Let me know what you think of the blog's new look. Libby messed around with it last night. I tend to be of the "new things scare me" ilk, so I wasn't going to mess with the default arrangement I had been using for the past eighteen months or so, but she wanted to play with it, so I let her.
And here's a video of Gabe doing some potentially dangerous flying.
Wait. First, while I'm on the subject of danger, he decided to do his "sliding down the pole" act (where he slides down the back of the chair to the floor) on the couch this evening as Norah was hiding behind the chair and refused to move no matter how many times shouted "Move baby! That's MY pole!" I went to start his bath (and check email) and came back a few minutes later when the bath was done. He informed me that he discovered something new. As he described it, I THINK he was sitting on the top of the couch then fell backwards onto the pile of pillows and blankets we store back there because we have no place else convenient to keep them. He desperately wanted to do it again for me, but, without seeing it, I pointed out to him the several ways it could, and probably would, end in tears. It's possible that he was actually doing something else, but I didn't want to take the chance.
I carefully explained to him the consequences of hurting himself badly: lots of pain, hospital, days or weeks stuck in bed, bad times all around. "Will fire engine come get me?" he asked excitedly. I really didn't like where this was going. I'm pretty sure he would do himself serious bodily harm if it meant he could ride in a fire truck. He is mighty obsessed with them.
"Probably not," I said. Then, to unsweeten the pot, I added, "You'd probably have to ride in a very boring car." That was as good as I could do. ANY means of transportation probably would have seemed exciting. I could have said, "You'll have to ride in a bumpy, uncomfortable, rusty old truck," and his eyes would have lit up as he said, "Truck!" in excitement.
So I shifted tack. "You would have to stay in bed, without moving, for many days! You couldn't get up at all. You couldn't play. You couldn't do ANYTHING but lie in bed! You wouldn't like that very much, would you?"
He had to agree that he wouldn't. So I think I dodged a bullet there. He reluctantly agreed that he wouldn't do anything but "slide down the pole" from the back of the couch. Can't imagine that will last very long, though.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Finny 'n Yon!
Saturday, Libby did something that I would not have endorsed for at least another year--she took Gabe to a movie. Over the past six months or so, Gabe's attention span has increased dramatically. He is very nearly capable of sitting in front of a movie from start to finish--very nearly. The thing is, when he's NOT sitting in front of it, he's expending some rather impressive amounts of energy with quick bursts of extreme activity--as if his internal pressure valve is nearing capacity and he has to blow off a little steam or explode in a frightening display of hyperactivity. He generally has one to three of these pressure releases during a ninety minute movie.
So, considering my disinterest in self-inflicted pain and social discomfort, I had imposed a timeline of roughly six to twelve more months before taking him to a movie, possibly even waiting until he was a teenager, just to be safe. After all, I have almost no memories of seeing movies in the theater until the early to mid-80s, putting me between eight and ten years old. Then I remember seeing a glut of movies in the theater--Return of the Jedi, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and several others. Granted, we only had two movie theaters within a half hour of us, and, at the time, Hollywood hadn't decided to capitalize yet on the younger audiences, so it wasn't unusual for there to only be one kids' movie a year released, and that was always a Disney movie, possibly just a re-release of something that had originally hit theaters in the 50s or earlier. But that's neither here nor there. I turned out just fine, right? Right?
Anyway, Libby decided that she wanted to brave the theater, so she took Gabe to a morning showing of Toy Story 3. Since the morning showings at theaters are always designated with small children in mind, the theater was understandably devoid of life. She said there weren't more than a dozen other families there. So that was a blessing, at least. Had the theater been packed, who knows how Gabe would have done. As it was, he was able to stretch out with his blankie and binky and watch the movie while periodically getting up and stretching without causing too much of an uproar with the other patrons.
All things considered, he did VERY well. He made it through the movie without too much trouble, only needing to leave shortly before it was over to go to the bathroom. We'd installed a diaper as a precaution before they left for the theater, but he'd managed to hold it through almost the entire movie before needing to visit the bathroom (something my notoriously small bladder and I almost never do). Pretty good considering he often can't make it through the movies he watches upstairs without coming down, most of the way through the movie, to inform me that he's had an accident. So, I guess this means that Gabe is theater-ready now. Hurray . . . .
On to the meat of the story. The Toy Story series hasn't been among Gabe's favorites to watch. He likes the toys and other assorted junk that we've picked up for him based on the movies, but the films themselves he's not been particularly taken by, probably because the story is heavy on story and a bit short on frantic activity (though, oddly, his favorite movie right now is WALL-E, which I NEVER would have guessed he would like considering how little goes on through much of that movie, and he's yet to make it through Finding Nemo despite the fact that it's one of the more actiony Pixar movies, so I guess there's no predicting what he'll like. Maybe he just doesn't like fish. Can't really blame him there. They do stink). After seeing the third movie, though, he's been all about Toy Story the past couple of days.
Then, last night, to cap off the weekend, Libby ran to Walgreens and picked up a Buzz Lightyear doll. It's about eighteen inches tall, so it's a pretty good sized one. She ran to the store after Gabe went to bed last night and bought it. Then she went up to his room. He wasn't quite asleep yet, so he looked up. She had the doll behind her back.
"Someone wants to snuggle with you," she informed.
"Momma lay down with me?" he asked excitedly. He loves to snuggle with Momma in his bed (not so much Daddy, since I can't lie still long enough for Gabe to get comfortable, so we both just end up getting antsy and giving up on the snuggle time).
"No," and she presented Buzz.
He was very excited. He introduced Buzz to his bed and tucked him in carefully so they could go to sleep. This morning, pretty much everything he's done has included Buzz. He showed Buzz how to play with Play Doh. He showed Buzz his trains and cars upstairs. And, for a good chunk of the morning, he watched Toy Story with Buzz on the couch. He hasn't yet made Buzz watch him go to the bathroom, which he's done with most of his other prized toys, so I guess the initiation isn't yet complete.
Gabe and Buzz. Also note that Gabe has decided to switch back to his OLD binkies (the rule is he has to be snuggling on the couch or in bed to use it, and he's figured out the loophole that PART of him is all that needs to be on the couch for it to count). I hoped that running out of the binkies he's used for the past year or so would discourage him enough to give up using them. Instead, he happily switched back to his old ones. Ugh.
Well, mostly watched. He was pretty quiet up there for, I don't know, the first hour of the show or so. Then, out of nowhere, I heard this cringe-inducing THUD, coming from our room. I went up the stairs and looked into our room. The light was on and Gabe was in there (he knows he's not really supposed to go in there, but he does it all the same).
"What are you doing in our room?" I asked. "You know you're not supposed to play in there."
"I'm just looking at my pool," he said. He went to the window and looked outside on the swimming pool in the back yard. Pretty good story, I thought. Perfectly plausible, except for the loud noise I heard before.
I surveyed the room, and nothing looked broken. That was a good sign. Whatever he'd done had probably just involved his own body, and, since he wasn't crying, I had to assume that it wasn't broken either.
"But what about the loud bang I heard a minute ago?" I pressed.
"I'm just flying," he said off-handedly, as if I was a dullard for not just assuming something so mundane might be happening on my second floor.
Fortunately, he didn't repeat the stunt for my viewing, as I would have had to stop him for fear of broken bones, but I have to figure that he jumped off our bed onto the floor. He did, however, illustrate another kind of imitated flight, I guess to prove that it was possible. He pulled himself onto the footboard and balanced himself, legs outstretched, on his stomach.
