The Blurry Line

I am not heavy into blogging culture, although I have certainly learned a lot about it in the past year. I post when I can, and sometimes there are lengthy periods of silence because either work and/or life in general have left me little time, or because I am not feeling particularly inspired. Still, I enjoy doing this and aspire to post more regularly. I marvel in slack-jawed amazement at those parenting bloggers who can write not only frequently, but who are also able to consistently have something funny or interesting to say (see e.g., Make It a Double, who is not only posting lengthy, well-written, often hilarious pieces frequently on his blog, but is writing (almost) daily pieces for StrollerDerby as well). I often wonder how they do it.

Even as infrequently as I post, it is interesting to me how it becomes a part of your life. When the kids do something particularly bizarre or cute, Deanna and/or I will look at the other and say “blog it.” Although I frequently do not, it shows how it becomes part of your mindset.

A few weeks ago, however, I found the line between blogging and reality being blurred, and fear I may have crossed the line. It was a Friday night, and Owen and I had just returned from buying a Christmas tree with my father-in-law.

As an aside, the tree, which passed my rigorous series of “freshness tests” on the lot (ramming it into the ground, smelling, running hand over needles, examining the “decorate by” date stamped on the trunk), would mysteriously drop about ½ of its needles by the next morning. Three weeks later, and the tree is now so dry that I wouldn’t be surprised if it spontaneously combusted prior to the New Year. But I digress.

Having just returned from picking out our gem of a tree, we were sitting around with my in-laws, chit-chatting before putting the kids to bed, when Hayden made a bizarre noise. My father-in-law looked at him and said “Are you all right, buddy”, to which Hayden responded by puking a shower of corn, raisins, and other partially digested food onto a shag throw rug in the living room. Minutes later, we were in the kitchen, where Deanna was holding him against her after finishing holding him over the sink, when he made the same noise and, before anyone could move, deposited a thick chunky layer of yellow-orange puke all over her shoulder and chest. It was at this moment that I found myself reaching for … not a towel, but the camera. That’s right, with my son’s body wracked and heaving, and my wife covered in nastiness, I thought to myself “this would make a great picture for the blog!” Although Deanna’s shout of “What the Hell are you doing!?!” was enough to dissuade me from actually taking the photo, by that time I had actually picked up the camera (which lay tantalizingly close by), turned it on, and stood there considering whether to take the next step of asking my puke-covered wife to turn a little bit so that I could get a better angle. To be honest, I was already looking at an extended period in the doghouse by that point, so I should have just snapped away. Even three weeks later, feet firmly planted back on the reality side of the line, I contend that a picture like that capturing the less-cheery side of parenting would be a hell of a lot more fun to look at 25 years from now than yet another picture of smiling kids. Still, it was probably good to be reminded (then, and frequently since) that I am a father and husband first, and a photojournalist something like 27th, so although I will continue to chronicle the less-savory aspects of parenting from time to time, you may simply have to use your imaginations to picture the nasty details.

Hey Oldtimer!

Things that make me feel old:

Owen was having a pretend car race with some Hot Wheels cars, one of which I was informed was being driven by me (an orange 1970 Wildcat Dragster), another by Owen, and a third by Mickey Mouse. Owen stopped by the kitchen to tell me that I was in first place (I have noticed over the years that I am often in first early in Owen's races, but invariably crash or otherwise lose to Owen by the end). As he walks away, I hear him say "Watch this, oldtimer, vvvroooom!" and suddenly he has passed me and I have fallen to second place. I know he is just quoting the Cars movie, but damn.

I periodically prosecute municipal ordinance violations for one of our municipal clients. I recently noticed that the 17-year olds I was prosecuting for underage drinking were born in 1990. 1990, that was, like, yesterday.

A paralegal from my office flew to Las Vegas on a recent weekend to attend the Spice Girls concert with 12 of her college friends. This doesn't actually make me feel old, so much as amazed that anyone I know would even be a Spice Girls Fan, much less pay money to see them. She was even able to go through the Spice Girls (short) discography for my benefit.

Using the term discography in the preceding paragraph.

Leftovers

Some Thanksgiving Weekend Highlights (and Lowlights):

Festive Holiday Decorating: Owen was in a drawing/decorating frenzy in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, specializing in before and after drawings of turkeys - the first drawing of a live happy turkey, the next, always on the same page, of a turkey ready for eating with its eyes marked with an x. He also refused to eat any turkey, basing his claim on a book that was read to him at pre-school involving turkeys who did not want to be eaten and who were holding up "Eat Tuna" signs. A budding vegetarian at age 4?? Is Tofurky in our future???

Blessings Bestowed: We hosted 20 at the house for Thanksgiving. It is a tribute to the organizational skills of Deanna that we were so ready for the party that I was able to take a 1/2 hour nap with Owen just prior to the guests arriving. Unprecedented! Although I avoid the pressure of having to carve a fresh out-of-the-oven Turkey right before dinner by us cooking and carving the turkey the day before and then simply reheating the cut meat in a big pan with gravy, I still have to say Grace. This year, I decided to wing it (pun vaguely intended). Perhaps channeling my inner Pilgrim, this resulted in me using the term "bestow" about a zillion times during the blessing as I rambled on fairly aimlessly about how lucky we all are. Various blessings that I may have mentioned had been bestowed upon those present included, but were not by any means limited to, good health, family, freedom, the food, kids who sleep through the night on occasion, strong cocktails on the odd-night out, HBO, the Bears vague playoff hopes, indoor plumbing, good heads of hair (my dad, not me), Schick Quattro razors (a gift to all the world!), and being lucky enough to live in the same country as David Beckham and Posh (the just-announced reunion of the Jackson Five was but a gleam in some promoter's eye on Thanksgiving, or I undoubtedly would have thrown that in as well). It all gets a bit fuzzy from there but you get the idea.

Thanks for the Smallpox, White Devils: After Thanksgiving Dinner, I read a children's book called The First Thanksgiving to the assorted kids present. Owen had checked it out of the library a couple of weeks earlier and had solemnly informed me that it "was a little sad" in the middle. Indeed it was. In this relatively unsugarcoated version, the kids were informed that there were no Indians in the immediate area when the Pilgrims landed as thousands had been wiped out by a "terrible sickness" brought by English fisherman four years earlier. Three pages later, half the Pilgrims are wiped out during the first winter as they huddled all together in the only building they had had time to construct that first season after landing. It has been a long time, but I don't recall the accounts of the Pilgrims I received as a child being quite so full of grimness and death. If this particularly version doesn't make today's kids thankful for their cushy lives, nothing will!

Doorbusters: For the third year in a row, I participated in a little Black Friday door-busting. This has much more to do with my poor sleep habits than it does with my actually accomplishing any Christmas shopping. If I am going to be awake at 4 a.m., I figure I might as well be awake at a store accomplishing something rather than awake in bed idly hoping I can fall back asleep. Since there is only one day a year that I can actually go to J.C. Penney at 4 a.m., I went. I marveled at the crowds. The lines at every register were 25 people long by 4:30 a.m. The line at Circuit City at 5:40 a.m. was over 150 people long. It took me a bit to warm up, but I eventually did get in the spirit by throwing a few elbows and closing some blockbuster-savings deals. And, I was back in bed by 7:30 a.m. The twins, unfortunately, got up at 7:31.

