The Family Vacation

We've just returned from what can only be deemed a classic American vacation. Last week we packed the minivan with beach toys, scooters, coolers, and antacid and headed for a rented beach house in Delaware, where we stayed with our close friends who also have two small children and an SUV filled with crap.

Overall the week was a success. We left on speaking terms with our friends. The moms got their well deserved rest and yet left more exhausted than they arrived. We only broke two dishes, a glass, and a vase containing fake flowers that was a victim of poor placement in the first place. And the dads, also known as the "pack mules", managed to squeeze out just enough relaxation to not go completely insane.

Paul, my fellow pack mule, reminded me of a post I created several years ago as a warning to future parents on what they should expect when a new member of the family arrives. Well, in a similar vein, a couple with no kids perhaps debating whether or not to join the parenting game might just decide against it after reading the following vacation highlight reel. I'm pretty sure the sound of doors slamming and tires squealing that I heard one night early in the week was the unmarried vacationing couple next door sneaking out in a combination of disgust and panic.

The bunk beds
The kids were quite excited to find two sets of bunk beds in the house where we stayed. Of course, with one kid still in a pack-and-play, that meant two top bunks for three kids. Time for a lesson on sharing, right?

Before the first night's sleep it was decided that, each night, the kids would switch things around so that the duty of sleeping in a lower bunk would be shared equally amongst them. This seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. Unfortunately it also meant that, each night, the parents had to deal with a child who was so traumatized by the possibility of bumping her head when sitting on the lower bunk that they would refuse to go to bed. For some reason, none of the kids bought into the logic that my buddy and I both spent four years of college sleeping on a bottom bunk while somehow avoiding a concussion. Go figure.

The tantrums
By the end of the week, Paul and I made it a game of deciding which kid would be next to tantrum, and why. With only a little practice we were able to call them moments before they would occur, much like Radar O'Reilly in M*A*S*H would announce the arrival of helicopters before anyone else could hear them.

There were tantrums over sharing of toys. Over naptime. Over sandcastles. Over hair clips. Doors being closed on fingers. Sequence of showers. Showers instead of baths. Baths instead of another five minutes in the pool. Getting out of the pool. Getting out of the bath. Getting out of the shower. Shopping for trinkets. Shopping for t-shirts. Over ice cream. Over dinner selections. Over being dragged on a pirate cruise. Over who got to be the 8th person in the minivan, forced to sit in someone's lap.

In other words, it was just like being home.

Fear of the ocean
I suppose it's healthy for a child to have some level of fear of the ocean. It's big and swirly, tastes bad, and movies are made about it with sharks eating people who like to swim. On the one hand, there's the level of fear that allows the child enough courage to go ankle deep into the water, only to dash out at full speed before the cold wave splashes at thigh level. On the other hand, there's the child who's level of fear is so high that just the sight of seeing dad enter the water without her causes screaming and panic. We experienced both levels, and every one in between. My oldest managed to work up the courage to join her dad several yards into the water where the waves broke, only to refuse to speak to him for the rest of the night when he somehow managed to allow the wave to crash directly into her face, filling her open and screaming mouth with salty sand. Paul's oldest took the stance of "uh uh...if I don't go in, you don't go in, so get your butt out of that water, mister!". Thus, he stayed pretty dry all week.

Out to Dinner
What would a beach vacation be without that night out at a big ol' seafood restaurant? Well, we belted through two dinners out this week, one more successful than the other. The first was in classic style. The little one's nap failed to take, so he was the typical bear that every parent dreams of. The only way to keep him from fussing was to constantly distract him with the spotlight-induced images of fish swirling around the restaurant floor, and thus we didn't see much of him or his mom the entire meal. And of course there were the usual bathroom breaks. First a child announces it's time to empty the bladder, so mom takes her. Upon returning to the table, the second child announces it's her turn, and the parent returns to the bathroom. Once back, she realizes that she, herself failed to go, and it's time for another trip. By then the appetizers are finished, and it's the dad's turn to go. Overall, we would have all seen more of each other if we'd asked for a table inside one of the restroom stalls.

