Procrastinet

Like a Canary

Ladies and gentlemen, the singing voice of Charlie Tolan.

(Sorry it's sideways - Procrastiwife forgets that you can't auto-rotate the video on her cameral...)

Cuteblogging Clearinghouse

#1:

I don't know - do you think Max is excited about our trip in August?

#2:

A few moments ago we declared that it was time for Max to get into the bath. He announced that he was not going to take a bath, but was instead going right to bed. Lisa said "No way, buddy, have you seen your legs?" His legs are smurf-blue with chalk from kneeling on his chalkwork (above).

He looks down, laughs, and says happily "God damnit. Look how stupid I am."

[UPDATE/DISCLAIMER: To put this in context, he's currently fascinated by "bad words" which he knows he's not supposed to say and so, naturally, tries to use all the time. Some are mild curse words, but some are just mean or teasing words that we've cracked down on in the past. Current favorites are God Damnit, Jesus Christ, Hate and Stupid. Hopefully in that context the above story reads as cute quirky rather than heart-rendingly depressing...]

#3:

This is out of date, but I never remembered to blog it at the time. About a month ago, Max was making me recite all the pets I've ever owned (a near-daily ritual for a couple weeks). I came to the sad story of our dog Dick (so named as a pair with his sister Jane - though the "Dick & Jane" reference was lost on the rednecks who goggled at me in disbelief when I was ten years old and had to tell them my dog was named "Dick").

Dick, you see, was epileptic, and eventually died of it after he had too many seizures - about a dozen in one day. It fried his brain. He was walking into walls and turning little circles.

"He had seizures?!" asked Max, with a good deal of wonder.

"That's right," I said.

"Like TED KENNEDY?!"

Charles Winkus

In the general dearth of Procrastinet posting, I missed talking about a significant family event.

From the time Charlie was born, other than noting that he looked just like I did as a baby (this has since been confirmed with family photo albums, and the resemblance is sometimes spooky), we also noticed that his left eye never opened as far as the right. We asked the doctor about it at his in-hospital visit, and he suggested it was probably swelling from the birth.

A week later it was still noticeable, so we asked another of the pediatricians in our practice. She suggested a tear duct was blocked and that we should massage it regularly.

Another week later, after we had dutifully jabbed our fingertips into the corner of the poor tyke's eye every couple of hours, his left eye was still at half mast. Moreover, it wasn't developing the crease that was allowing the right eye to retract. We asked the pediatrician again and, with the long suffering sigh of one accustomed to dealing with over-concerned parents, she huffed that we should go ahead and see a specialist if it would make us feel better, but it was really just a tear duct issue.

Well, no. Nana reminded us that her sister, Charlie's Great Aunt Phyllis, was born with ptosis in both eyelids which had been corrected with surgery. With much Googling and Wikipedia-ing we had come to suspect that was what Charlie had, as well.

The ophthalmologist took one look and said "ah, yes. Congenital ptosis." For those not familiar (as I wasn't), ptosis (pronounced "toe-sis") is a problem with the muscles of the eyelid. In his left eye, Charlie doesn't have proper muscles but instead fibrous tissue. Luckily, the eyelid clears the pupil at least most of the time, so he's getting visual input and his sight can develop normally. He'll have a procedure (what the ophtho called "a fun little surgery") when he's about two, to insert a silicon rod that will more firmly knit the fibrous tissue to his eyebrow muscle, allowing him to use his eyebrow to fully raise the eyelid.

So expect my son to affect a permanently surprised expression, starting in eighteen to twenty-four months.

I have to say, after obsessing about the "winky eye" during the period where we weren't sure what it was, I've now become quite fond of it. Charlie wouldn't look quite so much like Charlie without it.

And Forest Whitaker and Thom Yorke (fellow ptosics) now loom large in our family mythology...

Of course it turned out later we needn't have wondered for so long - Charlie's Uncle Bob and Aunt Judy (pediatrician/pediatric nurse, respectively) confirmed that they had identified the ptosis in the very first picture they saw of him. That's what we get for not requesting an in-family consult.

[UPDATED to correct the timeline and properly attribute Nana as the first one to correctly identify the droop as ptosis.]

Charlie

Charles Owen Tolan, 2/27/08, 8:29pm. 8 lbs., 3 ozs.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Whoops!

So we're at the OB for our last checkup and to thin the membranes. Lisa has heard that this is a painful process. The doctor starts in and Lisa isn't feeling much, at which point this conversation occurs.

Lisa: Are you doing it?

Dr.: Yep! You're very ready.

Lisa: Wow I heard it was really painful!

Dr.: Well, for some women it--uhps.

Lisa: ... Did you just break my water?

Dr.: ... So let's get you to the hospital!

So. Here we are at the hospital! Wish us luck!

Randomitable

38 weeks and counting, Baby Vou remains an internal baby.

So in the meantime, some random Max fragments.

Tonight he was raging on something (chocolate mousse cake?) and refused to go to sleep. Eventually I got him down at 11:45pm, on the living room floor. When I picked him up to move him he said, calmly and in a steady tone (though fast asleep), "Why? I'm sleeping there."

Earlier, while watching American Idol with us, he was making up random and interesting stories about why Josiah was kicked out.

"It's because his middle name is Oscar," he assured us. As far as we know, Josiah's middle name is not Oscar.

Later he had a more dramatic reason. "He was going to have a party," he told us, "and he went to get drinks. But there was no bourbon in the pantry. There was no bourbon because his mother had drinked it all."

Good to know.

The Littlest Literalist Goes Political

I was just reading exit polls to Lisa while Max played with his puzzle. I think he's confused about the political process:

Daddy: It looks like Hillary is going to take New York.

Max: (looks up, startled) Hillary is TAKING us?! What is she going to DO to us?!

Daddy: No, no. I just mean she's going to win the election in New York.

Max: She's TAKING the state?

Daddy: Taking just means winning, in this case.

Max: Is she taking it HOME with her?!

Mommy: No, honey, she's just getting more votes.

Max: (calmer, but still worried) Is it still attached?

Mommy: Yes, buddy. New York isn't going anywhere.

The Slim But Persistent Possibility That Our Kid is Actually Nuts

We went for a "nature walk" while visiting my folks in North Carolina for Christmas, and ended up on the dam that makes the man-made lake they live on. Max looked out over the dusk-lit lake, dotted with Christmas lights, and declared:

Max: That is New Hampshire.

Daddy: What, buddy?

Max: That. It's Concord, New Hampshire.

Mommy: ...

Max: It's a model of Concord, New Hampshire.

Grandma: Um...

Max: And it's made out of water.

Daddy, Mommy & Grandma: ...

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Concord, New Hampshire. A model of Concord, New Hampshire. Made out of water.

Working Through It

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Max was looking forward to a playdate with his best friend from school, but said friend is sick today and had to cancel. In the midst of Max's stoic grief over this, we somehow got on the topic of his long-lost "V Train Bear" from the transit museum, which was dropped from the stroller soon after purchase and disappeared.

Max: Does someone have V Bear?

Mommy: Yes. Someone gave it a good home.

Max: I want to kick them.

Mommy: Well...

Max: I want to kick them all the way to Uganda.

Mommy: ...

Max: To Northern Uganda.

Don't Work Blue, Kid, You'll Never Work the Big Rooms

Max's new knock-knock joke, which he made up last night:

Max: Knock knock.

Dad: Who's there?

Max: Peep.

Dad: Peep who?

Max: Vagina.

Submitted without comment.

Laugh Out Loud Halloween

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Trying out the embedded Flickr slideshow tool flickrSLiDR for the Halloween pix!

Mouse to the top of the slideshow for controls, mouse to the bottom for tiny thumbs of all pictures to jump around. Neat!

Ape Lad, esteemed creator of the Laugh Out Loud Cats, posted two of our Halloween pics on Hobotopia. Fleeting Intarweb Fame - We Haz It! Big thanks to Mr. Koford - glad you liked our costumes, we sure love the Cats.

Our attempt at re-creation of one of the original panels we own:

And finally, my favorite picture from the inordinate number I took last night. Maybe one of my top five favorite pictures of the boy ever:

O HAI!

If you aren't already reading the Laugh Out Loud Cats, (a) why the heck aren't you, and (b) that's where Max's costume comes from. He's Pip, the leaf-loving hobo kitten.

The Laugh Out Loud Cats are the creation of Ape Lad, and you can while away several happy hours paging through the archives here. More pictures to come later, when I will be dressed as the other half of the Laugh Out Loud Cats, Meowlin Q. Kitteh.

Pip at school:

Social Awareness

We went for our seems-to-be-annual apple picking today, at Stuart's Farm in Granite Springs (pictures here, pictures from last year here). After picking the (now sparse) apples, going on a hayride, and trekking through the extensive and picked-over pumpkin patch, Max was ready to sit down on what he insisted on referring to as "a grassy area."

As we were sitting, a party of absurdly good looking hipsters walked past from the pumpkin patch. One of the absurdly good looking guys decided to (a) be friendly and (b) show off for the absurdly good looking girls by striking up a conversation with Max. He didn't, it's safe to say, know what he was in for.

Absurdly Good Looking Hipster Dude: Hey, buddy, did you find some pumpkins?

Max: (mumbles, shy, hides his face)

AGLHD: Did you get some good ones?

Max: Yes. I got four.

[Girls giggle.]

Max: See? One, two, three, four.

AGLHD: Oh, yeah--

Max: We had to get so many because we have SUCH a big family now.

AGLHD: Oh, uh--

Max: Right, because there's me, Mommy, Daddy, and Vou that's my baby brother who's in Mommy's tummy.

AGLHD: ...

[Girls giggle harder.]