I'm On My Way to Church, Officer, Honest!: At 9:29 a.m. on Sunday morning, I was pulled over doing 70 in a 55 mph zone by a 20-year old cop who was wearing sunglasses despite the fact that the sun was buried behind a wall of clouds. As luck would have it, we were late for a 9:30 a.m. memorial mass for Deanna's grandmother. That fact, my cute sleeping kids, and my stellar driving record persuaded him to let me off with a warning. Perhaps Deanna's grandmother was simply having a bit of fun with us, as we were, spookily, pulled over across from the entrance to the cemetery where she was buried.

Bears Playoff Hopes Live On, Family Time to Suffer Further: Half-way through the 4th quarter of the Bears game on Sunday, Rex Grossman fumbled for what seemed like the 8th time of the day. With the Bears down by 14, I turned off the TV in disgust, and loudly proclaimed to Deanna that the season was over, that I was done watching any further Bears games for the year, that the players should be shamed into giving back their undeserved salaries, and that Sunday afternoons were once again "Family-Time". I wasn't alone, and I am sure any alien listening devices aimed from outer space at the Chicago-metro area at about that time would have picked up the sound of thousands of TVs clicking off simultaneously. It was only by chance that twenty minutes later I went down to the basement where we had left a TV on and learned the Bears had closed to within a touchdown. They, of course, went on to win in overtime, thereby keeping hope alive and requiring at least one additional Sunday of me being tethered to a TV for further torture prior to the eventual and inevitable extinguishing of all hope. Until such time, Sunday afternoon Family Time is on hold. Daddy likes a quiet baby.

Back to School: As we walked Owen through the school parking lot yesterday morning, he yelled "Hey Gas-hogger!!" at the driver of a GMC Yukon. Strikes me that it might be time to dial-down the anti-large SUV ranting around the house.

Attack of the Giraffes

The twins turned 1 1/2 a couple of days back. They are slow to talk, especially compared to how verbal Owen was at this age, but I feel they are, at last, on the verge of a verbal-explosion.

While Hayden already sports a massive vocabulary consisting of "mama, dada, duck and boo (the latter having gotten quite a workout in the recent Halloween-season), both Hayden and Cooper currently communicate primarily through baby sign language and by grunting and pointing. The pointing by Hayden is often accompanied by quite a bit of animation and urgency, along with a series of plaintive little "ah, ah, ah" sounds. Sort of like Lassie, but instead of trying to alert us to trouble down at the old mill, it usually turns out to be something much more mundane - most commonly that Cooper has swiped something from him.

Cooper meanwhile, has, in recent weeks, taken a stab at making animal noises. Hopefully a precursor to actual words and a ritual I would guess has been enjoyed by toddlers for the last 6000 years or so. Apparently channeling those cave-dwelling ancestors, Cooper makes the same drawn out monotone grunt for every single animal. It actually sounds an awful lot like Phil Hartman doing Frankenstein on those old Saturday Night Live skits. Probably for that reason, I find it endlessly amusing to sit with him and go through a book featuring different animals. After I turn each page, he gazes at the new animal with a serious little face, points at it and goes "aaaaaaaagggg." So, although giraffes don't actually have voiceboxes (or so my smart wife claims - sounds like crazy-talk to me), I like to imagine a pack of them lumbering along stiff-legged, making their ominous Frankenstein-sounds as they bear down on an unsuspecting Village while Lassie attempts in vain to wake the local Sheriff.

You Can't Get Through!

A recent favorite game of me and the boys in the evening is "You Can't Get Through!" This essentially consists of me building a blockade of pillows and blankets in the upstairs hallway and the boys attempting to breach the wall while I try to support and maintain it from the other side (I would respectfully suggest that the offensive linemen of the Chicago Bears might want to try this game at home with their own kids, in order to get in some much needed additional practice). While attempting to prevent a breach, I will periodically yell "You Can't Get Through!" - thus the not-so-creative name of the game. They ultimately, of course, do get through, proving Dad wrong once again. I suppose that I could fancy up my motives and claim that through this simple exercise I am teaching them that no obstacle is insurmountable, no mountain too high, no river too wide. If I had daughters, I could even rename the game "Glass-Ceiling." But, in reality, it is just another excuse to wrestle around as I get them good and wound up just prior to bed, a dubious endeavor that has not escaped the eagle eye of my wife. I am also a sucker for anything that keeps them from spreading a million plastic or wooden pieces, figures, shapes, etc. around the house, so that the time we spend restoring the place following their Sherman-like march of destruction towards bed each night is marginally curtailed.

Post-Halloween Thoughts

Hey parents, were you as disappointed as I was in the lack of variety of candy being disbursed by your neighbors on Halloween this year?? While much has been made of the shrinking size of the candy portions being made for Halloween, I also feel like everyone is buying the same couple of variety bags of treats from the local mega-mart. Granted, the situation was not helped by the kids, who, when offered a choice at a trick-or-treat stop, would invariably grab the exact same things we were giving away at our house. Owen, bless his kind little heart, was doing this in part because he knows I love peanut butter cups, but without regard to the fact that we already had a zillion back at home. Anyway, whatever happened to Butterfingers? Not a one to be found (well, okay, there was one, which I promptly ate and probably what has inspired this mini-rant - perhaps I should just drag myself down to the store and pony up a dollar to by myself one instead of whining here). I would like to give kudos to John and Connie down the block for stepping out of the box AND supporting a local business by giving away Ferrara Pan products, including Red Hots and LemonHeads. Also, Hershey's "Take 5" bars (peanut butter, peanuts, pretzel, caramel, and milk chocolate!) are a winner and I predict a long and happy future for this bar. Although the Hershey's website claims Take 5 has was introduced almost three years ago, this is the first time I remember seeing them in such wide distribution.

Unleaded Christmas

I saw a blurb the other day that said 25% of American parents are vowing to only give toys made in America as Christmas gifts this year. And to those parents I say GOOD LUCK. No one, of course, wants their kids playing with (or chewing and swallowing, as the case may be) lead-coated toys, but this made in America thing strikes me as an extreme and unrealistic overreaction, since even a casual survey of the bottom of your child's toy collection will reveal that there aren't actually any toys made in America. So, unless your kids have their hearts set on corncob dolls, sock puppets and action figures made out of pipe cleaners, expect some seriously disappointed faces on Christmas morning. That retired grandpa in Tulsa who spends three hours a day making hay corn checker sets out in the woodshed is going to have a banner year as 15 million American parents descend on the shed, having realized too late that he is the only U.S. toymaker in a 900-mile radius.

And what about Santa?? At least there haven't been any recalls (yet!) of toys manufactured at the North Pole. But, having closed his last American manufacturing facility eight years ago (the Rochester, Minnesota plant, following that bitter labor standoff - who can forget those scenes of striking elves chanting "Santa sucks"), how is Santa supposed to honor these parents wishes? I suppose he could start a third list to go with naughty and nice: "Kids with Parents Who Are Ruining Christmas With Their Unrealistic Knee-jerk Reaction." If managing three lists proves too confusing for the old guy, chaos will reign on Christmas Eve as safety-crazed American parents wielding golf clubs and torches chase the confused octogenarian out of their houses. Meanwhile, their children, having woken from all the noise, will scream in horror in the background - the visions of organic American-grown sugarplums dancing in their heads permanently replaced by the vision of Santa cowering in the bushes with his giant bag full of lead paint-infested goodies as the mob slowly closes in. Merry Christmas.

