Airing Out the Winter-Musty Children

In which your humble narrator decamps from the old homestead.

It hit 40 degrees and the sun came out so the children and I left the house on booted feet to inspect the melt in the neighborhood.

Here they are pictured pontificating on some mud. A good time was had by all.

On our way past the local parochial school I overheard one small boy indignantly retort to another, "I'm not a little kid! I'm six and a half, and I play violent video games!"

Tick, tick, tick...

In which your humble narrator perpends upon the coming autumn with fear and trembling.

Summer seems to abruptly deserted those of us nestled into the curves of the upper Mississippi. Unfortunately a richly deserved, bright and sunny autumn seems to be nowhere in sight. After the constant rains of the early season I feel more than a bit annoyed by the constant cloud cover of this September.

In remembrance of my ability to manufacture vitamin D only a few short weeks ago, here are some photos of my offspring from an early August outing.

Child #1 runs down a hill at Gold Medal Park in Minneapolis.

Note the clearly more predatory approach of Child #2. If she ever gets Zombified* we're in trouble.

Dissertations for Wife-a-roo and myself are both in progress. She's ahead of your humble narrator, but she started two years earlier and is only going to finish a couple of months before me. I intend to point this fact out to her on, pretty much, a daily basis for the rest of our lives.

In other news: Twitter is still stupid.

*This is apparently the correct spelling of the past tense of the verb "to Zombify." Don't doubt me. This is a quality blog; I looked it up.

Realpolitik

In which your humble narrator tries to tamp down the smoldering embers of sibling conflict which could flare into a full scale war of mutual destruction at any moment.

I should say as a caveat, both children are doing quite well. Each is charming, mostly well-behaved and pretty much delightful now that everyone has gotten over the long-lasting summer cold that's been going around.

Here are the little darlings on a recent outing to Gold Medal Park in downtown Minneapolis, conveniently located three blocks from Wife-a-roo's office. Child #1 is now using the toilet like a pro and Child #2 has found a new love of being upright and verbal.

Our recent conflict involves the unfortunate issue that Child #2 is interested only in whatever Child #1 is playing with at any given moment. Since Child #1 has a flair for melodrama, he provides massive reinforcement for Child #2's meddlesome nature by obligingly caterwauling whenever she interferes with his play things. Child #2, of course, finds his vocal histrionics absolutely enchanting and rarely misses an opportunity to irritate him. Child #1 no longer even waits for Child #2 to start messing up his train set. He simply begins fussing whenever she enters the room. Drawn to his siren-song of constant complaint, even if she wasn't in a mood to mess up his railroad, she usually cannot resist the invitation to battle over brio train tracks and Thomas the Tank Engine figures. 

Sadly, I have little interest or patience for this particular sibling ritual and usually just end up taking whatever toy has become the object of their concentrated desire away from both of them. This results in both of them howling at me instead of each other. I'm pretty sure there's a reason that I do this, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is.

The Big Schlep

In which your humble narrator goes to the big city, eats pizza and bagels and discovers that there are a hell of a lot of playgrounds in Manhattan.

Apologies for the infrequency of postings of late. The end of the term and its accompanying flurry of work and a recent trip out east have left little time for writing lists of stuff that irritates me. 

Child #2 rides the subway

Child #1 looks out over New York Harbor

Wife-a-roo, and Children #1 and #2 and I flew to New York last Wednesday. Wife-a-roo had a job interview with some sexy research outfit doing even sexier research than she usually does. Since they paid for her flight and we had access to an empty apartment courtesy of one of her investment-banky cousins,* we decided to make a trip of it.

Both children were surprisingly good travelers. The flight out was completely without incident except for when Child #1 was informed that he would have to remove his shoes in the security line. This prompted an on-the-floor screaming (and sock-footed) fit much to the delight of our fellow travelers behind us waiting for their own chance to do the TSA tango. Calm was restored on the other side of security when Child #1 was re-shod as he choked back the tears of rage and humiliation of having to go sock footed in public for 1.5 minutes.