"Finny 'n yon!" he shouted. He's been shouting this a lot the past few days. Sometimes it's closer to "Infinity and Beyond" than others, but if he's excited, the phrase gets the abbreviated version. This time it actually might have been closer to "Fin 'n yon!" Syllables are for the uninvolved, I guess.
He stayed there long enough to shout it a couple more times, then he lowered himself back to the floor, repeated the phrase a few more times, then got distracted with the sproingy door stop thing that we have in our room, which has provided hours of enjoyment over the years. He sat on the floor and sproinged it a half dozen times.
"I'll leave you to it, then," I said.
"Finny 'n yon," he said under his breath in response and he sproinged the door stop again.
After that, he fed Buzz some cheese and crackers, "flew" him down the stairs, made him a few play doh robots, then settled in to watch a little TV on the couch while I made lunch. I have to say that I'm a little sad that Gabe's glommed on to such a commercial toy, giving up on his old, more imagination driven stuffed animals, but, then, it's only been a morning since he got Buzz. Hopefully he'll remember his old favorites, too. I guess we'll just have to see.
So, considering my disinterest in self-inflicted pain and social discomfort, I had imposed a timeline of roughly six to twelve more months before taking him to a movie, possibly even waiting until he was a teenager, just to be safe. After all, I have almost no memories of seeing movies in the theater until the early to mid-80s, putting me between eight and ten years old. Then I remember seeing a glut of movies in the theater--Return of the Jedi, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and several others. Granted, we only had two movie theaters within a half hour of us, and, at the time, Hollywood hadn't decided to capitalize yet on the younger audiences, so it wasn't unusual for there to only be one kids' movie a year released, and that was always a Disney movie, possibly just a re-release of something that had originally hit theaters in the 50s or earlier. But that's neither here nor there. I turned out just fine, right? Right?
Anyway, Libby decided that she wanted to brave the theater, so she took Gabe to a morning showing of Toy Story 3. Since the morning showings at theaters are always designated with small children in mind, the theater was understandably devoid of life. She said there weren't more than a dozen other families there. So that was a blessing, at least. Had the theater been packed, who knows how Gabe would have done. As it was, he was able to stretch out with his blankie and binky and watch the movie while periodically getting up and stretching without causing too much of an uproar with the other patrons.
All things considered, he did VERY well. He made it through the movie without too much trouble, only needing to leave shortly before it was over to go to the bathroom. We'd installed a diaper as a precaution before they left for the theater, but he'd managed to hold it through almost the entire movie before needing to visit the bathroom (something my notoriously small bladder and I almost never do). Pretty good considering he often can't make it through the movies he watches upstairs without coming down, most of the way through the movie, to inform me that he's had an accident. So, I guess this means that Gabe is theater-ready now. Hurray . . . .
On to the meat of the story. The Toy Story series hasn't been among Gabe's favorites to watch. He likes the toys and other assorted junk that we've picked up for him based on the movies, but the films themselves he's not been particularly taken by, probably because the story is heavy on story and a bit short on frantic activity (though, oddly, his favorite movie right now is WALL-E, which I NEVER would have guessed he would like considering how little goes on through much of that movie, and he's yet to make it through Finding Nemo despite the fact that it's one of the more actiony Pixar movies, so I guess there's no predicting what he'll like. Maybe he just doesn't like fish. Can't really blame him there. They do stink). After seeing the third movie, though, he's been all about Toy Story the past couple of days.
Then, last night, to cap off the weekend, Libby ran to Walgreens and picked up a Buzz Lightyear doll. It's about eighteen inches tall, so it's a pretty good sized one. She ran to the store after Gabe went to bed last night and bought it. Then she went up to his room. He wasn't quite asleep yet, so he looked up. She had the doll behind her back.
"Someone wants to snuggle with you," she informed.
"Momma lay down with me?" he asked excitedly. He loves to snuggle with Momma in his bed (not so much Daddy, since I can't lie still long enough for Gabe to get comfortable, so we both just end up getting antsy and giving up on the snuggle time).
"No," and she presented Buzz.
He was very excited. He introduced Buzz to his bed and tucked him in carefully so they could go to sleep. This morning, pretty much everything he's done has included Buzz. He showed Buzz how to play with Play Doh. He showed Buzz his trains and cars upstairs. And, for a good chunk of the morning, he watched Toy Story with Buzz on the couch. He hasn't yet made Buzz watch him go to the bathroom, which he's done with most of his other prized toys, so I guess the initiation isn't yet complete.
Gabe and Buzz. Also note that Gabe has decided to switch back to his OLD binkies (the rule is he has to be snuggling on the couch or in bed to use it, and he's figured out the loophole that PART of him is all that needs to be on the couch for it to count). I hoped that running out of the binkies he's used for the past year or so would discourage him enough to give up using them. Instead, he happily switched back to his old ones. Ugh."What are you doing in our room?" I asked. "You know you're not supposed to play in there."
"I'm just looking at my pool," he said. He went to the window and looked outside on the swimming pool in the back yard. Pretty good story, I thought. Perfectly plausible, except for the loud noise I heard before.
I surveyed the room, and nothing looked broken. That was a good sign. Whatever he'd done had probably just involved his own body, and, since he wasn't crying, I had to assume that it wasn't broken either.
"But what about the loud bang I heard a minute ago?" I pressed.
"I'm just flying," he said off-handedly, as if I was a dullard for not just assuming something so mundane might be happening on my second floor.
Fortunately, he didn't repeat the stunt for my viewing, as I would have had to stop him for fear of broken bones, but I have to figure that he jumped off our bed onto the floor. He did, however, illustrate another kind of imitated flight, I guess to prove that it was possible. He pulled himself onto the footboard and balanced himself, legs outstretched, on his stomach.
"Finny 'n yon!" he shouted. He's been shouting this a lot the past few days. Sometimes it's closer to "Infinity and Beyond" than others, but if he's excited, the phrase gets the abbreviated version. This time it actually might have been closer to "Fin 'n yon!" Syllables are for the uninvolved, I guess.
He stayed there long enough to shout it a couple more times, then he lowered himself back to the floor, repeated the phrase a few more times, then got distracted with the sproingy door stop thing that we have in our room, which has provided hours of enjoyment over the years. He sat on the floor and sproinged it a half dozen times.
"I'll leave you to it, then," I said.
"Finny 'n yon," he said under his breath in response and he sproinged the door stop again.
After that, he fed Buzz some cheese and crackers, "flew" him down the stairs, made him a few play doh robots, then settled in to watch a little TV on the couch while I made lunch. I have to say that I'm a little sad that Gabe's glommed on to such a commercial toy, giving up on his old, more imagination driven stuffed animals, but, then, it's only been a morning since he got Buzz. Hopefully he'll remember his old favorites, too. I guess we'll just have to see.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Polka Dots
Gabe has been busy this week, in terms of noteworthy occurrences (not in terms of being actually "busy," because I couldn't abide such things).
Today has been a series of typical disappointments to the Grand Scheme of How Things Should Work that I hold near and dear to my heart at all times. There is a Right way, and a Wrong way that the world should work. Specifically, my way is the Right way, and any other way that things might go is the Wrong way.
