Soupie's favorite foods, in case you can't make them out, are a snowman and a little mouse cat toy. Yum!

Ah, good times.

In other news, our house nearly flooded over the weekend. Turns out there might be a good reason why our house is listed in the flood plain (though it hasn't ACTUALLY flooded in this house since the 60s, and that time a bridge collapsed--so I still feel as though we're throwing several hundred dollars a year away on insurance we'll never need). Between Wednesday and Sunday morning, we received about 9 inches of rain. For those of you not in the US, using your crazy measuring system, that's about 13 hectares, I think. Sunday morning, we watched as the little creek that runs along our yard (which usually doesn't "run" so much as "stagnate" unless it's raining) filled, then overfilled, then began to creep into our yard. Eventually, the water got within about twenty feet of our house.

What we woke up to. Normally, the creek isn't visible from our house as there is a slope that drops about eight feet down along the edge of our lawn.

About forty-five minutes later.

This is the creek across the street. Normally, there is no water in this part. Eventually, this whole portion of road was underwater, though we didn't get a picture of it.

Our backyard. The slope leading down to the creek just ahead is even steeper than the earlier picture.

Sand Creek, the big "river" that runs through town. This is the concrete fence that lines the walking path. The walking path is up a considerable hill from the river itself. These ducks were probably pleased that they could get out of the rushing water. It was moving, by my estimate, well over ten miles an hour.

Fortunately, the huge band of rain that was heading our direction missed us--it dispersed as it went around town, which was a little weird but definitely fortunate for us. Another big set of storms blew through that night, which also missed pretty much just us. I'm pretty sure it was Fate keeping an eye out for this house. If a house as poorly put together as this one can keep standing for well over 100 years, then SOMETHING must be looking out for it.

A Wonderful Day (and Potty Training Is Stupid Again)

So, today, Gabe did something fantastic that I hope is a sign of more good things to come. As Libby finished getting ready for work, she decided to go up and say goodbye to Gabe. He likes to see her when he wakes up in the morning. He's never had a full blown meltdown when he's woken late and she's been gone already--but, then, that's only happened a handful of times in the last year that I can remember.

Thus, to avoid the off chance that he might pitch a fit, she goes up and says goodbye to him if he wakes up when she opens his door (which he usually does--our stairs are impossible to sneak up and down, and Gabe has a long history of waking up whenever he hears us creaking up or down them).

This morning, she went up there and he was already awake. She went in and told him she was going to work and said goodbye. Then, as usual, she asked him if he was ready to come downstairs (he still calls us to escort him down about 75% of the time--we're not sure why as he's perfectly willing to get himself out of bed and come downstairs on his own the other 25% of the time). "No, I'm still sleepy," he said. "I'll stay in bed."

Hurray! For the first time ever, Gabe CHOSE to stay in bed a little longer! Of course, this will become a bigger issue as he starts school and refusing to get out of bed becomes a staple of life (though, I expect that is the case, to one degree or another, with pretty much every kid--and who can blame them, since school is what awaits them if they get out of bed), but for now it is a wonderful thing. Remember, this is a kid who's been getting up between 5:00 and 6:30 EVERY morning for the past three years. The prospects of him sleeping even an extra half an hour are very cheer-inducing, indeed.

And then there's the opposite end of the spectrum: potty training. I am, quite honestly, at a complete loss, and nearly at the end of my tether with the whole thing. Since my last post on the subject--where I claimed that it was starting to "just happen"--it stopped "just happening." He actually seems to be regressing--ASKING me to keep a diaper on so he doesn't have to worry about having an accident, and actively ignoring every bodily clue that suggests he might need to go to the bathroom still. And this was before he'd even figured out how to poop on the toilet. He's done it once. Every other time, it's an in-his-pants kind of thing.

Nothing works. We've tried every method of subtle manipulation and passive-aggressive parenting ever suggested in parenting books, on websites, or as suggested by people who've been there, and nothing works. He counters all of it with his own stubborn logic, abject laziness, and apparent disregard for the rules of hygiene and etiquette. We tell him that babies wear diapers, and he keeps claiming to be a big boy, and he says, "I'm a baby. I want a diaper." We say it's gross to sit in pee pants and poop and that it needs to go in the toilet, and he just blithely smiles and nods then usually follows it up with something like "I pee pee in diaper so no accidents."

Ugh! I'm about ready to say screw it and go back to diapers, switching over to adult diapers here in a few months when he's too big to fit the biggest size they make for children.

Our Kid Is Spoiled

There has been little doubt in my mind, over these past three years, that we are raising anything but a spoiled child. Pretty much anything he has ever wanted, he has gotten. Toys, "hip" clothes, name brand formula and organic foods, you name it and he has gotten it--much of it without him even asking. And if he DOES ask (especially if he asks Libby--I've gotten used to saying "no" because, otherwise, I'd be doing his bidding all day, and I've got important internets searching to do, so I can find things like this--might want to jump to a minute or so in, but this drummer is ROCKIN!), he gets it.