We stayed in Manhattan near Gramercy park for two days. Wife-a-roo had her interview which went well. We saw an old friend from college. We ordered freakin' awesome takeout.

On Friday, Wife-a-roo's father drove down from ye olde New Hampshire homestead to meet up with us. We had lunch at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the village. Then we piled into his ancient Volvo and went out the Mid-town tunnel to the Long Island Expressway to go stay for a couple of nights at the North Shore Home of Wife-a-roo's aunt.

A brief note on Wife-a-roo's family and their relationship to cars. They kill them. Dead. Grandpa's Volvo has 323,000 miles on it. The air-conditioning is kaput. It was 90 degrees and humid on the L.I.E. outbound on a Friday afternoon. Then the car overheated.

Children looking dignified

In which your humble narrator shows off his progeny.

Child #1contemplates something in his weird little brain.

Child #2 smears tasty Indian food all over her face, and yet manages to maintain a certain dignity during the experience. She looks like she's testifying before a congressional committee. "Senator, if you'll let me finish..."

Abrupt Reversal

In which your humble narrator discusses his progeny's prudishness and rapaciousness for candy.

For reasons known only to his own little weirdo brain, Child #1, a previously stalwart opponent of combined bathing with Child #2 has abruptly reversed himself and begun demanding that his sister be deposited into the tub at the same time that he goes through his evening ablutions.

This surprised all and sundry since upon previous entreaties to maximize the efficiency of tub-time, Child #1 looked positively scandalized and began the octave jumping litany which follows any suggestion to which he is not immediately inclined, "No, No, NO, NO, NO!"

Frankly, he is a bit of a prude. Someone gave us* a copy of that classic of the Western Canon, Once Upon a Potty, which we introduced to Child #1 several month ago. He was appalled. When his grandmother read it to him and his eyes got very big, and when the got to the page on which the little boy proudly produces poop, Child #1 covered his eyes and blushed.

Needless to say potty training is proceeding slowly. At least now it's proceeding. Once he figured out that going in the potty chair meant a high probability of candy upon completion he suddenly got a lot more willing. Every kid has his price.


*Or maybe Wife-a-roo bought it? Or maybe pixies left in under a cabbage leaf in the garden? I cannot keep track of the stream of child-related ephemera that sweeps into our house on a weekly basis.

Of Water Heaters and Swollen Gums

In which your humble narrator smacks his head literally and figuratively.

We got a larger than expected tax refund this year due to the birth of Child #2 and some withholding irregularities on the part of Wife-a-roo's employer. The general plan was 1/3 to savings, 1/3 to home improvement and 1/3 to debt reduction. The water heater was high on the list. In fact I was going to call our plumber on tomorrow to schedule a replacement. But that would have been too easy. The bottom fell out of the old water heater Friday morning, flooding the basement with hot water, a half of an hour after Wife-a-roo left for work. Sister-of-Me came over to watch the children while I mopped up and got ready for the plumber to come in the afternoon. (Mercifully they squeezed us in on the same day.)

I managed to crack my head pretty hard under the stairs while cleaning up the soaked boxes that I had foolishly left in the path of the river from water heater to the floor drain. We've now spent half of the tax refund on a new water heater, a new kitchen drain, and super clean sewer lines. Every time I go into the basement the furnace creaks and wheezes as if to say, "I'm the last mechanical system standing, buddy. I'm going to wait for the inevitable cold snap in March and then die! Haw-haw!"

Also the children have given me another cold. And I think Child #2 is teething (a process that she likes to ensure takes at least 2 weeks). And my permanent retainer on my lower teeth broke, and the orthodontist doesn't have any available appointments for a month.

On the plus side, it's getting brighter, the garage door lock is unfrozen and my children are beautiful, even if they do spend a lot of time trying to improvise new ways to make me pay for unknown sins in a previous life.*

Maybe I'll spend the rest of the day reading the book of Job and try to be grateful that I'm not covered in boils surrounded by my dead livestock.

