Coolest truck ever

On Thursday, the excavators carved out the footprint of the addition in preparation to pour the footer. At about 4pm, they got the weather report and found out that Friday called for rain. "Hey," they said. "Let's just pour the footer today." so Tom, the lead excavator guy, picked up his cell, and in ten minutes this truck showed up on our street. It seem someone came up with a way of delivering concrete much the same way as one delivers pizza. After talking with the owner of the truck I found out that he's got three of these rigs in strategic locations around the suburbs, and can usually respond to a call within an hour. The machine has a number of hoppers containing gravel, sand, water, and other mysterious chemicals, and simply by lowering the nozzle attached to the tail, it pours out perfectly-mixed concrete ready to pour. The truck even has a built-in credit card reader. Beats out any tonka truck I ever had.

Rather than drive this massive rig on my driveway, the excavators chose to go back and forth with their little four-wheeled John Deere bucket-loader. After the third or fourth pass, the driver of the bucket loader got into a real rhythm, much to the expense of what little grass was left back there. It's amazing what you can do to a lawn driving one of these things in circles at 30 mph.

Movie Review: The Wild

My suggestion: Avoid it. Skip it. Forget it ever existed.

These days, technology has reached a point where, in a well written movie, the animation should almost go unnoticed as you watch, much like a good score does. A good score simply adds to the power and emotion that the movie contains. Animation can serve the same role. If you watch a truly well-made animated movie, you almost forget it's animated. Finding Nemo is a great example of this.

The Wild is not.

Unfortunately, the ONLY redeeming feature of The wild was its animation. The animation was incredible. Whereas Madagascar (my kids' favorite movie) was amazingly animated with the characters intentionally looking cartoony, The Wild's animators made the animals look REAL. Or, at least, like real stuffed animals. The scenery was also fanastic. One striking scene involved the cast riding in the back of a garbage truck down 42nd street. The glitz and glamour of Manhattan was incredibly realistic, right down to the giant, flashy ads on 42nd (including a well placed TiVo ad!). In that scene, however, I noticed there were no people on the street. so much for realism.

My wife, daughters and I walked out of the movie at least twenty minutes before it ended, totally disgusted with having spent $25 on tickets to see it and expecting nightmares from the kids later tonight. This movie has a "G" rating. As parents of children ages 5 and 2, we need to be able to trust that "G" means "G", not that it means "no sex or blood, but plenty of scary scenes that will make your child scream that she wants to go home and throughout the after noon wish she was never born". The Wild started off with the father lion telling a story to his son about how he fought of a 14-foot (actually, he changed it to 14-thousand-foot) tall wildebeest with fire in his eyes, four sharp horns, and hooves that could destroy mountains, simply by roaring as only lions can. I felt extremely uncomfortable throughout the opening scene, and thanked the lord when it ended with a down-to-earth attempt by the son to roar like daddy. Picture the "Be Prepared" scene in Lion King where Scar sings with the hyenas in a cave, but even more scary and no music. Later in the movie, the mean, scary wildebeests return in scenes that were not only dark and fearsome, but also long, boring, unimaginative, humorless and tiring.

The basic story line is nothing original. Based in the fictional NY Zoo (and not nearly as creatively as Madagacar did it), The son can't roar like a real lion ("he's eleven, but roars at a nine-year-old level"). His dad (played weakly by Keifer Sutherland...he's much better when he's pointing a gun at someone) is visibly disappointed, to the point where the son wants to go back to the wild, where his dad supposedly grew up, and learn to be a big meany like him. In a familiar story line, the son accidentally gets stuck on a boat headed for who-knows-where, and Dad has to gather his group of trusty friends to save him. The son was actually on a boat headed to rescue animals from the African Jungle where the threat of a volcano eruption was eminent, but the whole volcano thing was barely even an issue in the movie (perhaps the ending was about the eruption, but again we left early). The dad and friends hijack a tugboat and follow the giant sea-going barge across the Atlantic, without so much as filling up the gas tank.

Dad's posse included a forgettable giraffe, a best-friend-and-advisor squirrel that was in love with the giraffe, a snake, and a koala named Nigel with an English accent. Sorry, but since when are koalas from London?

The humor fell completely flat in this movie. For example, when the zoo closed, all the animals got together for a big event, which was a curling competition using turtles for pucks. Problem is, it just wasn't funny. There was also a potentially great scene where the garbage truck starts to compress its cargo much like the famous trash compactor scene of Star Wars. In homage to Star Wars, the lion attempts to use the snake to brace the walls. But again, weak. The only other bit with potential was when, as the gang searches the jungle for the son, trees and rocks seem to guide their way by lighting up with neon arrows and through mysterious jungle whispering. It was a scene that (I think) was a parody of LOST, but again, weak.

Save your money.

STEP 1: destroy all grass

P1040705.JPG
Originally uploaded by daninhim.

We are well underway today. The diggers are digging. Interesting that they dropped off the excavation equipment a few days ago, and I'm pretty sure did some donuts on the grass. The purpose of that, I believe was that if they start off with the grass all nerfed up, the home owner isn't going to worry about it later in the process. seems like a reasonable idea to me.

We also had our first minor hiccup of the process. Bob the builder (yes, his name is Bob, that's why we hired him....) realized that we measured one wall wrong. If we'd gone by the dimensions on the left side of the architectural plan, the new space would have been 4" shorter than if we'd used the measurements on the right side. No big deal, all is well, but it's a good thing he didn't order the floor joists yet. Bob first asked me if we should forget the extra 4 inches. I asked him what that would affect, and he said the bathroom vanity would be a little shorter. I said no big deal. But then he also said the workshop would be 4" shorter. I told him no f'ing way. a man's gotta have his priorities, you know. I can brush my teeth in a smaller bathroom, but don't mess with my workshop.

Weekend's gone, so is the deck

well, the deck is outta here. Many thanks to Dave and Ed, trusty grunts that enjoy demolition. Overall everything went as planned. The only rather frightening moment was when it came time to remove the posts from the old half of the deck. This is the half that I DIDN'T build, the one that came with the house. Once the structure was down, I laid a hand on the first post, to find that it tipped over with as much ease as tipping an empty beer bottle over. And that was what was holding up the deck. Yikes.

Of mice and men

I guess you could say that today was day 1 of the build. Today began the teardown of the deck. But first, a comment on omens.

You know those moments when you just KNOW you're making the right (or wrong decision)? Well, we had three of those moments over the past few days. the first happened last week or so, when the kids (and, well, okay, the parents) were dancing around the room to Smashmouth. All that glittered wasn't so much gold, but broken glass, and oil.

Okay, I've lost you. I shall explain. During the festivities, someone knocked over an oil lamp (basically a glass jar full of kerosene) all over the living room carpet. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get oil out of a carpet? Our living room floor suddenly turned into the set of an infommercial as we discovered the wonder of the absorbent chamois cloths we obtained at a recent home show. Now the carpet is so lumpy that Natalie's remote control car wouldn't even drive over it. But hey, with the renovation the carpet goes away. So be it. And it reminded us that now would be a good time to start potty training Jessica.

The next omen occurred the evening we signed the loan papers. We told our kids that we were definitely going through with the project. The generaly response was, "yeay. Can I watch a video?" So we obliged, flipped through Comcast's on-demand programming, and discovered that the "preschool network" (or something like that) had a show teaching kids about home renovation. Daddy and daughters watched intently. Mommy will be forced to watch it before the end of the weekend so she can learn what HVAC stands for. How many 2-year-olds do YOU know that know what HVAC stands for, huh?

