Video Roundup

The last couple of days, I've been trying to make up for being remiss with the camera for the past month or so by trying to capture the kids doing cute things on video. Since both of my kids have Pavlovian responses to seeing the camera in action, though, I haven't had much success. All the same, here's what I've managed to get.

This was supposed to be a video of Norah doing her fake laugh. It's the cutest little forced laugh ever. Some day she'll make a good studio audience member for a CBS comedy. She's getting pretty good at the laugh, and she WAS doing it up to the point where I turned on the camera. The she started eating crackers. Still, even doing almost nothing, she's awfully cute.

A few minutes later, she was carrying on a conversation with herself--which she's getting pretty good at, though it seems to be some kind of Nel language that only she understands. But, once again, she stopped doing it as soon as I grabbed the camera. Then she grabbed the camera string and started dinking around with that. Probably not the BEST or most interesting video, but I don't have much more to offer, I'm afraid.

This would have been better if Norah hadn't immediately noticed me with the camera. She started cheesing it up for the camera instead of playing with Gabe like she had been. But this is a pretty good example of why it's often easier to entertain her while Gabe is around than when she's be herself.

And, finally, after the video of the two of them together, Gabe wanted to put on a show for the camera. He needs to work on his showmanship somewhat, as this video ended up being little more than him spazzing out for a minute.

An Average Day at Pre-School

It must be great to be a child. I can't even imagine how wonderful it would be to live in a world where everything is not only plausible, but actually happens--regardless of what all evidence to the contrary would suggest. Every day, Gabe creates some sort of strange event or story that he tells me that is SO out there that I can't even follow the basic storylines--and he tells them as if they are simple recountings of easily verified events. Of course, he can't really tell me a coherent story about easily verified events, so I suppose it's not surprise that fantasy and reality would so easily intertwine in his mind.

Just yesterday, Gabe got into BIG trouble. He pulled out this little rug he got for his birthday that has a series of roads printed on it so kids can drive cars all around. He wanted to unfold it in the dining room and play with it. So he dropped it on the floor, which is usually the extent of preparation that he's interested in putting forth. He went to gather a few cars while he sang out, "Daddy, come fix my rug for me!"

"You can do it yourself, hon. You know how." This, not surprisingly, is a pretty standard response to most of what he would prefer that I do for him these days. I tend to give it two or three times before admitting that my options are to keep repeating myself for the next half hour or do what he wants me to. This time, I guess I should have done it the first time he asked.

He turned back to his rug and Norah was standing on it. "No baby!" he said, and before I could even think enough to respond, he bent over, grabbed the rub, and yanked it out from under her. She spun and smacked head first into the hardwood floor.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth followed, from both of them, because Gabe got an earful.

After things had settled down, I sat Gabe down on my lap and tried to work through what, exactly, he had done that was wrong so that he could, hopefully, learn from the experience (so far, these little teaching moments haven't been paying off much, but I figure they have to eventually, just because he'll want me to quit bothering him all the time).

"Why did you get in trouble?" I asked.

Between sobs he said, "Norah was standing on my rug." So far, so good.

"And then what happened?" I encouraged.

"It's not Norah's rug. It's MY rug."

"Right. But you know that everything you play with that she can reach is BOTH of yours. That's why you play with your toys on the table or upstairs if you don't want her to mess with it. But what did you do to make Norah cry?"

He looked at my like I was speaking Esperanto. I repeated the question. Eventually, he said, "Norah was standing on my rug," again, and that was all I was able to get out of him. I reminded him that he had pulled the rug out from under her, but he insisted that all he remembered was that Norah was on his rug. In other words, it was her fault. The kid's got a bright future in politics.

But that's pretty typical. He can remember the most obscure things from months ago (last night, while we were in the car, he quoted a line from Monsters Inc., a movie we haven't seen in at least two months, completely out of the blue--we had no idea where it was from until he said it was something Mike said, then we put the pieces together), but he often can't remember what he was doing two minutes earlier.

So today, I picked him up from pre-school and asked him what he did today. I talked to his teachers as I was waiting for Gabe to come over from the playground equipment. They said he was cracking them up this morning because, for some reason, he kept sticking everything up his nose. Anything that would fit, went up his nose. I'm glad they were cracked up by it instead of being disgusted. Both of our kids, probably because the whole family has been fighting a cold for the past week, have been spending an inordinate amount of time plumbing the depths of their nostrils. I try to discourage it, of course, but what can you do?

Anyway, so we were back in the car and I asked him what he did today. "I road a dinosaur with a crook," he informed me.

"You road a dinosaur with a crook?" I asked, assuming I had misunderstood him, which I often do.

