Anderblog

December Blog Post

2009-12-31T10:13:00.002-05:00

I think it's so pathetic that I'm down to only one blog post a month. I still think it's because the laptops are busted, but I do occasionally sit down at my desktop or put the less-broken laptop on that one place on the dining room table where it can get a wireless signal, and I still don't blog. I play Bejeweled Blitz. I might be over that now, though. Now that I have an iPod Touch and can play Bejeweled any time I want, it's really lost its appeal.

Speaking of the iPod, I have finally realized my dream of having the app I've been wanting since I learned there was such a thing as an app, or maybe since Soren turned two: Time-Out. Enter age of child, press the "Start Time-Out" button, and it's on. When the child gets up or hits you as you walk by, you press the "Restart Time-Out" button. The app includes support for up to four children, so when Sigrid turns two, she can, and will, be added to the disciplinary system.

Maybe I've just been too busy to blog. The holidays have been great -- lots of time with family, playing games, eating good food (Christmas goose!), sledding, and relaxing. The relaxing equation may be a little lopsided right now, since Mom, Richard and Kelly Ann are currently taking care of Soren and Sigrid while Chris and I sit in a house in New Hampshire with our friends quoting the internet and pondering cake and eggs for our second breakfast. Thanks, Mom, Richard, and Kelly Ann! I hope the kids aren't screaming too much!

Nah, the kids are really good and fun. In fact, in a cruel twist of fate, Soren hasn't required a time-out since I downloaded the Tine-Out app. Don't think I'm not sitting with my finger on the button, waiting for him to ignore a warning, though. Anyway, Soren has been a lot of fun lately, and really enjoyed last week's snow, especially sledding at the park down the street. He's been way too chicken to enjoy sledding until this year, so it's a nice change. On one run, he even got some vertical going over a jump, then slid into a mesh barrier and fell over; we waited for the crying and demands to go home, but he surprised all of us by jumping up and yelling, "That was AWESOME!!!!!"

Sigrid is proto-walking and proto-talking, meanwhile. She says "MAAAAA-MEEEEE!" in a demanding tone, "Daaaaa-deeee!" in an adorable, loving tone, and "nom nom nom" when she sees food. And "ohhhhhh-ohhhh-ohhhhh BEEEEE!" when she wants to read So Big.

It's been an increasingly good 2009; here's to a uniformly great 2010!

Travels With Children

2009-11-25T17:23:00.007-05:00

This is a post about how things go when you have small children. Just precisely this way. I'm letting you know so you'll be prepared.

First of all, Soren, Sigrid and I went to visit our friends Ian and Renee (4-year-old and mom of 4-year-old, respectively). Sigrid napped for a while out in the car (in the driveway, far removed from the road, visible from the window, plus it was National Kidnappers Take the Day Off Day); Soren and Ian occasionally fought but mostly played, as they do; and Renee and I took on the kind of parenting responsibility that we usually adopt in this kind of situation, by which I mean we played Scrabble and told the boys to work out their own disagreements and popped up every few minutes to look out the window and make sure Sigrid was still a) in the car b) sleeping.

Eventually, I had taken a commanding enough lead in Scrabble that Renee wanted to quit, Sigrid had woken up and eaten trace amounts of lunch, Soren had refused lunch, and the boys had started doing more fighting than playing. We then decided it was time to go to an awesome indoor gym for little kids, about 20 minutes away, so the young ones could jump around on large foam things. We checked the gym's web site to make sure they were open, crammed all three car seats in the back of my car, and set off! Merrily!

Shortly thereafter began the screaming. It is not for me to speak of the screaming of the child of another, plus Ian wasn't doing that much of it anyway, so I will speak only of the screaming of my own progeny. There was a lot of screaming, mainly regarding the hunger one can only experience when one has refused to eat lunch. There was also the wordless rage and/or sadness of one who has spent too much time in the car already, or who has eaten only trace amounts of lunch, or who the hell knows because she's only one and can't talk yet. The back seat was a vortex of screaming.

I started playing a Beatles CD to try to distract Soren from screaming. What happened instead was that he screamed a bit, heard what was playing, and then started screaming about how he wanted me to start the song over again because he'd missed the beginning of the song because he'd been screaming.

Renee and I kept our cool. The promise of kids jumping on foam gym equipment stuff was our prize, and we kept our eyes on it.

And finally! We arrived! At the gym! We piled out of the car and ran to the door! And read the sign! Which said, "Closed for the day! See you soon!"

Moms throw tantrums, too, as it turns out. There's less screaming, but just as much pouting, and a lot more brainstorming regarding composition of angry emails to the proprietor of the gym.