The final event (or straw, as it were) occurred this morning. I was making my morning coffee when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed furry critter bounding across the kitchen floor into the dining room. And it wasn't a muppet. It seems little GusGus (Cinderella reference for all you non-parents) had been snacking on a bag of brown sugar, and I disturbed him. I then went all Bill Murray on his ass, chasing him around the house, overturning chairs and couches, all the while swearing a blue streak and working up a good sweat. I cornered him behind the piano, behind the bookshelf, under the computer desk, until finally I managed to direct him out the back door to freedom. After the chase ended, I tried to think of a way to debrief my wife on the chaos without completely freaking her out. Unfortunately I'm not that strong a thinker. Hilary spent the rest of the day traversing the house across countertops and couches, a broom in one hand and a saucepan in the other.

But hey. We're renovating. A chance to clean those corners full of cheerios and other kiddy snack foods that GusGus has obviously been squirrelling (well, mousing) away for years.

So back to Day 1. As mentioned above, the deck comes down this weekend. The excavators come on Wednesday afternoon (quite an event for the first night of Passover, dontcha think?). So out come the power tools and beverages, as I'm expecting a small crowd of helpers to arrive tomorrow. Here's to a summer of barbecuing in the driveway!

It's happening!

Well, as you see from the post below, we weren't having much luck with alternative sources of funding, so we are proceeding gaily forward with our local bank and a loan. We sign the papers tomorrow, get the permits Thursday, and if all goes well, begin demolishing the deck this weekend. Pictures of both the progress and any blood drawn will of course be forthcoming.

Let's talk money for a moment

So we're at the final stages of planning for the renovation project. And that's everyone's favorite: getting the loan.

We've had reasonably good luck with our local bank, so I went to them asking about optionsf for a 2nd loan or line of credit. The end result was that they offered a loan covering about 75% of the estimate for the build, at an interest rate that a month or two ago would have seemed obscene. So I did a little more investigating. It turns out there's this thing called a "home construction rehab" loan designed just for projects like this. Sort of.

On the phone, the HCR loan sounds like a sweet deal. They appraise your current home, look at the plans, and come up with what they think the net worth would be after the addition. They will then loan you up to 80% of that net worth. This amount pays off your existing mortgage, and usually gives you plenty of additional money to do the build. It's kind of like consolidating your debt before you even manage to get yourself into debt. But there's some strings.

First, they don't just give you the money. They pay off the current mortgage for you (at a higher interest rate, by the way), and then based on the construction bid they set up a set of milestones at which they provide a sum directly to the builder. So he might get $10k at the start, then another $20k when the foundation and walls are up. But it's up to the bank to decide those milestones. Sounds kind of like an accountant deciding on the right health care coverage, huh? But wait, there's more.

In order to provide us those "draws" of money, they have an inspector come out and check on the completion of those milestones. so if the walls were supposed to be completed, but they are only 90% done, no money. Sounds like a real hassle.

And to top it off, they want over nine thousand in closing costs.

In the end, our local bank is making it easy. We'll have money on Tuesday. This weekend, I get to demolish a deck.

Top ten signs it's time to build an addition

10. Before you sit down at your desk to get some work done you need to remove three Fisher Price Little People, a pile of graham cracker crumbs, and a leaking sippy cup full of what was once milk from in front of the computer keyboard.

9. You get dressed in the dark on tiptoes every morning so no one wakes up.

8. Your family hasn't come to visit in three years because they are tired of sleeping standing up in the furnace room.

7. You rent a Rug Doctor for the weekend, but your carpets just laugh at you.

6. Your kitchen wallpaper pattern is "early handprint"

5. You think that tearing your house apart, living amongst boxes and dust for 6 months, and spending every waking moment painting, nailing, or sanding something might just be what your marriage needs to give it a little spice.

4. You love a little sawdust in your coffee.

3. You've stopped repairing broken things in the house because whenever you look at them you think, "gee if we renovated, we'd just get rid of that".

2. The thought of staging a house for sale and thus keeping it clean for more than thirty seconds at a time frightens you to the depths of your soul.

1. You've decided to join the rest of America and explore the world of debt.

The Renovation Will Be Blogified

Today this blog is going to take a bit of a different direction. Hilary and I are about to have a new baby, weighing in at approximately 1100 square feet and three stories high. You see, since Thing #2 joined our family, we decided we were running out of living space fast. We're currently living on top of each other, I'm tired of having to move Fisher Price animals off the desk in order to reach the computer, and Hilary is tired of me throwing out her stuff every time I felt like cleaning. It was time to either start shopping for a bigger home, or consider an addition. Trouble is, we generally like our house, love our yard, and enjoy the neighborhood. Plus, we just can't imagine keeping the house clean for more than five minutes at a time (especially since our house cleaner retired two months ago), what with our two rugrats doing their best to unclean it, and figured that staging a house for sale would be nearly impossible. So we considered our next best option.

The Renovation Revelation.

Renovation is in my genes far more then selling/buying. My dad is a retired architect, and in 1979 the family did a major addition on the Connecticut homestead, adding an entire second floor. I believe dad's almost done with that project. Additionally, my sister just finished a renovation on her house. To me, selling the house would be the wimp's way out. I mean, when prehistoric caveman decided he wanted a hot tub outside the cave, did he sell and move up to the Stalactite Plan by the park? No, he hired a heavy dinosaur to make a big footprint in the back yard, and filled the hole up with molten tar. then, he soaked his way to bliss until he got eaten by a velociraptor. Hilary is still trying to figure out if we're (okay I'm) completely nuts. Jury is still out. So dad came to town last fall, and we mapped out the grand scheme. It involves adding a new master BR and bath on top of our one-story family room, plus additional space coming off the back in the form of more basement area with a workshop (which I will reside in 24/7 when the girls hit their teens and start having feminine issues) and mudroom, a bigger family room and kitchen eating area, and a new deck. Plus, we decided it would be wise to re-orient some of the rooms, making the dining room into an office, the living room into a dining room, and a short list of other items. All in all, a pretty sizeable project. I will get into more details in upcoming postings, but at this point we've got the builder, the electrician, and the heating guy all set to go. Now, I'm deeply entrenched in figuring out how we're going to pay for all this. If that goes well, I expect groundbreaking (actually, deck demolishing) in about a week. And yes there will be pictures. Possibly injuries as well. But definitely beer, if anyone wants to come help.

My sister, a sort-of stay-at-home mom with lots of free time on her hands (come on, admit it Audra), worked out a scheme where for her renovation she became the day-laborer for the builder. Throughout the process she swore she was going to write a book on the process. But even after having the Order Of The Golden Crowbar bestowed upon her by a panel of experts (mom and dad), she still has yet to write a syllable. I'm going to attempt to avoid that by documenting the process throughout. So stay tuned for more. Expect gruesome details, a multimedia experience, fireworks, laser shows, and perhaps a review on a new power tool whenever the opportunity comes up. If all works well, much of it will be amusing. Some of it will be informative. A little bit might perhaps be boring and self serving. But in the end, you may find some value in all this. If so, please let me know.

And that, your honor, is how I got the Band-Aid

Last night I came home from work to see Natalie pouting and pointing to a Band-Aid on her knee. I said to her, "what's the Band-aid for?" The following is a word-for-word, unedited transcript of the answer she gave me.

"When I was going to hunter's house, all we did was make dresses, like the one I have at home. And then when we were picking up Spencer, we had donuts - Easter donuts. We all got the same donuts. They had pink, purple and white frosting. And then when they dropped me off home, they stayed instead of went home when they dropped me off at my house when I came home. Then we played a little bit. Then I found a piece of tape stuck on my black sock. Me and Hunter, while she was drawing, I found a piece of tape. I said let's go find my magnifying glass in the white bin, but I couldn't find it. We were digging to the bottom, but I could not find it. so I said, "I have a safari kit downstairs". So we went downstairs to find my safari kit to see if my black magnifying glass was in my safari kit, which is the same color as my sock. so we went downstairs, and as I was walking I was singing, "Safarrrri. Safarrrri.". Then I tripped on my Little People House and popped my balloon. It was a red balloon. I called everybody and Hunter, Mommy, Spencer and Lisa all came to see what happened. I tripped on the thing and got a scratch. so we went upstairs and mommy got a Band-Aid. And that's where I got this Band-Aid."