Max: I wanted to sit here in a grassy area and watch for the hay ride. We went on the hayride earlier and it was so bumpy. I keep asking and asking if it's going to come along this path and run into us but Mommy and Daddy keep telling me and telling me that it won't.

[Girls are leaning on each other for support, gasping for air.]

AGLHD: Wow. I bet you've never met a stranger, huh?

Mommy: Nope, pretty much everybody's a friend.

Girls: AWWWWWW. BYE!

AGLHD: Um, right. Well... bye.

Max: Okay, bye. [They leave. Max looks at Mom and Dad in consternation.] Why did I keep TALKING to them?!

The Evolution (?) of Humor

I have already chronicled Max's unique take on knock-knock jokes. Tonight he showed how far he has come:

Max: Knock knock.

Me: Who's there?

Max: Glass.

Me: Glass who?

Max: Glass from Manhattan.

Me: ...

Max: That's a knock-knock joke.

Well, by some definitions, I guess...

Introducing...

Max knew we were pregnant before we told him. Which was weird. Last time (nicknamed "Baby 2.0") we told him as soon as we knew - and then when we lost that pregnancy we had to explain to a 3 1/2 year old why there was no longer "a baby in Mommy's belly." Yeah. I don't recommend it. Though, actually, Max took it better than we did. So this time we waited until the first OB visit.

But a week beforehand, out of nowhere, he starts talking about "Baby Vou."

"Who's that?" asks Mommy, looking at me funny.

"My baby," says Max confidently.

"Um..." says me, "where is 'Baby Vou,' buddy?"

"In Mommy's belly."

Mommy and Daddy look at each other with Twilight Zone music playing in their neurons.

We're not sure where the name Baby Vou came from, or even how to spell it properly (I say "Vou," Mommy says "Voo," Max insists it's just "V.O." which I'm pretty sure would be pronounced "Voh"). But the nickname stuck, supplanting the somewhat chilling "Baby 2.1"

We went for the 20 week sono today, and sure enough, Tolan men only shoot Y's. Baby Vou is set to be Max's baby brother, some time around leap day (come on, February 29!)

Doing his best impression of an Egyptian temple carving

Oy! No pictures!

Hey folks!

Prenatal Baby Yoga! "Now, peacefully place your big toe into your nostril and just relax..."

Good Post Gone Bad

This started out as just another "hey look at the funny my kid made" post. To wit:

Dad: [Watching video for "Haunted" by Shane MacGowan feat. Sinead O'Connor] Boy, Shane is drunk.

Mom: SO drunk.

Max: What's drunk?

Dad: Er... it's when you have too many grownup drinks. Having a drink now and then is "drinking," having them ALL the time is "being a drunk."

Max: Is Shane MacGowan a drunk?

Dad: Yes, buddy. He's a genius, but he's a drunk.

Max: [Thinks.] You know who else is a drunk?

Mom: Who?

Max: Amy Winehouse.

Mom & Dad laugh uproariously.

Mom: That's so true! How did you know that?!

Max: I'm drunk.

Right? Cute, right?

So then I go to google image a picture of Amy Winehouse, all drunk, to accompany the piece. Like so:

Ha, ha! Whee!

And then I discover that La Winehouse has become, with terrifying swiftness, a haggard and anorexic drug addict who seriously, seriously looks like she's going to die soon if she doesn't get some help.

Like this:

She's admitted to being on crack and heroin, but in a sad case of life imitating art, just last month she swore she would, in fact, never go to rehab again. (There's a site called Bossip that is covering her decline with feverish, obsessive intensity, and from which several of the above images were ganked.)

Oh noes. That's not funny at all.

THE CON IS ON!

Let it never be said that our little guy can't scheme with the best of them.

Last week, we saw an electronic drum machine in the window of the Rite Aid. Max is a drum freak, so he fell instantly in love with it. I thought it was pricey enough at $25 to be used as leverage for some good behavior, so I told him that if he behaved himself for FIVE DAYS IN A ROW, with no major punishments, he could have it.

This allowed some parental judgment on whether his misbehaviors were misdemeanors or felonies - only felonies (after a "final warning") would wipe out his progress towards the drums.

Lisa set up a "Behavior Chart" to keep track, and logged good days with smiley faces. Offenses (Grabbing of Toys in the 3rd Degree, Impatience in the 4th Degree) which were bad enough to get a stern talking to but didn't violate the final warning were shown via smaller, less smiley smiley faces. He cobbled together four marginally good days, then slipped farther on the fifth:

In Lisa's judgment, that fifth day was bad enough not to count towards the five, but not so bad that it had to reset the whole venture. So she added an additional day to the chart.

She came in the next day and found, to her surprise, that the day had already been filled in:

That's right. My boy snuck in and forged a smiley face.

Interestingly, it's the first time we've ever gotten him to draw anything even vaguely recognizable. I guess he just needed the proper motivation...

Little Known Facts of Geography

Max shared with us some obscure geographical knowledge while flipping through the pieces of his United States map puzzle:

Augusta, Maine is where challah bread comes from. They make the best challah bread in Augusta.

Dandelions are from Honduras and Alabama. The yellow ones are from Honduras, and the white ones are from Alabama.

New Mexico has lots of quail and buffalo. The beach is great in Quailland, New Mexico.

Idaho is known for its spinach.

They have great ice cream in Arizona.

They have great apples in Washington and great peaches in South Carolina.

I like peaches.

The Saga of "Big Boy Bedtime"

I had a dream the other night, where I suddenly found myself on a long set of railroad/subway tracks with walls on either side. There were three or four different tracks, and a train was coming from around the bend. I didn't know which track it was on, or where to go to get away from it, or how I'd gotten there to begin with.

Which reminds me of Max's bedtime.

Here's why: somehow, and we don't know exactly how, we made a tragic error in the rearing of our child. We allowed him to get in the habit of going to sleep only with one of us lying down with him.

The most effective way to get him to fall asleep is for the attending parent to fall asleep first. I have a weird built-in snooze function, and usually pop awake again after precisely 12 minutes. But when Lisa goes down, she tends to be out for the night.

We first tried to address this issue over a year ago, tagging the idea of "Big Boy Bedtime" to his 3rd birthday. We branded the parent-assisted method as "Baby Bedtime" and talked for a long time about doing away with it. Baby Bedtime prevailed in a storm of sobbing and tantrums.

This time, we decided to attach Big Boy Bedtime to the start of Pre-K, to avoid another bedtime bugaboo: the nap. Max doesn't nap at home anymore (weekends, vacations) but he still napped at preschool. Even a short nap pushed his fall-asleep time from it's god-intended 8:30/9pm to 10:30/11pm. Which, let us say, drastically impacts Mommy and Daddy's quality of life.

So for weeks I've been prepping him for the return of Big Boy Bedtime. I proposed a new way to ease into it: we'd read two stories, sing two songs, and then I'd leave for five minutes while he tried to Big Boy himself to sleep. If he was awake after 5 minutes I'd come back. The second night would be 6 minutes, etc.

Max has been stoked about this plan for weeks. He knew September 10 was the date. We woke up Monday morning and he immediately shouted "Big Boy tonight!" This is going to be CAKE, I thought.

So Monday night we get ready for bed after his bath. "Two stories!" he shouts. "Two songs!" I shout back. "And then... BIG BOY BEDTIME!" we chorus together. Nice.

We do our two stories. We sing our two songs. He snuggles up with Pearl Bearley and Baby Pearl, and I kiss him good night.

"Oh..." he says, like he's just remembered something.

"You're okay, buddy," says me, heading for the door.

"Daddy!" he says, panicked.

"You're okay. I'm very proud of you. You can do this." He flops back down and snuggles up with the Pearls and I ease the door shut.

I wait a moment outside the door, then head for our room. It's 9:12 pm, and our boy is in bed by himself. A brave new world, one where we can watch movies and tv and have sex and actually see each other dawns before my mind's eye. "Well," I say to Lisa, beaming proudly, "now we'll..."

Behind me, Max's door opens.

And there's our little guy in our doorway, clutching Big Pearl, Baby Pearl and his pillow. He has the stoic face on that he wears when he's truly upset - eyebrows up, eyes wide and brimming with tears, mouth pulled down in a cartoon frown and chin quivering.

"Daddy?" he says, tears starting to streak down his cheeks. Then he climbs up in our bed and lies down.

So much for Big Boy Bedtime Take 1. I comfort him and get him back in his room, wind up my childhood teddy bear Theodore, with the music box innards singing "Teddy Bear's Picnic," and promise to stay with him for five minutes then try again. He relaxes a bit while I count down the minutes and rub his back. After five, I kiss him goodnight again, and ask if he's ready. He nods.

I get up to head for the door. He gets up and follows me.

"Okay," says me. "Let's try something else. If we can't do Big Boy, let's do Middle Boy."

"What's Middle Boy?" he asks.

"It's where you lie in bed and I'll sit in your chair. I'll still be in the room with you. Okay?"

He nods. I tuck him in and sit in the chair, with my feet on his mattress. He climbs out of bed, pulling his pillow onto the floor, and lies down under my legs.

"What are you doing, buddy?" I ask.

"I'm going to sleep below you."

I sigh and get him back into bed. "Okay," says me, "how about Lower Middle Boy? I'll sit at the foot of your bed..." So I did. He rested for a moment, then got up to leave.

"Where are you going?"

"Your room."

"But," I say, "if you leave I'll be in here alone and I'll be lonely."

His eyes soften. "Awww," he says. "I'll give you a hug..." he says gently, resting his head in my lap like a little faun, "...on my way OUT."

And he's gone.

From the other room I hear Lisa laughing so hard she almost falls out of bed.

Finally, at about 10:15pm, he went to sleep by the Lower Middle Boy Bedtime method. Patent pending.

Sigh.