The second dinner was almost strangely successful, with little issue to speak of. This was despite the 45-minute wait for a table, which we realized would be worth it when we thought about the fact that it would take us at least that long just to find another restaurant, and on a Friday night that place would have a wait as well. But the kids kept themselves occupied the entire time. Perhaps it was due to the four iPhones we had in our possession, each with a copy of the game "Pee Monkey" on it.

The noise, noise, noise, noise!
After accepting the challenge from my eldest child to swim down and touch the bottom of the nine-foot deep pool, I found myself unable to remove the water from my ear. After three days of asking people to repeat themselves and turning the TV volume up to eleven, a trip to the local urgent care facility was necessary. It turned out that the water pressure had compacted enough wax into my ear canal to make an entire colony of bees say, "dude, that's a lot of wax."

Unfortunately I didn't realize how good I'd had it. After my ear cleaning, I quickly learned just how loud a house with four children who've had nothing but ice cream and popcorn for four days straight can be. I promptly went back to the urgent care facility and asked for my wax back.

It only took about thirty years, but at last I finally understand why my parents never took me or my sister anywhere.

Back in my day...

This week was parent-teacher conferences. That most wonderful time of year, when the kids get a couple of free days off and the parents rearrange their schedules so they can sit in tiny chairs designed for six-year-olds and find out exactly what they are getting out of their school district's tax dollars.

For us, parent-teacher conferences are actually fairly boring. I mean really, how often can you hear phrases like "pure unadulterated genius", "miles ahead", and "their future fame and fortune will more than cover your retirement" before it starts to get a little repetitive? Really, the highlight of conference night is walking out of the classroom and roaming the hallway, picking out the documented moments of brilliance that are our childrens' artistic masterpieces hanging on the walls amongst more feeble and pathetic attempts at creativity while other, lesser parents run screaming from their own childrens' classrooms and hurl themselves off the top of the gymnasium bleachers in a vain attempt to quell their own anguish over their child's mediocre performance.

Sometimes I can't help but get my geek on, but this year during the conference I felt compelled to ask how involved the students get in computer skills development. I figure that by the time our children reach adulthood the cyborgs will be pretty much running things around here, so I want to make sure that my kids are skilled enough to be useful members of the Great Hacker Resistance of 2030. That, and I'm hoping my older daughter might be able to help my wife occasionally by recovering a lost Word document or two when I'm not home.

I received an interesting response to my question. It turns out that the kids don't spent a whole lot of time in the computer lab these days. Why? Because it's a complete waste of time. More often than not a typical lab session starts with a bevy of computer crashes, "teacher, I can't login" complaints, and accidental mouse clicks inadvertently leading kids to open the Windows System folder and deleting Autoexec.bat. Frankly, it's gotten to a point where it just isn't worth the time and frustration.

Wow. This is quite a testament to how far with computers we have come. Microsoft and other companies have spent billions trying to make computers so friendly and intuitive that they have become too complex to teach how to use.

I remember when I was a youngster and part of the gifted program (otherwise known as the short bus full of snowball targets). We spent many hours learning and understanding computer concepts. Each day we would fire up the trusted Radio Shack TRS-80, wait for the black screen to appear, and start typing. That was it. No logins. No icons. No worrying about accidental downloads of porn. Back then, porn was where it should have been...in that secret box in my dad's workshop that he thought I didn't know about. And as long as he doesn't read my blog, he still thinks I don't know about.

What a life these kids lead. My daughters have never seen a world without the internet. Heck, they've never been without WiFi. They've never not shared the house with at least one iPod. And as a result, they're not the least bit dazzled by these technological wonders. The other day I introduced my kid to an iPhone app that automatically recognizes songs playing on the radio and identifies them for you. She was completely nonplussed, and simply asked me for the iPhone so she could play that game where you make the monkey pee in the toilet by tilting the phone back and forth.

Back in my day, the monkey I had to make pee in the toilet was an actual monkey. And he didn't like it when I tilted him.

Planning to have kids? Better rework that budget.