Stuck in Chicago

Off topic a little bit, but oh well. It's Sunday evening. I should be in Minneapolis. But I'm not. I'm in Chicago at the lovely airport Hilton, a destination many a way-layed traveler knows about. Overall it could be worse, as I could be sleeping on the floor of the airport. But it's not all Heavenly Beds and honor bars.

My flight out of Pittsburgh today was at about 4:40 pm today. I got to the airport to discover the flight was delayed 20 minutes. Okay, no biggie. I can still make the connector out of Ohare. Well, once the flight took off, the usual midair time warp took care of any chance I had of making my connector. And of course, the other two possible flights to Minneapolis were booked solid. So, the woman on the counter said she could put me on a 7:00am flight Monday morning. She then asked, "which would you like to do?"

I replied with, "well, you haven't given me a choice.".

She said, "I need you to make a decision."

"On what? A decision implies options. You've given me one option. So guess what I'm gonna pick."

But wait, there's more.

I asked what they would be doing to set me up in a hotel. Answer? Nothing. She checked the system and found that the reason for the delay out of Pitt was for "cleaning". Meaning the time spent pulling the soda cans, newspapers, banana peels, and lost wallets out of the seatbacks. Because it was not a "mechanical issue", the hotel is not United's responsibility. I asked her why the plane was delayed into Pitt to begin with, and she said she didn't have that information. The best she could do was give me a voucher for a $99 rate at the aforementioned Hilton. Nice. Thank goodness for company expense reports.

Oh by the way, when I got on the flight in Pitt, the luggage racks were already full. So they made me check my roll-aboard. Which means it ain't with me now. While the friendly United customer care representative assured me it would be on the same plane as me the next morning, that don't give me no fresh underwear. The customer care rep then pulled out "Emergency Kit."

The emergency kit consists of everything you might need if you're stuck in a foreign city without your luggage. While one might think it includes fresh underwear, a toothbrush, and perhaps a sixpack of Rolling Rock, one would be mostly wrong. It contains:

-A toothbrush witha really short handle (Imagine breaking the handle of your toothbrush in half. That's what it's like to use).
-A tiny tube of Rembrandt toothpaste (so that's who buys Rembrandt toothpaste)
-A 2-inch long comb (for my eyebrows?)
-A bottle of Sea Salt body wash (sure hope I don't have any open cuts).
-A bottle of Sea Marine moisturizing shampoo (so I can smell like a Marine who's been at Sea?)
-A bottle of Marine Collagen conditioner (taken from the lips of real Marines?)
-A bottle of Hydrating Body Butter (So I stay moist while roasting?)
-A really dangerous looking disposable razor
-A tube of Transactive Foamless Shave Cream (I never really thought of shaving as a "transaction" before)
-A pipette full of Green Tea Eu De Toilette (which smelled surprisingly like a toilet someone poured tea into)
-This strangely designed cylinder about the size of half a roll of quarters, with no text on it except the word "deodorant". Oh, and when you push up on the bottom, the deodorant flies across the room.
-A brochure describing how I should be prepared to be revitalized by the sea, followed by two pages of small print describing the chemicals combined in these products to create the illusion of "the sea".

The next morning worked out far better. My 7am flight was on time, and my luggage was waiting for me in the bag claim office. So overall, I've been through worse. But never smelling like sea salt.

Waiting for Daddy to come home..

Waiting for Daddy to come home..
Originally uploaded by Tara C.

I came across this photo randomly on Flickr. The title and caption are what truly make it special. Make sure to click through to see the caption.

Man, I know that look....

Happiness is...

Happiness is an entire winter without anyone throwing up.

It's when both kids go to bed before LOST comes on.

It's when neither wakes up at night.

It's when they both stay asleep until the coffee is made.

It's that rare fleeting moment when there's more clean laundry than dirty.

It's that one gem in a collection of ruined photos.

It's instance #3,921 when some stranger says, "oh, that red hair!"

It's the big hugs.

It's having a DVD player in the minivan.

It's the first Saturday of the month at the Home Depot Kids Clinic (come to think of it, it's any Saturday at Home Depot).

It's making it to the top.

It's sitting on the deck while the kids are on the swings.

It's making something for dinner slightly more exotic than chicken nuggets and french fries and having both of them eat it.

It's when they ask for seconds.

It's when they want ice cream and so do you.

It's the closing music to Barney.

It's when they come up with comments like the one below.

Pure genius

My wife said to our children, "I can't imagine you guys at 20 years old. I wish you could stay little forever."

My 5-year-old responded with, "Mom, you can't control that. We'll be little for as long as we need to be."

I wish I'd thought of that.

Where do I find this stuff?

I decided I it's time create a second blog. One that's got nothing to do with kids, parenthood, or toilet paper (well, maybe toilet paper). One where I can regularly mention the goofy stuff I come across on a regular basis. There's a link to it on the sidebar on the right, entitled Today's Discovery.

Hmm, Yale, or U Paris?

I just opened the mail to find a letter from PNC bank stating that an educational fund has been created which we might be interested in. the fund provides financial aid to any child of an attorney working in Allegheny County that wishes to attend either Yale or University of Paris.

Hmm, if I send my wife back to work (she was a lawyer in her pre-mom life), maybe I can get early admission for Natalie?

Get some coughy while you're there.

I was giving words to Natalie to spell.

Shoe? S-h-o-e
Basket? B-a-s-k-e-t.
Sneeze? S-n-e-e-'-s. Thats' right, Snee's. I asked her to use it in a sentence, and got, "I went to Snee's house".

I guess she's right.

Terlet Paper for Kids

This seems kinda neat, actually. The toilet paper has paw prints on four sheets and then a puppy on the fifth, so children can follow the tracks to the dog and tear off the right amount of toilet paper. "So cute you’d almost feel bad about using it to clean up poop." Funny, that's how I feel about cats.

Curious George

In our neverending quest to find something decent for the kids to see at the movies, we were thrilled to hear that Curious George was coming out on the big screen. Though not an overly popular story character during our household's bedtime reading hours, CG was at least known by both kids, and we had high hopes that there would be nothing about this movie that would drive either child out of the theatre screaming.

We were not let down.

The story is about how the dude in the yellow suit (Will Farrell) comes to meet up with the inquisitive little ape (who's monkey-noises I believe are played by Eugene Levy) during a trek into Africa to find a mysterious giant idol he hopes to bring back to a museum. The monkey steals the man's hat, plays a little hide 'n seek, and gets on the man's good side. George also proceeds to stow away on the man's ship home from Africa to the big city, and the normal fish-out-of-water mishaps ensue. George racks up traffic, demonstrates his artisitic abilities when he comes across open cans of paint, and learns the art of defying gravity through the collection of helium balloons. Meanwhile yellw-hat dude is trying to protect his job at the museum and pretend he doesn't know the troublesome monkey while at the same time taking a liking for him and saving him from certain injury. You know, the usual stuff. There are no surprises in this movie, but the storyline was good, the characters were cute, and they made Drew Barrymore (who plays Will Farrell's love interest) into a much more attractive character than she is in real life (hey, I'm a dad, but I'm still a guy).

But what makes this movie is the soundtrack, consisting of original tunes by Jack Johnson.

I've never much been into Jack Johnson, a mellow guitar performer who makes John Mayer appear overly caffeinated, and knew little of his work other than an occasional song I caught on the local coffeehouse rock station. But on a whim I downloaded this album from the itunes Music Store, as I'm always on the hunt for something other than Barney's Greatest Hits to play in the minivan. Well, this album actually makes it into the regular playlists on my own iPod. It's great music, and it really makes the movie great.

So if you're like us struggling to find movies right for your little kids, don't miss this one. Both kids were riveted, and both parents enjoyed it fully.

Someone call a sports doctor...