"No," he said like I was a fool. "I road a crook with a dinosaur."

"Er, what? You road a crook? What do you mean, 'crook'?"

"Crook!" he insisted, but he offered no explanation.

"Do you know what a crook is?"

"Crook!" And that was all he was saying on the subject. The rest of the way home I probed for further details, but was able to gain little further information. He did say SOMETHING that I think was in explanation, but I couldn't make out half of it. I'm pretty sure I heard the words "robot," "fire truck," and "helicopter," but I have no idea how any of it linked together.

Man, it must be fun to be a kid and live in a world where all of that kind of stuff makes some kind of sense.

Oh, and I couldn't get him to admit anything about sticking stuff up his nose, either. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even remember doing it.

Gabe Has a Conversation with His Junk

For awhile now, Gabe has been doing "voices" whenever he's pretending to do stuff. Usually, his "voices" are more a "voice" and that voice is a slightly higher pitched version of his own (nobody will likely confuse him for Michale Winslow from the Police Academy movies--but I can't really folly him for that since the extent of my voice impersonations are limited to Pat and Pat sounding stupid). This voice covers pretty much everyone who isn't Gabe.

And last night, it covered his penis while he was in the bath.

He was sitting in there and I came in to wash his hair. He's gotten pretty good at washing everything that he can see on his body, but if he can't see the dirt, then it doesn't exist still, so we have to wash his face and hair. I filled up a cup and got his hair wet a few times (because he's got such a mop of hair) then lathered him up. While I was doing that, I heard him talking in his high pitched voice, but wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. Until the last two cups of water that I poured, then I heard what he was saying.

As Gabe: "You need an umbrella or you're going to get wet."
As Penis: "I need an umbrella or I'm going to get wet."

Then he made a "shooosh, shoosh" sound--like a piece of large machinery or something sliding into place--and he used his hands to shield his junk from the water that was running down from the top of his head.

Because I'm a helpful parent, I pointed out, "But he's still going to get wet because you're sitting in a tub full of water."

Gabe paused as if to consider this then said in his "voice," "I need an umbrella or I'm going to get wet," effectively ignoring my reason and logic and continuing with his dialogue.

"Now you're all dry," he concluded in his own voice.

And I left him to his important work for a few minutes.

One Dad, Not Enough Time

I've reached a bit of an impasse over the past couple weeks, and I feel as though I should give everyone warning. I have begun, in earnest, to compile and edit many of my earlier postings and supplement them with new stuff to tie it all together in the hopes of creating an end product that I can start to receive rejections on from agents/publishers. The problem is, I still only have the same very limited time during the day to work on it that I previously dedicated to working on submissions for this site.

That isn't to say that I plan to take a hiatus or anything from posting on here--but there is a very good chance, indeed, that I won't be able to keep up with the multiple-posts-a-week rate that I've been able to mostly maintain for the last year and a half. Probably, this isn't a BAD thing, as many of my postings have been little more than filler and probably not worth your time and eye strain. Any time the kids do something noteworthy or entertaining, I'll figure out a way to share it.

Also, as I get this thing put together (already up to almost 40,000 first draft words! Though I'm not sure what my goal is yet, probably in the 75K-80K range), I will also be looking for readers/editors. Although I doubt anyone has noticed, I have a tendency to get a bit wordy at times. And my goal is to come up with a clean, concise, easy-to-read (and hopefully easier to market) finished project than I'm likely to create on my own.

Libby is an ace at destroying my work, but she really has less time than I do to work on this sort of thing, so, while I'm counting on her to EVENTUALLY read it, I'm sort of figuring that she'll do so at about the same rate that she's read the other three books I've written (I finished the first almost two years ago--and she's managed to edit six pages of it, so her current rate of return is about one page every four months. Not a very realistic reading rate if I want to get this sent out before we retire).

If you have strong eyes and like to judge people based on their writing style, let me know and I will happily send you sections as I get them completed.

Just When I Think Potty Training Isn't Stupid Anymore, It Still Is

For the most part, we've considered Gabe's potty training to now fall into the Win category. Over the past two months he's had a couple accidents in his bed while sleeping, and there have been some minor spills and leaks on clothes, carpet, floors, and pieces of furniture, but he's mostly mastered it. He consistently tells us whenever he needs to go, and we've really not had many problems.