In Hindsight

Mistakes I made this weekend, in no particular order:

Devoting time to watching the Cubs hit into a gazillion double plays on their way to meekly exiting the playoffs;

Absentmindedly shaving a large swath down the middle of Owen's head with a #1 clipper blade (super-short!) as opposed to his usual #2 clipper blade (kind of short), leaving him with a bit of a reverse mohawk look - 4 days before picture day at school;

Telling Deanna that Pamela Anderson seems like a nice person.

There were more, but you get the general idea.

Color-Coded

I have always had sort of a passive admiration for the old hippie value of allowing kids to run around naked. From a practical perspective however, at least for anyone who lives in a house that has anything other than dirt or concrete floors, I feel that running around naked indoors should really be reserved for the potty trained among us or at least those we know aren't going to pee indiscriminately on the couch or take a dump on the carpet.

All that being said, it appears that when you have 16-month olds who are dexterous enough to remove their own diapers, shit is going to happen, if you know what I mean. In the face of the inevitable, the best Deanna and I have been able to do is to develop a code system meant to convey, in as few words as possible, the nature of the problem and need for immediate action.

An excellent example of the utility of such a system came a couple of weeks ago. Deanna was on the first floor, preparing to leave for an early morning work obligation. Upstairs, I picked up Hayden up from where he was playing for his first diaper change of the day and was mildly alarmed to see that his diaper was no longer secured on one side. It wasn't until I laid him prone on the changing table that I saw he had a large piece of poop attached to the entire bottom of his right foot, sort of like one of those sandals that mold to the shape of your foot after a few wearings. As Deanna cheerily yelled goodbye from downstairs as she walked towards the door to catch her train, oblivious to the developing situation I was facing, I began desperately yelling "Code Brown, Code Brown!" Thus, while I dealt with prying the brown sandal off of Hayden's foot, Deanna was able to swoop upstairs and secure the scene in the carpeted room where Hayden had been playing from curious onlookers (Owen) and souvenir seekers (Cooper clearly had designs on a plastic chicken-leg covered in poop that was found at the scene). Once I was done decontaminating Hayden and able to move onto dump site clean-up, Deanna was able to again be on her way and still made her train.

Things aren't always that smooth, and in fact, Code Brown incidents tend towards all-out chaos as we try to contain the problem, but you get the idea.

Code Yellows are off course, more frequent, the most recent coming just last night. Owen had used the toilet and had, of course, left the seat up and neglected to flush. I came upon the scene a minute later to find the twins leaning in and up to their elbows in yellow pee-water, happily cackling and swishing away in their own little toilet water park.

Other recent Code Yellows have featured Hayden suddenly appearing in the dining room sans diaper and peeing on the floor in full view of us with a gleeful look, and us following Hayden up the (thankfully uncarpeted) stairs while he left a small puddle on each stair. In that latter incident, he actually had a diaper on and our working theory at the time was that he merely had some crushed ice in his diaper that was falling out and puddling as he walked (why we may have thought he had crushed ice in his diaper is a fair question and a whole different story). Anyway, it turned out to be pee and that he must have somehow maneuvered his penis outside of the confines of the diaper.

And so the chaos rolls on in our little corner of the world, with shouts of Code _____(insert whatever color you can conjure up from the less-than beautiful rainbow of colors the human body is able to produce) echoing merrily up and down the halls.

Recommended

Regular visitors will notice that I have recently added a recommended list with links to five blogs over on the right. In the absence of any other inspiration in a busy, work-oriented and not particularly interesting week, I thought I would take this opportunity to say why I believe you should take a moment and check out the five sites.

The first is the blog "How Did I Get Here" by our friend "Stinkerbellmama." Not just a friend, she also appears to be, at the moment, our future family member as Owen has been best friends with her daughter since before they could walk and said daughter and Owen have talked frequently over the years of their desire to get married to each other some day. Things even got to the point where Owen had names picked out for the two sets of twins he was planning for them to have. The first set is going to be named Alice and Cooper (no he does not know who Alice Cooper is - just an amusing coincidence). The second set is slated to have the more unfortunate names of Coasterball and Googly-Goo. I will admit that now that these names have had a chance to roll around in my head for several months, I am starting to find them sort of cool in a quirky, futuristic way - kind of like Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa. Doubtful anyone stuck permanently with the name Googly-Goo would feel the same. Anyway, Stinkerbellmama, although she posts even less frequently than myself, cranks out some entertaining and thoughtful rants when the mood strikes that are definitely worth a read.

The second link is to Laid Off Dad. Although I have had trouble finding other daddy-blogs that I much enjoy, LOD is an exception. Funny, well-written and all around good reading.

Nothing But Bonfires I read simply to revel in Holly Burn's outstanding writing. I don't know what it is about her writing style that resonates with me but I just love it. It is just so lyrical and good that even when she is on about shoes or hairstyles or, even worse, the Bachelor, things I could not care less about, I read every word just for the sheer joy of it.

Next is Post Secret. Not a blog, per se, this site bills itself as a "an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." A different group of postcards with secrets is posted once a week - every Sunday. It is sometimes funny, often heartbreaking, and always thought-provoking (and addictive!).

Lastly is Sweet Juniper. With the (sort of) demise of Neal Pollack's Alternadad blog as he focuses his writing talents on higher paying regular writing gigs at high-profile parenting sites, Sweet Juniper has to be considered the premier parenting blog out there. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find another parenting blog that does not link to it. And why shouldn't they, I say, as the Sweet Junipers' are consistently brilliant (and prolific!

Summer Part III

"I can't wait for Winter, Daddy!" Owen announced cheerily at breakfast the other day. Now I can't say, living here in Chicago, that that is a statement you hear very often, if ever. I was especially surprised considering it was another beautiful 80 degree day and he had nothing but playing and fun on his agenda for the day. Curious, I asked him what exactly he couldn't wait for about Winter. He then starting waxing poetic about all the fun we were going to have. When pressed for specifics, he came up with sledding, and eventually, Christmas.

Now I view one of my many jobs as a parent as helping prepare my kids for the less pleasant aspects of life, since who wants to encounter the inevitable setbacks and adversity and unpleasant surprises life has in store without the appropriate tools to process the event and move on. With my worrying ways, and my wife's unrelenting and sometimes alarming lack of worrying, I am uniquely suited within the family to take on this task. That is why, in the face of Owen's enthusiasm, I found myself concerned about the letdown to come, as summer eased into the chill of fall, followed by the frenzy and (intermittent) joy of Christmas, and finally, weeks of hard, unrelenting, bitter cold before Spring once again comes around. I briefly found myself telling him how much more fun summer, with its whirlwind of swimming, vacations, fun and freedom was than winter. To his credit, he seemed completely unswayed, and continued to talk about winter with unabated enthusiasm.