Some advice for all you expectant parents out there. I'm sure you're giddy with anticipation over the prospect of a new little one in your life. someone to love, to care for and, most importantly, to pay for. I'm sure you've got the nursery all ready, the pantry stocked with Enfamil and various jars of pureed vegetables, and the budget for the next several years solidified and ready for the little one to invade your life. You're ready to be Supermom and Superdad, right? We laugh at you, you silly young waifs. Here's a few things I bet you never thought of for that budget.

Birthday parties.
No, I'm not talking about your little one's birthday party. That's enough of a financial drain in itself, what with the required passage through the worlds of Build-A-Bear, MyGym, and giant backyard BBQ's. I'm talking about the friends' birthdays. As your child enters toddlerhood and begins to attend preschool, it's a requirement that she invite each and every classmate to her birthday party. Likewise, she's obligated to attend each one of their birthday parties. Each birthday party will out-do the last, and don't think for a MOMENT that you're not required to do the same. So plan on about twenty bucks a kid for presents. Plan to spend each and every weekend being dragged by your toddler to Build-A-Bear to go through the same ursine manufacturing process you did the previous week until she's amassed a quantity of stuffed bears no human should have to tend to. My advice to you? Train your child to become a pariah, loathed by each and every one of her classmates. It's cheaper in the long run, and scars will heal. Who knows, your socially awkward child might grow up to write a blog or something.

Paper
Kids love to draw. Expect that your printer will never be in proper working order. Expect that the paper tray will always be found on the floor under your desk after your kid has ransacked it in an effort to obtain clean media for her latest bit of artistry. Plan on about a ream of paper,per month, per kid. With the economy the way it is, save money by swiping paper from the office, since chances are good your company won't be around in the next fiscal quarter anyway. Oh, also consider space allocations in your home, as every flat surface in the house will eventually be piled high with your child's artwork. There's the stuff she makes at home, the stuff she makes in preschool, the stuff she scribbles on the back of the Denny's menu...none of it can be thrown away as it's all entirely too special and important and your child will still be healing from the wounds of not being invited to her classmates' birthday parties so don't injure her pride further by throwing something out. That sheet of 8-1/2" x 11" with the two messy crayon circles on it? Better get it out of the trash right now and put it up on the fridge before she notices what you tried to do. As if to demonstrate my point, Jessica just walked up to me asking, "Dad? Can I have a piece of paper?" I'd tell her to check the recycling bin, but if she does she'll find the pile of her drawings I threw out the other day and call me an evil ogre for doing so.

Prescriptions
Another advantage to making your child the preschool outcast is that it will enable her to avoid physical contact with other children. If your child is unlucky enough to have a friend or two, then plan for the worst. By the 3rd day of the first school year, she will have her first ear infection. The following week will bring a case of strep. After that, another ear infection, with diarrhea. And just in time for your upcoming vacation, she will pass all those diseases over to you, knocking you flat on your back for the rest of the month. Get to know your local pharmacist. You'll be there often. I should also mention that you should plan to add an extra closet to the kids' bathroom dedicated to the storage of Childrens' Tylenol, Vaporub, and humidifiers in the shape of Hello Kitty. As I write this, my wife is picking up Jessica's latest prescription, this time for an ear infection with pus on her tonsils.

Camp
This one has been discussed by many a blogger in the recent past, but it's worth mentioning again. As a dutiful helicopter parent (a term I just learned last night), you will need to make a multitude of decisions about how to get your child out of the house when school is done for the summer. But telling your child to simply go play outside is NOT an option. There are evil things in your neighborhood. A skeevy man with thick glasses and beady eyes is camped out at the end of your street at this very moment, waiting for a lone toddler to wander just a little too far from his front door, so the child can be swept up and shipped to an overseas white slavery ring. There are packs of wild dogs roaming your neighborhood right now, on the hunt for an afternoon snack. And since chances are good little Timmy has some syrup from this morning's breakfast still on his new outfit from Childrens' Place, if the wild dogs don't get him the swarm of bees will. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, camp. Start writing checks now. There's preschool camp. Bible camp. Art camp. soccer camp. Acting camp. Piano camp. Attitude Adjustment camp. Band-Aids and Booboos camp. Learn to be a Vegetarian camp. Send your child to all of them, for if you skip even one, come fall your child will be even more of the social pariah than she already is, having missed out on an opportunity to learn how not to fend for herself over the summer. Oh and of course, don't you dare try to schedule your own child for camp independently of the scheduling of the other children in her class. If your son's best friend is going to Paint Your Own Pottery camp, you'd better damned well send your son there at the same time, even if he thinks painting your own pottery is for sissies.