But, because it is such a treacherous walk through his mess of a room and down our somewhat harrowing flight of hardwood stairs to get to the bathroom for him in the middle of the night, should he wake up needing to pee (and because, when he's napping, if he has to go and comes downstairs to do it, there's zero chance of getting him back to bed), we put his little plastic training potty up in his room. Time and again, we've stressed that this is for "emergency" use only and not something for his day-to-day tinkling. This is a nice thought, but one that he's not been particularly interested in abiding by. Especially now that he's spending a few hours of every day playing upstairs on his own where Norah can't mess with him. If he needs to go, and he has the choice between coming all the way downstairs or just dropping trow in his room, he almost always chooses the upstairs option.

Which sucks, because it requires me to CAREFULLY tote the little container down the stairs without splashing it all over myself and my environment, but is still better than the alternative--and, considering him, the ONLY other alternative to going in that potty would be to simply go on the floor in some corner of his room.

Probably the worst part is that his room always smells like pee now. He doesn't seem to care, but it bugs the hell out of me. But, if I remember what boys tend to smell like, especially once they get into high school, there are almost certainly worse things that this room can and will smell like in days to come. So we'll just deal with it for now and hope that he moves beyond the need for the potty in the not-too-distant future.

Today, though, we ventured into new territory.

A little while ago, Gabe came down the stairs to ask for a drink. He wasn't wearing any pants or underwear. I sighed inwardly because I knew this meant he had peed in his potty--which I had just emptied yesterday. For some reason, even though he CAN pull up his pants after he goes, he doesn't have much interest in actually doing so, preferring, instead, to wander around the house half naked until we grab his clothes and help him get dressed again.

"Go back upstairs and put your pants on," I said. "Or your underwear. One or the other."

"Ooooh," he moaned in disappointment. I knew there was about a 90% chance that he wouldn't even try to put them on, but I figure if I keep pestering him about it, eventually he'll have to figure out how to get himself dressed. He trudged back up the stairs and I figured I would follow him in a few minutes to see how he was doing.

A short time passed during which I changed Norah's poopy pants and worked on some laundry (Norah had a pretty good bladder explosion last night and her sheets stank to high heaven, so I had to run everything from her bed). I hadn't forgotten about Gabe's pantslessness yet, but I had already assigned it to the back of my mind.

Then, as I was carrying the kids' clothes into the living room to sort and fold, Gabe came down the stairs and shouted, "I need to wash my hands!"

This isn't an unusual request in and of itself. Gabe likes to wash his hands, and he often eats his food or plays with his play-doh, paints, or markers in just such a way that allows him to spend a few minutes in front of the faucet "washing his hands." But the request almost never comes from upstairs because there isn't much up there that he can make a mess of himself with.

He came down to the foot of the stairs and repeated, "I need to wash my hands." He held up his right hand for me to inspect.

"Oooooooh god," I said to myself. I took a deep breath. "Turn around," I said slowly.

He did so. There, smeared up the small of his back, all over both of his legs, and all of his butt was a mess of poop. That was the mess on his hand, too.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I pooped in my potty," he informed, pointing upstairs in case I had any doubt where it was located.

"Oh, Gabe," I said, trying not to sound TOO upset. "No pooping in that potty upstairs."

"It's just for emergencies," he explained, knowing that was what was coming next.

"And pooping isn't an emergency. You don't have anything to wipe with up there."

He showed me his hand.

"You don't have any TOILET PAPER up there to wipe with," I amended. "You HAVE to come downstairs if you need to poop."

So we went to the bathroom. I grabbed the wet wipes--because toilet paper wasn't going to be enough for this job--and cleaned him up. He washed his hands, and I followed him back upstairs so he could show me what happened and I could assess the situation. Obviously, I brought the wet wipes up with me, figuring there would be poopy little finger prints all over everything.

But there weren't. Not over EVERYTHING, anyway. A few on the shelf by his toilet, and a couple more on the door which I'm guessing he'd closed for privacy while he did his business then opened back up again when he came down to wash his hands. The potty itself, however, was a disaster. Poop was everywhere. What kind of scatological acrobatics he'd performed after his dump, I can only imagine in my most terrible dreams. But he had even managed to get it on the bottom AND the top of the lid. And all around the seat. And on the side of the potty.

Moreover, he had attempted to cover it all up by pulling the window curtain, which is usually stuck behind the shelf and shielded from his peeing by the toilet lid and other obstacles we've put in its way, over the entire mess. Presumably, he thought he could cover it up with the curtain and it would all go away. If only.

Fortunately, he somehow managed to NOT get any on the curtain, which is good because I didn't have curtain laundering on my list of things to do today. Then again, I also didn't have "soak a training potty in a foot of hot water in the bath tub so that I can remove piles and smears of grimy pooh" on my list of things to do today either. But, being the nature of poop, it always seems to find a way to work itself into my schedule.