To my way of thinking, children should wake up quietly in the morning, cheerfully eat some breakfast, entertain themselves, again quietly, while I have my coffee and morning computer time, entertain me for a few hours (here they can make some noise, but only enough to be heard--I couldn't laugh at their antics if I couldn't hear them), then have lunch. After lunch, they would have about four hours of nap, during which time I could do my own thing, perhaps even taking a nap myself. After that, I'd be willing to allow them to do whatever they wanted until bedtime, as long as it's quiet (bedtime should be promptly at 7:00, though the kids could certainly read to themselves in bed for an hour or so if they wanted, as long as it didn't interfere with my watching of grown-up shows or whatever other grown up thing I might want to do).
Oddly, things almost never seem to work out the Right way. Perhaps it is my fault. Maybe I ask too much of myself. Hmm. Something to consider another time.
Today, for instance, nothing went the Right way through the morning, just as it never has before, but we managed to make it through to lunch time nonetheless. Gabe ate, Norah was fed, and it was nap time.
Much to our chagrin, Norah still treats sleep like the enemy--specifically, an enemy that she plans to go down fighting. In her defense, she has nearly mastered conditional initial sleep, or going to sleep when we first lay her down for her nap and for bed time. The condition is that she MUST have a bottle in her mouth. She won't go to sleep any other way. After that, though, it's a crap shoot. She still rarely sleeps for more than two or three hours at a stretch, and she makes sure EVERYONE knows she's awake when she is. It takes another bottle to get her back down at night, and, during nap time, whenever she wakes up the first time, she's usually done napping.
Generally, she's good for at least an hour of nap time. On blessedly wonderful days, she'll stay down for two. When the stars align, the heavens beam down on us, and Colm Meaney is getting regular work (because all things revolve around Colm Meaney), all at the same time, she'll sleep for three hours (I think it's happened two, maybe three times).
Today, she wasn't good for even an hour. Thirty minutes after I put her up there, she started wailing. WAILING. If she wakes up and makes just a little noise, she might go back to sleep. If she wakes up and starts crying, Daddy Time is over.
So, ugh. I went up and got her, but she wouldn't stop shrieking about whatever it was that woke her up. Then Gabe woke up. Great, the double whammy, two kids with an hour of nap between them. This always makes for a fun afternoon of whining and screaming (which manifested shortly after the incident I'm going to go on to describe in the passing of an episode of Wow Wow Wubbzy, a show Gabe has only ever shown passing interest in; the episode finished, the hour we have on our DVR went by, and, suddenly, Gabe decided that he wanted to watch that episode again; he cried for ten minutes over it--how did we EVER survive as children with only an hour of Sesame Street to watch one hour a day?).
Wait! Don't go! This is all going somewhere, I swear.
About 3:00, Norah started to fade, so I put her up to bed with a bottle to see if I could squeeze an extra hour of sleep out of her and, hopefully, keep her from starting to melt down by 6:00 tonight. After five minutes, she was quiet, so I considered the experiment a success. Gabe was watching, you guessed it, Wow Wow Wubbzy.
"I'm going to take a quick shower," I told him, since during the thirty minutes they were down for a nap I'd only managed to eat my lunch and watch The Daily Show from last night.
"---" he replied, without so much as a glance away from the TV.
So I showered.
When I came out of the shower, my first thought was to ask Gabe if he needed to pee, so I headed to the living room. He met me halfway.
"I put polka dots on the TV!" he proclaimed proudly.
"What?" I said, already knowing that I wasn't going to like what I was going to see.
I hate stickers. As a child, I really never saw much appeal to them. My younger brothers covered at least two chests of drawers with the things, but I really don't remember doing much with them (though, that could just be selective memory on my part--I'm willing to admit that I might have blocked my stickering responsibility out of my mind after spending HOURS trying to scrape the goddamn things off many years later). Gabe, however, loves them. Loves, loves, LOVES them. He's gone through at least 250 stickers in the last month or so. Usually, he doesn't do much with them. He sticks one somewhere that he's allowed--we've stressed several times where he could and couldn't put them, and he's been pretty good about it (another reason that I have to chalk this afternoon up to not having a nap)--and then he sticks another one right on top of it. If he has enough stickers to do it, he might create a stack of one hundred stickers, going straight up. What the appeal is, I have no idea. He doesn't really care what's on the sticker, he just likes that they stick, I think.
Today, somehow, he got a hold of a sheet of about 100 little dot stickers with bugs and smiley faces on them that we had used for potty training until it became apparent that he'd need a more substantial bribe than a sticker to ply his cooperation. I'm not sure where he found them or how he got them. I thought we'd tossed them. Guess not.
You can see where this is going.
Since I was only in the shower for maybe seven minutes, he must have made a beeline for the sticker page as soon as I went in there and immediately started applying them to the face of the television. There were THIRTY of them on there (well, almost thirty, twenty-eight, but THIRTY has more impact). He hadn't been satisfied with just polka dotting part of the thing, he got every part of it he could reach.
I reintroduced him to my most withering glare.
So I spent a half hour carefully scraping them off and hoping that I wasn't damaging our TV. This is one time I miss the old, glass TV tubes, at least you know where you stand with glass.
Actually, I feel kind of bad about the whole thing. Obviously it was wrong, and I don't think I was out of line giving him the Glare that I reserve for special occasions, but he was just so excited about it. Like he'd just built a scale model of the Sphinx out of toothpicks or some other uncooperative medium. He genuinely thought that he had done something very special--for me, for Momma, and maybe for the world. He'd invented Polka Dot TV! And I'd Glared at him for it (and continued to Glare at him as he cast weepy gazes downward at the floor throughout the time it took me to clean off the TV).
Sad. For him and for me (since I had to clean it). I blame stickers.
Whoever invented them probably had that same look of accomplishment on his face after he'd done it. I'd Glare at him, too, and never think twice about it.
Oh, and Norah wasn't really sleeping, either, it just took her ten minutes or so to make it through her bottle. So tack that in there somewhere, too.
Today has been a series of typical disappointments to the Grand Scheme of How Things Should Work that I hold near and dear to my heart at all times. There is a Right way, and a Wrong way that the world should work. Specifically, my way is the Right way, and any other way that things might go is the Wrong way.
To my way of thinking, children should wake up quietly in the morning, cheerfully eat some breakfast, entertain themselves, again quietly, while I have my coffee and morning computer time, entertain me for a few hours (here they can make some noise, but only enough to be heard--I couldn't laugh at their antics if I couldn't hear them), then have lunch. After lunch, they would have about four hours of nap, during which time I could do my own thing, perhaps even taking a nap myself. After that, I'd be willing to allow them to do whatever they wanted until bedtime, as long as it's quiet (bedtime should be promptly at 7:00, though the kids could certainly read to themselves in bed for an hour or so if they wanted, as long as it didn't interfere with my watching of grown-up shows or whatever other grown up thing I might want to do).
Oddly, things almost never seem to work out the Right way. Perhaps it is my fault. Maybe I ask too much of myself. Hmm. Something to consider another time.
Today, for instance, nothing went the Right way through the morning, just as it never has before, but we managed to make it through to lunch time nonetheless. Gabe ate, Norah was fed, and it was nap time.