Ask the Smart Dad...

I found this in a pile on my desk. It's a picture my daughter drew two years ago in Kindergarten. Don't ask why it's a negative image...that's my scanner acting wonky. What's important is the message. "I will ask MY SMART DAD before taking any unknown substance."




Note the light bulb of brilliancy and the corporate logo shirt. She knows me well. And she knows she'll get a straight answer from me. While I don't recall being asked recently by my daughter if she could snort any white powder or down a bottle of skull-and-crossbones-flavored Gogurt, I'm ready for anything.

"Dad, what's this stuff?"

"That's Oxalic acid, dear. I use it to clean bird poop off the deck."

"Do you think it might taste good on ice cream?"

"Dunno. Never tried."

Planning on having kid?

I have a coworker who's expecting her first baby. It got me to thinking. As a father of two children, I consider myself a seasoned expert on the subject of child-rearing. I mean, so far I've done everything right, and documented all of my successes so that when the Father Of The Year award comes up for grabs again, I'm a shoe-in.

But that's just my opinion. I might be wrong. But I doubt it.

I have some suggestions for all those new parents-to-be out there. Some might call this unsolicited advice. I think of it more as a warning to all the new players on the team. And it certainly is a team. If we don't band together, those meddling kids will take over. Ever seen the Matrix? Yeah, it's like that but with more goo. So here's how you can best ready yourself for the onslaught:

1. Start buying twice as much food as you do now. When you get home, throw half of it away. That's exactly what will happen when your kid starts eating real food. You'll spend countless hours slaving over dinner and preparing a nutritious meal, and your kid will eat one carrot and half of your slice of garlic bread because three hours ago she had conned her grandma into an extra lollipop. But she'll have plenty of room for ice cream later.

2. Pay a neighborhood kid to call your house every 47 minutes starting at 7pm until around 6:30am. That will get you used to a normal sleep pattern once you have kids. For a more realistic effect, let the neighborhood kid know what TV shows you are watching so he can be sure to call you right when all the best scenes come on.

3. Practice the Dish Color relay. Take a blue dish from the cabinet and place it on the dinner table. Walk back into the kitchen. Now go and retrieve the dish, put it away, and replace it with a red one. Now do the same with two drinking cups. Then, bring out a fork and switch it with a spoon. You see, this is what will happen when your child forms an opinion. Bring him a bowl of red grapes in a green bowl on the third Tuesday of the month, and he's going to want them in the red bowl. Give her milk in the pink sippy, and she's going to want the Dora cup with the built-in straw. And don't even think about asking which bowl she wants before you select one; she will only change her mind the moment you bring it. You see, this is how they break you down, forcing you into submission.

4. When you talk to your spouse, only say the third and fifth word of every sentence. And repeat the fifth word twice. That's how it will be once you have a kid that knows how to talk. Or, more accurately, how to interrupt.

5. Accept the fact that you and your fertile loins will be personally responsible for global warming. Between the twelve thousand pounds of diapers your little varmint will go through, the massive collection of non-biodegradable plastic Disney Princess toys that will amass in the corner of the basement giving off toxic fumes, and the truckloads of empty cereal, Eggo waffle, and Easy Mac boxes you will dispose of each week, there's no hope for this planet and it's all because you wanted someone to carry on the family name. Ironic, ain't it.