And this spoiling doesn't just revolve around material possessions. The kid gets to do all kinds of crap. All the time he's got stuff going on. You'd think he was a celebrity or something.

Take last weekend for instance. Libby took him to the Kids Zoobilee on Saturday. Zoobilee, for those of you not in the know, is a benefit the zoo holds to raise money for exhibits every year. The adult version is moderately posh (it used to be $100 a ticket about ten years ago, no idea what it runs now), with just about every major restaurant and bar in town supplying and endless supply of free food and booze while participants are entertained by, well, entertainers of varying types. The kids version follows the same idea, but with less booze (which makes it all the worse, I should think). And there are games and stuff (which also might be a good idea for the adults).

She met up with a friend from work and her two kids and they wandered around. Gabe didn't eat any dinner and, instead, filled up on junk food from the vendors. He also got to play some games and bring home a few bags full of swag--including a quite nice tool box from Home Depot that he got to help Libby put together Sunday evening.

An enclosed bouncy thing. Gabe refused to enter it. The kid is still terrified of confined spaces (and loud noises). I'm not sure why, but he is. He just watched the others play inside.

This picture wasn't posed to show the kids acting like monkeys. It was posed so they could show off the mud in the creases of their armpits. They'd spent several minutes prior splashing in mud in water puddles. Sadly, you can't really see the mud that well in the picture. A macro shot would have done a better job.

This was the apron that came along with her toolbox, I believe. Libby put it on him after he'd stripped down to his diaper (yes, he's wearing something under there). He's also stuffing his face with an "Airhead" candy. I don't think he'd eaten anything with less than a 50% sugar content for about three hours by this point.

Just to prove he was wearing something. And if I put this outfit on, Libby makes fun of me! Where's the justice?

Then, Sunday, we took the kids to the new spray park that opened up here in town. It's a nice little place with several water features that spray water that the kids can, well, get sprayed by. It looked cold to me, but the kids seemed to love it (actually, it WAS cold--Gabe's shoulders started to turn blue a few times before we pulled him out and made him warm up in a towel for a few minutes). We took a picnic and they played there for about two hours.

Norah, prissy little thing that she is, really wasn't that interested in getting in the water. But she did touch it daintily a few times.

She looks so put out, being forced to have fun. I know how she feels, though.

Gabe in his Old Man and the Sea hat, shooting the other kids that came with us. I think he has a bright future manning a machine gun nest. I assume that's why municipalities put guns in, to help identify the promising troops early on.

He sat there like this for about five minutes. It's very odd to me the things he will sit still for--apparently, freezing cold water is one of them. Of course, it might have been the hypothermia slowing him down by this point, too.

And, finally, Norah found her "me" spot this last week. Several dozen times a day, now, she retreats to this spot. Sometimes she drags one or more of her little baby dolls in with her, I guess to keep her company. Sometimes she just goes back there, sits up, and bangs her head on the wall until she cries. And did I mention she's started throwing mini-tantrums, too? When she gets pissed about something (usually when I take a crayon or something small Gabe has thrown on the floor that she hasn't had a chance to get stuck in her wind pipe yet away from her and refuse to give it back). She'll throw herself back onto the floor, without so much as a glance to what she's going to hit on her way back, and start rolling around and crying. I don't know what it is about my personality that encourages my kids to develop into drama-queens. If someone could tell me, I'd sure try to change that aspect (for awhile at least--until my kids are old enough to have their basic personality traits pretty much set, then it's back to the old me).

Anyway.

Norah's spot.

Self Deprecation Is Healthy, Right?

I'm afraid, that I already ruined the punchline of this post by making the picture taken of the incident my Facebook profile picture. I've received no end of ribbing for it, but I figured there would be no harm--and, in fact, only good could come of it--in giving the full details of the event for the annals of history to decide. Oh, and the kids did some stuff this weekend, too.

It all started about a month ago. Well, longer than that, really. For the past year or so, we've been having problems with the drainage from our kitchen sink and dishwasher.

Our plumbing is a nightmare. See, our house is at least 106 years old. We've done some research into the records, and the earliest mention of our house that we could find was of when it was moved to this spot, in 1902. How long the house existed before it was moved, we have no idea, but it's been standing on the spot it is now for over a century.

When it was moved, concepts like climate control and plumbing were completely foreign, so, not surprisingly, the original owners of the house weren't that concerned with the crawl space under the house. Presumably, they figured they only reason they'd ever need to get under the house was to remove errant wildlife or, perhaps, to hide from a tornado. So they only left something like three feet of clearance.

When they eventually added plumbing and central venting, they didn't bother to dig out the space under the house any further. So, in spots, there is about a foot of clearance under the duct work--and, in other spots, there is no clearance at all. In fact, we cannot access the entire front half of our house because there isn't enough room to get under the obstacles.

AND, when some previous owner decided to add some rooms on to the back of the house (the bathroom, and the entry room we use for the washer and dryer, and possibly the kitchen), they did something even stupider than leaving a three foot crawl space--the back filled OVER the plumbing they installed, leaving no clearance and zero access to much of our house's plumbing. As I said, nightmare.