And so it goes. Summer with its many pleasures is quickly giving way to fall. Owen is now back at his second year of pre-school without a peep of protest (those looking for the requisite touching and bittersweet parental blog entry about letting go as a child heads off to school will have to look elsewhere, at least this year). The only concrete indication of sadness at summer's passing so far has been Cooper's shrill, tortured shrieks and uncontrollable sobbing every time his feet are imprisoned in socks or, God forbid, shoes. If nobody else seems fazed, I am certainly not going to dwell on summer's passing. This point was reinforced this past weekend when I attended not just one, but two gatherings where late night conversations around fire pits with friends and neighbors reminded me that every season has its joys, and that the best way to ward off the cold is to arm ourselves with Owen's cheery enthusiasm for life and to bask in the warm glow of our relationships with friends and family. So, having learned something about life from my four year old once again, I am ready to bid farewell to summer with nothing more than a "thanks for a great time" and "see you again next year" as I head off with Owen and the rest of the crew to pursue fun and adventure in the seasons ahead.

Parent of the Year (POTY) Competition

Each year since Owen was born, we have bestowed upon a lucky parent in our house a Parent of the Year (POTY) award. Competition among the two fairly competitive nominees has always been fierce. Sadly, I have only been able to eke out a victory once, in 2004, largely on the strength of my willingness to continue to get up in the middle of the night for bottle feedings while Deanna, who needs more sleep than me, slumbered happily on. My narrow victory was of course helped along by my arsenal of other parenting skills (such as my unique ability to quickly dress a struggling baby/toddler) and innovations (such as the creation of "the knockout punch" - essentially getting then-baby Owen to regularly fall asleep with the aid of a final extra two ounces of formula after an earlier pre-bedtime bottle). Other years have not featured such close battles. Deanna has successfully (fine, deservedly) played the "pregnancy/giving birth" card to propel her to easy victories in 2003 and 2006. In the face of carrying around 13-odd pounds of babies while moving, setting up a new household, mothering then three-year old Owen, and holding down a demanding full-time job (including working late the night before giving birth to said 13 odd-pounds of twinage), my clear edge in lesser categories such as "skill at swaddling" and "most animated interpretations of children's books" just didn't seem to get me much traction with the voters. 2005 was a closer contest but, despite a year of solid parenting, I found myself once again giving my "happy just to have been nominated" speech to the largely uninterested crowd in the press room.

This year, however, readers o' mine, I have my eyes set firmly on the prize once again. Sure, Hayden's poop-eating incident and Christmas ornament glass eating incident have both been on my watch, but I am optimistic that those hiccups (non-poop scented, if you are lucky) in my record will be overlooked in favor of what has been a year of outstanding parenting. This is my time. Stay tuned for further developments.

They Grow Up So Fast

In recent weeks, 4 1/2 year old Owen has gotten his own place AND started a job, thereby going directly from little boy to adult and skipping those annoying teenage years. I was going to say he had moved out of the house, but the truth is he has merely "moved" into an apartment in the basement. When he is in his renter persona, he calls us by our first names ("Michael, when you get a chance, there is a lightbulb burned out in my apartment"), and acts like we are recent acquaintances - asking us to refresh his memory as to the babies names, complimenting us on our taste in furnishings, etc. We usually invite him to eat dinner with us, which he seems to appreciate. We also have been suggesting each night that instead of making the long trip back to his basement apartment, he sleep in our "guest room" (his actual bedroom) upstairs. To date, he has always taken us up on the offer, although he will sometimes head back to the basement to retrieve "his" toothbrush rather than borrow the one upstairs that belongs to "that four year old" who sometimes lives with us. He has furnished the basement with a table, some plastic food and dishes, and a chair and makeshift desk where he "can sit and relax." As of today, he appears to have constructed a fireplace down there out of cardboard bricks, complete with some hand drawn pictures on the mantle.

As of last week, he also started a new job as an auto-mechanic out on the driveway, where he spends part of each day tinkering with the three plastic foot-powered cars we recently acquired. At first we just had one, but the primeval grunting, pushing and anguished screaming matches between the non-talking twins over the use of it was such that we decided to acquire a second off of Craig's List (a stylish teal and yellow garage-kept model from a far-Western suburb). The third came when my in-laws dropped off a convertible that they acquired second-hand. Anyway, Owen announced one morning last week that he was starting a new job as a mechanic and did not have much time for breakfast as he did not want to be late for his first day. He has a plastic gas pump and various plastic tools which he uses on the job. His boss appears to be a little demanding, as Owen was slated to work yesterday on Labor Day. I offered to talk to his boss about how he should have Labor Day off so we could do things as a family; an offer he briefly considered before announcing that he had been mixed up and did not have to work after all. Now I just hope his boss is understanding of the fact that he is headed off to pre-school part-time tomorrow. Is it too much to hope that his employer offers some sort of tuition reimbursement program?

Guys Night

A fair amount of time has passed without comment by me here. We visited the State Fair (much fun), and spent a long weekend at Wisconsin Dells with three other couples and their combined six children (much chaotic fun). Otherwise, I have been working excessively and have generally found that working a lot is not at all conducive to blogging. Frankly, I don't know how some of these more prolific parenting bloggers do it.

Anyway, tonight was my first night home alone with the boys in some time. We of course took advantage of the opportunity to do all the guy things we like to do when Deanna is not around. I brought home fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn fritters, cole slaw and kidney bean salad (the latter two of which proved to be unpopular with the kids), had a rock and roll dance party featuring AC/DC (although I haven't put on "Back in Black" by choice in ages, it is the first thing that popped into my head when Owen demanded some rock and roll - a testament to its classicness, I suppose), played ring toss with a frozen teething ring and a broom stick, had the 31st installment of the "Great Baby Race" - a semi-regular bedtime race between the twins up the stairs, with Hayden leading the series 21 to 9 - tonight was judged a tie), had a spirited wrestling match on our bed, and read books about cars. We also pretended to watch TV. We are not fans of kids watching TV except as a special treat, yet Owen, oddly, has taken to pretending to watch, laughing uproariously at the hilarious antics of made up shows - tonight it was "The Pirate and the Car" and "Stritterman and the Two Dads" - playing out on the blank screen. It reminds me of how kids who aren't allowed to play with toy guns simply pretend they are playing with toy guns using sticks or whatever. Anyway, there was minimal crying and no trips to the emergency room - a good night!

Summer, Part II

Last summer, my mother, I'm sure in all sincerity, wondered aloud to me whether I was having my best summer ever. I can see how she might say that, since after years of struggling to have kids, we had been blessed once with Owen and then blessed twice more with the birth of Cooper and Hayden in May 2006. Although I am thankful and appreciative every day for those little guys and the joy they have brought to our lives, that appreciation is separate from the everyday unrelenting grind that was last summer with a toddler and two newborns in the house. In short, last summer, with its sleep deprivation and constant feed and caring of two fragile, slightly premature newborns was, in the final summation, probably in my bottom ten summers ever.

Best summer ever, by the way, is, and probably will always be, reserved for the summer of 1983; a summer of firsts and lasts, fueled by hormones, beer, recreational drugs, sun, a newfound sense of freedom, close friendships, and the pure joy of being alive. First girlfriend, first real kiss (and more!), first summer with a driver's license, playing my first concerts with my first rock band, last summer without a steady job (just my lawn mowing business where my hours were dictated by myself and the weather). A intensely happy blur of fireworks, concerts, new friends, parties, movies, cruising around in cars, staying out late, etc. I recall how sad me and my friends were over labor day weekend, as we all realized a truly special time was coming to an end. Happily, I made an audio record of this particular summer, ranging from the sweetly mundane (me and my sister washing dishes) to the classic (me and my friends being kicked out of the local pizza parlor for not having a table).

