Cold, Cars and Evil Cackles

Dropping by with some brief thoughts from a chilly CloudEight:

I am not sure which is more annoying: Having to wear coats in June or people who point to any spate of unseasonably cold or cool weather as some sort of "proof" that global warming is not occurring.

The boys have been entertaining themselves recently while we drive by enthusiastically shouting "C'mon lady, lets move!" at the cars ahead of us every time a traffic light turns green. This is allegedly a behavior they learned by hearing me shout it at a fellow driver(s). While the statement is maybe not the greatest behavior for the boys to be modeling, I comfort myself with the fact that they could certainly be repeating much, much worse statements I have made. So far, so good on that front - so don't cross me on the road.

Sharing is hard for three year olds and, I'm guessing, even harder for three-year old twins since there is not a lot that seems uniquely "yours." While the little guys are okay at it, they are constantly on guard for any perceived advantage one is being given over the other, as well as opportunities to assert their individuality. When I had just Cooper on errands recently, and a local business owner gave him a sucker, he promptly told me he was going to save it to show Owen and Hayden and then proceeded to let loose what can only be described as an evil cackle at the thought of lording it over them. His plan had the desired effect, resulting in jealous whining, tears and demands for suckers from his brothers. Meanwhile, Hayden, the more obviously selfish of the twins, has slowly come a long way in his sharing ability. Several times in the last couple of weeks, however, he has apparently been having twin-sharing nightmares that have caused him to shout out things in his sleep along the lines of "No, Cooper, No! Don't take the whole thing!"

Dell-Tastic!

We spent the long memorial day weekend at a water park in beautiful Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. In my usual hardcore Vacation Dad way, I had the sleepy kids and sleepy wife loaded in the car and on the road prior to 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. At 10:04 a.m., an excited Owen announced his full transition into vacation-mode by declaring to all of us that he could no longer remember what our house looked like. In a sign that we had chosen our long weekend destination well, at 10:37 a.m., as we rolled past the first tacky and gargantuan water parks on the fringes of the Dells, Owen yelled "We're in Wisconsin Dells baby! I have to scream!"

By 12:30 p.m. we were waterparking it. You might say things went downhill (waterslide pun intended) after that, since by 2 p.m., I had a black eye (Owen's skull met my eye socket as he launched himself up out of the water for no apparent reason), a badly bruised foot (I'm a little fuzzy on the origins of that one) and was gagging into a toilet with motion sickness after Owen and I had a nasty run-in with one of those vortex water slides that sends you spinning around a giant bowl-like room a number of times before sucking you backwards down into the dark and then spitting you out of a tube back into the light. While the spinning portion of the ride that made me nauseous did not seem bad at the time, the drainpipe portion at the end definitely was a bit hairy, as I desperately tried to hold a screaming, low-swimming skills Owen in the raft during the dark backwards descent and our raft then flipped as we shot out into the pool at the bottom. Owen christened the ride "Mt. Death," announced to Deanna that it had "drowned" him. and quickly dialed down his water slide ambitions to a more manageable level.

The twins meanwhile, recovering from nasty colds, were still sporting ugly coughs throughout the weekend. While not an issue in the noise and chaos of the water park itself, it did not endear us in restaurants and shops, as I am sure a number of people subjected to their open mouthed fits were wondering why the boys were out and about with us rather than in a consumptive ward somewhere.

Other than those minor glitches, we had an awesome time. We took an olde-timey picture - formal western gear (including rifles!) in front of a stage coach, realizing a long-held but heretofore unvoiced dream of Deanna's to have an olde-timey family picture taken. We played mini-golf and arcade games. We took in the supremely cheesy Tommie Bartlett Water Show, which appeared to be unchanged from 30 years ago with the bizarre exception of a randomly inserted song by Lady Gaga. The boys played happily in the hot tub of our rented condo one night and ate mini-boxes of bad cereal for breakfast each morning (Cocoa Puffs still suck after 40 years!). We ate at a buffet where Owen fell in love with crab legs, a fine compliment to his long-established passion for shrimp. Swam in an outdoor wave pool. We watched bad TV, including one night when Deanna and I stayed up way too late after getting hooked on a terrible movie called "Head Over Heels" starring Monica Potter and Freddie Prinz, Jr. Feel free to google it - you can watch it free on the internet if you too have the urge to waste two hours of your life!