We later discovered a partial culprit - he had taken a nap at pre-K. NOOOOO! Turns out, during "quiet time," he sits with a book and nods off. Rather than pinch him awake, the teacher let him take a 15 minute nap. Not as bad as before, but still good for a 10pm bedtime. Double sigh.

Last night, having already given him the Big Boy Bedtime reward (a black-and-white cookie) for achieving Lower Middle Boy Bedtime, I encouraged him to move up to Middle Boy, to get a new treat (ah, bribery). So around 10pm he fell asleep with me in the chair and my foot resting against his (which was the only way to get him to stay in bed rather than back under my legs on the floor).

Tonight I'm at Youngblood, so we'll see if Mommy can pull off Middle Boy. From there, we can prepare our assault on the summit of Big Boy Bedtime, like failed climbers attempting Everest again...

Maxian Numbers

Max has a long history of naming/renaming things, and lists. Here's his original take on the alphabet, here's his surreally-named bouncy ball collection, and here are the 20 tracks of an album he invented. Tonight, however, I think he may have outdone himself.

In the bath he plays with big foam letters and numbers, which he uses to make up elaborate stories mostly having to do with addresses and Fall Out Boy ("Joe lives at... 547 EIGHTH Street...") - but tonight he picked up the U, the D and the L and shouted, apropos of nothign, "UDL means FIVE!"

"In what?" I asked.

"In German," says Max. He then started inventing other numbers, which I had Mommy write down for posterity. Imagine all of these pronounced with an accent that's somewhere between Hebrew, Japanese and Martian:

One = ashee
Two = sada
Three = shok
Four = zoshoko
Five = UDL
Six = zastanoko
Seven = ashtutu
Eight = bastard
Nine = lasoto
Ten = zojo
Eleven = zaktu
Twelve = azsti
Thirteen = zastutu
Fourteen = sadazaza
Fifteen = Sarah
Sixteen = ashzoto
Seventeen = ashtuta
Eighteen = zvzvthu
Nineteen = zvzvzvu
Twenty = "there is no twenty."

I Am Not The Chosen

This morning, Max had climbed into bed with us (as usual, around 4am - none of us really even bother to wake up for it anymore, including Max). We all slept in for the first time in weeks, but around 8 he woke up and wanted some attention from Mommy. In the course of attempting to get up with him myself, thus (a) letting Mommy sleep and (b) getting to sleep in on Father's Day tomorrow, as it would then be "my turn," the following conversation transpired.

Max: Mommy! Get up!

Dad: Buddy, I'm going to get up with you.

Max: No! I want Mommy!

Dad: No, buddy, really, I'm going to get up with you this morning.

Max: No, Daddy. You are not Jewish. Only Mommy and I are Jewish. So you do not get to get up with me.

...

...

WTF?!

Future Classics

Max's imaginary life, while rich and detailed, makes disproportionate use of numbers and numbering systems. Recently, that manifested in his invention of an album, complete with track numbers and song names, for an imaginary band called "The B70s." He filled in eight or nine of the 20 tracks without any prompting (20 tracks, what is this a double album?) and with some nudging invented names for the rest. Here he is, working diligently at the list:

Herewith, the first album from The B70s:

1. Thrill
2. The B70s
3. Disappointing
4. Ball
5. 5180 (Fifty-one-hundred and eighty)
6. Blue Mark
7. So Blue
8. Big Big Big Big Avalanche
9. For You
10. 21st Century
11. Maricee Street
13. Choo Choo Choo
14. Sleepy Dream
15. Blue Mark (Reprise)
16. Me & You
17. Me & You (Reprise)
18. Clyde
19. Me
20. Ball (Reprise)

We have no idea where he picked up the concept of the Reprise, but he's evidently very fond of it.

Knock Knock! Who's There? SURREALISM!

Max is taking a keen interest in this whole humor thing, though when it comes to structured jokes he doesn't quite have it down yet. At Passover he was regaling the guests with knock knock jokes, and rather than stick to the two he knows, he was doing a little improv. It went a little something like this:

Max: Knockknock!

Bemused Guest: Who's there?

Max: ... ... Cranberries...

BG: ...Cranberries who?

Max: ...Cranberries... don't look at my green! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

BG: ...?

Parents: ??

Max: KNOCKNOCK!

BG: Who's... there?

Max: ... ... ... ... pumpkin...

BG: Pumpkin who?

Max: ... pumpkin... ...pumpkin look at my white! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

We're starting to have to seriously consider the possibility that he's out of his mind.

Fallen Out Boy

In the cycling series of Max's obsessions, Wonder Pets replaced Little Einsteins and were then in turn replaced by The Backyardigans. But now he's moved on to some new "friends" - Fall Out Boy.

He is so carried away with them that he can surf YouTube for their videos all by himself (wtf?) and, when he discovered that there was an article about them in Entertainment Weekly this week, insisted that the magazine stay with him at all times and that Mommy stop touching it.

This morning, he set down his Wonder Pets stuffed animals and took the magazine to school with him instead. I couldn't even close it - it had to be open to the Fall Out Boy article.

As I carried him to the car in the rain, he was very concerned about his new friends. "Have you got my magazine, Daddy?" he asked. "Is it getting wet in the rain?"

At least I *like* Fall Out Boy. He's fond of Dashboard Confessional, 30 Seconds to Mars and Hinder, too, so it could have been WAY worse...

Christmas Cuteblogging

While we're on the cuteblogging tip, this is one I meant to post about last week: Max has become a presents addict. After eight days of Chanukah, and the buildup to Christmas, he was extremely let down to be informed that, when all the Christmas presents were opened, that was it on the presents for a while. He came up with a solution:

I will get another present. Tomorrow. On the 26th. I will get a present for Kwanzaa!

Through the power of positive thinking, he managed to make this happen - Hearthsong (a catalog) sh*t the bed with the shipping of his present from Nana, which arrived on the 26th. Just in time for Kwanzaa.

Captain Charmypants

The problem with Max's mad verbal skillz is that he's starting to figure out how to charm his way out of trouble. And then sometimes it happens just by accident, when he's just working out what's on his mind.

We were just downstairs, and he's crazy with tired (no nap at home), and had been warned about getting rough. He kicked at me, and I turned off the TV and declared that Mommy and I were going upstairs, and he would stay downstairs alone. His response:

Will you leave the toy? Will you leave a toy to help me? If someone will take care of me, then I will stay down here. If no one will take care of me, then I will be wicked sad.

Great Moments in Parenting #3,476

Watching VH1's Top Twenty Countdown While Sitting in a Cooler

The Compulsive Collection of Bouncy Balls

Max cycles through obsessions with totem items (much, actually, like his Daddy's Weekly WANT ITs) on a week-to-two-months cycle. A couple weeks ago it was a book, before that it was his Pooh figurines. Now it's his ever-growing collection of bouncy balls.

For over a month now, we've been unable to pass a hi-bounce ball dispenser without buying a couple. The collection is up to 51 or so, depending on how many are currently under couches. He's named every single one of them, and gets very cranky when we get the names wrong. Actually, we've named some - which tend to me the unimaginative names like "Golden" or "Pink Swirl," and he's named others, which have astonishingly strange names like "Two Eret." WTF?

Here they all are, with names appended (sadly, in this picture they're packed compactly enough that the scope of the collection is minimized). Welcome to our world. Because this wasn't dorky enough to begin with, the balls are displayed in chronological order.

Back row (l. to r.): Zebra, Orange Baseball, Basketball, 8-ball, Twin (the other "Twin" has gone missing), White Multi-Color, Black Multi-Color

Second row: Greeny, 11, Golden (lately "Pink Golden" as there are three others), Check, Chalk, Psychedelic, Stripy I

Third row: Splatter, Tek, Bouncier 8, Pink Swirl, 11, 11, Stripy II

Fourth row: Green Golden, Super Golden, Pink Golden (yes, another one, so much for differentiating), Kooshy, 1, 3, Blue Swirl

Fifth row: 15, Two Eret, Booger (!!), Tu Dandy, Texas, Tu Tu, Circus

Sixth row (SIXTH ROW?!): Cinnamon, Orange Swirl, New 8, Taggy, Yellow Psychedelic, [Unknown], Sherbet (the cause of much strife as Daddy fights for proper pronounciation)

Seventh: Lime Swirl, Eyeball (small Eyeball, hiding behind big Eye Ball), Mosaic, Hot Pink Swirl, 3, 12, Daddy (which Daddy found at the Bowery Poetry Club)

Large Format: Astronaut Ball, Eye Ball (which lights up and appears to levitate).

I think it's safe to say that we are, as a family, out of our minds.

Here are the balls deployed at the playground, standing for roll call:

The upside is, we've gotten over a months worth of enjoyment, with hours of active playtime each day ("Mommy, come play ROLL CATCH wif me!" is the refrain of the moment), for a running total of $15.

Great Moments in Parenting #3,754

So I'm reading to Lisa aloud from this very funny piece on Defective Yeti, wherein a 13-year-old relative tells Matthew Baldwin "If you keep hugging [your son] like that, you're going to make him gay..."

As is my wont, on finding this funny I repeated it a few times, chuckling. From behind me, Max pipes up.

Max: If you keep hugging him, you're going to make him GAY...

Me: Yes. Gay means "happy!"

[This is my standard approach to unwanted repetitions - confidently side-track them. Max usually follows.]

Me: So - if you keep hugging him, you're going to make him HAPPY!

Lisa: (Good one, hon.)

Max: You're going to make him GAY.

Me: You're going to make him HAPPY.

Max: Gay.

Me: Happy.

Max: ...Gay.

Great. Nice job, Dad.

Misread, 9/29/06

So Max loves reading, and is getting pretty good at sounding out words. We're flipping through an anthology of kid's books, and we come across "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble." Lisa gives him "Sylvester," as that's a bit tough, and he looks over the rest and confidently announces:

"Sylvester and the Magweed People!"