This summer has been a vast improvement over last, due in no small part to more regular sleep and the increased mobility of the kids, freeing us to wander further afield, eat out, etc. (although Cooper's annoying habit of screeching in a very loud and obnoxious manner when he doesn't get his way - predictably unpopular with those unfortunate enough to be dining in the vicinity - has tempered our desire to frequent restaurants of late). It has also had its handful of moments that create the sort of indelible imprint in your memory (see, e.g. my awesome surprise party!) that enable you to look back, even years later, and say that was a damn fine summer. What has been especially cool though, is enjoying the season through the eyes of the kids. Owen's excitement over vacation and just about everything else is infectious. And the twins, despite not talking yet, have clearly had a ball wire to wire this season. From the second their shoes and socks came off in spring and they cackled with glee as their toes felt the grass beneath their feet for the first time, they have been a joy to spend time with. So, while adult summers, necessarily and probably thankfully, pass by on a more limited emotional plain than those of my youth, watching the kids delight in their own firsts as they have turned into little people with big personalities and an appetite for life has somehow been extremely satisfying. Parenthood, as it turns out, has its own unique rewards.

The Eye of the Beholder

"Aren't these NASCAR underwear classy, Daddy???" Owen, bent over at the waist and talking to me sincerely through his legs so that I can best see the glory of his NASCAR underwear, a blurry red, white, blue, black and orange mess of cars, flames, and checkered flags. I am not sure what his definition of classy is, but rarely are NASCAR and classy used in the same sentence. Toss in the word underwear, and we may just have a sentence that has never been uttered before by anyone.

Chaos Reigns Supreme

The past two weeks have been fairly eventful. We spent the first week on a week-long family vacation in Door County, Wisconsin and this most recent week completely obliterating any sort of benefits a week of relaxation on vacation may have provided.

Vacation was awesome. Owen had been packed for about a month prior to the trip in anticipation so it had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, the trip probably exceeded his expectations. Door County, thanks to strict zoning, is largely and blissfully devoid of any national chain establishments other than gas stations and of the rampant commercialism and giant water parks found in places like Wisconsin Dells. Old fashioned entertainment is the name of the game. We went to a drive-in movie, a family sing-along at a small-town Village hall, took a car ferry, threw rocks into Lake Michigan, checked out cherry orchards and boats, hung out at the beach, frequented shops that ranged from the tacky (Owen admiring the hand-carved "tobacco" paraphernalia in a hippie store) to the sublime (yay, Maxwell's House in Egg Harbor!), played minature golf, ate at restaurants (including Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant with its grass roof and grazing goats and waitressing staff that miraculously had us in and out so fast the babies were actually still eating when the check came rather than creating havoc - a stark contrast to a place on the way up that was so slow they actually comped our entire meal without us even asking), and just generally chilled out. Despite some talk around the County that tourism is off a bit because kids are demanding giant water parks and other modern high-tech thrills for their vacations, it certainly seemed to be thriving up there. And Owen was the perfect age, reveling in every detail. The twins adjusted well and generally seemed pleased just to be checking out some different sights.

Since our return from the trip, it has been non-stop craziness. Deanna was out of town for work from Tuesday through Friday. Our nanny's mother passed away so she was out of the picture all but one day this week. This left me and my mom and father-in-law to tend to the brood as best we could (thank God for them, as I was absolutely swamped at work and was therefore stressed out and distracted). In summary, chaos reigned supreme all week. On Wednesday morning alone, our beloved 93 Camry reached the breaking point and had to be taken in for repairs in an attempt to coax it back to life and Hayden, who may or may not have eaten some glass from a broken Christmas ornament had to go to the emergency room. He is fine, by the way, although his eating nasty stuff is obviously becoming a bad habit! Can't wait until the twins stop putting stuff in their mouths. Deanna and I had set, at the outset of summer, modest goals related to emergency room visits of a maximum of one (her goal) and two (my more practical goal, considering the ages and activity levels of all the boys, and rapidly developing climbing skills of the twins). Here's hoping Deanna's prediction was the more accurate of the two, and that things settle back to somewhat normal in the coming week.

Best! Wife! Ever!

One year and three months past my 40th birthday, Deanna threw me an awesome 40th surprise birthday party this past Friday. Not only were 50 or so of my very favorite people there, she hired the incredibily talented Robbie Fulks, our favorite performer, to play in our backyard. With the kids all disbursed out to various grandparents, I had a rip-roarin good time until 2 a.m., as, I hope, did everyone else. Deanna has now earned the title of Best Wife Ever! for the foreseeable future.

The following day, we were off to Springfield for my Grandmother's 91st birthday spectacular, an event long known for its oppressive heat and humidity and family infighting. On Saturday night, as I stood, still vaguely hungover, in the bathroom of a Springfield hotel, washing the day's grime off of baby bottles in the bathroom sink, and about 16 crying and whining jags past my daily tolerance level for such activities from our severely overtired kids, I reflected wistfully on how much cooler my life had been 24-hours ago.

I suppose that sounds a little selfish, and it is true I am often selfish, a prime example being my periodic complaining about not having had a fun 40th birthday despite the fact that we were one week away from moving and Deanna was 7 months pregnant at the time. But, as awesome as it is to be a father and a family, it is also important to remember that we are individuals, and a couple beyond who we are as parents and who we are at work. Beyond the obvious - the fact that my wife is wonderful and apparently still digs me enough to do something really special for me - the party served to remind me that I was, and still am, when time actually permits, the person who once upon a time had cool friends and outside interests and that we were a couple who had a hell of a lot of fun even before being blessed with our little guys. So, considering how much of ourselves we devote to our children and the time we invest in making their lives as great as we can, I don't think it is unreasonable to want a little something for myself now and again, to see those friends and pursue those interests, as doing so contributes to my happiness and thus theoretically makes me a better parent.

Having written the above a day or two earlier, it strikes me that this whole "a happy parent is a good parent" thing is really a pretty good rationalization for more nights drinking until 2 a.m.!

Everything in between was okay though, really

How I kicked off last weekend:

On Friday night, we were in a furniture store with the boys. I returned from an "emergency" trip to the bathroom with Owen to find Deanna chatting with a salewoman. "Guess where she lives??" Deanna asked excitedly. Within about a half block of us turned out to be the answer. Deanna and the saleswoman then tried to explain to me exactly which house she lived in. At this point in the conversation, I apparently partially tuned out, and at some point concluded they were merely trying to give me a reference point house - something I could recognize that was near her house. When I figured out what house they were giving me for reference, I identified it with the exclamation "the ugly brown house!" Well of course the ugly brown house turned out to be her house instead of a reference point. Whoops. This was embarrassing but even tougher to swallow since we had just learned she had a 16 year old daughter who liked to babysit. Oh, well. I am sad about my lack of social skills, but it sure is an ugly house. Even after she said "thats my house" in response to my comment, I still couldn't believe the house was hers and just starred at her dumbfounded, as I had always pictured the owner as a toothless crystal-meth addict with five naked kids running around the backyard.