In one sign that the glorious cheesiness of the Dells may not hold sway over today's kids the way it did over our generation, when we suggested driving to the "Lost Canyon" attraction to take the half-hour horse and buggy tour through it, Owen asked why, if the canyon was really lost, we had a brochure about it and declared the whole thing to be nonsense. This moment of sober reflection was thankfully rare compared to his and the twins boundless enthusiasm at the rest of the trip, including their glee at playing on the ratty old mini-golf course that actually passed off a street light pole planted in the middle of a green as one of many "exciting" obstacles.

All in all, an awesome start to summer.

Here are a several photos of the trip:

Yes, the Dells actually ARE beautiful, despite the cheesiness of the town. This is the view from a river dock at our hotel.

Brothers and best friends.

Money saving vacation tip: While the kids are still young and gullible, you can convince them the oversized bathtub in your hotel room is actually a "waterpark."

How do you know you have crossed the border into Wisconsin? Giant cow statutes every 7 miles.

Apparently concerned about making a claim it could not back up, this business cautiously boasts that "Only in the Dells can you get a Polish Taco in a Caboose." Take your best shot, all you other polish taco stand in caboose owners.

Inside the polish taco caboose, the boys don railroad hats for a family photo snapped by the owner while our polish tacos were cooking. The hat makes Owen in particular look like he stepped out of a picture of Soviet youths circa 1936.

Me giving my usual rousing interpretation of "Bear Snores On," one of our all-time favorite children's books.

Ain't No Party Like a Pee-Pee Party

It appears that I have only been able to muster a single post in the last month. Where have I been? Well, there was that period where everyone was a little sick. And then there was that stuff at work. The refusal of Hayden to sleep except during a random two hour window every two weeks or so has also contributed. So, honestly, has the improving weather. Oh, and several times I was simply distracted by TV and just didn’t feel like posting.

So what has been going on on CloudEight, you ask?? Hmmm. To touch on a couple of our favorite themes, there have been two incidents of puking in the car since my last post, along with all of the post-puking clean-up fun that car puking incidents lead to. There has been one trip to the emergency room: Cooper v. coffee-table = 3 staples to the back of the head. Yuck. Second trip to the emergency room caused by this particular table, by the way, as it also sent Owen there with a wound to the forehead three years ago. Either we are slow learners or the coffee-table has blood-lust, not sure which. Cooper and Owen have since been engaging in sometimes heated arguments as to who was hurt worse by the coffee-table, and we would certainly be wise to move it before Hayden, who loves a good argument, intentionally self-inflicts some damage to his own head just to get in on the action.

Mostly, though, I have spent the past month hanging out in the bathroom. The good news on that front is that I may have actually changed my last diaper, retiring after a respectable career. I can’t say that I have put up hall-of-fame numbers, mind you, as I only have three kids after all, but I have certainly worked it hard. I have left it all on the changing table, so to speak, and have no regrets. Well, there was that one time I guess, that I regretted my lack of vigilance and failure to note a penis aimed at my head. And there were certainly times I regretted having a sense of smell. Other than that though, it has been tedious but sweet, as a swift change of a diaper has long been one of my parenting strengths.

Anyway, my career is coming to an end not due to me losing a little something on my fastball or some sort of marital decree laid down by me that henceforth, only the women in the family shall change diapers. Instead, the twins went from reluctant and seemingly unready to potty-train to wearing nothing but underwear in the space of a week. Seriously, it was that fast. That was three weeks ago and not an accident since.

