Two Shots of Whiskey for Us Please, and Three Cheese-Waters for the Kids

Why we continue to try to eat out as a family these days is, quite frankly, a mystery to me. Within two minutes of being seated Deanna and I are desperately trying to corral a server and get our entire order in immediately so we can get served and shovel food at the kids as fast as possible so we can then quickly flee the premises before the twins start loudly demanding freedom to wander about terrorizing the other patrons and staff. Well, terrorizing may be too strong a word. Its not like the twins are purposefully misbehaving. They have never, for instance, gone through Owen's unpleasant toddler phase of signaling he was done with a meal by tossing his plate face down on the floor – always a hit with restaurant staffs. They are, however, two, and, no matter how you slice it (wait, you don’t have a knife? Here, use one of mine from this pile I have confiscated from the kids during the meal – I don’t have a fork though, those are all on the floor, along with various crayons, the salt shaker, my sunglasses, 2 sippie cups and approximately 1/5 of all food served to our table), it is often tense and never relaxing to dine out with two two-year olds and a sometimes cranky and overtired five-year old. We hit rock bottom over the summer when things went so badly one lunchtime that we were forced to acknowledge that even the six-table, un-air conditioned hot dog diner in our town was too fancy an eatery for our little crew to dine out at. A sad day.

Still, who wants to give up on eating out altogether. Not us, that is for sure. You wouldn’t want to dine in all the time either if you got a look at the floor underneath our table following pretty much every meal at home. Tonight, for instance, the boys decided to create “cheese-water” by putting big pinches of Parmesan cheese into glasses of ice water. Not only was it disgusting, but the twins Parmesan cheese-pinching skills hover somewhere between muppet and Cro-Magnon. Who wants to spend every evening as the janitor of the cafeteria at the insane asylum. And so we persist in going out, motivated partly by stubbornness, partly by principle, and partly by laziness. And on those occasions when it does go well, there is that glimmer of hope that someday, in the not so distant future, everyone in the restaurant won’t be thinking of us as THAT family. You know the one. That glimmer keeps alive our little dream that we can someday take our seats once again with the rest of you, tsk, tsking to ourselves about the behavior of some as yet unborn children that some couple will by then be inflicting on us, and smiling to ourselves as we dawdle over a second cup of coffee and desert.

Mr. Obama Goes to Springfield

Upon graduation from law school I spent a couple of years working as an attorney for the Senate Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly, where I was the lone democratic staffer for the Civil Judiciary Committee. My main job was to analyze the bills that came before the Committee and advise the four Democratic members of the Committee on the bills during Committee meetings. After the bills moved out of Committee to the full Senate, I would be present on the Senate floor to advise any of the Democratic Senators in the event they had questions. We would do other things too, write legislation, meet with lobbiests, etc. but the Committee support and analysis of bills was the main gist of the job. All in all, a pretty cool first job to have after law school.

Six months before I left the job, a newly hatched State Senator by the name of Barack Obama arrived in Springfield and was assigned to the Judiciary Committee. Before his first Judiciary Committee meeting, he summoned me to his office to talk about the bills and my analyses - my first meeting with this extraordinary person. I, like many others in the Statehouse, grasped quickly that this was a person of exceeding intelligence, charisma, talent, and ambition. But, as hard as it is to imagine at this particular moment in history, back in those early days, he was also just a normal person new to the job (well, as normal as a brilliant constitutional law professor from University of Chicago freshly elected to the Illinois Senate can be). I remember standing in a bar one night with him in those early weeks at some function or another, with him pointing to this person or that, asking me who they were, what their story was. Another time in those first months of Barack's legislative career, when Chicago's Mayor Daley was down in Springfield for an annual party that Chicago threw for legislators, I watched as Barack, after waiting in line, introduced himself to the Mayor, shook his hand, and posed to have his picture taken with him. I was aware even then that Barack was destined for bigger things so I paid attention to little moments like that. I have a cool black and white picture of Barack speaking on the floor of the Illinois Senate on a bill he had sponsored, with me standing to his left in the event he had questions or needed additional information. I liked and admired Barack, enjoyed the time I spent with him, and believe he liked me. I got to know Michelle Obama a bit as well, especially when we sat with Barack and Michelle at a friend's wedding not too long after I left the Senate job, and I thought she was fantastic. While I left the job disillusioned in some respects about politics and the legislative process, I continued to hold Barack in high regard. Several years later, Barack was one of my references when I got my current lawyering gig. It is simply amazing to think how far he has come in just these few years, although Deanna and I were predicting great things for him to anyone who would listen long before he became a household name.

