Hooray for using the Potty

In which your humble narrator closes a door of complain and opens a window of kvetch.

Child #1 is reliably using the toilet. Hooray! No more poopy diapers of a 2.75 year-old thrashing around while screaming "No! Don't clean my testicles! I don't like testicle poo!"

Yeah, well Buddy, this hasn't exactly been a picnic for me either.

Now that he goes to the potty, he goes all the time. Today I think he went 38 times between 8:00 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. I've spent more time in my downstairs bathroom over the past three weeks than in the preceding six months. It's really not a big deal, unless the adult to child in home ratio reaches 1:2. In that case, making sure Child #1 gets to do his business without interference means perching on the end of the tub in an unnaturally twisted position to assist him while using my right foot to repel the marauding advances of Child #2 who wishes to be intimately involved in the experience, mostly by pinching the bare thighs of Child #1 whilst he attempts to urinate.

Public bathrooms are another boondoggle since they are both wonderfully exotic but full of dangerous menaces like loud flushing toilets and electric hand dryers.

We're packing the children and my Mom into the car on Friday to drive to Iowa for a friend's wedding. This will be the first "potty-trained" trip.

We who are about to get peed on salute you.

100th Post Spectacular

In which your humble narrator celebrates one hundred instances of bloggy goodness with a list of lessons learned.

Here is a list of lessons recently learned that don't promise much applicability in the future.

• Terry cloth seems to be an acceptable fabric for clothing worn (in public!) by women under the age of 22.
• Presbyterians all look the same.
• Summer gives me a headache.
• People fear couscous. 
• Babies love banjos.
• There's not a noticeable difference between reading the Pioneer Press and then recycling it, and just recycling it immediately.
• The French brew beer. (Sacre brew!)
• Ohio is like, the place to be this summer, at least judging by the airfares.
• Twitter is still stupid.

Best Veep Ever

In which your humble narrator jests about our beloved vice president.

Hey, it's so hot and windy today that I feel like I'm standing near Joe Biden's mouth!

Just kidding, Joe. You know I loves me some Biden. From that one time I met you on the Amtrak between Wilmington and D.C. to last week when you told some pissant in an ice cream store to maybe not be such a bilious tax-obsessed wingnut jerk. You are the best vice-president ever, and that includes such memorable heavy-weights as Garret Hobart and John Nance Garner.

Cold Comfort

In which your humble narrator is grateful for a little well-timed aridity, celebrates improbably weddings, the color orange and remembers his paternal grandmother who couldn't remember anything.

It finally stopped raining. June has been unpleasant. It's either been beastly hot or raining or both (mostly both). If I wanted to live in a climate unfit for human habitation I would have decamped for Dixie years ago, thank you very much. The garden was waterlogged and there were mushrooms all over the lawn. Child #1 who assiduously scrapes any single particles of green vegetable matter off of his carrots has shown a surprising interest in eating the damn yard mushrooms. "No, no we only eat grocery store mushrooms!" And it's not like he would eat grocery store mushrooms either, but for some reason, potentially poisonous things growing in the yard look tasty. My sister suggested that I use this to my advantage and sprinkle foods he refuses to eat in the grass to gin up some interest. "Look! The yard grew us some meatloaf! Isn't nature's bounty wonderful?"

Wife-a-roo and I went to a wedding on Saturday. A friend of mine from my days working in the used bookstore got hitched to a perfectly lovely woman much to the surprise of everyone who knows this guy. A former unwashed, anarchistic, dread-locked, hippie-jock hybrid, this guy managed to find a charming woman who actually seems to, you know, love him. The wedding, for me, was a delightful combination of heartfelt goodwill mixed with with a noticeable undercurrent of surrealism, a bride dressed in a bitchin' orange wedding dress and free dinner. Just my kind of shindig.

The wedding was a nice way to end up what had been a lousy week which kicked off on Monday with news from West Virginia that my grandmother had died. She had suffered from Alzheimers for a number of years. The last time I saw her at my grandfather's funeral almost two years ago, I had to introduce myself to her. She was a good woman. She took care of my sister and I often when we were kids. She taught us a number of useful skills and took crap from no one. Her personality was big. She loved cheap beer, her unloveable fat cat, making things and delivering well-deserved smacks to various smart-alecky members of her family. She was an excellent cook and made everyone feel welcome in her home. She fumed loudly about sexism. She registered as a Republican to please her parents and became a liberal because of the civil rights movement. She sewed, knitted and crocheted. My daughter is sleeping tonight wearing a pajama shirt that Grandma made for me thirty years ago.

Her memory, language and abilities were all degraded by her disease to a point that the woman that I knew has been gone for a long time. Unlike some Alzheimer's patients, she seemed to, at least intermittently, be aware of her diminishing faculties. I suppose an easy death should seem like a relief for a woman who had lost so much of herself. But it's cold comfort.

First day of the rest of the term

In which your humble narrator knows he should not be surprised and yet still...

Today is the first day of summer term. A whole semester's worth of educational psychological goodness crammed into five, fun-filled weeks. I (of course) received an email from a student who did not show up to the first day of class because she had the first day "written in her planner as Tuesday, June 15." I can only suspect that the wrong date was inadvertently written while she fiddled with her slide-rule and Trapper-Keeper.

Why must you turn my inbox into a house of lies?

Phoney Quality Time

In which your humble narrator reflects on the plugged-in parents at the playground.

The New York Times ran a story this week about parent using smart phones and ignoring their children. The descriptions of typical interactions largely mirrored the sort of thing I've observed on the playground. Harried parents bring their offspring to the park for some quality time, and spend the entire time on their phones. On a recent morning outing, we arrived at the park to find a mother and a little girl. The mother was on her phone when we arrived, and on her phone when we left 45 minutes later. The little girl was apparently only allowed to play within a 15 foot radius of the mother. One begins to wonder: what is the point? Surely she could ignore her child at home.

Regular readers might expect a full-throttle vitriolic screed at this point. But with an uncharacteristic spirit of charity I have to admit that I understand the impulse. I don't have a fancy phone, but I do stay home with the kids most days while simultaneously trying to "work." Sometimes all I want to do is to have the kids leave me alone for five minutes so I can keep my email inbox down to a manageable size. When classes are in session I make it a point to respond to student emails within 24 hours. This can obviously take up some time during regular childcare hours.

I think part of the issue is that, as parents, we're supposed to be in a state of filial bliss at all times. Certainly the child-centric culture of the past twenty years blares its expectations of personal fulfillment through "parenting."* If your precious little wunderkinds aren't making you happy, well then there must be something wrong with you.

Or not.

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.