That's my boy. Never let partial knowledge get in the way of total confidence.

Liveblogging P-Day - August 27

For weeks now, we've been touting August 27th as the day we'd do Potty Training. While the current trend in potty training is based on Dr. Phil's "Potty Party" (which sounds a bit fetish-y to me), we're doing the favored method of a few years ago, the "Naked Weekend." The idea is that the kid stays naked all day so that they notice when they pee, rather than just doing it unconsciously into the diaper.

Since both Lisa and Max have off from school this week, today is the beginning of "Naked Weekend." Max has had the date memorized for a while - when we asked him "what happens on August 27" he'd merrily shout "POTTY TWAINING!"

Lisa has drilled him on the rules all week: we've got a potty chart and stickers, and he gets to put one sticker on for each pee or poop on the potty. She's gotten presents, and he gets one present for the end of the day if he has three pee-pees. The first time he has a poop he gets a big present.

Potty training day. Let's see how this goes.

2:12am - Max crawl in bed with us, to nurse his cold by turning himself entirely sidewise in our bed and relegating us to the edges for the rest of the night.

7:43am - Max wakes up. Cranky. And sad. He heads out into the living room with us groggily following.

7:44am - Max sees that I have gotten up as well, and freaks out. "Daddy I want YOU to go BACK to BED!" he says. Sadly, I can't take him up on it, as we've already determined that both parents will participate in Potty Day.

8:02am - He has cheered up enough for us to start the P-Day festivities. We print out his potty chart with much fanfare, and show him the stickers. He announces a change to the rules - rather than a star for each pee-pee and a Pooh sticker for each poo (yup), he wants a pooh sticker for all potty activity. We allow the rule change.

8:03am - The pants come off. We say "bye-bye" to the departing diaper. We tell him that any time he gets "a feeling" he should shout "potty" and we'd put him on it to pee-pee.

8:16am - In the living room, Max shouts "POTTY!" We rush him to the potty, and he sits.

8:17am - "I PEE-PEE'D!" We check the bowl and sure enough. There is much jubilation, as the whole family dances ritually around the potty.

8:18am - The presentation of the first sticker. SO PROUD. We remind Max that if he does three of those, he gets "Lily's numbers" as his first present (the big foam numbers he fell in love with at Lily's house last weekend).

8:27am - In the living room. Max sits again on the potty. "I PEE-PEE'D" he shouts. Um?

8:28am - Second pee-pee confirmed. About three squirts' worth. Still, that counts, so we shout and dance and put another sticker on. "Only ONE MORE and I get LILY'S NUMBERS!" shouts the kid.

8:31am - "I PEE PEE'D!" Four drops. We dance with waning enthusiasm. "Dump it out, Daddy!" shouts the kid. "AND I GET LILY'S NUMBERS!"

8:32am - Lisa and I pass on the way to and from the bathroom. We lean towards each other. "This it totally bending the rules," she says, carrying him Lily's Numbers.

"We're getting scammed," says me.

8:44am - Daddy, deciding that the whole family should get in on the action, announces "Daddy's going to the potty!" For purposes of more encouragement, shouts "Daddy made a poop!"

The kid goes for it. "You DID?!" he shouts from the living room. "YAY! I come GIVE YOU a HIGH FIVE!" He rushes into the bathroom and slaps my hand. I feel quietly proud. I have no chart, so I get no sticker.

8:47am - Max gets quiet. "Are you listening to your body?" asks Mommy. "No," says the kid, "I'm too tired..." But then he sits on the potty. The whole family is quiet while he concentrates. "Uh!" he shouts, and stands up. The potty is full of pee. "Hooray!" we shout, and dance around.

9:05am - Sits, pees. "I pee pee'd!" "Yay." Kid's been going on the pot for 45 minutes and already it feels routine. I'm starting to consider the next phase of our lives, with requests for trips to the potty every ten minutes or so...

9:33am - "I pee pee'd on the floor..." Sure enough, while trying to carry all of his big foam numbers at the same time, he seems to have lost track of his pee pee response, and has dampened the floor, his numbers, and his leg. Ah, well.

12:19pm - We're past brunch, Nana is here visiting, and peeing on the potty is already old hat. He barely even asks for the stickers anymore. "I peed," he said casually about five minutes ago, and pointed to a fuller-than-ever potty.

As Lisa points out, "of course, we're still waiting for the poop..."

Indeed, for months now every time he has to poop Max has moved at least ten feet away from us and announced "I'm gonna stand RIGHT HERE!" Which is followed by a hilarious red-faced performance as he works it out. He so far seems skeptical about doing that into the potty. Updates to follow.

Because I KNOW you want to know.

12:38pm - We're bored with peeing in the potty, so we decide to bust out the underwear. He's thrilled with all the kinds - Diego, Elmo, Where the Wild Things Are, and Tigger. He chooses Diego for his VERY FIRST UNDERWEAR.

As we put them on, we say "now, remember to keep listening to your body, and tell us if you need to pee pee, so we can take them off."

Max: "I don't WANT to take them off."

Us: "You don't have to unless you pee pee, but you don't want to pee pee in the underwear!"

Max: "Why?"

Us: "Because they won't hold it like a diaper. Just tell us and we'll go on the potty. Okay?"

Max: "Okay."

12:41pm - Max pees voluminously, soaking his Diego underpants, the couch, the floor and his book.

Us: "Buddy, you have to remember to tell us when you have to pee pee."

Max: "Why?"

Sigh.

1:05pm - Pees (a little) in the second pair of underpants. We clearly don't have the "tell us before you pee in the underpants" concept down yet.

1:06pm - Sitting on the potty, Max takes the big foam 2 from me. "I'm going to THROW this at you..." (does)

Lisa: "Maxie, why are you being so violent?"

Max: "Because that's what I do, is be violent."

Great. Four hours into potty training and it's already driven him psychotic. They TOLD us there were deep psychological issues involved, but did we listen to them? No... no we didn't.

4:46pm - I missed the big event. Lisa and I took turns taking "breaks" from Potty Household, and I was at the Barnes and Noble when Max declared "I'm going to stand RIGHT. HERE."

Lisa scooped him up, crying "ON THE POTTY!" and plunked him down on it, where he did a big solid business. Apparently it threw him a little, and he was a bit scared by the whole thing, but he did it! And now when I ask him "how was it to poop on the potty?" he says "GOOD. I got a PUSH TOY."

He did, indeed, collect the day's big bounty - the wood push-toy that spins little strings of colored wood balls around the top when you push it. He's wanted it at the Toy Space for weeks, and Lisa promised it to him when he had his first potty poop.

Underwear still confuses him - she put some on him and he peed right through it. Somehow the "sits where a diaper does but doesn't absorb BOO" concept isn't landing.

Anyway, barring further excitement or disaster, that will wrap up our P-Day coverage, with Numbers One and Two achieved in proper pottified fashion. Congrats to our little man.

Atta Boy

I'm staying home with Max today, as preschool is closed for the week. This morning, he was 1/2 playing, 1/2 trying to get my attention as I checked my email. I was 1/2 listening, 1/2 blowing him off - lots of "Daddy, Pooh fell down!" and "Uh-huh, buddy, I see him..." being traded back and forth.

He comes over and stands by me and gets quiet. I'm still not looking. Then he says, sheepishly: "Daddy? Look at me."

I look, and he's standing next to me with his feet in my new sneakers.

"I'm handsome," he says.

Donald the Nebulosaur

Introducing our newest family member, Donald the Nebulosaur. Of whom Mr. Max utters plaintive cries of "I can't LIKE a Donald!" but then, brave little man, puts his face forward for his treatments - even if he's crying while he does it. My heart swells.

New Monia

You'd think one bout of pneumonia would be more than enough for one toddler in one year. But apparently Max's Christmas bout, which left him half-conscious and whimpering in the basement at Grandma and Grandpa's house over the holidays, wasn't all the poor tyke was in for: he's coughing violently again, making weird chest sounds again, and the doctor has given him 24 hours of nebulizer treatment to see if it clears up, or we'll have to take him back to the hospital.

Sigh.

Max was an absolutely trooper at the doctor, however: he greeted Dr. (Karen) Raksis with a rousing "who's THIS boy?" (no offense, Dr. Raksis, he calls everyone a "boy"), properly identified her otoscope and stethoscope (thank you, Winnie-the-Pooh books), and despite his repeated cries of "I can't! I can't like a nebulizer!" he hung in there through his ten minute Albuterol treatment. At the end of it, the Dr. said he sounded better enough that she'd give it a day before recommending we go to the hospital.

Throughout the attempts to listen to his chest, Max kept a running commentary, which rendered the proceedings much more difficult:

Max: What's this boy doing at me?

Me: She's not a boy, that's Dr. Raksis. She's listening to your chest. You have to be quiet.

Max: I be QUIET. I be QUIET so this boy can LISTEN AT ME. I being QUIET.

Me: You're not, though, you're still talking. You have to shhhh.

Max: I gonna SHHH! I gonna be QUIET! I gotta be QUIET for this boy to LISTEN AT ME!

Dr.: Um... Dad?

Me: Shh, shh, buddy, really, you have to be quiet.

Max: SHHHH! SHHHH! I BE QUIET!

Between my inability to keep the boy shushed, and the fact that she COLD BUSTED us for still letting him use his P (his binky - "only at night!" I shouted, to not avail), I'm not sure I was the good doctor's favorite patient Daddy today.

UPDATE: For those playing along at home, the follow-up visit this morning was good - the nebulizer treatments every four hours were helping, so they and the amoxycillin continue through a follow-up visit on Monday. No hospital so far.