Much to our chagrin, Norah still treats sleep like the enemy--specifically, an enemy that she plans to go down fighting. In her defense, she has nearly mastered conditional initial sleep, or going to sleep when we first lay her down for her nap and for bed time. The condition is that she MUST have a bottle in her mouth. She won't go to sleep any other way. After that, though, it's a crap shoot. She still rarely sleeps for more than two or three hours at a stretch, and she makes sure EVERYONE knows she's awake when she is. It takes another bottle to get her back down at night, and, during nap time, whenever she wakes up the first time, she's usually done napping.
Generally, she's good for at least an hour of nap time. On blessedly wonderful days, she'll stay down for two. When the stars align, the heavens beam down on us, and Colm Meaney is getting regular work (because all things revolve around Colm Meaney), all at the same time, she'll sleep for three hours (I think it's happened two, maybe three times).
Today, she wasn't good for even an hour. Thirty minutes after I put her up there, she started wailing. WAILING. If she wakes up and makes just a little noise, she might go back to sleep. If she wakes up and starts crying, Daddy Time is over.
So, ugh. I went up and got her, but she wouldn't stop shrieking about whatever it was that woke her up. Then Gabe woke up. Great, the double whammy, two kids with an hour of nap between them. This always makes for a fun afternoon of whining and screaming (which manifested shortly after the incident I'm going to go on to describe in the passing of an episode of Wow Wow Wubbzy, a show Gabe has only ever shown passing interest in; the episode finished, the hour we have on our DVR went by, and, suddenly, Gabe decided that he wanted to watch that episode again; he cried for ten minutes over it--how did we EVER survive as children with only an hour of Sesame Street to watch one hour a day?).
Wait! Don't go! This is all going somewhere, I swear.
About 3:00, Norah started to fade, so I put her up to bed with a bottle to see if I could squeeze an extra hour of sleep out of her and, hopefully, keep her from starting to melt down by 6:00 tonight. After five minutes, she was quiet, so I considered the experiment a success. Gabe was watching, you guessed it, Wow Wow Wubbzy.
"I'm going to take a quick shower," I told him, since during the thirty minutes they were down for a nap I'd only managed to eat my lunch and watch The Daily Show from last night.
"---" he replied, without so much as a glance away from the TV.
So I showered.
When I came out of the shower, my first thought was to ask Gabe if he needed to pee, so I headed to the living room. He met me halfway.
"I put polka dots on the TV!" he proclaimed proudly.
"What?" I said, already knowing that I wasn't going to like what I was going to see.
I hate stickers. As a child, I really never saw much appeal to them. My younger brothers covered at least two chests of drawers with the things, but I really don't remember doing much with them (though, that could just be selective memory on my part--I'm willing to admit that I might have blocked my stickering responsibility out of my mind after spending HOURS trying to scrape the goddamn things off many years later). Gabe, however, loves them. Loves, loves, LOVES them. He's gone through at least 250 stickers in the last month or so. Usually, he doesn't do much with them. He sticks one somewhere that he's allowed--we've stressed several times where he could and couldn't put them, and he's been pretty good about it (another reason that I have to chalk this afternoon up to not having a nap)--and then he sticks another one right on top of it. If he has enough stickers to do it, he might create a stack of one hundred stickers, going straight up. What the appeal is, I have no idea. He doesn't really care what's on the sticker, he just likes that they stick, I think.
Today, somehow, he got a hold of a sheet of about 100 little dot stickers with bugs and smiley faces on them that we had used for potty training until it became apparent that he'd need a more substantial bribe than a sticker to ply his cooperation. I'm not sure where he found them or how he got them. I thought we'd tossed them. Guess not.
You can see where this is going.
Since I was only in the shower for maybe seven minutes, he must have made a beeline for the sticker page as soon as I went in there and immediately started applying them to the face of the television. There were THIRTY of them on there (well, almost thirty, twenty-eight, but THIRTY has more impact). He hadn't been satisfied with just polka dotting part of the thing, he got every part of it he could reach.
I reintroduced him to my most withering glare.
So I spent a half hour carefully scraping them off and hoping that I wasn't damaging our TV. This is one time I miss the old, glass TV tubes, at least you know where you stand with glass.
Actually, I feel kind of bad about the whole thing. Obviously it was wrong, and I don't think I was out of line giving him the Glare that I reserve for special occasions, but he was just so excited about it. Like he'd just built a scale model of the Sphinx out of toothpicks or some other uncooperative medium. He genuinely thought that he had done something very special--for me, for Momma, and maybe for the world. He'd invented Polka Dot TV! And I'd Glared at him for it (and continued to Glare at him as he cast weepy gazes downward at the floor throughout the time it took me to clean off the TV).
Sad. For him and for me (since I had to clean it). I blame stickers.
Whoever invented them probably had that same look of accomplishment on his face after he'd done it. I'd Glare at him, too, and never think twice about it.
Oh, and Norah wasn't really sleeping, either, it just took her ten minutes or so to make it through her bottle. So tack that in there somewhere, too.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A Line You Never Want to Hear from Your Child
The Christmas before last, most of Libby's family came in, from the four winds they are scattered, to stay for a week. Because they hadn't been together for, I don't know, umpteen Christmases, there was much rejoicing and gift giving. Among the gifts we received was a little stuffed animal that, we believe, her brother John gave to her (it was from ThinkGeek, so it could have been either John or Jamie that gave it to her, but I want to say John because I got a USB powered remote control car--which Gabe got ahold of and broke the second time I took it out to use it--also from ThinkGeek, and Libby thought it was John, too, so, if it was from James instead, sorry about that). All of the kids present that day received one, a small, plush representation of a venereal disease.
Libby's brother gave her The Clap. Ha! That's just fun to say. Gonorrhea. It's a small, gray, well, I don't know how to describe it because I never paid much attention in my science classes--instead focusing on the far more marketable Medieval Literature field, clearly where the money and the chicks are. Perhaps it's bi-segmented? Pod-like? Like a snowman that doesn't have a bottom third? Dunno. Here's a picture, you figure it out:
The Clap, as given to Libby by her brother.
Gonorrhea: nothing to clap at. Sometimes the old ones are the best ones. Here's him saying it. You'll have to pay attention because the video is only about ten seconds long, I think. What you can't see in the background--the reason why I cut this short without seeing where he'd go with it--is Norah grabbing Gabe's cup off the table and pouring the water in it over herself. I couldn't see it either as she was around the corner, so I turned the camera off instead of trying to catch her reaction. I'm not sure WHY that was my response, because it would have been more interesting than the rest of the video. But there you have it.
Libby's brother gave her The Clap. Ha! That's just fun to say. Gonorrhea. It's a small, gray, well, I don't know how to describe it because I never paid much attention in my science classes--instead focusing on the far more marketable Medieval Literature field, clearly where the money and the chicks are. Perhaps it's bi-segmented? Pod-like? Like a snowman that doesn't have a bottom third? Dunno. Here's a picture, you figure it out:
The Clap, as given to Libby by her brother.The little toy has been sitting on one of the bookshelves in my office for the last year and a half. Several times I'd debated on giving it to Gabe to play with, but figured it was too funny to let be destroyed. But I also didn't really have any way to appreciate the humor of it beyond occasionally glancing it on the shelf, and I wasn't sharing the humor with anyone because nobody was seeing it. Thus, it wasn't really doing much for anyone--and it wasn't really performing the function it was designed for, either as a stuffed animal for someone to play with or as a humorous novelty to delight and amuse people who saw it. It just gathered some dust and sat in the same spot. In short, it's existence was a failure.
So, it was probably just as well that Gabe spotted it on the shelf as he was walking through from the bathroom and said, "I want it!"