....my daughters have Superbowl Fever!

Okay, this post is a little late in coming. So be it. I just wanted to tell the world about this strange new disease that's hit our household, known as football fever. Now, you must understand, that I was brought up in Connecticut, The Land Without Sports, in a very non-sports-oriented family. None of my friends understood me when I was growing up, because I didn't know the difference between a seventh inning stretch and a two-minute warning. when I moved to Pittsburgh, I discovered I had entered this very odd world full of people who's lives rotated around football schedules, people who worshipped these strange golden figures known as Fullbacks and Wide Receivers, often praising glory of these godlike figures while at the same time denouncing their faith when it appeared that their gods were going to fail them.

Then came the playoffs.

Steeler fever hit this town like a ton of t-shirts. Heck, even I started watching the games. Suddenly I noticed a change in my daughters. They would come home from preschool yelling chants like, "Willie Parker Willie Parker!" and "Big Ben Number 7", and ask for new toys like footballs and black & gold pom poms to chant their cheers.

Who was corrupting them? Could their preschool teachers really be secretive cult leaders, teaching the children to rise up against their parents and watch TV all day Sunday? Or could it just be a natural occurrence for all children born and bred in the 'Burgh, to grow up loving all that is Bettis? well, soon I found myself doing something I thought I'd never do...searching out the best deal on Steelers T-shirts.

The Superbowl came, and both kids stayed up for the whole thing. These are kids that normally go to bed before 9pm. And we let them stay up for a FOOTBALL game? My god, were my wife and I getting the fever too? I mean, what on earth were we thinking, letting them stay up for a FOOTBALL game? I think I'm starting to sweat. Quick someone grab me that Terrible Towel over there. AACK! We own a terrible towel? What's going on.

I guess there's no choice. I surrender. We're Steelers fans.

I've been hacked

ParentHacked, that is..

The toilet monster

If you are looking to toilet train your kids, I suggest NOT starting with this.

Go Steelers!

Jessica: Look! It's the Stee-lows!
Mom: And what are they playing?
Jessica: Foobow!
Mom: Do you like Football?
Jessica:No, I like yellow and green.

Ascension Revisited

We went back to REI today. Natalie of course climbed today. And she made it to the top! Dang, we're proud. this will come in really handy come spring time when I need someone to get frisbees unstuck from trees.

Daddy climbed too. While he made it to the top as well, most muscles were either pulled, strained, or bruised. Any that weren't considered themselves quite lucky.

All wet and sparkly

Picture this. Your daughter is playing in her room. Suddenly there's a loud crash, three seconds of stunned silence, then the piercing scream of a 5-year-old in turmoil. You run upstairs to find her soaking wet and covered in sparkles.

What could possibly have happened?

On Monday night my wife was out, Nat and Jess were upstairs playing, and I like a good, watchful father, was bumming around on the computer and ignoring my children. Natalie was busy hosting a surprise birthday party for her imaginary friend, Alicia.

The party was going well, from what I could hear filtering down the stairs. All her imaginary friends were there, the imaginary cake was cut, the imaginary presents (which were actually grocery bags filled with random crap from throughout the house) were being opened, and the imaginary list of names for thank you notes was being maintained by Jessica (who of course can't write). There was only one thing missing...music.

Natalie decided that, to keep the flow of the party going, she should play some tunes from her carousel horse music box/snow globe on her dresser. This thing is a beautifully decorated snow globe with a carousel horse in it, and a typical wind-up music box in the base. It weights a good five pounds.

She picked it up off her dresser, and attempted to wind up the key on the bottom. Trouble is, she turned the key the wrong way and ended up unscrewing it. The key promptly disappeared down her sleeve. As she shook her sleeve trying to get the key out, she somewhat absentmindedly placed the snow globe back on the very edge of the dresser with her other hand. The key fell to the floor, and as she bent down to pick it up, the snow globe toppled off the counter and smashed over her head.

How she escaped major injury is beyond me. But when I found her she was, as I stated earlier, soaking wet and covered in sparkles. The sparkles were a combination of tiny shards of glass and sparkly snow globe contents. When I asked her "are you ok?" and "what happened?", I was only able to get, "WWWAAHHWWHAAGGGHSNOWGLOBEHEADBROKEWETWEAAHHWAAAAGGGGHH!" out of her, so I proceeded down the trail of forensic science without any input from her. Soon she calmed down just enough to demand that mommy get home. Given the amount of glass all over her and her bedroom floor, and the fact that Jessica was left unattended in her kitchen stool downstairs, I figured that was probably a wise idea.

So we called mommy, at which point Natalie attempted to explain over the phone how the snow globe attacked her, and how we need to go back to the Carousel Museum in Bristol, CT to buy her a new one NOW, and how even in the movie Madagascar they always had a supply of snow globes, and how life just won't be worth living without a snow globe in her room and how no one fixes booboos like mommy and how Alicia's party is ruined and how she wants grapes as a snack before bedtime. At some point I did manage to get a word in to Let my wife know that there was no blood and that she shouldn't panic.

Jessica, meanwhile noticed that Natalie seemed to be sucking up a particularly high volume of attention from mom and dad. She grabbed the phone and told mommy, "I fell and hit my head on the paper bag." This was true. Minor, but very important in a two-year-old's mind for the purposes of equal attention.

So if anyone asks why we missed last Monday's episode of 24, there ya go.

Dad, what's a down?

Having been brought up in Connecticut (The Land Without Sports) and not being from a sport-centric family, any friend of mine will tell you I'm atheleticially challenged. I don't know my MLB from my AFC, my two-minute warning from my seventh-inning stretch. I've been living in Pittsburgh (The Land of Black Milk and Golden Honey) for about a dozen years now, and I still don't get it. Only this year have I begun watching the Steelers play, simply because I've gotten tired of not having an answer to the age old question, "y'inz watch the game n'at yesterday?" (and because it's much more fun to watch in hi-def). I still struggle, however, to comprehend the massive force that is the passion of the average Pittsburgh sports fan, but I think it's got something to do with Myron Cope.

Which leads me to today's topic. Yesterday we, as a family, along with some friends of ours, watched the Steelers barely hold the lead for a playoff win against the Colts. Even I can say that the game was worth a few doses from the defibrillator towards the end. And poor Natalie was set back about 18 months in getting out of her "startle reflex", after being so frightened by the yelling and screaming of my buddy Mike (an avid fan and lifelong Pittsburgher, and therefore one of those crazies) that she tried desperately to climb back into mommy's womb several times just in the first half.

During the game, I had to answer Natalie's occasional question about how the game is played:

Steelers! Steelers! Dad, why did they tackle him?
Cuz, that's the point of the game.
But doesn't that hurt?
Well, yeah, probably.
Wouldn't it be more fun if they got along better?
Go get me a beer.


Dad, what happened?
He intercepted the ball, then fumbled it, but recovered his own fumble.
What's an interception?
If I throw the ball to mommy but you catch it, you intercepted.
So, what's a fumble?
You dropped it.
What's recovered?
you pick it up again.
Why'd he drop it?
It slipped out of his hands.
Was the ball slippery?
well, no.
So, shouldn't he have held onto it?
I think you're starting to get it.


Dad, what's a first down?
Well, that's when the team advances the ball past that yellow line. It sort of gives them a first turn again.
But how come the line keeps moving?
Well, the line's not really there. It's just shown on the TV, but the players can't see it.
If they can't see it, how do they know when to stop running?
They don't stop until they make it to the end or are tackled.
So why do they need a first down then?
Go read a book.

Dad, what are those words and numbers on their shirts?
That's so you know who's who. See #36? his name is Jerome Bettis.
So, why is he number 36?
They looked deep into his soul, and assigned him a number based on the order in which he joined?
Dad, what are you talking about??
Not a Simpsons fan, I guess?