*I don't really believe in reincarnation. If I did I would be forced to conclude that in order to merit the constant annoyances of my life that I was was some sort of nun-beating Jerry Lewis type person in my last incarnation.

Gratuitous Cuteness

GrIn which your humble narrator feels sorry for the parents of ugly children.

Child #2 sports a healthy vaseline sheen due to unremitting frigid, skin-drying temperatures.

Child #1 engages in imitative play by washing dishes in the bathroom sink. He washes dishes in the bath as well. He also pees in the bath a lot. I have yet to convince him that peeing in the dishwater is generally frowned upon.

Winterfulness

In which your humble narrator ventures out onto the frozen tundra.

It finally warmed up enough to take the children outside to play in the snow. Sister-of-Me and I ran over to the University with children in tow so she could turn in a paper. Then we came back to the house promising Child #1 that he could play in the snow. In the car:

Child #1: I will shovel snow.

Me: We're going to play in the snow but we have to go inside first so you can get your snow pants on.

Child #1: I will not wear snow pants.

Me: Yes you will. It's cold and then your regular pants will stay dry.

Child #1: No! I will not wear snow pants. I don't like snow pants any more.

Me: You don't even know what snow pants are.

Child #1: (with increasing volume) I don't like them!

So we get home and I drag him crying into the house. And I rummaged through the closet and found the snow pants while he's veering ever closer to a meltdown. He looked up at them, stopped crying and said, "Snowpants are red. I will wear them." If only I had known that the color was of paramount importance.

But first, we had to wrestle the baby into her snowsuit.

Then we lost her since she camouflaged herself into the rug.

We found her eventually and then proceeded outside for much winterful fun.

Gratuitous Cuteness

In which your humble narrator dang near burns out his retinas from an overload of adorableness on the part of Child #2.

Child #2 received a monkey hat from a friend of mine. Don't look at it too long or you'll damage your optic nerves.

Some days I have smartness in my brain-thing

In which your humble narrator tries to turn back the tide of fluids spewed regularly at him by Child#2.

Child #2 is a spitter. She's a drooler. She's a pooper, and she's a screamer.  Some people call her a Space Cowboy... no wait that's not right.

I simply was not prepared for the mess-making capabilities of Child #2. Child #1 was a scrawny, colicky infant who screamed pretty much non-stop for his first four months of life, but he was tidy. Child #2 spits up copious volumes of milk after every feeding (no matter how much I try to restrict the number of ounces at any one feeding). She also drools disgusting milky drool while she drinks from the bottle. This runs down her neck into the fat-folds of skin where it sours and then collects lint. Or it alternately soaks her shirt. Bibs do nothing, leaving me with the joy of going through about six outfits per day (four for her, two for me). I don't have a big enough wardrobe to continue feeding this child. By the end of the week I'm forced to wear ancient, ill-fitting, strange clothes. If you drop by on any given Friday you may find me wearing holey corduroys with a tuxedo shirt and track jacket. It's a look borne out of desperation not to smell like sour milk.

In my continuing battle against the moisture generated by my daughter, this morning I purchased some amazing, space age super towels at the local Trader Joe's. They come in packages of 2 10"x14" towels. I cut one in two, and made a second curved to fit around Child #2's neck. It worked pretty well. It's much more absorbent than any of our 12 million bibs.

Sometimes I do have smartness in my brain thing... but only when backed up against a typhoon-like wall of spit-up.

Minnesota State Fair Pictures

In which Child #1 stuffs his face with funnel cake and mauls the face of your humble narrator.

 

Today Wife, Sister and Mother-of-me took both children the Minnesota State Fair where we feasted on fried foodstuffs. This year some enterprising individual is making a fortune renting personal motorized scooters to the overweight, lazy and lazy-overweight among us. I spotted several "ladies of a certain mass" tooling around with multiple bags of free fair loot, various food containers and, in at least one case, a small child riding the open byways of the state fair on scooters.