The Kid's Engrish

A conversation yesterday, over Max's toy shovel and rake:

Max: Mommy! I want a shovel and fork!

Lisa: Okay, buddy. Here they are. But you know, that's not really a fork. That's a rake.

Max: A rake?

Lisa: Yes. A rake.

Max: Like the fish swim in?

Lisa: ...

Max: Rake.

Lisa: Not "lake," buddy, "rake." Ruh-ake, not luh-ake.

Max: Ruh-ake.

Lisa: Yes. Ruh-ake. Rake.

Max: Like the fish swim in.

Lisa: No! It's a RAKE.

Max: No Mom. It's a fork.

Supplanted!

2006 is having a busy start - Youngblood is producing its mainstage show, in which I'm directing a full-length (in rep with two one-acts), and there's another episode of the Brunch on Sunday. All of which means I'm not home as much as I'd like to be, or seeing as much of Max as I'd like to be.

I had no idea how far gone I was from the family landscape until last night, though.

As I crept in at some wee small hour, I heard Max stirring and restless. I paused outside his door to listen. Suddenly he shot bolt upright, and in a middle-of-the-night panic cried out:

"Mommy?! Diego?!"

Sigh.

Anyway. Happy New Year from the whole family:

Not Quite Understanding the Miracle

Max enjoys Chanukah a great deal, partially because - in the catbird seat of the mixed-faith child - he gets presents for eight nights AND Christmas morning, and partially because he likes the prayer and the candles.

That is not to say, however, that he entirely gets it.

Since the only celebratory ritual in Max's repertoire that involves candles is birthdays, he cheers lustily for Chanukah, watches in reverent awe as the candles are lit, and then throws himself at them shouting "I BLOW 'EM OUT!"

We've convinced him that this would violate something vital to the spirit of the holiday, and he'll grudgingly go along with it, but we have to keep a careful watch. It's not unusual to see him creeping up on the menorah, going "Fffffffffffff!" at it, when he thinks we're not looking.

From the Department of Hard to Take

This morning was not my morning to get up with The Buddy, so I "slept in" to the slothful hour of 8:15. I awoke to the strains of "Diego Radio," a Nick Jr. website which will, distressingly, play all of the songs from the new Dora spinoff, "Go, Diego, Go!"

I staggered blearily out into the living room, eager to see my son for a few brief moments before heading off to work and a full evening of rehearsals.

Max saw me coming and his face lit up - with horror. He ran towards me with his hands up in the universal sign for "stop."

"NO DADDY!" he shouted frantically. "DON'T SING!!!"

He then clutched both hands to his face in despair at the very notion, and fell on the ground wailing.

ADDENDUM:

This morning, Lisa was singing the theme to the new Noggin series, Jack's Big Music Show. "Come on everybody give your hands a clap! Dum deedee dum deedum deedum day!" I joined in for a verse.

Max declared: "No, Daddy! Stop singing! YUCK."

Sigh.

The Definition of Optimism

As we arrived at Nana's after the Official Nana's Birthday Dinner, Max demanded to be put down so he could climb the steps himself.

I obliged, and he laboriously clambered up the first step, burdened by a sippy cup and an underdeveloped sense of how one actually climbs the stairs.

Once he got his footing on that first step, he straightened up, pointed to the top of the staircase (with eleven more steps to go), and shouted triumphantly: "You CAN do it! ALMOST AT THE TOP!!"

The Squirrelly

For the first time since ill-advisedly reading my mother's article about my grandmother's death while at work, I'm having to concentrate fairly hard on keeping it together at my desk and not just bursting into tears. Over at Defective Yeti, Matthew Baldwin tells his readers that his son, known as The Squirrelly (whose comic hi-jinx I've linked to several times and who, thanks to Baldwin's astonishing writing, feels like a close friend-of-the-family), has been diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

"Spectrum" is an apt name - there's a massive range of behavior, cognition and, yes, disorder that falls under it. Whatever one thinks of the current classifications and taxonomy (the Procrastimom is not a fan), it's a challenging diagnosis.

But that's not the part that choked me up. Baldwin's post shows a grace, heart, and heartbreakingly intense joy in fatherhood that just floors me.

[Thanks to TwinC for pointing me to this.]

Outflanked

We're trying to get Max to ask for things in complete sentences. We've also been brainwashing him with manners, so much so that now when he asks for something and we say "And what do you say?" he tends to reply, pre-emptively, "Pleaseandthankyou!"

So he'll chant "More VeggieBooty?" and we'll say "what do you say?" and he'll say "pleaseandthankyou" and we'll say "so put that all together!" and he'll go "PLEEEEEEAAAASE!!!!!" and we'll give up and give him the Veggie Booty before he whines at the frequency that makes our ears bleed. But we're still trying in vain to get him to insert the object right into the sentence - i.e., "moVeggieBootypleaseandthankyou!"

All of which led to this conversation at dinner:

Max: (Pointing to his empty sippy cup) More?

Lisa: More what?

Max: Pleaseandthankyou!

Lisa: (Pointing to the sippy cup) Yes, but what is this?

Max: Empty.

Kid's got a point.

[Editor's note: apparently in my first draft of this post I grossly misrepresented the state of my child's speech. I have been corrected, and so in due course has the post. Thank you.]

The Potty

I think it's safe to say that my son doesn't really get this whole potty training thing yet...

The Sleepless

Max had a bad sleep weekend. We think it was an ear infection, as he spent Friday with a toasty fever, and many of the times he woke up shrieking he seemed to be pawing at the side of his head. At some points, in the middle of the night, he was inconsolable, so we brought him to bed with us.

Unfortunately, this month, "to bed with us" means onto the L-shaped sofa that already barely contains Lisa and myself without us headbutting each other viciously in our sleep. So the hours spent with Max also on the couch, while comforting to the poor little blighter, weren't what I would call the best sleep we've ever had.

All of which was fine, because the poor tot was sick and miserable.

But then after a few days he was no longer sick and miserable. And he kept waking up and wanting to come to bed with us anyway, just because he liked it. And, because it's hard to reason with a 2 year old and even harder when that 2 year old is still 70% asleep, we let him.

If we had forgotten what it was like for the 7+ months that Max didn't sleep through the night - and we had - we've been reminded. It is not, on balance, Good Times. But sometimes, in the punchy netherworld, some good times can be had in a bitterly humorous kind of way.

4:00am Monday morning:

Max: [Mostly sleeping] mmmf... waaagh... couch!

Daddy: You want to come onto the couch.

Max: Mm-hmmm.

Daddy: [Sigh. Pause.] Okay.

[Carries Max to couch. Max immediately kicks Mommy in the face.]

Mommy: Ow! Buddy!

[Max settles down. Minutes pass, during which Mommy and Daddy have just fallen back asleep. Suddenly:]

Max: Cheese!

Daddy: What?

Max: CHEESE!

[Pause.]

Max: CHEESE!

Mommy: You want cheese?!

Daddy: Buddy, it's four o'clock in the morning!

Max: CHEEEEEEEEESE!

Daddy: Well, are you going to eat it this time? Or are you going to just wipe it on the couch, like last time?

Max: Couch.

Daddy: Huh. Well, at least this time we know it going in.

[Mommy goes to get Max a piece of cheese. Max does not eat the cheese. Max wipes cheese on the couch.]

[Two minutes pass. Mommy and Daddy are nearly asleep.]

Max: 'nana!

Mommy: You want a banana?

Max: Uh-huh.

Mommy: Are you going to eat that cheese?

Max and Daddy [together, sing-song-y]: No-o!

[Daddy and Mommy laugh. A bit crazily.]

Daddy: Never let it be said I don't know my own kid.

Mommy: Buddy? Why did you put your cheese on my neck?

Max: NANA!

Daddy: You're not getting a banana, it's four fifteen and you didn't even eat your cheese.

Max: [Grumps a bit. Tosses and turns, kicks Mommy in the head]

Mommy: [Giggles.] Hey hon? [Giggles.] You want some cheese?

Daddy: No! I'm not eating your warm neck cheese!

[Mommy and Daddy dissolve into choking laughter.]

Max: NANANANANANA!

Mommy: [Sighs] Well, I have to go throw this cheese out anyway.

[Mommy gets Max a banana, part of which will be found, brown and gooberized, in Mommy's hair the next morning.]

The Baby Gets a Little Twin Action

Max's chosen "comfort object" is his teddy bear, Pearl Bearley. She's awfully soft and cute. Back when he was only moderately attached to her, we got a duplicate Pearl for Nana's house, when we were doing our best to get him hooked in the interests of getting him to sleep more easily (we also - ON OUR DOCTOR'S ADVICE - did this with binkies, only to have said doctor tell us that now we need to take them away again YEAH THANKS).

Now that Max goes to daycare/preschool instead of Nana's, we've gotten Pearl II back - so now both of the Pearl Twins are at our house, one in the crib and one in his school bag.

Yesterday he woke up hard from his nap (which he seems to be doing more often for some reason), and clung to Pearl I as Mommy brought him upstairs. He saw Pearl II in his bag and reached for her, crying "Puh! Need Puh!" between sobs.

So the twins made a rare joint appearance:

The Schemer

Yesterday Max and mommy went to a birthday party. Having just had one himself, Max was wise to how birthday parties get down: people sing, and then you have cake. The problem is, Max's timetable for cake didn't fit with the grownups' timetable: to wit, he wanted it RIGHT NOW and they wanted to wait.

So my little schemer comes up with a master plan: if he can get the singing going, the cake will surely follow! So he proceeds to burst into song at random intervals for the next twenty minutes:

Hep birfday... YOU! Heppy birfday YOUUU!

(looks around expectantly)

...CAKE!

After all that, when the cake was served, he didn't eat any. You see, just like he thinks all cheese should be yellow and therefor rejects swiss on principle, Max thinks all cake should be chocolate. When it's not, he refuses to recognize it as cake.