6. Ask each of your friends to plan on getting together no more than once a month. When the day comes to get together, one of you should cancel due to illness. It doesn't matter if anyone's actually sick, but it will get you used to the fact that you will never be able to make advance plans with anyone because when the time comes someone's kid will have a fever of 102 and have spent the previous night throwing up on the duvet.

7. Kiss the following things goodbye: friends, spare time, exercise routines, sleep, disposable income, nice furniture, savings, cars that don't smell like spoiled milk, ironed clothing, polished kitchen floors, CD collections, recollections of important events in history, and extra space. All those items will be distant forgotten memories once he takes over.

8. Rent a classic horror movie. When the "girl screaming at the top of her lungs" scene come on, turn the volume up past 11. This will enable you to get started on the inevitable hearing loss that comes as a result having children. There is no sound more piercing on this earth than two children playing loudly in a bathtub while you are less than a foot from them.

9. Take a container of cottage cheese, and store it under the kitchen sink for a month. Now open it. Mmmm, notice that pungent aroma? That's kid barf. Get used to it.

10. No no, this one's for you to find out yourself.

The impossible requests

The other day, like most days, my daughter came to me with a random small part from a playset and asked me to glue it back together. In this case, the problem was an arm that broke off a tiny Disney action figure only slightly smaller than a dung beetle. And she wanted me to repair the arm. Sure honey, all I need is an electron microsocope, one of those machines they use for laser eye surgery, and some nanobots. I'll get right on it.

I especially like it when she comes to me with a broken Slinky, figuring I can just tape it back together again. Ever try to tape a slinky? It doesn't work.

This led me to think about all those impossible questions asked of a typical dad (or mom, I suppose, but this is my blog, not hers) on a day-to-day basis. For example:

>Daddy, can you glue this (insert small item, such as Barbie shoe, hair band, necklace bead) back together?

>Daddy, can you put new batteries in this (non-battery-operated broken item)?

>Daddy, can you play with me (when asked while standing on an eight-foot step ladder with a tool belt on my waist, a paint brush in my hand, and a live electrical wire in my teeth)?

>Daddy, do you HAVE to go to work today?

>Daddy, how do you spell ablobdigog?

>Daddy, how were tools made back when there were no tools to make them? (good one, I thought)

>Daddy, can I have blueberries as a snack?
(Me:) We don't have any blueberries.
(Her:) But I want some!

(Me:) Good night sweetie.
(Her:) Good night daddy. Daddy?
(Me:) Yes?
(Her:) I want to sleep with Woofie tonight.
(Me:) Okay. where's Woofie?
(Her:) In the car.
(Me:) Of course.
(Me:) Trudge...trudge..trudge....Okay, I got Woofie, here you go.
(Her:) And Blue Bear.
(Me:) And where's Blue Bear? Never mind, in the car....right....

PT 101

With a week of vacation over the holidays, we decided to focus more of our efforts on getting our younger one to recognize the virtues of the potty seat. I think it started something like this:

"C'mon sweety. Which would you rather do? Pee in a diaper that soaks it all up and gets it out of your way so you don't even have to think about getting up from your 15th time watching Wonder Pets this week, or hold it in until you can rush to this closet of a room, fumble with your zipper, and plop down on this cold, hard, porcelain throne to pee, noisily flushing it away along with your very own soul down the drain never to be seen again, followed by a thorough hand washing and re-dressing, only to rush back to Wonder Pets and discover that you missed the scene where the mouse with the pilot's helmet managed to get the team together and save the rhino stuck in the mud? I mean, really.

Come to think of it, I look forward to getting old and wearing Depends, so I won't miss any of Wonder Pets either.

We were actually moderately successful this week. My wife formulated a brilliant plan starting with the purchase of a display case containing little toy horses, which we set on top of the TV for the kid to see. We told her she would get a horse each time she successfully peed in the potty. So far she's gotten two horses, named Nichole and Michael. I believe her plan now is to mate them and make her own new horses, thus having no need for our silly plan.