Needless to say, the plumbing they installed was cast iron, because that was cheaper than copper. Obviously, these owners suspected they would be dead or gone by the time this plumbing wore out, so why worry about it?

And now it is wearing out. Quite rapidly, in fact. For the past year or so, as I said before, the drainage has been terrible. We've managed, but it hasn't been pleasant, until about a month ago when things started backing up regularly. Because we're cheap, I tried to deal with it on my own--with a plunger and some muscle. To my surprise, it actually seemed to work. All of a sudden, the sink and dishwasher were draining well again!

And then the stink came. Libby was the first to catch a whiff (because I have a pretty dead sense of smell for some reason), and she swore it was coming from under the house. We thought maybe some mice or a rat or snake or a hobo or something had gotten underneath and died. No such luck. We opened the crawl space to find about four inches of sitting water under there--sitting water filled with the various discardings one would expect to come from a kitchen sink.

Ugh. So we had a plumber out to fix it. He replaced a section of worn pipe with some PVC and recommended we get a drain company out to clear the line. So last week we did that, and found that we had ANOTHER leak in the line. Then the drain company said it was impossible to clean out the line because it's too old and practically destroyed. Now we're waiting on the plumber to come out and tell us how much it will cost to put in as much new line as they possible can.

Double ugh.

The problem is, with two kids who use dishes like they are going out of style (and one female adult occupant who never met a glass she'd use more than once), we have scads of dishes to do on a daily basis--and only two sinks, the kitchen and the bathroom. Our bathroom sink is tiny and very poorly designed for doing dishes. So, I decided to do the dishes in the bathtub.

And how, you might ask, does one go about doing the dishes in a bathtub? Not easily, it turns out. Obviously it would be easy enough to fill the tub to soak the dishes, but then you don't have any clean water to rinse them off (without making a new pile then figuring out a way to rinse them in the bathroom sink, which would doubtless leave the bathroom a wet mess from all the wettening, transferring, and rewettening).

So I turned on the shower. Perfect solution! New water sprays down on the dishes making it possible to clean them and rinse them at the same time! I turned on the shower and set to work while I knelt down outside the tub. Only to get sopping wet from the haphazard sprays of the shower head, which was apparently not designed with washing and rinsing dishes in mind, for some reason.

The dishes in the tub. Quite a load, actually. We were in need of a run through the dishwasher before the plumbing fell apart, and this was a full day after that. There were, actually, more dishes that I'd already run through the bathroom sink and a few others that hadn't made it into the tub yet.

Thus I came upon another solution--one that I felt was not only a mult-tasking ingenuity, but a perfectly acceptable answer to my problem: I would sit in the tub with the shower running (and the drain open, so no water was sitting) and do the dishes!

The ultimate class act.

Yes, I know, terrible. Everything about it reeks of the Appalachian backwaters. But what other option was there that worked as well? There was none. And, sadly, I just got off the phone with the plumber and he said it would likely be Wednesday before they could make it out to fix the drain. We're already in need of another load of dishes, so it looks like it will be back in the tub with me some time today! Hurray!

The Madness!

Try as I might, I just couldn't come up with a pithy, appropriate name for this post. It's going to cover an array of topics because our kids have been doing some weird/funny things the last few days. But those things include Norah finding a new place to hide, Gabe playing on his new slip and slide, and Gabe making a footlong hot dog dance. How could I possibly come up with a name that could allude to such a diverse range of weird topics? I couldn't, so you got a half-assed name instead. Oh well.

Anyway, yesterday, Norah kept insisting on crawling into her new hidey hole.


I'm not sure what the draw was. The first time she went under, she'd thrown a toy under there and went to retrieve it, but, after that, I made sure nothing went under there so she wouldn't crawl under and get stuck. But she kept bringing her own toys under with her. I pulled her out the next three times, figuring it would prevent her from bonking her head, at least, but she kept going under. Eventually, I just let her find her own way out, which she did after spending about five minutes hunkered up under there. Kids are weird.

Next, the slip and slide. As if Gabe needed something else to be obsessed with! It's pretty much non-stop "Slip and slide? Slip and slide?" all day now. But there you have it.

He hasn't quite mastered the concept yet, obviously. It's more of a Run and Splash right now than a Slip and Slide (Note: I'm making a conscious choice to say "and" instead of reducing it to the "whimsical" replacement "'n," on general principle). I like how he has to get a BIG running start, too, and then clean out all the grass that he's dirtied it up with.

And, finally, last night, Libby got him a footlong hot dog for dinner at Sonic. For some reason, Gabe will not eat a hot dog in a bun. He likes to eat the buns plain--and he will ask for them often--but he won't eat one that's holding a hot dog (or has held a hot dog, as if it's compromised the purity of the bun, which, considering hot dogs, it probably has). So he pulled the dog out and started to eat it.

At the very beginning (and you have to watch close, it doesn't last long), he's says he's dancing his hot dog to the music on the TV. Then the rest of the video becomes a contest between Libby and the TV for Gabe's attention.