What's a false start?
Someone on the team started moving before they said "hike".
They're going on a hike?
No, they just say "hike" to start the play.
They're just playing?
No, the play, it's when they first start moving.
Dad, when's this going to be over? I want to watch Dora.

Eyeglass screwdrivers

Hey guys out there. Have you ever been asked your opinion on a gift to get for a baby shower? I didn't think so. BUT, should it ever come up, here's my suggestion:

A set of eyeglass screwdrivers and a pair of wire cutters.

Very few new dads own screwdrivers tiny enough to open those little battery doors. And of course the wire cutters will reduce the time spent opening toys tremendously. They will appreciate the thoughtfulness. And, if you really like the guy, toss in a case of beer.

Speaking of bad packaging

A friend sent a gift to my kids today via Amazon, and it takes children's toy packaging to a new low. Rather than the typical wires, plastic, and tape, they toy is actually SCREWED to the packaging, using two hard plastic washers screwed through the cardboard into the back of the toy with a couple of little eyeglass screws. Unbelieveable. And to make matters worse, this toy (a little walkie-talkie) has a "demo" button on the front that pops out of the package so people can try it out on the shelves. Which means, of course, that by the time YOU get to wrestle the package open about ten thousand people have pressed the button before you got it, killing off the battery. Once you turn the unit on, the demo button no longer functions. So, why is it there? Oh yeah, to sell more batteries.

That explains it.

A friend forwarded this joke to us. It explains a lot.

After their baby was born, the panicked Jewish father went to see the obstetrician Dr. Cohen.

"Doctor," Mr. Spiegel said, "I don't mind telling you, but I'm a little upset because my daughter has red hair. She can't possibly be mine."

"Nonsense," the doctor said. "Even though you and your wife both have black hair, one of your ancestors may have contributed red hair to the gene pool."

"It isn't possible," the man insisted. "This can't be, ur families on both sides had jet black hair forgenerations."

"Well," said the doctor, "let me ask you this. How often do you have sex?"

Spiegel seemed a bit ashamed. "I've been working very hard for the past year. We only made love once or twice every few months"

"There you have it!" the doctor Cohen said confidently. "It's just rust."

Dealing with unattended children

I think this is a fabulous idea.

Some old family photos

My dad and I have been gradually putting together a family tree. Along with it, we've managed to scan in a few long lost portraits in hopes of preserving them. Here's a few shots of my mom's family. Okay, so it's not a post about the kids, but it's all in the family.

Ascension

Over Thanksgiving, Natalie stunned her parents and the general public. We went to the local newly-opened REI store over Thanksgiving weekend. While there she discovered the Pinnacle, which is the store's freestanding indoor climbing wall. I told her what it was, and immediately she wanted to try it. I didn't think that they would even LET a 5 year-old child climb, but they were more than willing to allow her. So up she went. And she made it almost to the top.

Here are some pics of our little spidergirl.

I'd say something to the effect that she's showing shades of her father there, but she failed to come down all bloody and bruised so she's obviously got more work to do before she completely mimics me. But heck, I was impressed. And mom was a tad nervous. Good thing grandma wasn't there that day.

Where's the remote??

Last night we spent over an hour searching for the cable remote. All the usual locations (seat cushions, behind the TV, in the fridge) turned up empty. We gave up searching for the night, planning to tear the house apart floor by floor until it turned up.

First thing this morning we asked Thing#1 if she knew the location of the remote. "Oh yeah, sure I do!" she yelled, and dashed downstairs.

It seems that she and Thing#2 were playing Dora The Explorer. They were saving the baby sloth from the well. She was Dora, Thing#2 was Boots, and the well was a pitcher in the dining room. and guess what played the role of baby sloth.

Sigh.

Children's toys, packaging, and other evils of society

I was about to write a posting about the cursed hell of opening children's toys, but have realized that the subject really has been talked to death. I mean, everyone who has a young child knows how frustrating it can be trying to get Dora and Boots freed from the wire and plastic prison that is their store package. If you don't know what I mean, here is a writer who has spelled it out in great detail. As he states in the article, "Today, dolls and action figures come bound like miniature Gullivers. It can take a parent 15 minutes or more to free them, and 15 minutes for every toy that follows. 'By the time you're done Christmas morning,' sighed industry analyst Chris Byrne, editor of the Toy Report, 'you're ready for a cocktail.'"

What really irks me, though, isn't so much the effort involved in freeing the poor Fisher Price Zebra from its shackles, it's the endless amounts of waste being generated by the packing of these toys, and frankly from the toy itself. Guaranteed most of this crap will end up in a landfill, to be found by aliens in the year 3006 who wondered why the creatures of this planet were overcome by a strange petroleum-based substance that existed in all sorts of pastel colors. A typical package holding a typical Dora or Disney toy is made of a combination of heavy (and heavily printed) corrugated board, glued together with often multiple layers of clear plastic to allow for the best display possible. a 6" x 8" toy will often come in a box that's over two feet wide. According to my Township's rules, none of that is recyclable. I've read that Germany has strict rules on packaging of products calling for all parts of the products to be recycled or at least disposed of according to published guidelines. I'm thinking they've got the right idea.

As I was looking for more information on this disease has consumed America, I came across this article. As the writer says, "The issues involved in junk toys are deeper than the layer of clutter on the playroom floor. These issues are as deep as the ocean, where thousands of yellow Lego toy life rafts drifted after three million toy pieces inadvertently spilled from a tanker in 1998. But more important than the occasional freak toy-pollution disaster are the routine environmental insults associated with the mass production of most toys."

Amen. The article is fantastic, and I agree with it almost 100%. Next year, our holiday will be different.

Happy New Year.

The holidays

I surely can't keep a blog about being a parent without something said about the holidays. So here it goes.

There's a big difference between age 5 and age 2 when it comes to gift-getting. A two-year-old is handed a gift, says, "A plezent? Fo me?", takes it, places it (still wrapped) on the floor, and goes back to playing with an empty paper towel tube. A five-year-old plans for weeks in advance regarding what she needs for a gift, how she will react, how she will inform all her preschool friends of her newly-obtained booty, how she will write thank-you notes to her parents, her grandparents, the president and the governor, and how she will redesign the layout of her bedroom (sorry, her princess castle) to make space for the new item. She will then check every hour on the hour before the holiday begins to make sure the wrapped gift is where she last spotted it, and to inform her family of exactly how she will undo each piece of tape holding the wrapping in place. She will then eat only the exact amount of her dinner allowable by household law such that she can quickly and efficiently be excused from the table in order to take the fullest advantage of the statement, "we'll open presents after dinner" that came from an authority figure. Upon opening the gift she will then proclaim the wonder of the item by charging through the house at just under the speed of sound, screaming and yelling unintelligible things that can only be assumed to be the five-year-old equivalent of, "hey, neat." Her father will then spend the next 45 minutes attempting to get the item out of it's packaging, slicing a finger off in the process. She will then play with the item for approximately eight minutes, break it, promptly forget about its existence, and steal her sister's paper towel tube.

Sandra Boynton

Sandra Boynton, the artistic wonder behind the Boynton Books, has a couple of amusing videos on her absolutely silly website. There's the Shortest Song Ever, along with Also Quacht Zarathustra. Speaking of which, Philadelphia Chickens fans will be happy to know that Boynton has a new book/CD combo out entitled "Dog Train".

By the way, the website has enormously useful information, such as a Q&A section by Ethel, the hippo in the picture above. From the site:

A reader from the Berkshire Hills of New England asks:

Q: Do you have a last name?

A: Yes, of course.

Q: What is it?

A: What is what?

Q: Your last name?

A: You're asking what my last name is?

Q: Yes.

A: "Yes" is not a question.

Q: Um. Yes?

A: A simple solution of warm water, baking soda, and vinegar will usually do the trick. If not, seek professional help. Meanwhile, I think I'll head out shopping for a pair of roguish yet sensible sling backs, size 9-1/2 or 10.