The coolest thing to me about the Obama phenomenon is not the man himself, but what he inspires in others. Aside from knowing Barack personally, that is why I feel so strongly about this election. I actually first started this entry the day after Barack’s speech accepting the nomination for President. That day, still riding a wave of emotion from seeing this extraordinary person accept the nomination, I wrote that “No matter who wins this election, I firmly believe that we stand on the brink of a new American epoch. There is no denying the energy, aura, hope and power that hangs thick and heavy in the air today, like the smoke following a fireworks finale in the moment just before everyone exhales, turns their gaze from the sky, and goes back about their business. The culture is changing at a breakneck speed, and, at this moment, for the better. The last decade, defined by its winking cynicism, is slipping away, replaced by a rising tide of hope that will transform all in this nation who care to come along, for the better. The transition to the next epoch is happening now and will be marked in the coming years by turbulence – but, in four years, this world will be completely changed, whether for the good or the worse.” (Apparently my time in politics did not completely beat the optimism out of me!). While I believe some of that remains true, the breakneck speed and turbulence parts seem most true (hello stockmarket!). Only a few weeks have passed and the economy is in shambles, and, it appears to me, the Republicans, in these last desperate days of the campaign, are encouraging, tacitly if not overtly, a cultural war and ugly acts by their supporters. The nation continues to hold its breath but the mood has shifted: things are tense, nerves are frayed, and we are all holding on tight and watching history unfold.

This being, ostensibly, a parenting blog, I will dispense with the politicking at this point but will leave you with one story that is kid-related and always amuses me. The last time I saw either Barack or Michelle Obama in person was at a relatively lightly attended press conference when he announced his long-shot bid for the U.S. Senate seat. I happened to be working at the time in a building across the street from the hotel where the press-conference was taking place and decided to swing by and watch the announcement. Owen had recently been born and Deanna had been corresponding with Michelle Obama via e-mail regarding a daycare facility near our home run by one of Michelle’s friends. After the press-conference, I ran into Michelle in the hallway outside and we took a minute to catch up. While the events in the Obama’s world, I would guess, had been much more eventful even then than the doings in our little corner of the world, Michelle, charming as always, asked, among other things, how breast feeding was going for Deanna. After we parted ways I was making my way through the crowd towards the lobby to leave when I heard my name behind me - Michelle trying to get my attention. I turned around and she called out to me down the crowded hallway with a smile "Tell Deanna to use lanolin on her nipples!" And that, my friends, is a pretty damn cool thing for a (hopefully) future first lady to say.

Summer Wrap-Up

Best quote of the summer - Deanna, speaking to me while changing Cooper's diaper one night after a long day during 4th of July weekend: "How did Cooper get orzo on his scrotum??" How indeed my young friend. If you end a day with orzo on the scrotum, you can say with some authority that that is a day that has been lived to the fullest.

With October here and temperatures hovering in the 50’s and 60’s, it has become futile to argue that it is still summer in Chicago. It is thus time to formally bid adieu to what was truly an outstanding season. We laughed, we cried (including over spilled milk, my parental admonishments to the contrary notwithstanding). Those of us who didn’t know how to talk at summer’s outset are now little talking machines, a bike laden with training wheels at the outset of summer is now a sleek two wheeler, and the water that looked so deep and intimidating on Memorial Day was simply a place to joyously jump into and swim by Labor Day. There was a week in Wisconsin, three weekends in Michigan, five hours in Canada, one weekend in Springfield celebrating my grandmother’s 94th birthday, lots of days at the beach, visits to the zoo, and bike rides with me towing the twins in a trailer and Owen trailing Deanna on a tagalong. We went to the horseraces, car shows and cruise nights, to parks and parades and picnics, watched fireworks, hung out at the pool, ran through sprinklers, slid down slip and slides, rode the rides at Kiddieland, climbed on tanks at Cantigny, saw the sights at Navy Pier, went up in the Sears Tower, and visited Millennium Park and Buckingham Fountain. We ate hundreds of cherry tomatoes off of the vine, grew sunflowers from seed, and picked blueberries at a farm. We bought a new car (2004 Toyota Corolla) and said goodbye to our beloved old one (1993 Camry). Owen played t-ball and took swimming lessons, I ran a 5-K and went kayaking. We went to concerts, barbecued, spent many happy hours visiting with family and friends, and drank to excess a couple of times. We gathered around a fire pit with friends, telling ghost stories and roasting marshmallows. We endured floodwaters in our Village and were caught in a torrential downpour at the beach in Michigan after lingering too long watching the rain and lightning roll in from Lake Michigan. We watched sunsets, slept in hammocks, and Owen and I spent a great night camping in a tent in the backyard, where we read old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons and ate junk food. All in all, not a bad way to spend four or so months. Here are a few final pictures – soon, all that will be left to warm us up until Spring:

Of 10 photos in the giant chair at Julie's in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, this is the only one where everyone is vaguely looking in the same direction.

Awesome Norwegian flag tattoo sent to Owen by CloudEight reader Gail in Minnesota. Thanks Gail! Owen wore it on his head for 4 days straight until we made him wash it off for the start of the school year.

Hayden goes full on patriotic, right down to his NASCAR sippy cup, the toddler equivalent of the American flag lapel pin.

Buckingham Fountain!

Summer takes its toll.