Summer Wrap-up

There is no surer sign that Fall has arrived than the first Bears victory (insert your very clever and funny joke about Fall starting some years in November HERE). Thanks to keen coaching, raw desire, and the kindness of the officiating crew in enforning their nonsensical NFL rules, Fall has officially arrived on Cloud Eight.

How was summer on Cloud Eight, you ask? Well ... wet. From our rainy garage sale in June to fun with serious basement flooding and its aftermath much of the rest of the summer, water was the word. The wet was not all bad however - from the pool and the great swimming strides made by all three boys, to sprinklers, water balloons, spray-grounds and beaches, there was plenty of wet fun to go around as well. 

 Post-Flood Garbage Day - Bleh!

Here are some additional pictures, both water-themed and not, of what has been up here these past unblogged months (and yes, most were taken different days, despite Cooper's propensity to wear the same shirt every single day!):

                                                                                                                                                 

Next Year's Christmas Card??

Beach in Door County

Owen and Cousin Emma - Lake Michigan

More Lake Michigan

Cooper - All-American

                                                                       

Fountains at Cantigny

Door County Fish Boil

Hayden

Flooding can be fun if you are 4 years old - otherwise, it sucks!



Me and Sunny D.



Millenium Park

Kids and Cousins on WWI Tank at Cantigny

Family in Door County

                                      

 

Some well-deserved rest



The Return

I have always set the posting bar low here at CloudEight, eking out an average of just over 2+ entries a month. So, given what has to be the modest expectations of my dedicated readers, when I start receiving e-mails from them asking what gives with the long absence, I take notice, dust-off the old keyboard, and start typing.

While I can offer any number of excuses for a lack of writing, and have not shied away from doing so in the past, my best bet this time around is simply to note that summer has, at long last, arrived here at our little outpost in the northern tundra. Given that summer in Chicago is approximately 4 weeks long, we tend to react when it does arrive like a ravenous dog that has been thrown a State-Fair sized turkey drumstick - attacking it with all the energy we can muster, ripping great gaping mouthfuls of tender meat from the bone.

For those of you who are literalists, "tender meat" = "summer fun." For those of you who are still struggling with this concept, I offer the following example: I kicked off the fourth of July weekend by going to the American Music Festival at Fitzgerald’s, where I was lucky enough to catch the Texas-blues of the Marcia Ball Band, the alt-country of Robbie Fulks, and the manic New Orleans funk of Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, down a few cocktails and hang out with friends. During the course of the remainder of the three day weekend, we had a family bike ride, went out to eat, attended a town picnic/concert on Friday night, a parade, a family fun-fair, an all-day long party at my in-laws on the 4th followed by fireworks, and a Sunday brunch with friends. I also ran a 5K and we took a family trip to the pool. All this in addition to the more mundane but unavoidable tasks of child maintenance (including keeping them fed, their noses (and butts) wiped, and ensuring they don't stink so much that we aren't invited back places) and house maintenance (including grass cutting and the most recent installment of my weekly battle with the back license plate of our van, which persists in its taunting of me by hanging from one rusty bolt every time I think I have it securely reattached). Thankfully the weekend also included three family naps or I may have been dead at this point instead of merely exhausted.

From the "How Long Can I Get Away With This" file:
While we were driving to a 4th of July picnic in another of the seemingly endless bouts of pouring rain, Cooper asked from the back seat "Daddy, why is it raining?" He may have meant "why is it raining when we are supposed to be going to a fun picnic?", "what makes it rain?", or "what made you decide to raise us in the new Seattle of the Midwest?" Not in the mood for science or, frankly, for delving into the motivation behind his question, I gave it a theological and holiday spin by answering: "Because God hates America." That effectively shut him down for the rest of the ride.

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.

Poopie the Brown: Fearless Viking Warrior, and other Wisconsin tales

Just back from a week of family vacation in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin, the Cape Cod of the Midwest. What is it about a family driving vacation that causes me to go into Dad overdrive? I was up at 4 a.m. the day we left and we had our sleepy charges on the road by 5:20 a.m. in a pounding rainstorm. From there, it was a week of big fun. Some highlights, for those of you who couldn’t make it:

1. MUCH NEEDED SLEEP: Including napping in a hammock with Owen;

2. MUCH NEEDED CHANGE OF SCENERY: This view from our rented house;

3. MUCH NEEDED SLEEP INTERRUPTED: We took advantage of the twin’s general level of exhaustion by plugging them into twin beds for the first time rather than cribs. The house we had rented was high on a bluff away from pretty much anything. Each night the peaceful silence was broken several times by thuds that back home would have been neighbors car doors slamming shut nearby, but here signaled a twin falling out of bed in his sleep once again, followed by a plaintive and confused wail. Apparently bed rails are necessary for our next trip;

4. VACATION WITHIN A VACATION: Owen decided the first day of our arrival that our rented house was a lodge in which Deanna and I were the proprietors and in which he was a guest. Once in full guest mode he played it to the hilt, at one point looking quizzically at his little brothers, then turning to me with a serious little face and asking “What did you say their names were again?”;

5. WIFE REPELLENT: The intensity of the mosquitoes caused me to buy some bug repellent that was so toxic it caused Deanna’s lips to go numb after she kissed me on the neck. When mosquitoes were in the air, romance was not;

6. PIE!!!: We gorged ourselves on all manner of pies in our cherry-orchard laden vacation destination. Peachberry: peaches, cherries, blueberries; Summerberry: raspberry, blackberry, blueberry; Carmel-Apple-Walnut: you figure this one out. Pie for snacks, pie for desert, and best of all, pie for breakfast!

7. BOILED WHITEFISH: Eating boiled Lake Michigan Whitefish drowning in butter after laboriously picking their bones out is not for everyone, it is true. Including Deanna, seen here in front of the pot of boiling fish with Cooper shortly before she bolted to a different nearby restaurant with her Mom for dinner, leaving some of the rest of us to enjoy this Wisconsin delicacy. Mmmmm, mmmm, good!

8. NORTHERN WISCONSIN HUNTING CULTURE TAKES HOLD: Spying a life-size fake sheep on the front lawn of a store, Owen spontaneously yelled “I’m hungry for lamb!” and proceeded to unleash a barrage of imaginary bullets into the sheep from close range with a pretend gun;

9. POOPIE THE BROWN - FEARLESS VIKING WARRIOR: The twins tried on plastic Viking helmets in the store of Al Johnson’s Swedish restaurant. While wearing the helmets, they both suddenly began dancing around, grabbing at their diapers and loudly chanting “I’m poopie!!!” in unison. The stoic Swedish crowd in the shop were unmoved by either the cuteness, or, to their credit, the stench, of what was a fairly amusing, albeit stinky, display.

10. MY MEXICAN BRIDE. Lastly, Owen and his 8-year old cousin Emma, going by their stage names of Aiden and Annika, concocted a 100-act play that included the death of their moms (causes never specified, but some suspect insecticide poisoning!), the subsequent adoption of the twins, now named Leo and Ian (pronounced, amusingly, Ion, as Emma/Annika has apparently only read this name and not heard it said out loud), and their dads subsequent remarriages. While my brother-in-law, I am told, had to search “every church in Illinois” before finding a new bride, I was apparently able to avoid all that pesky church-going by picking mine up in Mexico. One night, when Deanna poked her head into a room where the “play” was taking place, Owen looked at her and said “Mom, what are you doing alive?”

Anyway, as I adjust back to life back here in Illinois, with my new Mexican sweetie and my sons Aiden, Leo and little Ion, I will leave you with a couple of more pictures from our trip. Adios for now.

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.

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.

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.