Longest Day of the Year: a Photoblog

Max was born on June 21, 2003 - the summer solstice. Lisa allows as how the longest day of the year has never felt longer. In her delirium that night, after 48 sleepless hours and, oh, you know, CHILDBIRTH, while Max cried and cried and failed to figure out breastfeeding and the nurses ignored her and she became convinced she was going to starve him or freeze him to death, she wrote him a little song, the beginning of which went like this:

His name is Maxwell Raymond Tolan
He screams so loud when he gets himself goin'
He was born on the summer solstice
He's got long fingers he can make in-to fists

To which I say: hey, man, YOU try to come up with a rhyme to "solstice" when you just had your first kid...

So yesterday I took off work to spend his birthday with the little tyke, and man let me tell you - I am not in tip top Daddy shape. Despite napping during his nap, I was wrecked by his bedtime. I don't know how he, or his Mommy, do it.

Here, then, is a photoblog of Max's big day.

It was a tradition when I was growing up that I got "sugar cereal" only on my birthday. We'd go cruise the aisle and I'd pick whichever box had the best looking toy in it - usually I went for those plastic dolphins that you filled with baking soda to make them dive and rise in the bath tub. Later, I started choosing by taste, and by early adolescence Trix was my cereal du choix. As it so happened, we had some left-over Trix from my weekend upstate with my theater company, so Max got to get down on Daddy's old tradition. At first, as shown above, he was too tired and spaced out to know exactly what to make of it.

Once the face-stuffing began in earnest, however, he cheered right up. Here, he appears to be trying to fit some up his nose.

Off we went to the playground, which is nicely devoid of screaming multitudes of children at 9am. Max allowed himself to be seen with me on the "big kid swing" even though my hair had already degenerated into some sort of "Paige Davis gone wrong" kind of look.

Max celebrated his new 2-year-old-ness by sitting all by his lonesome on the big kid swing, with Daddy hovering nervously nearby. It's actually kind of hard to take a picture while you're preparing yourself to leap bodily to your child's rescue should he plummet the death-defying 20 inches to the rubberized playground's spongy surface, thus risking severe bouncing and even mild rug burn.

More after the jump...

After we went "Up. Da. Hill?" to "Watch. Da. Cars?" (what can I say, the kid's inflections are unique), Max further celebrated his independence by running far, far away from me. That tiny speck in the center is him.

Once I closed the gap between us, Max had to find more creative ways to endanger himself. Here he is, sprinting uphill, into traffic.

Here Max indulges in his new favorite game, Sewer Sticks. Sewer Sticks is played like this: Step One - find a stick. Step Two - drop it into sewer to hear it go splash. Step Three - pause to eat part of torn-up Nerf football while Daddy isn't looking. Step Four - go "blechhhh" when you actually taste said football. Step Five - scream at Daddy until he breaks too-large stick into Sewer-Stick-able sizes. Step Six - repeat steps One through Five.

Our usual path to the Prospect Park Zoo was closed for tree-tending, so we took "The Ravine" instead. We had a difference of opinion over the purpose of our stop by this scenic waterfall. I thought it was to take a lovely picture. Max thought it was so that he could dispose of a binkie in the most dramatic and thorough way possible: hurling it down into a chasm of rushing water.

Despite Mommy's insistence that I be careful about losing binkies ("we're running out," she had warned me sternly), leaving Max on the path while I clambered down the sheer stone walls to retrieve it seemed an even less Mommy-approved option. Our day continued, minus one binkie.

I have no idea what exactly this big scary paddle-wheeled floating lawn tractor was doing harvesting duckweed and algae from the pond. I'm not even sure I want to know. Maybe we're not far enough into the future for them to have started making Soylent Green out of people yet.

Just outside of the zoo we found this bunny, clearly an ex-pet now gone feral. It was, actually, quite friendly and happy looking, and caused Max to shout "BUNNY!" at the top of his lungs for the next four hours.

Sure, it was warm in the sun, but I really think this sea lion was milking it for sympathy.

The zoo was still fairly empty, so Max got some serious quality time with the baboons.

Max and the baby baboon: kindred spirits.

Unlike the melodramatic sea lion, this baboon was clearly in the grips of some genuine existential crisis. Max and I christened him "Uncle Mister DeVore."

After the zoo, we retired to the Dog Beach. Since there were no dogs currently enjoying it, Max decided to pick up the slack. From now on I guess I have to refer to it as "the Dog Beach oh and my son plays there too."

Call him Fido.

Skipping ahead to the birthday dinner, at Max's favorite restaurant, Pizza Plus:

It's still early in the dinner, and already the boy is looking surly, not to mention shiny with grease. He's famous at this place for being the only toddler who can sock away more than half a pizza by himself.

Of course, more often than not he eats it laterally...

He was hitting the sippy cup pretty hard...

...and got a bit grabby towards Daddy's carbonara.

Back at home, we celebrated with birthday cupcakes from Two Little Red Hens. I had worried he'd be disappointed that it wasn't an actual cake, as he'd been screaming "Birthday CAKE!" at random intervals all day.

Clearly, I need not have worried.

At first, he wasn't sure what to make of the fact that his cupcake was on fire.

But he figured out how to eat it while warily keeping an eye on the candle. He steadfastly refused, however, to blow it out, so Mommy took care of it for him.

With the hazard of the flame taken care of, Max was free to stuff himself sick.

Ta-daaah! And the cupcake has DISAPPEARED!

We ended the day with a pretty remarkable cuddle at bedtime.

As if understanding that I'd overtaxed myself with a long day of toddler-watching, Max was kind enough to share one of his binkies with me. It was actually kind of soothing.

If the year is going to have one longest day in it, then I'm glad I got to spend it all on the birthday boy.

Happy birthday, buddy.

How Quickly They Grow

Tomorrow is Max's 2nd birthday - I'm taking the day off work to hang out with him, so I'll be playing Park Slope Daddy all day.

Somehow, Lisa and I have thought of him as a two-year-old for many months now. It kept surprising me, when people would ask how old he was, to have to say "well, he's almost two." And, about six weeks ago and thus six weeks ahead of schedule, he developed the ability to be a real punkass when he doesn't get exactlywhathewantsexactlywhenhewantsit.

So the birthday itself is likely to be something of an anticlimax.

Not only that, but Max himself is clearly already moving on. For at least the last month, Lisa has been practicing with Max so he can tell people how old he is. Mostly she'll say "how old are you going to be?" and he'll say "I TWO!" Every once in a while one of us will slip and say "Hey Max, how old are you?" to which he also replies "I two."

So yesterday, Lisa says to him "Hey Maxie, how old are you going to be on Tuesday, on your birthday?" and he looks at her all excited and goes "I THREE!"

They grow up so fast...

Fear and Loathing in Park Slope Brooklyn

Did you know that ephedrine/pseudoephedrine are used in meth labs to make crank?

I didn't.

Now I do. I was looking into the nature and effects of pseudoephedrine after discovering its ability to cause my not-yet-two-year-old son to stay up all night climbing up walls, tapdancing on the ceiling, and blowing things up with his vicious laser eyebeams.

Last night, a hacking cough was waking Max up every ten minutes or so in evident misery. So I ran out to our local 24 hour drug store and picked from among the wall-sized display of cough elixirs the one that (a) seemed most designed for small children (i.e. a dropper, not a cup), and (b) seemed to offer the most ways to make him feel better.

A nagging voice in the back of my head tried to remind me of an old story I had heard from my Mom, about something horrible that pseudoephedrine had done to me when I was beensy, from which we learned I was intolerant. I ignored it.

So when Max woke up at about midnight, hacking and crying, we dosed him up with baby-style cough suppressant plus expectorant plus here's where we went seriously awry decongestant. Pseudoephedrine.

All was well. Baby sleeping. No coughing. Mommy Daddy sleeping. Good good.

2:30am all no longer well. Baby awake and crying out for something. "Books!" as it happens. "Books a-BOOKS!" Odd request for the wee small hours. Mommy awake and dealing with it, so Daddy back to sleep.

3am - baby being brought into bed. Restless. Trying to sleep but not getting much of anywhere with it. Mommy Daddy no longer sleeping more than fitfully.

3:30 am - baby WIDE AWAKE AND READY TO PARTY. I realize the tactical error of having allowed Lisa to deal with him to this point: it is now MY TURN.

3:40 am - baby and Daddy emerge blinking into the living room, with baby writhing and bouncing and calling for booze, hookers and human adrenal gland. Or maybe just "BOOKS!" and "DORA!" I'm not so clear on it anymore. I plunk him on the floor while I marshall supplies, and he blinks around at the walls in a crazed manner, shouting unrecognizable words at intervals. "JamBO!" he calls. "Wop! BangOOO!"

I have never seen him behave like this.

The next 2.5 hours pass in a haze of debauchery and high living. Finding Nemo and Elmo's World on the tube, baby twanging and thrumming in my arms as I attempt to faint on the couch.

Finally, as he's peering at the closing moments of our 2nd Elmo's World episode through barely-open eyes, I try to inject some control into the evening.

"Buddy?" I say, cautiously. "You wanna go back to your crib, and try to get some more sleep?"

"NO!" he hollers, instantly revved up again. "WATCH ELMO! WATCH ELMO WORLD!"

So at least the speed does some good for his sentence construction.

At this point it's 6 am, which means "Mommy's Turn" has come around again. I take him upstairs - sobbing, weeping, gnashing, as "upstairs" means "away from the tv" - and dump him unceremoniously on Mommy.

As she carries him back down, he's looking at me with hurt and heartbreak and shooting lizards at me out of his eyes.

Apparently he began his "come down" at about 7am and was out by 7:30.