My changing of diapers has been replaced, however, by endless trips to the bathroom, during which the guys proudly eek out the thimble full of pee that has trickled into their bladders since the last bathroom trip ten minutes ago. And so it goes. We read books, we sing songs, we chit-chat. There is dramatic grunting and bragging about the size of poop (they are actually quite generous in oohing and aahing over the size of each other poops; a mutual admiration and support society). There is endless wonder as to where everything disappears to when the toilet is flushed, complete with numerous questions and close examinations of areas of the toilet that no one has business examining. Then there is the rinsing out of their little potty seats, followed by extremely enthusiastic hand-washing, leaving our little bathrooms perpetually looking like a freak thunderstorm has just raged through. Leave bathroom for five to ten minutes, repeat ... and repeat ... and repeat. Still, much like bodily waste, this too shall pass - hopefully in time for me to catch a bit of out-of-the-bathroom sunshine before winter sets in again.

The Club Scene

While the rest of you have probably spent your recent Saturday nights maybe renting a movie or doing something equally tame, we have been out hitting the club scene. Well, one Club in particular. You would be in awe if you saw it - huge cavernous place, with a whole wall of flat screen TV's, all showing the same thing (hello mindfreak!). It is too hip to have a "theme" per se, but if you pinned me down, I would say that its theme is supersized consumer goods - with authentic reproductions of food and household items on steroids stacked in row upon row and rising towards the heavens in an effort to make you feel tiny - Alice in Wonderland style (mindfreak no. 2!). Some sort of ironic commentary on American consumer culture I suppose. And did I mention exclusive? I have a card that I flash at the door and am waived right in, but if you just showed up for the first time, no way you get in unless you are willing to pay. I keep my VIP status intact by dropping loads of cash at the place every time I go. This time, my night out cost about $500, and that was without even hitting the jewelry kiosk that they have on premises for those inclined to buy their significant other or new Club friend a bit of bling on the spot - a stroke of marketing genius. While Deanna and I have been known to hit the Club for a night out, we have recently gone with the whole family in tow, as kids appear to be a trendy Club accessory right now. I would have been wise to hit the jewelry kiosk during our last visit, because as our little accessories were gulping down some of the retro-chic hot dogs, I saw some dude with a funky American-flag hearing aid (as if the music wasn't already loud enough!) and crazy wisps of gray hair chatting up Deanna. He claimed he was only commenting on how cute our kids were, but I didn't buy it, and challenged him to a fight in the "radial room", a room of the club where the walls are stacked with tires (mindfreak no. 3!). He backed down and the night proceeded without further incident, other than the usual crazy fun. Anyway, I hear the owner of the Club, one Sam Walton, is opening these things everywhere, so keep your eyes open locally. If a Sam's Club opens near you, you can be as cool as me next Saturday night.

Seek and Go Seek

The twins and I are often busy here these days playing endless games of what others commonly refer to as "hide and seek," which goes in our house by its less common and more cumbersome name of "Daddy, you count and me and Cooper hide". The twins, in that twin way of theirs, always hide together, often arguing loudly about where while standing in the same room where I am counting. Once a consensus is reached, they charge off, leaving me to loudly search for them in rooms where I know they aren't before "finding" them. Often, the whole seeking process is just too much for them to bear, and they yell out helpful hints to me like "in here" in case the uncontrollable giggling emitting from their hiding spots aren't clue enough. Owen rarely joins us, as he does not appear to find it particularly fun that his brothers either insist on hiding with him or immediately out his spot upon being found themselves.

The current state of the game is a vague improvement over a recent phase, in which the twins would go to the trouble of running and hiding somewhere while I counted, but would then come charging towards me as soon as I finished counting, pointing at me and triumphantly yelling "I find you." Imagine that "seek and go seek" scenario playing out 10 times in a 10 minute period, interrupted only by my attempts to explain that they should stay in their spots until I find them, at which they would nod heartily and convince me they understood only to do the same thing again. I am also fascinated by the fact that they appear to believe that so long is they have buried there head in a blanket or the like, that I will not be able to see the rest of them. This puts them, by my calculation, at the approximate evolutionary par with the ostrich at the moment. Still, they are damn cute, and the pure joy they get from playing is so infectious that I would be hard pressed to think of a better way to spend my time than playing "Daddy, you count and me and Cooper hide" or "seek and go seek" with my little ostriches.