"What?" I asked.
"That bunny! I want it!"
"Bunny?" I asked, mildly perplexed, and I looked over at the bookcase to where he was pointing. "Oooooh," I said as I grabbed the toy. "You want Gonorrhea?"
"Yes!" he exclaimed. "I want Gonorrhea to sleep with in my bed! It will make me happy!"
Hilarious.
Really, that's all there is to the story. I tried to get him to repeat the sentence in front of the camera, but it was failure. I think he did manage to repeat the word "gonorrhea," which is probably something that most three year olds make it through their lives never having said. I guess someday, when I show him this video, he'll realize just how charmed of a life he's really had, how special his youth is compared to those of others.
Or else he's really going to hate me for all the stuff I put on here. Guess we'll see.
So, it was probably just as well that Gabe spotted it on the shelf as he was walking through from the bathroom and said, "I want it!"
"What?" I asked.
"That bunny! I want it!"
"Bunny?" I asked, mildly perplexed, and I looked over at the bookcase to where he was pointing. "Oooooh," I said as I grabbed the toy. "You want Gonorrhea?"
"Yes!" he exclaimed. "I want Gonorrhea to sleep with in my bed! It will make me happy!"
Hilarious.
Really, that's all there is to the story. I tried to get him to repeat the sentence in front of the camera, but it was failure. I think he did manage to repeat the word "gonorrhea," which is probably something that most three year olds make it through their lives never having said. I guess someday, when I show him this video, he'll realize just how charmed of a life he's really had, how special his youth is compared to those of others.
Or else he's really going to hate me for all the stuff I put on here. Guess we'll see.
Gonorrhea: nothing to clap at. Sometimes the old ones are the best ones. Here's him saying it. You'll have to pay attention because the video is only about ten seconds long, I think. What you can't see in the background--the reason why I cut this short without seeing where he'd go with it--is Norah grabbing Gabe's cup off the table and pouring the water in it over herself. I couldn't see it either as she was around the corner, so I turned the camera off instead of trying to catch her reaction. I'm not sure WHY that was my response, because it would have been more interesting than the rest of the video. But there you have it.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Why I Don't "Get the Kids Out" More Often
This morning, I had an adventure--rather, a misadventure. Some time back, I used to send out emails on a fairly regular basis with stories about the terrible and bewildering things that happened to me when I went for a walk or a bike ride (these stories are cataloged in the Pat vs. Nature blog that, I think, should still exist and might even be accessible from this blog--I'm too lazy to look right now, but feel free to look if you're interested). For some reason, just about every time I went out, something weird, unusual, or nearly fatal happened to me. After the first few incidents, I figured I was cursed.
And then we had kids--and I started to only walk with other people--and the strange occurrences stopped completely. At first, I thought I had broken the curse. In fact, I hadn't. The curse had transferred from being conditional of me being out alone exercising to me being out with my children doing, well, pretty much anything. Now, if something can go wrong while I'm out with the kids (just me, mind you--if Libby or someone else is with me, or if it's just Libby out with the kids, then everything goes perfectly, which only adds to Libby's insistence that I should be getting the kids out to do things more often), it almost certainly will.
Today was a perfect example.
Libby didn't get home until late last night, and she is working late again tonight as well. Monday, through the summer, is library night (she signed Gabe up for a storytime that they both go to in the evening while I stay at home with Norah, since she doesn't tend to be very cooperative during group activities). Last week, they picked up some books and a movie, and the movie was due back. Also, we had a prescription waiting at the pharmacy that needed to be picked up.
"So," I thought to myself, in unusually optimistic spirits this morning, "Maybe this would be a good morning to get a little exercise and go for a walk, first to the library, then to the store to pick up the prescription and a few little things off the shopping list. It will be good to get the kids out, and lord knows I need the exercise." So that's what I set about to do.
First, there were the preparations. One of the reasons that I am reluctant to get the kids out and about is the sheer energy it takes to organize and prepare such an outing.
Even just an hour or so of walking around town requires a mess of arrangements: a fresh diaper for Norah; a change of clothes from whatever each of them are wearing because, even if they aren't still in their PJs (which they often will be--especially Norah--just because dressing her in anything that has to go over her head is still like dressing a giant, stubborn, uncooperative, wrong-headed cat--actually, that pretty much describes ANY cat that you might try to dress, so just imagine trying to dress one that weighs about 30 pounds) because whatever they are wearing will be covered in food or paint or play doh or any of a number of other things, and we can't be seen in public looking like we just came from the dump; I have to make Gabe go to the bathroom--not just try, he has to actually do it, which might take two or three attempts because, even if he swears he doesn't have to go, he will as soon as we get anywhere, and it won't be in the bathroom; put on shoes; gather something to drink and snacks--because, if I don't, one or both of them will pitch a fit because he/she/they are hungry/thirsty (and, of course, if I DO pack something, they'll have no interest in it); gather whatever we need to take with us (this morning it was the library books and his Fireman Sam DVD to return); load them both up in the stroller or the car, which is often an ordeal because Gabe instantly wants to play as soon as he's outside and getting him to cooperate can be fun times in its own right; and then we can finally be off. I will say this in favor of summer (and it is just about the ONLY thing I will say in favor of summer), at least I don't need to add coats/gloves/hats to the mix, because that's another time consuming step.
Then, of course, I have to get myself around. Admittedly, this doesn't really take that long because, frankly, I've given up on life and don't much care what I look like, as long as I have my wallet and keys and I'm wearing serviceable shoes.
So, there we were. All of our inside preparations were complete. I'd gathered everything I needed--or so I thought--and we went outside to load up in the stroller.
It was already too hot to be anything like a pleasant walk, and it was only going to get worse, I knew, but I had already come this far, so I wasn't going to back out of the exercise portion of the morning's activities. I found the stroller in the garage, pulled it out, and loaded the kids into it. Only, Gabe's umbrella wasn't on anymore, and I figured it was too hot and too sunny to NOT have it offering at least the inadequate shading it offered, so I found it on the floor in the garage and started trying to put it back on and straighten it out.
Honestly, I can't say enough bad things about this two child stroller we have. It would be easier for me to list the positive things it has going for it: it seats two children, and it has wheels. That's it. Really. It is an unmitigated failure of design engineering otherwise. There is nothing good about it, except that it allows me to contain both kids at the same time and move them from point A to point B without driving. I could go on and on about the things that are wrong with it, but I won't. This post is already longer than I figured it would be, and I haven't even gotten to the good parts yet.
But one design flaw is relevant, so I'll elaborate on it a bit. To my way of thinking, it has also proven to be on of the most frustrating problems with this stroller, the umbrellas. They are meant to move around, forward and backwards, to allow children to be passed under them or to moved out of the way if the monstrosity has to be folded up. The last time we folded it up, the umbrella was pushed forward as far as it would go (as it's supposedly meant to be), and then the poorly conceived joints that they're supposed to revolve on froze up. Now, the umbrella shoots straight forward in the front, at about ninety degrees, which, obviously is useless. So I installed the umbrella and fought with it for almost five minutes to try and move it back up where it might offer Gabe some relief from the sun (very little relief, since, besides being impossible to move around, the umbrellas are also only about twelve inches across when opened up, which isn't going to stop much sun).