The questions begin

My 5-year-old hit two major milestones this month. First, she is reading. In fact, she reads better than I do, I think. I realize that this now means that the sponge which is her brain has stopped it's one-way path of absorbing everything in its wake, and is now providing output as well. We can only hope she uses this new-found power for good rather than evil. I already know that Kid#2's plans focus on an evil-only lifestyle, but I think with Kid#1 we've tried to steer her down a simpler path.

The other milestone was that she has asked her first questions of me that I actually had to look up to find an answer. First, she asked why the sky is blue. No really. And she caught me off-guard, so I wasn't prepared to tell her the real story, about the horrible mistake God made on laundry day by mixing his white clouds with his favorite blue hat. The other question she asked was what three things made mammals unique. Okay, she was quizzing me on this one, because she learned it in preschool. Of course, Google came to the rescue by explaining that mammals all have mammary glands, the presence of three middle ear bones, and hair. Hah-betcha didn't get the ear thing, did ya.

How did dads save face before the internet?

A suggestion for evil witches

More on the whole Disney thing. In your average 007 movie, James Bond's evil arch nemesis will almost always fall short of his goal of killing off the secret agent because one basic mistake - wordiness. The bad guy will always be sure to yammer away about his death ray is the biggest, or how his extortion plot just can't fail. Meanwhile, James is sawing through his chains with his laser watch and making plans to foil the bad guy's plot.

Disney Evil Witches and Fairys (DEWFs) all suffer a similar character flaw. For some stupid reason, rather than killing of the pretty young things that piss them off, they insist on putting them under spells that can only be broken by love's first kiss. For some reason, they ALWAYS make that mistake, thinking there's no possible way that some troubled handsome young lad might fall upon the young princess lying there, decide she's quite the tongue-candy, and steal a smooch while no one is looking. Get real. Princes in fairy tale land are like Hummers in suburbia.

Let's take a look at a few DEWFs who went wrong, and how they could have done better:

SNOW WHITE: In a pre-internet nod to Hot Or Not,the DEWF decides to rely on a mirror to give her a daily babe rating. When she finds out, after specifically assigning some lumberjack the task of offing Snow White, that Paul Bunyan wasn't up to the task, she sets out to take care of business herself. She dresses up like an old hag and creates an appple poisioned with a potion that will make her fall asleep until awoken by love's first kiss.

A BETTER PLAN: Break the mirror into shards, pound down the door of the double-wide that Snow White and her vertically challenged inbreds are shacking up in, and slice the wench. Then, get yourself a nose job and a facial and forget the old hag buisness.

SLEEPING BEAUTY: In this story, the DEWF is miffed because she wasn't invited to the family shindig celebrating the king's new offspring. So, she makes herself a real thorn in the king's side by plotting to stab the kid with a spinning needle when she turns 16.

A BETTER PLAN: You know, I've heard that my crazy Aunt Ruth wasn't invited to my bris, and she got back at us by stealing the silverware at my bar mitzvah. Sounds like a similar story line. But the fact is it would have been far simpler to steal the baby and grind its bones for her soup.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: In a bit of a role reversal, some mysterious DEWF casts a spell on a prince, and tells him he's gotta find a way to love before he can go back to normal.

A BETTER PLAN: Now, let's face it, the DEWF's mistake here was making the guy look like a cross between the Cowardly Lion and Ben Franklin. Everyone knows the Cowardly Lion was the sexiest member of the Oz bunch, and Ben Franklin always managed to invent his way into the hearts and beds of women. I mean let's face it, sometimes, women dig geeks. The geek thing seemed to work okay for me. Now on the other hand, she made the dishes talk like Angela Landsbury. That, alone, was probably enough torture for the prince, so I will give her that one.

DisMay

I believe we are beginning to enter that much-anticipated and much-feared stage of parenthood, where the child realizes that money can be exchanged for goods and services (and any Homer Simpson fan worth his salt knows that money can also be used to buy peanuts. Tell me more). However, our elder offspring has not quite grasped the fact that this money does not come out of a tap or get harvested from a plant.