How I finished last weekend:

On Sunday night I was standing in the driveway at about 7 p.m., holding Hayden, when he erupted out of the blue, sending a warm fountain of vomit onto my shirt, shoes and the driveway. In the next couple of chaotic minutes, as we struggled to get the worst of the incident off of me and Hayden, Cooper toddled merrily into the middle of the pool of puke in his bare feet like he was playing in a puddle and Owen started a game that involved showing off his jumping skills over the puke puddle, insistently yelling "look dad, look what I can do!" A series of more minor eruptions followed over the course of the next several hours. At about 2 a.m. I went into the twins room, thinking I was hearing Hayden hurl once again, only to find Cooper sitting perplexed and crying up in his crib with his dinner pooled around and on him. From then on, it was twice the food poisoning fun. By morning, we had gone through copious amounts of pajamas, diapers, sheets, bathtowels, washclothes, a rug and tears, as our guys struggled along, their little bodies racked by dry heaves when they ran out of anything further to spread around. The low point for me came when, desperate to find a pacifier for Hayden in the dark, I grabbed one off the floor and popped it into my mouth to clean off any residual carpet strings, realizing only then that it had come to be on the floor when it was dislodged from his mouth by a torrent of puke. I'm still a little queasy about that one. All in all, the night was not a snapshot for the "favorite moments in parenting" album.

Summer, Part I

My apologies to anyone who actually reads this for my 11 day absence. Busy, busy. Anyway, I've much to say about summer, but I realize that if I actually wait to cram it into a single entry, I will probably not get around to finishing it until fall! Therefore, I thought I would do it in several bits and pieces.

Even at my age, I am always amazed at the intensity of the seasons here in Chicago. The bitter cold and relative isolation of winter is such a stark contrast to the heat and humidity and intense socializing of summer. Although winter is somewhat broken up by a round of parties and get togethers around the holidays, it is a mighty long stretch between December and actual warm weather. So by the time summer arrives, people have been waiting for it in eager anticipation for what seems like forever. As I recall, Owen was anticipating getting his first summer dip in the backyard kiddie pool as far back as last October. I sometimes wonder if people in places like San Diego lose their appreciation for good weather, having to rarely, if ever, suffer through bad weather. Because the heat of summer here is essentially comprised of 12 or 13 too-brief weeks, people attempt to cram in an inordininate amount of activities - something we not so cleverly refer to around our house as "summer fun."

Because of the generally busy schedule and brevity of summer, things that don't qualify as summer fun sometimes strike me as monumental wastes of time. I was reminded of this at a recent gathering. This one was more obligation than summer fun on my agenda, but there I was, looking to make my own fun, embrace the moment, etc., when I spied a couple of the guests and kids tossing a football around. I grabbed Owen, who recently declared to me, brimming with young confidence after a successful Spring session learning to ride his bike with the training wheels, that he is now a "sportsguy", and we headed over to join in. Not only were we sort of spurned by the football toss participants, I was appalled when a little boy, 3 or 4, fell while running and began to cry, obviously hurting a little (or a lot, hard to tell), and his dad, instead of comforting him or even asking him how he was, yelled, in all seriousness, "c'mon Sally, get up." Whatever summer is, it is certainly much, much too short to spend any time whatsoever hanging around with dads who mockingly refer to their injured progeny as girls.

Party of the Century

We are 27 days into a raucous sex-drenched non-stop party in my neighborhood, the likes of which we are unlikely to see again for 17 years. Unfortunately, the invitees to this party are exclusively 17-year cicadas, although the rest of us have had, unavoidably, a front row seat for much of the action.

The whole thing has been a kid's dream. To say they have taken over the neighborhood would be an understatement. They first began emerging silently from the ground over 3 weeks ago, in some yards every few inches. In the space of a few days, the neighborhood filed up with slow-moving, freaky looking bugs that don't protest too much when caught and who don't sting. They have bulging red eyes and sticky little feet that allow them to cling to anything, including upside down on your hand. After emerging wingless, they began their march towards anything tall. Most gravitated to taller, older trees, but others were less picky, climbing up most anything; houses, car tires, swingsets, anything that would get them off the ground. They attached themselves pretty much at little kid eye-level and then proceeded to literally crawl out of their skins, coming out white until they darkened to black after a day or so. Hundreds of vacated shells surround the most popular trees (see picture above - all the brown things on the ground are vacated skins). Finally, their wings grew in, and the din began, as the males began trying to attract females by beating their wings against a hollow abdomen or some such mechanism. Walking to the train each morning, the hum has already begun. By midday, it builds to an incessant, deafening, pulsating roar. I think people on the block are starting to go a little batty from the constant throbbing noise, especially the stay-at-home moms. And they are EVERYWHERE. You can't avoid stepping on them since they cover the sidewalk so thickly. I had one flutter out of my shirt as I hung it in the closet after work. They are inside the car and clinging to the car tires. On the side of the house. On the deck and swingset, even showing up, somehow, in the port-o-crib inside. Because they are pretty vague flyers, they have a tendency to wack into the side of your head or otherwise land on you when you venture outside. When the mating frenzy was at its peak, we even had a mating couple crash-land at our feet while eating dinner on the deck. Owen proclaimed them to be fighting. Deanna told him they were "making eggs" and we left it at that. Between the noise and the sheer numbers, it is like living inside a science fiction movie. Large flocks of seagulls have flown the 8-miles inland from Lake Michigan to gorge on these tasty insect snacks, adding to the weirdness of the scene.

The gulls are on to something, because cicadas are supposedly, for the non-squeamish or those too young to know better, edible. The twins like to chase after them, most likely with the intent of popping them into their mouths. Although cicadas don't seem particularly bright, they are bright enough to evade a lumbering one year old coming at them, so I don't think any have actually been captured and/or eaten (at least as far as we know!). Owen did approach me with two dead cicadas yesterday and asked if we had any chocolate sauce. Not sure how serious he was.

As the party grinds towards its fifth week, it is finally starting to die down, literally, as the cicadas life-cycle comes to an end. As weird as the whole thing has been, it has also been miraculous (how do they all know to pop out of the ground the same year??) and a pretty cool way to kick off summer. Definitely a party to remember.

The excellent close up of the cicada near our house in the picture above was taken by my brother-in-law. Other selections from his gallery can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanvisuals/.

Book Review - "Noisy Friends"

Once upon a time, in what seems like another lifetime, my wife and I used to discuss current events, read actual books and see movies. We would debate the issues of the day and generally enjoy the type of discourse that over-educated people tend to engage in.