Procrastimom has since confirmed that I tripped hard on some pseudoephedrine when I was four months old, and when she told the Pediatrician that I'd been looking around crazily, like I was hallucinating, the Ped replied "oh, yeah, that's 'cause he was probably hallucinating."

Huzzah.

Toddler Nirvana

And there you have it - probably the highlight of my son's not-quite-two-years of existence.

2 weeks ago we went with my brother and sister-in-law and his step-grand-daughter (it's all very confusing, and that's not even getting into the fact that he's actually my half-brother, making little Mia my half-step-great-niece or some incomprehensible crap like that) to Sesame Place.

Sesame Place turns out to be a little gem of a theme park, even when it's cold and rainy and the water park part (which is most of it) isn't open yet. It's a wonderland for toddlers, many of whom - Max included - spend the whole visit in a daze of ecstasy at seeing their favorite tv show come to life.

We were there for the grand opening/season preview/kickoff to the 25th anniversary celebrations (it turns out Sesame Place and I were both born on May 7 - who knew!), complete with a red-carpet arrival for all the big headed characters, which finally tore Max away from the express ticket kiosks he had been running laps around for 20 minutes:

(click on pix for full size)

We got snubbed by Elmo, which almost caused an insurrection as Max writhed to get free from my arms and chase him down, but Ernie stopped by to press the flesh:

More pix after the jump...

We finally tracked down everykid's favorite furry red menace, at the "Take A Picture With..." booth.

[A quick tip of the hat to Sesame Place - they let you take pictures with your own camera while their photog snaps away, so you're not stuck buying their prints (which aren't that outrageously priced anyway) if you don't want to. It's a classy, classy touch - and, perversely, probably why we went ahead and bought the official prints from them.]

Here's my shot of Max going for the takedown:

Lisa pretended to nobly volunteer to accompany Mia on the amazing system of net tubes and ramps and treehouses they have set up:

In reality, if Mia hadn't been there, Lisa would have probably gone alone, and would've had to spend the whole time elaborately pretending to follow some child who had just gone out of sight. On her re-emergence, Lisa declared it "seriously the most fun I've had in years" which I took a little personally.

We took Max on the "balloon ride," which is like a teacup ride that goes 30 feet in the air. In the following triptych, Max is (1) freaked out by being strapped in, (2) freaked out by Mommy freaking out at him, and (3) totally blase about the whole thing by the time it was over:

Max then, expensively, fell in love with the toss-a-wiffle-ball game. Here he is, winding up for another $5 pitch:

He looks all impressive, like he's really going to get some distance, right? Yeah, no. He spent 20 minutes throwing wiffle balls no more than six inches in front of us, straight at the ground. Eventually he let me help, and we won a strange embryonic lopsided stuffed cow, which Lisa immediately christened "Loppy":

Notice the professional cheerfulness of the Game Girl, despite having spent the last 20 minutes stooped over picking up Max's earlier attempts. Well done, Miss.

Eventually, well merch'ed, ride'd, painted and fed, Mia and Max were starting to show the surly signs of their three hour bender of delight:

Despite the overload, I think it's fair to say a good time was had by all. Well done, Anheuser Busch!

My Son Likes Spicy Food... On My Shirt!

On Sunday, to properly enjoy our lovely early-Spring day, we splurged on dinner at Two Boots in Park Slope. We ordered Max the pizza face, as usual, hoping this time he'd actually eat it rather than fling it or straightarm it ("n'O! n'O! N'O!").

Despite having demanded many handfuls of fish ("fiss!") during the almost-bad-enough-to-get-annoyed-but-it's-too-nice-out-to-bother delay in service, Max had plenty of appetite left for pizza face, and began cramming it into his mouth by the handful as fast as we could chop it up.

Partway through his first mouthful, he started to look a little wild-eyed. "Ooo!" he said, but after a pause resumed stuffing pizza into himself.

After a moment, he went "OOOO!" again and began hopping a bit in his chair. He looked around frantically, and then grabbed my sleeve with both (saucy) hands and buried his face in my arm.

I should explain: Max has, recently, begun shoving his face into various parts of his mother and I. And sniffing/snuffling. For comfort. Each diaper change means sacrificing our left elbow for a good couple minutes of snuffling.

Who knows.

Anyway, he snuffled around on my shoulder for a bit, then grabbed another bite of pizza. This time he burst into tears and swung his head at my arm again, with his tongue out, and gave my sleeve a good licking/snuffling.

"Maybe it's spicy?" said Lisa. He did seem to be purposely wiping his tongue off on my sleeve. I grabbed a piece of pizza and sure enough, the sauce had a pretty pronounced kick on the back end. Not super duper hot, but probably pretty startling for a kid who's never had anything much zestier than a fish stick.

But man, he couldn't get enough of the stuff. Even though every third bite made him burst into tears, as soon as he had thoroughly wiped his tongue off on my sleeve, he'd grab another handful.

"That's spicy food for you, buddy," said his mother, "even when it makes you sad you just want to keep eating it."

At one point, when he was running out of clean bits of my shirt to stick his tongue on, he realized he was using only my dark blue outer shirt when there was a crisp white undershirt available as virgin territory. His eyes lit up like firecrackers. "Ha HA!" he seemed to be saying, "that WHITE shirt will be JUST the relief I need!" He scrambled most of the way out of his high chair, clawing his way across my chest, and stuffed handfuls of my t-shirt into his mouth. He snuffled a bit and sucked on it while staring up at me contentedly.

It's an odd experience to realize that a table full of cute young women is staring at you in bemused fascination while your toddler son sucks at your chest like a lamprey. "It's, uh, spicy," I explained, feeling proud and lame all at once.

The nice thing about living in Park Slope (stroller central) is that you can walk down the street in a full-body crust of pizza sauce and no one will look at you twice.

Cool Kidz

They Might Be Giants have confused me.

Not their discursive, abstract lyrics (I'm your only friend I'm not your only friend but I'm your little glowing friend but really I'm not actually your friend but I am), nor the puzzle of how two guys can write so many catchy goddamned songs, nor which one is Flansburg and which one is Linnel.

No, TMBG has now confused me about the future of our children. And I believe the children are the future.

See, when we were growing up we watched some terrible crap on tv. Think Hanna-Barbera terrible. Romper Room terrible. When we grew up, destined to fetishize our own childhoods, we went back and re-perceived all that terrible crap as cool. It was cool because it was terrible, and dated, and awkward, and because it was ours from our childhood.

This morning Max and I sat and watched Here Come the ABCs.

"Here Come..." is a TMBG dvd featuring songs and animations about the alphabet. It's great. The songs are great. The animations are great. I may have enjoyed it more than Max did, and he was pretty rapt.

Problem is: it's cool.

A lot of the stuff we've found for Max is cool, and he's not even 2 yet. They Might Be Giants has an extensive selection of kids' music, which is cool. Dan Zanes is way cool.

If the stuff we're feeding our kids is already cool when we feed it to them at sub-2-years-old, how the christ are they supposed to transform it into coolness through kitschy self-fetishizing retrospect? How will their pop eat itself?

The Littlest Literalist

This morning Max and I are counting:

Me: (Holding up one finger) How many?

Max: One!

Me: (Two fingers) How many now?

Max: Two!

Me: (Three fingers) And this?

Max: F'ree!

Me: (Four fingers) And what's this?

Max: Foe-w'uh!

Me: (All five fingers) And this?

Max: HAND!

They Just Keep On Changin'

One thing about having a toddler: just when you think you've got 'em figured out, they develop some new ability that totally changes the paradigm. I thought it was the cutest thing possible when Max, using his traditional "last-syllable-only" system, called me "Dee!" when I came home. Now he's added the first syllable, but still stresses the second, and I'm "dah-DEE dah-DEE dah-DEE" and it's cuter than ever before.

You also get surprised by the little revelations, like when you see a new tooth and realize THAT'S why the little monkey has been drooling so much he left a trail.

So last night, Max woke up in the middle of the night. He was pressing his hand on his forehead and going "oooh!" the way he does when something hurts.

"Does something hurt, buddy?" I said.

"Ache!" he said. Pressing his head. "Oooh."

"Does your head hurt?"

"Uh-HUH," he said. "Eye."

"Um, buddy," I said carefully, "that's your forehead. Your eye is a bit lower."

"No!" he said, in the foreceful way he's developed. "Eye!"

"Okay," I said. Some fights aren't worth picking at 3am. "Your eye hurts."

"Uh-HUH," he said. "Ache!"

I put him back to bed and thought no more of it.

But as of this morning, it all makes sense.

Purim: Where All My Hip Young Jews At?

As a lifelong goy, I didn't have any idea what Purim was, except that once a year there would be hamantaschen at the office. And as a lifelong opter-out (opt-outer?) of organized religion, I was somewhat nervous as we headed off to the Purim Carnival sponsored by Brooklyn Jews at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

But the poster was really cool, so I swallowed my trepidation and off we went.

And a fantastic time was had by all:

(click for full size on all pictures)

It was the perfect Park Slope crowd - youngish, baby-laden, hip without being hipster, friendly, eclectic. Lots and lots of families with kids (many in costume, which is why a friend calls Purim "Jewish Halloween") and parents who look like they're in publishing, but also some older devout-Reform-Jewish types and at least one couple who were grooving to the band and each other like they were at Webster Hall. At one point they almost ground Max underfoot as they did their strange Klezmer Lambada.

There were lots of hamantaschen to buy, bake-sale style, as well as beer from He'Brew (the chosen beer!). I had a $3 Messiah Bold, and it was actually pretty excellent for a gimmick beer (from Schmaltz Brewery, no less).

More pictures after the jump...