Yours oh-so-truly,
Ethel T. Lethe
Senior Administrative Assistant

Nutcracking with my daughter

Last night I went on a date with eleven women.

Okay, perhaps that's not quite right. More accurately, my wife got sick and, instead of her taking my 5-year-old to see The Nutcracker with several of her fellow mom friends, she sent me.

This was both my first experience seeing The Nutcracker and my first experience on a mom's night out. But since I had been away all week on a biz trip, I was game for some quality time with my daughter. Natalie told me that I should dress handsome, and she would dress fancy. We met everyone for dinner downtown first, then went to the theatre early for a backstage tour and an opportunity to see the dancers preparing for the show. As I watched six 5-year-old girls ogling at the wonder of professional ballet dancers scurrying around, getting their makeup and costumes ready, I saw those visions of my daughter's next Home Depot toy workbench and mountain bike being quickly replaced by a those of a pair of ballet slippers and a purple tutu. Sigh.

At the end of the tour, Natalie was asked what her favorite part of the tour was. Her answer: "going to the bathroom."

On a side note, the Benedum Theatre, the venue for the show, is a fantastic place. built in the 30's, it was meticulously restored after being beaten down by rock band performances in the 80's (the entire lobby was painted black at one time), it's known as one of the top 3 theatres for ballet in the country, according to the tour guide.

Later, as we sat in the lobby and waited for the show, one of the moms struck up a conversation with several of the girls about the holidays. Natalie pointed out she was Jewish and celebated Jewish holidays. When asked which ones were her favorites, she said, "Rosh Hashannah, Purim, and Holloween."

Both Natalie and I enjoyed the show quite a bit, but agreed that the second act (do they call them acts in ballet?) was way too long, and needed to end sooner. While I told her to sit quietly and watch the show every time she said, "another dance??? When's it going to end???" I have so say that I silently agreed with her.

Natalie's only experience with The Nutcracker before this was the Barbie version on DVD (can't say I joined her for that one). About halfway through the show, she leaned over to me and said, "wow, how do they do that???"

"Do what?" I asked. "Jump so high in the air?"

"No, dance for this long without talking!"

Those Holiday photos

I remember buying our first digital camera, a few months before our first child was born. The technology was new then, and we were excited by the huge collection of beautiful portraits were were going to gather over the years without having to worry about film, developing, or stacks of envelopes full of rarely-viewed pictures.

Throughout life with one kid, our goal was being met. We found lots of opportunities to snap a candid here and there, and often came up with great creative poses, beautiful smiles, and shots that would make any grandparent vaklempt.

Then squirt #2 came a long, and all bets were off.

The term "herding cats" comes to mind when trying to get a toddler and a preschooler to synch up for a good photo. we have hundreds of shots where one kid looks perfect while the other has her finger up her nose, is looking at a bright and shiny object behind her, is crying, is walking out of the picture, has her eyes closed, or is attempting to beat the other one up. And we have thousands more where both kids look like complete bozos. I truly believe that professional child photographers who can get a good portrait of two kids together are truly and artfully skilled, and also possess unnatural powers of hypnotism and mind control.

Last night we made one desperate attempt to get a decent pic for our holiday photo card. You know, those cards that all parents are obligated to send out to relatives and to other families with kids, because a)no one is allowed to have an exposed surface on their refridgerator during the holidays and b)if we don't send them out we will be shunned by our peers for the rest of time. I cleaned all the toys off the fireplace hearth and pointed every lamp in the room in the right direction to set the mood. Hilary dressed both kids in their matching cloud jammies after a long session of showering and primping. 97 shots later, we have one picture that is almost good enough to use. Between my 5-year-old and her inability to sit still, and my 2-year-old's complete disdain for authority, we were very lucky to get both of them in the same frame for half the pics, never mind both smiling. Add to that the constant requests by Natalie to take a turn behind the camera, and the repeated demands from Jessica for teddy grahams, and you can start to understand Scrooge's point of view.

So consider this blog entry your holiday card. Print it out and paste it to your fridge. Then, find two separate pics of my kids on our photo web site, cut print them, cut their heads out and tape them to this printout. Merry friggin' Xmas.

2005 T.O.Y Awards

As quoted from Patrick Douglas Crispen's "The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace", a weekly email of all things internet:

"Each year Family Fun magazine holds a Toy of the Year (T.O.Y.)competition. This year, the magazine's writers collected 520 brand new toys from 170 different manufacturers, dropped the toys in front of 130 elementary school kids in Kennebunk, Maine, and then seriously reconsidered their career choices. [As a wise man once said, "And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!"]"

Check out this year's winners here.

Franlkly, I've never heard of any of the items except the Darth Vader voice changer. Gee, surprisingly, no Disney stuff. Go figure. I would have thought that the Disney Karaoke boom box, which plays these cheap-ass plastic CD's and gives the Little Mermaid a voice like an old lady named Doris who works at the DMV, would have made the list. Maybe there is hope my kids will get past that after all.

Madagascar

Since my 5-year-old was old enough to have an opinion, she's expressed it about many a movie. I understand this is common among many youngsters, but there are certain movies that she would just REFUSE to watch, on the grounds they were too scary. Now, these are movies she has never SEEN before, but somehow, somewhere, she got wind of the fact that a certain movie might have a scary subject in it and therefore has vetoed it.

For example:

Incredibles - okay, that one is reasonable. though a fantastic movie, I could see it being a bit extreme for young kids

Snow White - I find this one odd. As you know from earlier posts, my daughter has completely assimilated with the massive Borg that is Disney. so why wouldn't she want to watch this over and over? Scary guy in the enchanted mirror, that's why.

Monsters, Inc - she used to watch this as a toddler, until she started understanding it for more than just the pretty colors. Then one night she had a nightmare about it, and told me I had to return it to the video store immediately. as far as she knows, I did.

Toy Story 2 - Evil Emperor Zurg...nasty guy. Shoots scary ping-pong balls.

So that's a simple, not-so-surprising list of movies she won't watch because they are too scary. However, it doesn't explain why she absolutely LOVES Lion King, which is chock full of death, destruction, and mean uncles.

This weekend, we discovered the movie Madagascar. Now, originally she had heard that "the lion bites the zebra in its butt" and for some reason that forced a veto on her part, but we just got a new Plasma TV and decided to watch it anyway despite her. After the first ten seconds of the movie, both she and her younger sister, as well as her parents, were laughing their butts off throughout the entire movie. Crude jokes, animal slapstick, and lots of wild creatures screaming made for quite an amusing time.

So my point in this long-winded blog entry is that I highly recommend Madagascar for preschoolers. The animals are beautifully animated, the humor is simple, not too crude, and there's enough giraffe injuries, Martial-arts-practicing penguins, and fart jokes to keep kids entertained from start to finish. Oh, and it looks gorgeous on a 37" widescreen.

Working from home

Natalie has issues with me working for a living. Like most kids her age, she wishes daddy could be home all the time. Understandable, though sometimes I think she wants a butler more than a father figure. But that's another blog entry.

Recently my wife and I have begun making plans to build an addition to our home. We decided that, among other things, a separate room to serve as an office was a necessity. Given that I had to remove a Fisher-Price Little People Dragon, five miscellaneous Mega-Blocs, and a naked Barbie doll from my desk before I could get to the keyboard and start writing, I'm sure you could understand. Of course, all but the Barbie gets tossed in the toy pile. She stays by the desk lamp.

So once Natalie heard we were adding an office, natalie was very excited. "You mean daddy won't have to go to work any more?" she was devastated when we told her that wouldn't be the case.

A few weeks back, I helped a new employee move into an apartment in the area. when I told Natalie that he would be working for me, she said, "Great, he can do the work so you don't have to go anymore!" Again I started to tell her that this wasn't the...wait a minute, maybe she's on to something....