I recalled this recently and realized how much I miss such things, even if I don't always realize it, when I found myself analyzing and criticizing, in all seriousness, the story-line in "Noisy Friends". Noisy Friends is a piece of crap book put out by Fischer-Price that does not even bother to credit an author except in 10-point type on the back cover. It is a series of 5 illustrations, each of which features a different "noisy" friend; buzzing bees, a thumping rabbit, a croaking frog, tweeting birds and a chirping cricket. Indicative of the lack of effort someone put into the book is the fact that it is probably the first time that rabbits have ever been accused of being noisy. Anyway, what actually bothered me about the book was that in the third illustration, the croak of "Froggy" is telling everyone that "bedtime is near." This is further illustrated to the reader (or "looker" for the younger set) by the fact that it appears to be growing dark. The fifth illustration has a cricket making his nightime chirping through the night while the rest of his noisy friends sleep. The illustration in the middle of these two, however, is a mother bird bringing her babies their "favorite treat" (a strawberry of all things). Now that is all well and good but birds eating to me says mid-morning, not dusk. And the birds are bathed in bright yellow light - clearly mid-morning or afternoon. Although Owen helpfully suggested during my rant that the yellow might be bright moonlight, he is giving the "author" too much credit and, come to think of it, was probably just trying to shut me up so we could put the twins to bed and read a better book. At any rate, it is not a moonlight yellow but a glaring mid-day yellow. To me, the yellow of the illustration is a jarring interruption of the journey of our noisy friends towards their night of sleep (cricket excepted of course). Where were the editors on this one?? Its five pictures for God's sake. Couldn't they put them in some semblance of logical order. Even one year olds deserve to have their stories follow some arc and pacing.

Now, do I really believe that the repeated readings of Noisy Friends demanded by my one-year old twins will have any lasting impact, dooming them to forever look expectantly to the sky as night falls, waiting in vain to see mother birds swooping towards their hungry chicks, their beaks straining under the weight of their cargo of fresh strawberries?? Nope. And if the entire book were random, I don't think I would have thought twice about it. It was the half-assed effort of introducing some time progression at all and then ignoring it that really bothered me, and the sense that if you are writing for one-year olds (although the book brashly recommends itself, again on the back cover, for all ages), you can just slop it together. Kids deserve better.

Anyway, I feel better having gotten that off my chest. Clearly I need an evening out sans children in the near future.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

A note of uncertainty creeps into something previously assumed at work and I realize and appreciate once again how tenuous everything all is. Any relationship, job, or other thing that you think is solid and understood could be turned on its head in a day. Gone, or irrevocably changed.

This works both ways of course, as good news can come flooding in unexpectedly as well. Winning the lotto, an old friend getting back in touch, a cancer vanquished, a baby made, etc.

There is good and bad, but there is nothing we can build that is so solid that it can't be torn down. And it is how we handle the knowledge of that fact, I think, that governs our approach to life. Do we stay within a narrow and comfortable range designed, consciously or subconsciously, to limit the opportunity for the unexpected to find us? Hoping that by crouching low in the bushes, the winds of fate will pass us by, unnoticed.

Or is it better to live at the opposite extreme, dancing constantly along the edge, not only inviting and welcoming change, but inciting it, laughing at and tempting fate, living hard, as though every day was your last. Maybe. Although practically speaking, that sounds exhausting and is not very realistic for most of us.

As an aside, I am reminded of a news story I heard recently about someone who was diagnosed as having just months to live. They promptly quit their job and spent every last dime living their remaining days to the fullest. They then learned that they had been misdiagnosed and were not in any actual danger of dying anytime soon. This caused the person to promptly sue his doctors for lost wages, etc. And really, if you think you are dying and are then rewarded with additional time on earth, what better way to live life to the fullest than to embark on several years of soul-numbing litigation.

Anyway, I live somewhere in the middle, as I expect most people do (that's what makes it the middle!). Despite being the most easy-going member of my family growing up, the most easy-going person in a family of worriers is still a worrier. Further, the crush of responsibilities that comes with adulthood and kids has not done me any favors in this regard. Still, the challenge that I face is to take this awareness that all things are fleeting and that change, for both good and bad, is inevitable, and to use it as a positive force in my life. To appreciate the small happiness's that are part of every day if you are looking for them, to hug my wife and kids every day and tell them that I love them, to push myself to take chances, keep growing and learning, embrace change as part of life, and to generally strive to live joyously and in the moment rather than beholden to any vague fears about what may come to be. And, to the extent that I have been increasingly successful in this regard in recent months, it has been a pretty damn good year so far.

Bon Jour!!

Having survived some serious sleep deprivation during the past year, and particularly the twins first few months, I am much more appreciative of a good nights sleep than I was pre-kids, although I probably only average about six hours a night. Only six hours is partly because I function pretty well on that amount, and partly because I don't have my wife's gift of going from carrying on a coherent conversation to sound asleep in the space of 60 seconds, but instead have a tough time getting back to sleep after waking up, especially if it is after 5 a.m.

That is why, last Saturday morning at 5:15 a.m., I was groggily displeased to hear the phone ringing. A phone call at 5:15 a.m. is never a good thing. It is either a wrong number or some sort of family emergency. I stumbled out of bed with some trepidation and answered the phone.

"Bon jour!!" said the cheery voice of my mother-in-law. Although she did not as a matter of course speak French, I foggily recalled that she was in France. Well, Disneyland Paris, to be exact, which may or may not actually qualify as France, depending on who you talk to.

"Hi" I mumbled.

"Are the kids asleep?" she perkily continued.

Instead of answering "Its 5:15 in the morning, what the hell do you think?" I quietly gave some sort of affirmative response, retreating into the bathroom in an effort not to wake the rest of the sleeping family.

"Are you okay, your voice is sort of faint?" she then asked. Having by this point then grown clear-headed enough to grasp that there did not appear to be any imminent emergency, I asked her if she knew what time it was. "No" she responded, sounding surprised.

Over the next 30 seconds I was able to gather that my morning's sleep had fallen victim to some bad international time/math skills on the part of my father-in-law, who I then heard my mother-in-law berating. 30 seconds after that I was tucked back into the bed, where I lay awake for another 45 minutes in the blissful early morning quiet before the first faint wail of an awakening one year old sounded from the room across the hall. C'est la vie.

Heaven is a Cornfield

Ever since Owen learned to talk, I have been bracing for the onslaught of difficult questions - about heaven and hell and the existence of God, the meaning of life, and various science-related questions that I have absolutely no answers to. So far, the challenges have been minimal. There have been some vague heaven-related inquiries recently in the wake of the recent death of his great-grandfather Paul, but he hasn't really taken it in a direction that would require much knowledge on my part. Tonight, however, he did ask me whether people who died in Illinois, or Iowa, or Wisconsin, were all in the same place up in heaven. Can't say I had a prepared answer for this particular inquiry, as I had never considered whether heaven adheres to the arbitrary state or international borders that exist here in everyday life. So I stammered something about everyone being with the other people they knew up in heaven. As good an answer as any, I suppose, since I doubt even theological theorists have spent much time on the governmental subdivisions that might exist in heaven. Upon further reflection, however, supposing heaven does exist, I would like to think everyone from Illinois got to go somewhere a tad more scenic.

Listmaking I

I once had a co-worker who was into keeping mental lists. It was a small office so I saw enough of him over the course of a couple years that it became amusing to me. If you talked to him one day about U.S. policy in South America, he might suddenly stop you and proclaim you to be "one of the 10 smartest people I know." Interests outside his sphere of knowledge might earn you a spot on the "10 most interesting people I know" list, and so on.