I was utterly unsuccessful despite all of my best efforts. All I managed to do was pinch my finger once, smash my thumb once, and teach Gabe the phrase "What the fuck is going on here?!?" which he dutifully repeated right after I said it.
I threw the worthless accessory back into the garage and determined that, once we were done with this stroller, I would give burning it in anger a distinct consideration over passing it on to some other unsuspecting sap. We were moving on.
Except I had forgotten to put the library books in the stroller. I got those, then realized that I had also forgotten to pack their drinks and snacks. I went inside and got those. Then I remembered my wallet, which I went back inside to get. I went back out and ticked off the list again my head to make sure I had what I needed. Good to go.
So we started walking. We made it a little over two blocks from the house when I realized that I had also forgotten Gabe's library card. I pulled out my wallet and looked for mine. It wasn't in there. I must have pulled it out at some point because I never use it. Ugh. I turned around and headed home.
"What we doing?" Gabe asked.
"Going home. I forgot your library card," I answered.
"I want to go to library!" he demanded. And then he started to get upset.
"We're still going to the library," I consoled. "But we're going to drive." By this point, I was already streaming with sweat and had had more than enough of being outside.
God I hate summer. More and more every year. By the time I'm in my sixties, I expect that I will be a barely contained volcano of rage from the point the temperature reaches into the 80s until the leaves fall off the trees. Should be a treat for everyone around me.
So we went back, I got his library card, and we loaded into the van. We went to the library (where I had to park a block away because, for some strange reason, the place was packed--by the time we left, twenty minutes later, there were only two cars parked out there, and ours was one of them, so figure that one out).
We trekked inside and I pulled open the metal door that leads down the stairs to the kids' section. Gabe, in his seemingly boundless capacity for being distracted, wasn't paying a lick of attention to anything around him, and he turned his head to look at something and walked straight into the metal handle on the door. He teared up a little, but, really, handled it pretty well. If it had been Norah, we would have been packing back into the van as she would have been inconsolable for the next five minutes, and I'm one of those people who refuses to inflict his screaming children on other patrons in a public area.
Then library time began. The library has a toy section, which Gabe is a bit obsessed with playing in, despite the fact that we have pretty much the exact same toys at home. I let him go at it and tried to surround Norah with enough little toys to keep her occupied for a few minutes while I went and hastily picked out two new books and a new movie for Gabe. It took about five minutes to find something that would hold her interest long enough that I felt comfortable leaving her basically out of view (because the toy area is surrounded by tall bookshelves, which makes it impossible to see the kids while looking over the books or anything else down there). Then I found him two books--probably not very good ones because I only spent about forty-five seconds considering my options, nervous that, when I returned, I would find Norah climbing on the little slide or doing something else equally face threatening.
I returned to show the books to Gabe to get his approval. He glanced at them and, by way of acknowledgment of my admittedly substandard effort, turned back to his toys without so much as a nod of approval. Oh well.
"What movie do you want to get?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Fireman Sam!" he replied enthusiastically.
"Uhhhh," I sighed just loud enough for him to hear. I made sure Norah was still occupied and made a beeline for the DVD section, hoping to find something quickly. I found the Fireman Sam videos without any trouble because I'd found them in the same spot already on two separate occasions. And I passed. We've had one or the other of the two Sam DVDs they have checked out for almost two months now, and I have just about had my fill. So I quickly perused the other DVDs and tried to find something else I thought he'd like. Failing that, I picked up the first Bob the Builder DVD that my hand fell upon and called it good. He might not like it, but it's something different, and that's about all I care about these days. Clearly I just need to buy the two Sam DVDs they have and call it done. Goddamn Welsh are giving me the red ass (it's a Welsh program, for anyone unfamiliar with it).
Bob the Builder DVD in hand, I headed back to the play area and found something I wasn't expecting in the least. In fact, the situation wreaked such havoc on my brain in the instant that I first saw it that I don't even really remember my initial reaction to it, so I'm afraid that I can't even accurately describe my first view. But here's the best I can do.
Gabe was standing a few paces outside the play area with a befuddled look on his face. I saw that first, but before I asked him what the problem was, I spotted it on the floor. A turd.
Gabe has two varieties of poop (yes, more information than anyone wants, but it is somewhat relevant to the story, so bear with me). One is smooshy and sticks, quite graphically, to everything. It's a mess to clean up, but at least it usually stays centrally located, if you catch my drift. The second one . . . .
Last Halloween, I made a novelty cake for our party--kitty litter cake. Using a variety of cake mixes, smashed up and mixed together with a few other ingredients, I recreated a pretty believable likeness of kitty litter. But the piece de resistance (sorry, can't do the accent marks, don't know how and don't care) was the cat turds made of tootsie rolls. Tootsie rolls, in and of themselves, look a bit like turds. But, if you put them in the microwave for a few seconds, it's possible to smooth them out, squish them into little balls, or twist and curl them into unspeakable things. They are most convincing because of the consistency of the tootsie roll--they are just the right kind of waxy/slimy to look just like a pooh. And Gabe's second kind of poop looks JUST like this. Imagine if you took one of the small, one inch tootsie rolls, nuked it for a few seconds, then smushed it into a sort of rough ball. That's a Gabe turd--kind of like an extra large rabbit turd.
And I saw one on the floor. He'd obviously had a poop and, worst of all, his little turdlets were squeaking out his underwear and falling on the floor. Not surprisingly, I nearly panicked. Public place! Poop on the floor! Guilty child standing there with his hand on his butt! And, oh my god! What is Norah doing????
She was following Gabe out the play area and she had just picked up a waxy turd. Oh dear lord! I ran over, grabbed her hand and made her drop the offending object (which she began to cry about, because she doesn't like to have anything taken away from her right now--"Oh dear lord, child," I thought to myself, "Don't draw any more attention to us!"). Thankfully, I caught her JUST as she was getting ready to put it in her mouth.
Then I cast a wary gaze around the area to fully take in the damage. Gabe had left a trail of tiny little poops all the way to where he was standing. Could it get any worse? I looked around the library, sure that I would see a dozen people staring, pointing, and chastising me for having such disgusting, poorly managed children. Thankfully, there were only two older kids working on the computer and the two ladies working down there, both of whom were otherwise occupied. I was lucky that the area was mostly deserted.
I quickly snatched up all the turds--bare handed, of course--told Gabe, in no uncertain terms, to NOT move a muscle, and scurried off to the bathroom to dump them in the toilet. I washed up quickly, returned, picked up a few smaller ones (one of which Gabe had helpfully mushed into the carpet, so I had to use my fingernails, thank you very much, to pry it away from the carpet) that I had missed, picked up Norah with my non-poopy hand, then told Gabe to follow me to the bathroom.
As soon as he moved, a cascade of turdlets fell from his pants. It was like watching a rockslide in a movie. A half dozen little ones fell out followed by that one, giant boulder that always ends up crushing, or nearly crushing, an automobile that's driving far too fast in a "falling rocks" section of road. The big one looked like a half-bag of tootsie rolls, warmed up and half-assedly mashed together. How it escaped the confines of his underwear, I have no idea. Probably, the whole time I was messing with the other stuff and he was standing there, acting guilty and being all quiet, he was working it down the leg of his boxer briefs (note to self, boxer briefs SUCK at containing poopslides).
I quickly cast around again but found that, again, nobody else had seen this disgusting and horrifying display. Thank god for small favors. I scooped up all the crap in my non-Norah hand and hissed, "Follow me to the bathroom," to Gabe. He followed without any problems since his pants were now completely free of poop.