Jesus Row Your Boat Ashore, and Watch Out for Darth Vader

Church is always somewhat harrowing, especially since our current church sometimes tends to be on the button-downed, "children should be seen and not heard" side (or maybe even the "seen in pictures and not heard" side). I am proud to report that the boys did well on Easter Sunday, despite being hooked up to the functional equivalent of a sugar-IV in the form of Easter Baskets in the three hours immediately proceeding our worship. One favorite moment was Owen loudly humming the Imperial March from Star Wars (Darth Vader's theme song) to himself during one of the quieter patches. Another favorite was watching Hayden seriously thumb through the hymnal. Despite his lack of reading skills at age almost-three, he apparently understands that the hymnal has to do with songs, as he eventually stopped his thumbing, looked up and loudly inquired where "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" was in the book.

The Jesus Pirates

Proof that religious education may be somewhat lost on kindergarteners. I thought the skull and crossbones was an especially nice touch.

The Owen Show

Several readers have inquired as to how my big trombone performance at the kindergarten class went last month, so I am updating you all.

Keep in mind that while my blog entry was about me, I was not the only act on the bill that day. In fact, if there were a concert poster made up for the event, it would have gone something like this:

"OWENFEST '09!!!
Opening Acts:
"Owen's Twin Bros." - Living, Breathing Show and Tell Items
"Star Wars medley" - played by Owen's Daddy on Trombone, followed by short Q & A
"Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt" - a dramatic reading of Owen's favorite book by Owen's Daddy

Headliner:

"Flags!" - an educational presentation by Owen, the Star of the Week"

So, first we introduced the twins, who proved to be an exceptional warm up act. I suppose for extra effect, we could have told the class that we had octuplets and only had room for two in the van, as kindergartners are notoriously gullible. But really, two is enough. Twins make people smile, especially when they are being cute and not either whining or wreaking havoc and destruction.

Next, I broke out the trombone. No chance to warm up as there was no "green room" and I was self-conscious about noise as a lone trombone blaring out through the relatively quiet grade school was sure to garner more attention than I wanted. So, I dived right in. The song went well, with the exception of one clinker high note early on which caused an audible cringe from the crowd. The kids asked me a lot of questions afterwards and Owen told Deanna later that a lot of the kids thought he had a cool dad. So, having earned the adulation of such a discerning crowd, what more could I really ask for. No encore was demanded, by the way.

Next up, I read the class Owen's "favorite" book, "Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt!" which proved to be more violent than I recalled, so I ended up skipping a lot of pages when I saw teacher Mindy sort of grimacing at me. You know you are not reading a classic when you can skip approximately every other page and not have anyone lose the narrative thread (such as it is) or care. The class was not enthralled.

Last, Owen did a little presentation on flags using his extensive collection of miniature flags as props. While devoted readers of CloudEight are familiar with his love of flags, his peers were not. I like to think he wowed them with his ability to identify the flags of obscure countries like Trinidad and Tobago, but who really knows what impresses the kindergarten set. I can say that he was poised and we, his parents, were duly impressed and proud.

In case you are wondering where Deanna was during all this, she was "on twins" after their portion of the show - i.e. keeping them from grabbing the slide of my trombone while I was playing, etc. A difficult job, to be sure. It was actually a bit of a trick prying the twins out of there as they were rather enthralled with being in school at long last. Hayden in particular attempted to dash into several other classrooms on our way out, but we managed to corral him in time.