If you are a new parent, be warned that The Disney store at your local mall utilizes a system known as the Disney Store Marketability of Youth System, known by its more common acronym "DisMaY". These highly complex sensors scan passers-by and immediately register the size, sex, hair color, parental spending limit and mailing address of each and every child that passes within 20 feet of the entryway. The system will then assign a rating and category to each child and proceed with a barrage of marketing in the child's general direction.

Let's use my daughter Natalie as a very simple example. Natalie is 5 years old and a red head. Let's look at some of her favorite things:

Favorite Movie: Little Mermaid
Favorite passtime: Princess dress-up
Favorite dishware: Her Ariel plate, Ariel bowl, and Ariel princess cup
Favorite sound: That "Ah-ah-ah" sound that Ariel makes in the movie when Ursula steals her voice
Favorite toothbrush: Ariel
Favorite toothpaste: Ariel
Favorite pull-ups, underwear, T-shirt....are you sensing a pattern?

How did she get this way? Daddy's influence? I think not. I've spent far, far too many hours demonstrating safe power-tool usage and watching Ask This Old House to head her in that direction. Mommy's influence? Not quite. Mommy is as much a victim as Natalie herself. And how did they become victims?

DisMay.

Okay, so now that Natalie has surrendered to the suggestion that she MUST have everything with a picture of a Disney Princess on it, the Disney Store Catalogs have begun arriving. Can I tell you how many times in the past month I've fended off cries of, "Dad! Look! A Disney Princess Futon cover! We don't have one of those yet!" or "Dad! Look! A Disney Princess Fire Extinguisher! I could use that to put out the fire when you burn my Disney Princess Pop-Tarts again."

We have found that when we explain to her that these things cost money and we need to save money, she tells us that she will pay. How, you might ask? Well, with her credit card, of course. And where did she get that credit card? From her Disney Princess Cash Register, of course.

Baby Translator

Okay okay, sorry I've been away for a while, lost in the abyss of daily life. Well I'm back, and today I'm going to mention a little something about baby translation. You see, Jessica is at that stage of life that every parent loves, that stage where she has words for about everything and very few of them are in the dictionary. For example, let's take "dwaffies". What are dwaffies, you ask? Well, it was time for the evening snack, and Jessica was frantically pointing at the fridge yelling, "Dwaffies! Dwaffies". At first I thought she wanted a waffle, but no, her word for waffle is "Farfel". Or is that her word for flower? I forget. Anyway, I then thought she wanted a cracker, but that would have been "quackel". Then it occurred to me. About five minutes before we have been discussing various fruits, and strawberries were mentioned. I said, "do you want Strawberries?" Her answer to that was an ecstatic, "Yes! Yes! Dwaffies!!" Followed by a heavy sigh that could only mean, "My god, these adults are so freaking STUPID."

Hilary has often told me that my ability to translate Jessica-speak is uncannily accurate, and far better than she can do. It's been more than one where Jessica would be running around yelling, "finglide, finglide!" Hilary would ask what it was she wants and, without skipping a beat I would tell her, "She wants to go outside on the swings and slide down the slide."

Some other important terms to know around our house:

Booma = banana
Boom = Balloon
Yellow = yellow
Yellow also = purple
Purple = Barney
See = Jessica (note that she picked that one up from "JeSSE")
Mike = Daddy. No, say "daddy."...."Mike"....."Fine, whatever".
Updown = down
Bof = Bath

By the way, at this moment in the other room I hear a baby screaming and a 4-year-old yelling, "I need that! I need that". Hilary then told her that she was being rude and not sharing, to which her response was, "But it's not rude to me!!"

Bliss. Nothing but bliss.

Love for sale

So, this weekend, we had a yard sale. For those of you on the east coast, that would be a tag sale. It was time to eliminate about 1800 cubic feet worth of crap from our house, in preparation for that next generation of Things That Stain, Things That Clutter, kiddie pools, and Disney Princess Fire Hazards. So after about three weeks of planning, attic emptying, closet purging and soul searching we were ready for the onslaught of (as my sister calls them) Freaks And Weirdos that are yard sale patrons. I figured we had it made, because at the bottom of the street the local church was having a "huge yard sale" on the same day, so through some strategic signage we would be able to grab those shoppers that just couldn't get enough of the chotckes at the church and needed another fix.