We went into the bathroom and I was finally able to get everything cleaned up. I washed everyone up and whisked them both out of the room. We cleaned up the play area (partly because I hate leaving it messy but mostly because I also wanted to do one last survey, just to make sure I didn't miss any pooh sprinkles), grabbed our books, checked out with a wry smile to the cute girl behind the counter ("wry" because I'm writing this in retrospect, probably "frazzled" or even "derailed" might have been more likely adjectives, though, to describe what I looked like by that point), and got the hell out of there as quickly and discreetly as possible.
My original intention had been to do some grocery shopping afterward, but, obviously, that wasn't going to happen, so I just went to the drive through window and picked up the scrip and went home.
There was actually quite an ordeal with getting the scrip, too, but, honestly, I'm too emotionally exhausted to go into it--and, really, it would be a poor denouement to this story since it was little more than a case of complete incompetence on the other side of the glass, and not really all that interesting (though certainly extra frustrating considering the last fifteen minutes I had just endured).
So, stick that in your "get the kids out more often" pipe and smoke it, world! I'll stay right at home, thanks, where at least I can keep the poop drops restricted to a few rooms of the house and don't have to worry about strangers judging us (probably with good reason) or Norah picking it up and feasting on it.
And then we had kids--and I started to only walk with other people--and the strange occurrences stopped completely. At first, I thought I had broken the curse. In fact, I hadn't. The curse had transferred from being conditional of me being out alone exercising to me being out with my children doing, well, pretty much anything. Now, if something can go wrong while I'm out with the kids (just me, mind you--if Libby or someone else is with me, or if it's just Libby out with the kids, then everything goes perfectly, which only adds to Libby's insistence that I should be getting the kids out to do things more often), it almost certainly will.
Today was a perfect example.
Libby didn't get home until late last night, and she is working late again tonight as well. Monday, through the summer, is library night (she signed Gabe up for a storytime that they both go to in the evening while I stay at home with Norah, since she doesn't tend to be very cooperative during group activities). Last week, they picked up some books and a movie, and the movie was due back. Also, we had a prescription waiting at the pharmacy that needed to be picked up.
"So," I thought to myself, in unusually optimistic spirits this morning, "Maybe this would be a good morning to get a little exercise and go for a walk, first to the library, then to the store to pick up the prescription and a few little things off the shopping list. It will be good to get the kids out, and lord knows I need the exercise." So that's what I set about to do.
First, there were the preparations. One of the reasons that I am reluctant to get the kids out and about is the sheer energy it takes to organize and prepare such an outing.
Even just an hour or so of walking around town requires a mess of arrangements: a fresh diaper for Norah; a change of clothes from whatever each of them are wearing because, even if they aren't still in their PJs (which they often will be--especially Norah--just because dressing her in anything that has to go over her head is still like dressing a giant, stubborn, uncooperative, wrong-headed cat--actually, that pretty much describes ANY cat that you might try to dress, so just imagine trying to dress one that weighs about 30 pounds) because whatever they are wearing will be covered in food or paint or play doh or any of a number of other things, and we can't be seen in public looking like we just came from the dump; I have to make Gabe go to the bathroom--not just try, he has to actually do it, which might take two or three attempts because, even if he swears he doesn't have to go, he will as soon as we get anywhere, and it won't be in the bathroom; put on shoes; gather something to drink and snacks--because, if I don't, one or both of them will pitch a fit because he/she/they are hungry/thirsty (and, of course, if I DO pack something, they'll have no interest in it); gather whatever we need to take with us (this morning it was the library books and his Fireman Sam DVD to return); load them both up in the stroller or the car, which is often an ordeal because Gabe instantly wants to play as soon as he's outside and getting him to cooperate can be fun times in its own right; and then we can finally be off. I will say this in favor of summer (and it is just about the ONLY thing I will say in favor of summer), at least I don't need to add coats/gloves/hats to the mix, because that's another time consuming step.
Then, of course, I have to get myself around. Admittedly, this doesn't really take that long because, frankly, I've given up on life and don't much care what I look like, as long as I have my wallet and keys and I'm wearing serviceable shoes.
So, there we were. All of our inside preparations were complete. I'd gathered everything I needed--or so I thought--and we went outside to load up in the stroller.
It was already too hot to be anything like a pleasant walk, and it was only going to get worse, I knew, but I had already come this far, so I wasn't going to back out of the exercise portion of the morning's activities. I found the stroller in the garage, pulled it out, and loaded the kids into it. Only, Gabe's umbrella wasn't on anymore, and I figured it was too hot and too sunny to NOT have it offering at least the inadequate shading it offered, so I found it on the floor in the garage and started trying to put it back on and straighten it out.
Honestly, I can't say enough bad things about this two child stroller we have. It would be easier for me to list the positive things it has going for it: it seats two children, and it has wheels. That's it. Really. It is an unmitigated failure of design engineering otherwise. There is nothing good about it, except that it allows me to contain both kids at the same time and move them from point A to point B without driving. I could go on and on about the things that are wrong with it, but I won't. This post is already longer than I figured it would be, and I haven't even gotten to the good parts yet.
But one design flaw is relevant, so I'll elaborate on it a bit. To my way of thinking, it has also proven to be on of the most frustrating problems with this stroller, the umbrellas. They are meant to move around, forward and backwards, to allow children to be passed under them or to moved out of the way if the monstrosity has to be folded up. The last time we folded it up, the umbrella was pushed forward as far as it would go (as it's supposedly meant to be), and then the poorly conceived joints that they're supposed to revolve on froze up. Now, the umbrella shoots straight forward in the front, at about ninety degrees, which, obviously is useless. So I installed the umbrella and fought with it for almost five minutes to try and move it back up where it might offer Gabe some relief from the sun (very little relief, since, besides being impossible to move around, the umbrellas are also only about twelve inches across when opened up, which isn't going to stop much sun).
I was utterly unsuccessful despite all of my best efforts. All I managed to do was pinch my finger once, smash my thumb once, and teach Gabe the phrase "What the fuck is going on here?!?" which he dutifully repeated right after I said it.
I threw the worthless accessory back into the garage and determined that, once we were done with this stroller, I would give burning it in anger a distinct consideration over passing it on to some other unsuspecting sap. We were moving on.
Except I had forgotten to put the library books in the stroller. I got those, then realized that I had also forgotten to pack their drinks and snacks. I went inside and got those. Then I remembered my wallet, which I went back inside to get. I went back out and ticked off the list again my head to make sure I had what I needed. Good to go.
So we started walking. We made it a little over two blocks from the house when I realized that I had also forgotten Gabe's library card. I pulled out my wallet and looked for mine. It wasn't in there. I must have pulled it out at some point because I never use it. Ugh. I turned around and headed home.
"What we doing?" Gabe asked.
"Going home. I forgot your library card," I answered.
"I want to go to library!" he demanded. And then he started to get upset.
"We're still going to the library," I consoled. "But we're going to drive." By this point, I was already streaming with sweat and had had more than enough of being outside.
God I hate summer. More and more every year. By the time I'm in my sixties, I expect that I will be a barely contained volcano of rage from the point the temperature reaches into the 80s until the leaves fall off the trees. Should be a treat for everyone around me.