Recently her desire to have more of me around manifested itself in a different way. She decided to hang out a shingle for herself. Anyone who's been in our home recently knows that, in the living room, we have two crappy couches in an L-shape. At the corner of the L is a small corner table. Natalie has turned that table into her "office." We discovered this when we started noticing certain regular office supplies missing. Post-Its, the stapler, stamps, tape, the phone...all these things mysteriously disappearing. One day we discovered all these items neatly lined up on this end table, with her Winnie-The-Pooh chair tucked in and ready for the next day of work. Inside the cigar humidor (a box that I use to hold remotes) was almost a full ream of paper, with random scribbles on it representing her note-taking for the day.

Gee, maybe I need to take some time off?

Goldilocks and the The Three Martians

Hilary picked this book up at the library the other day. It's a laugh-out-loud take on the classic fairy tale, but I warn any parent planning on reading it....be prepared to have to explain the REAL reason why Uranus would be the "gassy" planet.

Wait for it...

Creative Playthings - a great store

Anyone in the Pittsburgh area with kids (or stuck in their own childhoods) would be well-served to pay a visit to a new store called Playthings, Etc. the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had an article on it that intrigued us, so we paid a visit a few weeks ago.

As you can see in the links, the building is made out of welded sheet metal and designed to look like a space ship. When we got there, the owner was sprawled on his back in the parking lot under the chassis of his "shuttle craft", which seemed to be a miniature version of the store destined to be parked out by the road. He told us that by next week it should be fully functional and ready for takeoff.

The front door is designed to look like a blast door of some sort. Yank it open, wait for your eyes to adjust to the spacey darkness inside, and you are greeted with a world of odd, forgotten, educational, and classic toys. Oh, you're also greeted with a pummeling from the kid working behind the checkout counter, who proceeds to smack you with fast-moving pockets of air from a toy air cannon until you duck behind the rack of GeoMags.

Every ten minutes or so, a member of the staff calls everyone out to the parking lot, where he will proceed to demonstrate a toy rocket, a wind-up airplane, or some sort of a rock-em-sockem-robot. his demos don't always go as expected and he lost a rocket on the roof of the store, but hey- that's childhood.

The greatest thing about this store is that there ain't no Disney. no princess crap. no Buzz Lightyear. Just real, honest to goodness toys. Kites, ride-in cars, model airplanes, and science stuff. They even have an excellent collection of sleds and toboggans, something you can't seem to get at your average Toys-r-Us or Wal-Mart these days. of course, I happened to discover that some lady on eBay has a collection of classic toboggans for sale at hugely discounted prices, so I just picked up two on eBay for a third the price of one at this store, but still it's cool to see.

We spent about two hours there, left with our wallets empty and our trunk full, and look forward to going back before the holiday. Hmm, maybe I will buy something for the kids next time.

Competitiveness and illness

The other day we attempted to explain the game "hot potato" to Natalie. We said it was like musical chairs, but instead of running around and sitting in chairs when the music stops, you pass an object around and whomever is holding it when the music stops is out.

Natalie told us she never wants to play it because she doesn't want to lose.She's SO competitive, she won't even compete. how 'bout that?

So, in a tune that's probably familiar to many households right now, I'm currently "working" at home listening to two sick children hack and cough while a sick wife goes to the doctor. The four of us have passed around the same cold for about three weeks now. It's been a minor cold all around, but bad enough that we've probably spent Natalie's first year of tuition at CMU on cold meds. (By the way, I HIGHLY recommend Tylenol's new cold medicine with "cool burst" technology. It's like taking meds with an entire box of Altoids as a chaser, and it does a great job.)

For the past week or so, Jessica has said one thing to us, over and over. "I need a tissue". Her nose is constantly drippy, and of course no 2-year-old has any clue how to blow his or her own nose effectivly. so the most we can do is wipe what's dripping, and squeeze her nose together in hopes of getting a little more out. her nose is so red, she looks like a leaky fire hydrant.

At least she's not puking.

I can't be expected to remember everything

It's not that uncommon that I give my wonderful wife grief for forgetting and/or not getting around to things. Heck, as a former lawyer, it took her several years of me endlessly hounding her before she managed to coordinate the writing of our wills. Our kids came this close to being state property should the unthinkable happen. Usually it comes down to her explaining how I "just don't understand what it's like around here all day."

I have a little more understanding today.

Hilary was away all last night and today for a conference. It was one of those extremely rare moments (only happened once before) where I was in single-parent mode for a full 24 hours. Really, it was a breeze. Nary a whine, a whimper, or an injury. No one got lost. There were no screams. They were even well fed and their outfits matched (more or less). Heck, even the kitchen was clean and the lawn was mowed.

But I did miss one important step in the whole stay-at-home-mom process today. I put Jessica down for a nap in the afternoon, and she went right down with no complaints. Slept for two hours, and woke up jabbering and playing. When I went up to get her, she was standing in the crib waiting for me. As I walked in, she said, "I'm wet!".

Huh? did the diaper leak? Where's the...aw, crap! I completely forgot to put a diaper on her before she went for her nap. Nothing like sleeping in a pool of your own urine for two hours to really make you smell fresh.

Well, at least they are both still breathing, and there was no loss of blood. All in all, a productive day,

Thought for the day

Be good to your kids. They will be in charge of choosing a rest home for you.

The Uriel won't stand up

Jessica's birthday was October tenth. Since that day, she has been playing non-stop with her Fisher-Price Little People animals Zoo, only taking breaks to poop, to eat, and to ask for help getting the Uriel to stand up. You see, it comes with a collection of 26 animals A-Z along with a mat where you can place each animal on a letter, and there's a little bump under the U that causes the Uriel to fall down. I know what you are thinking, "what's a Uriel?" I'm still trying to figure that out, but it looks kind of like a yak. So, about 15 times a day Jessica will come running in to ask us for help standing the uriel up.

She makes up for it by giving the rhino a great name, "Nocerus".

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.

A poem by my (almost) 5 year old daughter

Written by my daughter for no apparent reason except to show her genius...

A said the R to the R said the O
O said the O to the P and the Q
W said the U to the X and the Z
XYZ said, I love you

Can you tell me what to do?
OPQ and R
Tell me what to do?
H and O and QRS
Tell me what to do the rest

I love you and you love me
I love the coconut tree next to me
This is a cool letter day
O my goodness can you say to me?

There’s a permanent thing to do
Can you tell me what to do
A said W, xyz
R follow me to the coconut tree

Then there was a little girl
Who came around the world
All the letters lived in Pittsburgh
And then the little girl cam e from California
And then the little girl saw all the letters

She took them home, they were actually pasta
And then she took them home to make alphabet soup
There were a couple of vegetables out in the garden
Then the little girl, picked the vegetables, made some broth,
Put them in the alphabet soup

The End

Robots...

A couple of interesting articles about some of the latest ideas in consumer robotics. Some of the ideas in these articles hit me as just those first baby steps towards us all being replaced by robots. Which of course makes me worry about what life is going to be like when our kids have kids.

First, there's the story that Wal-Mart is denying doing research into using robotics to replace human workers. And of course, this is Wal-Mart, so I think we can safely assume they are.

Then, there's a story about the latest ideas with Robots and RFID. Such as the kid's playground robot, designed to monitor the whereabouts of a kid (a kid wearing an RFID tag, no less), and to go medieval on your ass if you come near the kid by making loud noises, blowing smoke, oh and of course whipping out the massive Tommy-gun hands a la RoboCop. And we all know how well that worked on RoboCop.

And then of course, "Imagine a doll that recognizes its accessories and can request new ones". I can imagine it, it's called my opinionated 4-year-old. Frankly, the last thing I want around this house is another toy that talks. I already can't get a word in edgewise around here.

Of course, there's the robot toy that "detects other toys and responds to them." How cool would it be to see your robotic Winnie The Pooh sidle up to your robotic Elmo doll and smack him upside the head for being so whiny? Or better yet, whip out those Tommy-gun hands and, well, maybe not. For some reason I see a scene from Toy Story, where everyone leaves the room and the toys come to life. But I don't see them playing nicely together. I see them battling for playroom domination.