The turnout was really impresive - about 350, by the host's estimate:

There was a "Make Your Own Purim Crown" station for the kiddies, which also dispelled any doubt about the political leanings of the crowd:

Max fell madly in love with the crown making station, and greatly enjoyed getting to wear a crown in public:

He had never encountered stickers before, and they blew his little mind. He spent the next hour sticking them to his crown, a plate, the floor, and mommy:

Then the headlining band took the stage. They're called Golem, and The Jewish Week said of them "This is not your father's klezmer band. Unless, of course, your father was Sid Vicious." (They received five out of five stars... of David! Wokka!) They're a klezmer/rock band with a punkish, Lower East Side sensibility.

Golem manages to rock out and feel authentically connected to their musical heritage all at the same time. In Yiddish. If you combined the music of the shtetl with They Might Be Giants, you'd be in the ballpark.

Max dug it:

All in all, the Carnival simply kicked ass. It was probably the first time in my life I've encountered a group of people, brought together by organized religion, who I actually sort of wanted to hang out with.

Brooklyn Jews' stated mission is to redevelop the tradition of the Jewish neighborhood, revitalized to have a place in modern life. Judging by the Carnival, they've made a darn fine start of it.

The Yeti Takes Up Barfblogging

Matthew Baldwin, the dadblogger by whom all other dadbloggers should be judged, describes his family's run-in with the flu. He concentrates less on the barfing part (a favorite of mine) and more on the "daddy whining on the couch" part, which I indulged in heartily but, for modesty's sake, minimized in my flu coverage.

Anyway, the Baldwins had the day that every young family fears:

"And then came Sunday -- Palm Sunday, according to the calendar, but that we in the Baldwin household shall forever remember as "That One Day When We Were Totally Sick, Holy Shit Were We Ever Sick That Day."

Here's the rest. And if you've never read Defective Yeti, you can spend worse time online than going through the entire files of his dadblogging category "Squirrely, The."

Side note: I second his recommendation of the Busy Ball Popper as a childrearing supplement, not only because it fascinates the tots for minutes on end, but because it makes so much ruckus that you can safely nap out while it's in use - if the kid wanders off, the sudden silence will wake you in a shot.

We Have Begun Lying to Our Son

Okay, so I've mentioned before that Max is obsessed with planes. At any time of day or night, he's liable to point towards the nearest visible bit of sky and shout "plane!"

(When he gets really worked up about it, he adds what I've come to think of as a Max Modifier: sometimes, when he repeats words, he'll add what sound like articles ("the," "a") more or less at random. So multiple repititions tend to become "Plane! Plane, da plane! DA PLANE!" He also does this with other things, using a unique Max Modifier for each, i.e. "Book! Book ga BOOK!" or "Pee! (his word for "binky," somehow) Pee tsa-PEE!")

Max has recently become convinced that Elmo is blessed with a preternatural ability to spot planes. The other day, apropos of nothing, he rushed over to grab his Elmo puppet down from a shelf, shouting "L'mo!", and pressed it into my hands. I began a half-hearted falsetto rendition of the Elmo's World theme, but Max had more urgent business in mind. "Plane!" he shouted, and pointed to the transom over our front door (through which one can see a teeny bit of our sprodically plane-heavy Seventh Avenue sky).

"I don't think there are any planes now, buddy," I said. "La-la, la-la... la-la, la-la... Elmo's world..."

Max looked at me like I was daft. "Plane!" he insisted, and shoved Elmo towards the window. He pointed again. "L'mo! Ga PLANE!"

"Um... do you want Elmo to look for planes?" I asked.

"Uh-HUH!" he cried, glad that slow Daddy had finally caught up.

"Okay," says me. Then as Elmo: "Nope! Elmo doesn't see any planes!"

Max was confused. "Plane," he said, as if I must have misunderstood. He pointed. I tried again.

"Hee hee! No planes!" said Elmo.

By now, Max looked like you would if you put bread in a toaster, pressed the button, and it disappeared. Totally baffled by something that should have been mundane. He clearly couldn't conceive of how Elmo was missing all the planes.

We went another couple rounds, with him pushing Elmo towards the window, Elmo reporting a planeless sky, and Max looking perturbed. Finally, I said "Bye-bye!" and took off the Elmo puppet, at which point Max burst into tears. I put on Green Day and he cheered up again.

For the next several days, he'd repeat this at intervals, bringing us the puppet and demanding a plane report. Each time he'd get furious that it wasn't working.

Finally, on the fifth or sixth go-round, I had a flash. Max gave me Elmo and yelled "plane," and I held Elmo up towards the window. "Hmm... Elmo doesn't see any... WAIT! THERE'S ONE! THERE'S A PLANE! YAAAAAAY!" Elmo did a little dance of joy.

And the child was satisfied. Not exultant, or smiling, just sort of grimly satisfied. "I thought so," said his face.

So now, about twice a day, either Mommy or I are required to have plane spotting sessions with Elmo. And each time, Elmo spots four or five planes, and the boy is content for a while. And Lisa and I convince ourselves that in this case, it's totally okay to deceive our child.

Follow That Parade!

One of the unexpected benefits of living where we do: the Park Slope St. Patrick's day parade marches right past our house.

It's the best kind of parade there is: big enough that it's not just paltry and embarassing, but grass-roots enough that it's totally rag-tag and charming. There are battalions of little girls in Aran sweaters with gigantic curly-headed half-wigs frothing up from their heads. There are handfuls of old men from various local AOH branches, red-nosed and rheumy-eyed, proudly toting flags. There are some of the worst high school marching bands I've ever seen, sullen youngsters who can barely be bothered with tempo or key, or walking in much of a straight line. There was a young local congressman, walking with no one around him for thirty feet in each direction except his sign-carrier, waving heartily and shouting "Happy Saint Patrick's Day!" and giving us point-and-thumbs-ups.

There are pipes-and-drums corps of various sizes and levels of proficiency, from one really excellent one featuring tall men in blackwatch plaid kilts and gigantic black hats, to a small "Catholic Association" troupe that ranges in age from 55 down to maybe 12 - and the 12 year old was a girl. There's even one poignant little troupe of Revolutionary War reenactors, maybe four of them, median age about 75, battering away at fife and drum, tagging along just because it's a parade.

This year we even had "Miss Dance America," a sullen, pudgy Latina girl riding in a Camaro convertible, trailed by the Dance America Team as her grouchy train.

Max was in raptures. We stood out on our little pseudo-patio, and I bounced him on my knee as everyone trooped past, and he took it all in like it was the wonders of the universe.

It was drizzling this year, so turn out was poor. The whole parade went by in about 20 minutes. When it was all over, we took Max back inside.

"Band!" he cried, leaning towards the door. "Mo' band!"

"No, buddy, no mo' band right now," I said. "The band is all done."

He looked at me, stricken. And burst instantly into aching, heartbroken sobs.

It is said that Eskimos have hundreds of words for "snow." When your child is fast approaching toddlerhood, you learn there are many distinct kinds of crying, as varied as wine. You develop your own inner guidelines for how to react to these various forms of weeping, mostly based on a gut determination over the exact level to which the kid is playin' you.

My gut barometer said we weren't being played.

"Or," I said quickly, "we could put you in your stroller and chase after the parade?"

"Mo... band?" he said, snuffling.

So this is how Lisa and I came to find ourselves pelting down Seventh Ave., in the rain, chasing the St. Patrick's Day Parade. We passed Miss Dance America, passed the Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts and Webelos, passed the marching band I had christened "the Marching Band from Our Lady of Don't Give a F*ck," and finally passed the mixed-age pipe and drum corp. And we hunkered down at the corner and watched Max watch the parade go by again.

Just god-damned awesome.

More Lyrics Rogers & Hammerstein Never Imagined

This morning:

Me: Let's sing your song again. (Singing) Doe, a deer, a female...

Max: Deeh!

Me: Ray, a drop of golden...

Max: Fish! Sun! FISH!

Me: Me, a name I call my...

Max: HO!

Me: ...

Max: HO!

Me: ...Me, a name I call my Ho?

Max: Heh heh heh.

Ray, A Drop of Golden Fish

First two-way phone conversation with my son, who shares a certain obsession with Herve Villechaize (no, not the one about pistol whipping loose women):

Me: Maxie?

Max: Plane!

Me: Do you see a plane?

Max: PLANE!

Me: Where is the plane?

Max: ...

Me: Where is it?

Max: ...PLANE!

Me: ...what else can we talk about?

Max: a PLANE!

Me: You want to sing the song we were singing this morning?

Max: ...plane...

Me: (singing) Doe, a deer, a female...

Max: (whisper) deeeeh...

Me: Ray, a drop of golden...

Max: (whisper) fish...

[After the rest of the song:]

Me: Which will bring us back to...

Max: Doe doe doe doe DOE DOE!

Me: Very good!

Max: A PLANE!

Me: (sigh) I love you, buddy, I'll talk to you later...

Max: PLANE! PLANE! PLANE!

Barfblogging of Epic Proportions

Two little words that should strike morbid fear into parents' hearts:

Stomach bug.

From 10:45 pm last night through 11:45 am this morning, Max barfed at least every 20 minutes, sometimes more frequently. He barfed out all his food, he barfed out whatever was left, then he barfed out nothing for a while, just looking at us in horrified bewilderment while his poor little body locked up. We all camped downstairs, with towels and sheets covering the sofa and floor, and grabbed ten minute naps between outbreaks of Barfapalooza.

This morning Lisa and I took turns slinking upstairs for naps, while the parent-on-duty ran Max through an entertaining cycle where, in the name of at least nominal hydration, we'd feed him three or four sips of water, wait five minutes, give him three or four more, and then watch in fascination as he showered the room with it all. Once he hit the cat from about four feet away, which was pretty neat.

Here's one thing I don't understand: why would nature have bred into children the undeniable instinct to barf directly onto their parents? What possible biological/