And I just have to keep looking on the bright side. At least he didn't decide to wipe with his underwear then hide it somewhere in his room. I'm guessing he'll figure out how to do that in the next few months, though, and then this whole process moves into an even darker and stinkier realm. Not even a high school boy would do something like that (I keep telling myself, hoping it's true).

In Which I Teach Norah a "Useful" Skill

There isn't much of anything to report along with this video. It should be pretty self explanatory.

Norah's new skill. I figured it went along well with the dancing that she's always doing. How old does she have to be before I start carting her to auditions for "Cats" do you think? At the very least, she appears to have the Diva thing covered.

Tantrums

For some weeks now, Norah has been fine tuning her tantrum mechanisms. Tantrums aren't something we've had a great deal of experience with so far. Despite the fact that he's starting to get a little bit of a temper, Gabe has really never descended into the realm of tantrum yet. He doesn't kick and scream or throw things when he gets angry or upset. Probably that is a blessing.

But Norah seems hell-bent on evening out the score by throwing double the number of tantrums.

Typically, whenever we do something or the world presents her with something that she doesn't like, her answer is to collapse to the ground, throw her head back, and start crying. Usually, she starts crying because she never thinks to look where she's throwing herself down and she either sat down, with a pronounced exclamation point of a thud, onto a toy, or she's tossed her head down onto the hardwood floor (or another toy, a book, a piece of furniture, or the wall--really, anything is an option and she's explored most of them several times). But I'm pretty sure she'd cry even if she didn't have any actual reason to. It seems to be her go-to form of communication.

Typical woman, really.

Ha, ha! Generalizations are fun. Especially when they're true.

Anyway, she usually stops once I remove myself from the room. As Libby's folks are fond of saying, "Sometimes you just have to take your sails out of their wind." I love that saying, and I do it frequently. I'm not what you'd call very tolerant of tantrums. I value my own emotional control and get, well, uncomfortable and frustrated when presented by such blatant attempts at manipulation through emotional outbursts. Or I just sit there and laugh at them--which only tends to make them angrier, another reason it's best for me to leave.

Until now, though, I've not really been able to get one recorded. I never have the camera close to catch the collapse and subsequent head bonk--and that, really, is the best part--but usually, by the time I get the camera, she's moved on from tantruming to either flat out crying or she's given up and gotten over herself--neither of which makes very good video.

Today, though, I was able to catch some of her tantrum. Both she and Gabe were turds this afternoon for their naps. Gabe, unfortunately, has discovered that he can play up in his room, and if he stays quiet enough, I can't hear him messing around on the monitor. So he's taken to playing in his bed and not napping. This is fine, really. Ideal, actually, if it's done properly. All I REALLY want is a couple hours every day where I can eat lunch without being pestered, watch a show without having to turn the closed captioning on so I can follow the dialogue, or catch up on the blog or emails. If he can give me that that time without sleeping, I'm OK with that, especially since it might lead to him sleeping in past 6:00 in the morning.

But he doesn't usually JUST play quietly. He hasn't quite mastered it yet. He will do it for fifteen or twenty minutes, then he'll take to doing something noisy, which runs the risk of waking Norah. Today, he did just that.

So, I had two awake kids. Since Norah was already awake, she decided to have a poop, which only made her crankier, so I had to go upstairs and sort things out. I brought her down, changed her diaper and let her reset for a half hour (and told Gabe to stop screwing around because he woke up Norah and go to sleep--he eventually did). After that, I brought her up, she fussed for another twenty minutes, but went to sleep. Only to wake up again thirty minutes later crying.

Now, I have no explanation for why she still does this, but she still does as often as not. She responds to waking up like a newborn, shrieking and crying as soon as she opens her eyes. If Gabe is already awake, I usually try to let her fuss for a little while in the hopes that she'll eventually sort her own problems out (usually she doesn't), but if he's sleeping, I try to get up there as quickly as possible so I don't have two awake kids on my hands.

When I got in there, she stopped crying, and I brought her downstairs. Once downstairs, I fetched her a juice cup and handed it to her. She looked at the juice cup, back up at me, then started bawling. Wailing and bawling and, within about five seconds, falling backwards and flailing about randomly. She started kicking her feet at any toy or stuffed friend that was close. She picked a few toys up and half threw them away from her. And then she started flopping.

That's what I got on the video. Crying and flopping.

Unfortunately, stupid blogger won't let me upload it (which I fail to understand since Google is connected to youtube, and I'm not having ANY problems uploading it to youtube--stupid Google, sort out your damn blog site!), so here's a link to the video on youtube.

Shortly after I finished with the video, I left the room and, surprise surprise, she stopped crying.

Kids.