Well in the end, Natalie did far better financially than we did by selling lemonade. Who, honestly, could resist a little redheaded girl (Charlie Brown couldn't, that's for sure) following you around saying, "would you like some ice cold lemonade? It's only a quarter and I made it myself!" Well, it turns out Natalie made almost as much in tips as we did in the whole sale.

It seems that folks in the North Hills of Pittsburgh don't want our crap. They have enough of our own. In fact, I head a story on NPR (this is true) about the Do-It-Yourself Storage industry where someone cited a statistic that "Americans have consumed more stuff since 1960 then then entire world did in all of history before 1960." Okay, so how did they calculate that one? By the end of the day, perhaps 10% of our stuff was gone. And mind you, it was good crap too. I mean surely there must be someone who needs a completely unused floppy drive and a dozen highball glasses that say, "Greece Vacation" on them, no?

No.

And no, we've never been to Greece.

The Isle of Tools

The other day Natalie and I were playing with a puzzle, one of those wooden puzzles with about a dozen pieces, each piece with a little knob to pick it up with. This one contained pictures of different types of transportation. A police car, a tractor-trailer, a helicopter, a ship, etc. I decided to make things interesting by making a story out of it, picking up a specific piece whenever I mentioned it. Something to the effect of, "one day, a man was riding a Motorcycle, he drove too fast and was stopped for speeding by a Police Car. The policeman said, "you're going to crash into a Tractor-Trailer if your not careful!" Well, you get the idea.

Natalie then decided it was her turn. Her story began, "One day, a man was riding a Motorcycle. He rode to an island where there were no people, only tools."

I never heard the rest of the story, because I was too busy dreaming of that wonderful, wonderful place.

Small Pieces Of Cloth

It's 3:40pm on Wednesday, some time early in September 2000. The only reason I knew this is that my Timex Indiglo Ironman, for which I used the “I need it to time contractions” excuse to buy, told me. I never timed a single one, by the way. Instead I used it to tell me if I should be eating, taking out the garbage, sleeping, watching the Simpsons, or heating up a formula bottle for our 4-day-old newborn baby girl. It was a very tired, tired time.

Life quickly became a whirlwind of smelly diapers, washing bottles, and small pieces of cloth everywhere. It's amazing that the new kid was home no more than 4 hours and our spotless house turned into the set of one of those movies where the asteroid plows into Los Angeles.

So about those small pieces of cloth. There were burping pads. Sleepers. Gowns. Onesies. Changing pads. Receiving blankets. Tushie wipes. Washcloths. Diapers. Wet ones. Swaddlers. It seemed we could have made it easier if we had picked up one good sweatshirt and a garden hose.

So Natalie left the hospital at 3pm the previous day. She slept the entire ride home, and until 8pm, when we fed her. Then, she proceeded to wake us at 45 minute intervals until the next morning. During one episode, I checked on her to make sure she was okay (she had been silent for 48 minutes, and we were worried) and I was greeted by a stream of white goo coming from the general direction of her face. As I picked her up to clean her off, I discovered there was already a previously projected stream under her head, which she had been marinating in for quite some time.

It's amazing she survived the night, given her parents' general lack of knowledge at the time of how to keep human beings alive.

That morning, Natalie appeared interested in spending the day at rest. Mommy and I tried to catch up on sleep - but in reality Natalie had training regimen planned for us. She knew that before we had the chance to catnap, it would be time to introduce her parents to the concept of the explosive poop. I'm pretty sure they had been feeding Natalie nothing but corn salsa the entire time she was in the hospital, because that was exactly what was coming out of her. Did I sign up for that part? I couldn’t remember. Then again, I couldn’t remember what day it was without the Indiglo Iron Man. Hmm…Wednesday... Garbage night. Man, those garbage men were gonna hate us that morning.

And that’s how the first 24 hours went. Oh, how easy those days were.