And that, dear readers, was the extent of the Owen Show. DVD's of the show and my reading of "Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt!!" in audio book format are of course available for download in the "ShopCloudEight!" portion of this blog. Buy both together and receive a discount.

Paddy O'Daddy

Another St. Patrick's Day is in the books. Aside from guzzling Shamrock Shakes and amusing myself by speaking in an Irish brogue and making the kids refer to me as "Paddy O'Daddy" and "Da", not too much celebratin' took place. Deanna and I hope to rectify that in the near future with a kid-free jaunt to New Orleans, where we will celebrate being in New Orleans without kids.

Another birthday in the books recently for me as well. From the things that make me feel old file:

1. I recently had to ask the bartender at a Wicker Park bar what the kids are drinking with the Red Bull these days. Vodka, as it turns out. Still, I guess I should get some style points for being in a Wicker Park bar at all, even if I needed Red Bull to stay out past 10.

2. The twins like to run their hands over my unshaven weekend face and say "rrrrooouuugh!" Then, to reinforce their point, they run their hands over my bald head and say "smooooooove."

Owen-Wan Kenobi's Last Home Birthday Party

Every other family in town sagely seems to host 6th birthday parties at an indoor playground, pool, gymnasium, etc. We, however, for the second year in a row, let Owen talk us into hosting his birthday party at our house. We are apparently slow learners.

As soon as we consented to Owen's request for a Star Wars themed party at our place, he began suggesting that we decorate each room of the house as a different planet in the Star Wars galaxy, including an ambitious request to turn the living room into the lava-covered planet from Episode III, and the dining room into the ice planet of Hoth from the Empire Strikes Back. Yikes!

We eventually scaled back his plans to something workable, and worked out a guest list of seven of his little friends. An expensive but fun trip to the party megastore followed, along with some long days of agonizing over a cake design by Deanna (the final decision: an unappetizing looking but tasty Jabba the Hutt, using, amusingly, an Easter lamb cake mold as its base foundation), and research regarding Star Wars party games by me. Finally, after some serious night-before decorating, we were ready to rock.

Entertaining eight six-year-olds for two hours is not a pleasant task under any circumstances. Still, despite dreading it for days, I think Deanna and I can both agree that it was actually worse than we imagined. While things generally hung together for the first five minutes or so, the situation started to deteriorate when they spread out to multiple floors, despite our best efforts to corral them. Then, at the outset of the first game, one kid, who we didn't much know and who seemed a bit out-of-sync with the others, simply disappeared. Once Deanna reported to me that she couldn't find him, we took turns quietly scouring the house for him while the other gamely attempted to hold the rest of the group's attention. Increasingly desperate, we learned later that we had both independently gone out to the mudroom and counted the kids shoes and coats - all there. Finally, convinced that he must have left I began searching outside, stunned that we could lose one of our eight charges just 10 minutes into the party. Deanna was just looking up his mom's number to call and say we couldn't find him - not a pleasant call to make - when she saw a shadow move behind a chair. The little bastard actually smirked as he acknowledged to Deanna that yes, he had heard us all calling for him - just didn't feel like coming out.

While the rest of the party was fairly unpleasant as well - fist fight, verbal altercations, crying, running out of games after the first hour - it all actually seemed delightful compared to our panic of thinking we had lost one of our guests.

While we may have had a tough go of it, the kids all actually seemed to have a blast, including making a giant space-themed mural, which, amusingly, including poorly spelled versions of risque six-year old terms like "fartsicle" and "poopy-head." The highlight for me was some Jedi-sensory training that consisted of having the kids stick their hands into cups to feel various things they couldn't see and then telling them they were gross things like "Darth Maul's eyeballs" (mandarin oranges) and "Bantha guts" (spaghetti). I knew this was a success when one of the kids told me later, upon finding out it had been mandarin oranges and not eyeballs, that he had been wondering how we gotten our hands on Darth Maul's eyeballs.

I will leave you with this photo of Deanna, attempting, to no avail, to summon Obi-Wan to help us watch the kids.