So we went back, I got his library card, and we loaded into the van. We went to the library (where I had to park a block away because, for some strange reason, the place was packed--by the time we left, twenty minutes later, there were only two cars parked out there, and ours was one of them, so figure that one out).
We trekked inside and I pulled open the metal door that leads down the stairs to the kids' section. Gabe, in his seemingly boundless capacity for being distracted, wasn't paying a lick of attention to anything around him, and he turned his head to look at something and walked straight into the metal handle on the door. He teared up a little, but, really, handled it pretty well. If it had been Norah, we would have been packing back into the van as she would have been inconsolable for the next five minutes, and I'm one of those people who refuses to inflict his screaming children on other patrons in a public area.
Then library time began. The library has a toy section, which Gabe is a bit obsessed with playing in, despite the fact that we have pretty much the exact same toys at home. I let him go at it and tried to surround Norah with enough little toys to keep her occupied for a few minutes while I went and hastily picked out two new books and a new movie for Gabe. It took about five minutes to find something that would hold her interest long enough that I felt comfortable leaving her basically out of view (because the toy area is surrounded by tall bookshelves, which makes it impossible to see the kids while looking over the books or anything else down there). Then I found him two books--probably not very good ones because I only spent about forty-five seconds considering my options, nervous that, when I returned, I would find Norah climbing on the little slide or doing something else equally face threatening.
I returned to show the books to Gabe to get his approval. He glanced at them and, by way of acknowledgment of my admittedly substandard effort, turned back to his toys without so much as a nod of approval. Oh well.
"What movie do you want to get?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Fireman Sam!" he replied enthusiastically.
"Uhhhh," I sighed just loud enough for him to hear. I made sure Norah was still occupied and made a beeline for the DVD section, hoping to find something quickly. I found the Fireman Sam videos without any trouble because I'd found them in the same spot already on two separate occasions. And I passed. We've had one or the other of the two Sam DVDs they have checked out for almost two months now, and I have just about had my fill. So I quickly perused the other DVDs and tried to find something else I thought he'd like. Failing that, I picked up the first Bob the Builder DVD that my hand fell upon and called it good. He might not like it, but it's something different, and that's about all I care about these days. Clearly I just need to buy the two Sam DVDs they have and call it done. Goddamn Welsh are giving me the red ass (it's a Welsh program, for anyone unfamiliar with it).
Bob the Builder DVD in hand, I headed back to the play area and found something I wasn't expecting in the least. In fact, the situation wreaked such havoc on my brain in the instant that I first saw it that I don't even really remember my initial reaction to it, so I'm afraid that I can't even accurately describe my first view. But here's the best I can do.
Gabe was standing a few paces outside the play area with a befuddled look on his face. I saw that first, but before I asked him what the problem was, I spotted it on the floor. A turd.
Gabe has two varieties of poop (yes, more information than anyone wants, but it is somewhat relevant to the story, so bear with me). One is smooshy and sticks, quite graphically, to everything. It's a mess to clean up, but at least it usually stays centrally located, if you catch my drift. The second one . . . .
Last Halloween, I made a novelty cake for our party--kitty litter cake. Using a variety of cake mixes, smashed up and mixed together with a few other ingredients, I recreated a pretty believable likeness of kitty litter. But the piece de resistance (sorry, can't do the accent marks, don't know how and don't care) was the cat turds made of tootsie rolls. Tootsie rolls, in and of themselves, look a bit like turds. But, if you put them in the microwave for a few seconds, it's possible to smooth them out, squish them into little balls, or twist and curl them into unspeakable things. They are most convincing because of the consistency of the tootsie roll--they are just the right kind of waxy/slimy to look just like a pooh. And Gabe's second kind of poop looks JUST like this. Imagine if you took one of the small, one inch tootsie rolls, nuked it for a few seconds, then smushed it into a sort of rough ball. That's a Gabe turd--kind of like an extra large rabbit turd.
And I saw one on the floor. He'd obviously had a poop and, worst of all, his little turdlets were squeaking out his underwear and falling on the floor. Not surprisingly, I nearly panicked. Public place! Poop on the floor! Guilty child standing there with his hand on his butt! And, oh my god! What is Norah doing????
She was following Gabe out the play area and she had just picked up a waxy turd. Oh dear lord! I ran over, grabbed her hand and made her drop the offending object (which she began to cry about, because she doesn't like to have anything taken away from her right now--"Oh dear lord, child," I thought to myself, "Don't draw any more attention to us!"). Thankfully, I caught her JUST as she was getting ready to put it in her mouth.
Then I cast a wary gaze around the area to fully take in the damage. Gabe had left a trail of tiny little poops all the way to where he was standing. Could it get any worse? I looked around the library, sure that I would see a dozen people staring, pointing, and chastising me for having such disgusting, poorly managed children. Thankfully, there were only two older kids working on the computer and the two ladies working down there, both of whom were otherwise occupied. I was lucky that the area was mostly deserted.
I quickly snatched up all the turds--bare handed, of course--told Gabe, in no uncertain terms, to NOT move a muscle, and scurried off to the bathroom to dump them in the toilet. I washed up quickly, returned, picked up a few smaller ones (one of which Gabe had helpfully mushed into the carpet, so I had to use my fingernails, thank you very much, to pry it away from the carpet) that I had missed, picked up Norah with my non-poopy hand, then told Gabe to follow me to the bathroom.
As soon as he moved, a cascade of turdlets fell from his pants. It was like watching a rockslide in a movie. A half dozen little ones fell out followed by that one, giant boulder that always ends up crushing, or nearly crushing, an automobile that's driving far too fast in a "falling rocks" section of road. The big one looked like a half-bag of tootsie rolls, warmed up and half-assedly mashed together. How it escaped the confines of his underwear, I have no idea. Probably, the whole time I was messing with the other stuff and he was standing there, acting guilty and being all quiet, he was working it down the leg of his boxer briefs (note to self, boxer briefs SUCK at containing poopslides).
I quickly cast around again but found that, again, nobody else had seen this disgusting and horrifying display. Thank god for small favors. I scooped up all the crap in my non-Norah hand and hissed, "Follow me to the bathroom," to Gabe. He followed without any problems since his pants were now completely free of poop.
We went into the bathroom and I was finally able to get everything cleaned up. I washed everyone up and whisked them both out of the room. We cleaned up the play area (partly because I hate leaving it messy but mostly because I also wanted to do one last survey, just to make sure I didn't miss any pooh sprinkles), grabbed our books, checked out with a wry smile to the cute girl behind the counter ("wry" because I'm writing this in retrospect, probably "frazzled" or even "derailed" might have been more likely adjectives, though, to describe what I looked like by that point), and got the hell out of there as quickly and discreetly as possible.
My original intention had been to do some grocery shopping afterward, but, obviously, that wasn't going to happen, so I just went to the drive through window and picked up the scrip and went home.
There was actually quite an ordeal with getting the scrip, too, but, honestly, I'm too emotionally exhausted to go into it--and, really, it would be a poor denouement to this story since it was little more than a case of complete incompetence on the other side of the glass, and not really all that interesting (though certainly extra frustrating considering the last fifteen minutes I had just endured).
So, stick that in your "get the kids out more often" pipe and smoke it, world! I'll stay right at home, thanks, where at least I can keep the poop drops restricted to a few rooms of the house and don't have to worry about strangers judging us (probably with good reason) or Norah picking it up and feasting on it.
Monday, June 21, 2010
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:
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.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
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.
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.
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