If you ask me, the day they invent a robot that kids would prefer over a mom or dad to lie down on the couch with, snuggled in its arms, watching TV or reading a book together is the day we're all doomed.

Mom Plays Dad for a day

Yesterday, my wife Hilary got a chance to deviate from her regular course of life as a stay-at-home mom to experience a little bit of what it's like to be dad.

As I walked into my regular post-lunch team meeting, she called me, panic-stricken.

"You need to come home NOW," she proclaimed.

Immediately, thoughts of toddlers with broken bones, blood at the bottom of staircases, electrocution, and consumption of poisonous substances with torn-off Mr. Yuck stickers came to mind.

"Why, what happened?!!" I asked.

"A chipmunk fell in Natalie's pool and can't get out."

...Pregnant pause....

"And?"

"And how the hell am I gonna get it out??" She asked me.

"Try the pool skimmer. "

Funny, that answer worked pretty well. Now, I will be the first to admit that Removus Rodentia is certainly within the domain of The Dad, right up there with burger grilling, centepide squashing and the use if any tool in the garage, but I figured that little Chippy surely wouldn't survive my commute home. Too bad. I wish I could have been there to watch Hilary do the ol' Skim-N-Flick while the kids cheered her on from the deck. It turns out that with her brave assistance, Chippy made it safely to solid ground. After the extraction, he was a bit stunned and exhausted from what was perhaps hours of chipmunk-paddling, and he didn't move for quite some time. But after some CPR (Chipmunk Poking Resuscitation) he scampered off.

So, on this day, the Mom got to experience what is one of the top glories of being the Dad. That list, of course, includes:

-Grilling a mean side of beef to perfection
-Knowing the brand and model number of the power nailer the neighbor is using simply from the sound it makes as it echoes down the street
-Keeping the family safe from harm, under a well maintained roof
-Throwing that pitch that becomes the kid's first home run
-Driving the kid to that first college interview
-Graduation day picture-taking
-Varmint removal.

Maybe this weekend will teach her to use the table saw.

Maybe not.

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.

And God and The Fairy Passed Over....

So, we decided to take a trek to visit the family for the Passover holiday. This would be the holiday in which "God and the Fairy Passed Over the Jews' houses", according to Natalie. We hadn't been back home in a while, so the time had come for that long, long, very long drive across PA to CT. Conveniently, our friends Paul and Lee Ann were in Philadelphia visiting from Dallas with their new baby, so we made it a point of leaving Thursday to visit them and use Philly as a half-way overnight stopping point before continuing on to CT. Or so we thought.

Earlier in the week, Natalie had a fever that she couldn't seem to shake. So we played it by ear (or ear infection, as the case may be), planning on deciding at the last minute whether or not we would leave Thursday. Well, when Tuesday morning came and Natalie threw up all over the living room couch, we decided it was a safe bet we weren't going anywhere Thursday. So we pushed the trip off by a day so she could get better, which she did. No big deal. Or so we thought.

Friday arrived, and we left first thing in the morning. Twenty minutes into the drive, the PA turnpike came to a complete standstill for almost two hours. Truck accident. Got some cute pictures of the baby wandering around aimlessly on the highway. Probably will show up on some "bad parenting techniques" website someday. Conveniently, a nice couple in a Winnebago ahead of us offered to let Natalie use the bathroom. Inconviently, she took the couple up on her offer at much the same time that traffic finally began moving. So after thousands of people on the PA Turnpike waited for Natalie to pee, we were ready to continue. Good thing girls don't usually experience "freeze-up."

So on to Philly. Everything seemed completely normal for the rest of the day, until dinner when we noticed Jessica seemed to be on fire. She had caught "the fever," which later in the evening turned to a croupy cough. Good thing Paul's sister was nice enough to let us stay at their house, with three other little kids around to act as receptacles for the disease machine we seemed to have brought with us. We will be lucky if Paul's sister ever speaks to us again.

So that night the four of us all slept in one room. Natalie and I camped on the floor in sleeping bags, Jessica in a crib, and Hilary on a twin bed. The night was surprisingly not too bad, with Jessica sleeping through all of the night except those points where someone walked on the massively creaky hardwood floor outside the bedroom. Jessica didn't take kindly to that. The next morning, Jessica was still coughing but seemed to be on the mend. After an hour's debate of whether to return home or continue to CT, we decided to schlep on, where at least there were others who could potentially assist with the care of sick children.

Oddly enough fate was on our side somewhat, in that by delaying the trip by a day we managed to miss the deadly truck accident that shut the Jersey Turnpike down for 16 hours. Had we left on the day we originally planned, we'd have been in it. So despite heavy traffic, a half-hour wait in line at a NJ gas station, heavy downpours the entire way, and a slow line moving over the GW bridge, we were happy to make it to CT in one piece and in a normal fashion.
The rest of the trip had its ups and downs as well. Hilary got sick one night, the weather blew chunks, and being carriers of typhoid we weren't able to visit our friends and their kids too much. By Tuesday were we ready to head home. We expected to be on the highway by 9am. Or so we thought.

I spent the night before repacking the car and getting everything in order. That morning we strapped the kids in the car, asked which DVD they wanted to watch first, and....realized we couldn't find the DVD case. Where was the DVD case? we looked everywhere. We knew it had to be in the car, but it just seemed to have magically vanished. Luckily my sister came through with some backup movies to take, and about three hours into the drive it dawned on me I had probably folded the rear seat of the van down sandwiching the DVD case inside the seat. Sigh.

So here's a useful mathematical fact. To plan out a long distance drive, take the estimated driving time and add two hours per child in the car. In this case, the normally 8-hour drive took 12 hours. With a limited quantity of DVDs that end up getting repeated over and over again throughout the drive, that 12 hours ends up feeling like about 18. Next year, we wait until after spring cold season, and fly.

So now, it's about a week later. Whatever disease the kids had, Hilary and I are now suffering through. we spent the entire weekend coughing and hacking, sneezing and blowing, getting absolutely no sleep. I need a vacation.

The Pledge

Okay, so this is a little silly, but I found it as a memo in my old Palm Pilot today.

When Natalie was an infant and breastfeeding, she had a habit of holding her hand to her heart as if pledging allegiance. So, we wrote a special pledge for her:

I pledge allegiance
To mommy's boob
And to the Lactation Consultants
Of america
And to the nutrition
For which it stands
Two nipples
In the bra
Indispensable
With vitamins
And sustenance
For all.

The Magic Eraser

Today Natalie (the elder young'in) ended up in Time Out for scribbling on the wall. It seems that she got carried away at her drawing table in the family room and, in an artistic burst of passion, sketched out in dramatic strokes of Vibrant Orange, Laser Lemon, and Burnt Umber what I believe to have been an octopus riding a bicycle in a rainstorm.

The reason Natalie ended up in Time Out was not because of her wall art, but rather because she attempted to blame it on her sister Jessica. Mind you, Jessica's drawing skills at this point in her 18-month life carry very little artistic merit and would in fact be poo-poo'ed by many a SoHo critic. The Time Out was to teach her a lesson, but in fact the lesson I believe she actually learned was NOT to not place blame on her sibling, but that next time she should avoid signing her NAME to the artwork. You see, across the bottom of the picture it clearly said, "EILATAN", which is her own 4-1/2 year old way of spelling her own name backwards. Curses! Foiled again!

So, in order to teach her a lesson, I took the little graffiti artist with me to the supermarket, had her pick out and pay for (yes, I gave her money) a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, and together she and I scrubbed the walls down. Okay, well actually I scrubbed while she catched the drips that ran down the wall.

P.S. I highly recommend one of those Magic Eraser thingies. I wish that the walls of our house were actually MADE of whatever these things are made of.