Lately, with four year old Owen in list-making overdrive, I feel like I am back in that office 24/7. With Deanna out of town for 3 nights last week and 3 nights this week, I have been peppered with lists and, more often, demands for my own lists. These range from the mundane (my favorite color: burgundy), to the thought provoking (my "unfavoritest color": yellow), to the bizarre (my favorite Mazda: who has a favorite Mazda?? I suppose some people do, but I lamely offered up the RX-7, which I thought was very cool 20 years ago, and which I am unsure is even in production anymore). Categorizing things through lists is an interesting and manageable way for a kid who is learning more about the wider world every day to organize his thoughts on various subjects and to learn from others. Owen has an elaborate and ever changing list of his favorite colors, which I currently believe runs along the lines of red (always number 1, for its "fastness"), grey (he copied my 2nd favorite - very flattering), blue, orange, purple, pink, gold, silver, and on down to his unfavoritest color of white. I haven't taken on the challenge of explaining the whole "white as absence of color" concept to him, as who needs that at age 4.

Wet Kiss

Cooper starting kissing us last week. This currently consists of lunging at our faces with his tongue stuck out while making a humming noise. Very cute (and wet)! It did occur to me, however, that he will need to refine his technique over the next 12 or 15 years if he wants to go on any second dates in the future.

First Year in the (Curious George) Books

The twins turned one this past weekend. Like any decent parents, we honored the twins request for a large birthday party. We limited it to relatives - 22 of them, including us - ignoring their insistent demands that we invite their large circle of little friends.

Seriously though, it does seem odd to have a big party for little beings who couldn't care less, who are as entertained by the ribbons as anything that comes inside the wrapping paper, and who would probably be happier just hanging with us than a bunch of semi-strangers who are insistently cooing in their faces. Once you factor in the time involved in prepping for a big gathering - time where you are trying to minimize the time spent catering to the babies so you can actually accomplish something - the whole thing is a bit absurd. Ultimately, it is probably best to admit that the party is essentially for the parents rather than the honorees. It is true, in support of the concept, that turning one is a milestone birthday. In addition, my wife's family has a history of big first birthday parties. In the final analysis, it is as good a reason as any to drink mimosas at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

We went with a Curious George theme and put a lot of time and effort into the whole thing. We made monkey face cupcakes by using black and red frosting for the mouth, nostrils, and eyes, nilla wafers as the base for the mouth and nose, marshmallows for eyeballs, and mini-s'more cookies for ears. We made five different quiches with primate-themed names, such as "the Jane Goodall", and hung stuffed monkeys from the chandaliers and other various spots. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to do a stuffed monkey recreation of the infamous ether sniffing scene from "Curious George Gets a Job." Just as well, as that one would have gone unappreciated by the vast majority of attendees anyway. In the end, it was definitely a worthwhile endeavor as the weather was awesome, the guests had a lot of fun, and the babies eventually warmed up to the crowd and had a good time.

Three-On-One Breakaway

Going from one child to three with the birth of the twins a year ago has been challenging. Someone once made what I have since found to be a dead-on analogy between the number of little kids you have and basketball defense. When there are two parents and one child, you can double-team. Two and two, you can play man to man. But once it is two adults to three kids, you are forced to go to a zone defense.

For several months each Spring my wife Deanna is frequently away on business one or two nights a week. I'm not sure there is a decent basketball analogy for when it goes to three on one. More like a hockey team where my team has two players in the penalty box. I just go into penalty-killing mode until they (or in this case she) comes back again.

Mostly, these nights are routine enough and fairly fun. Other times, they break down into chaos. No matter how well you baby proof, there will be things you can't control when it is three on one. My favorite example of this happened a couple of months ago. I set out to give all three boys baths at once. I had Hayden (then 10 months) stripped first and in the tub when I noticed floating poop. This, of course, precipitated getting him out, draining the tub, and starting over. Tedious but necessary. I put Hayden back in, stripped Cooper (also 10 months) and was about to put him in too when I noticed poop stains on his feet. Although in retrospect I should have gotten more suspicious at that point as to where this was all coming from, trying to bath three little kids at once does not lend itself well to measured deductive reasoning. So, I took a quick look around, saw nothing that would really explain it, got his feet cleaned up and put him in.

Later on, after baths and preoccupied with getting the other two boys ready for bed, I went looking for Hayden, already in his PJ's, and found him sitting by the bathroom sink with a handful of shit and incriminating stains around the mouth area, including of course a literal "shit-eating grin". After sweeping out his mouth with my finger, I placed a panicked call to Deanna in her hotel three hours away, asking, theoretically, if one of the babies had eaten poop, whether the baby would be okay. After she confusedly replied that she supposed so as it was organic but what the hell was going on, I told her things were too chaotic to talk now and hung up. She really enjoyed that. I became suspicious of four year old Owen after I spied whole kernels of corn in the evidence, something the babies had not been chowing down on in recent days (CSI: Chicago). Owen initially claimed the poop must have been Cooper's, but eventually confessed that maybe it had been his. He said that earlier in the day, he had used the bathroom, and while he was subsequently busy washing his hands and "making faces in the mirror" some more "may have come out". I'm not sure why pants hadn't been pulled up at that point. Or why one wouldn't take a good look around on the floor to verify whether "some more" had indeed come out. The offending matter had apparently bounced off the little stool (no pun intended) Owen stands on to use the sink and underneath an overhang where the cabinets under the sink jut out so as to be not so visible to an adult but apparently in plain and tempting view of those under three feet tall.

Hayden, thankfully, suffered no apparent ill effects, by the way.

Day Full of New

Our oldest son, Owen, is a little over four years old and a great kid. Smart, engaging, funny, etc. He has been very patient with the fact that his life was turned upside down a year ago with the birth of his little twin brothers. Recently, as the twins have become marginally more independent, we have tryed to focus a little more on making sure Owen is getting enough individual attention from the two of us.

Anyway, last week Owen made his way downtown with Deanna when she got back early from a business trip. In the course of the next three hours, he had his first taxicab ride (and hailed his first taxi), worked with the office manager at my office delivering mail, for which he received his first pay ($5!) and a letter of thanks, gave his first dollar to a homeless guy (who sternly admonished him to stay in school and always listen to mom and dad), stood next to the Sears tower, and took a train ride home. The experience got me thinking how cool it must be at times to be so young and have everything happen for the first time. I would guess that as a four-year old it is fairly frustrating at times to have so little control over the day to day events of your life. But the flip side of that is the good unexpected, when you are woken up suddenly from a nap (yes! a four-year old who still naps every day!) and whisked off for several hours of new and exciting experiences.

You Have to Start Somewhere

I am sure the first entry is the hardest, so rather than spend forever debating how to define this blog, I think I will keep it short and sweet. My general goal is merely to periodically chronicle the goings on and general chaos related to raising three boys (Owen - 4, Cooper and Hayden - 1 year old (in two weeks!) twins) with my wife Deanna. Maybe give and get a little parenting philosphy and advice along the way. Discuss other subjects of interest to me from time to time. Allow near and far-flung friends to more easily keep up with the doings in our little corner of the world, since it has been less than easy to keep in touch since those aged four and under grew to outnumber the adults in our house last year. Who knows, maybe this will evolve into something else entirely over time, but that is the working plan for now.

I guess, based on the above, that this could be termed a "daddy-blog." And what better time to start this blog than now, I say, since parenting blogs and daddy-blogs in particular have recently been declared passe by various national media outlets. As I have always been slightly behind the curve technologically, starting my blog now makes perfect sense to me.

That is probably enough to get things started for now. Lets get this show on the road!