Quick thinker that she is, Renee decided we should go to the Kettle Pond Nature Center, which has a bunch of fun stuff for kids to do, and which is also free, so that's a bonus. Perhaps there was less screaming on this leg of the trip, or perhaps I have repressed it. Either way, we arrived, and it was open, and there was fun stuff for kids to do. We colored a bit, and then Soren, Ian, and I did some puzzles while Sigrid and Renee kept coloring. At one point, I thought I smelled a suspicious smell, but discreet butt-sniffing failed to reveal any of our kids as a source; Renee said the one other kid who was also coloring seemed to have had beans for lunch, and we left it at that.

We then moved on to a different room, which featured displays of various local flora and fauna and an aquarium full of frogs and tadpoles. Soren and Ian were very interested in the frogs, and both stood up on a little step-stool to watch them; Renee and I started going through drawers and found fun things to play with, like some little devices that seemed to serve as bird song quizzes. I bragged enough about Scrabble earlier, so I don't think I need to talk about how hard I rocked the bird song quiz. Common Nighthawk BOOYAH.

Then Soren came over and asked, very innocently, "Why is there poop on this stool?" Ignoring the "stool/stool" pun potential, I looked at the step-stool in question and was very disappointed to find that there was, in fact, a little turd sitting neatly on the top step.

Whereupon began the process of figuring out who left stool on the stool: a delicate dance comprising gentle accusations; leading suggestions; point-blank interrogation; none-too-subtle smelling of the butt region; a voyage to the restroom to perform a thorough hand-washing, since he claimed to have touched the poo; and, at last, a visual inspection. Results: Soren was clean, and I felt bad for thinking it was him. On the other hand, I couldn't exactly go around accusing other people's children of pooping on the furniture.

Renee also determined that it wasn't her kid, so we were left with the unsavory task of telling the nature center docent about the poop which was not the fault of either of our children and must have been left by the other kid who had since departed. I offered the docent a handful of paper towels and gave her a look which clearly said Sorry to make you do this, but there's no way I, a mere visitor, am cleaning up some stranger's poo. We approached the stool. And the stool. She reached down with the paper towels. Picked up the turd. And laughed.

"It's scat," she said.

I then gave her a look which clearly said Well -- yeah, I guess, although they don't usually call it that unless it's animal doodie, and what's so funny anyway, and wait, did an animal really come in here and do its business? When? Huh?

"It's a model of animal scat. To help with identification. There are a bunch of different ones - we keep them in the drawers over there."

A fake piece of animal poop. Very realistic, I must add. We laughed, and took our leave.

It would be great to end the story with a hearty laugh about plastic muskrat scat, and singing of Beatles songs all the way home, but all the kids remembered they were hungry as soon as they got in the car, and OH GOD. THE SCREAMING.

Birthday Girl

2009-11-23T18:40:00.003-05:00

Sigrid turned one on November 20th, but it's been a Birthday Gala Month full of celebration and pomp.

There was family: Chris's parents came out a few weeks ago to throw Party #1; and a whole passel of my family (my dad, stepmom, mom, sister, and brother-in-law) came for impromptu Party #2.

There were cakes: one a delicious white cake from Providence's best bakery, impeccably decorated with amazing buttercream; and one made by Ichabod House's best baker and decorated sloppily with pretty purple and black icing to try to disguise the messed-up part. But it was also delicious, if I do say so myself.

And there was the birthday girl herself, full of joy and smiles (unless I left the room or tried to cook dinner). It's been an exciting year from the start, in good ways and bad, and we're enjoying her more and more every day as she enters year number two, which frankly I hope is a lot less exciting.

TRICK A TREEEEEAT

2009-10-30T11:42:00.003-04:00

I feel slightly ridiculous for dumping photos and a blog post online fifteen minutes after we get back from Soren's preschool Halloween party, but I'm trying to stay on top of things.

Soren, light of my heart, announced some time ago that he wanted to dress as a leaf pile for Halloween, and that made me love him even more than before. Dressing as a leaf pile is creative, pretty funny, and, best of all, requires no particular sewing skill on my part. Maybe it's weird that someone who's as addicted to knitting and other artistic pursuits as I am doesn't like sewing, but I don't. It's tedious. And I suck at precise measurement because I'm impatient. And sewing machines scare me because they make too much noise, so I have to sew everything by hand.

Oh, so how's this for a backhanded compliment? At the preschool today, one of the Pre-K teachers walked by and said to me, "I love his costume! It's just my kind of costume! When my kids were growing up they were always complaining, 'Mom, why do I have to wear this? You're so bad at sewing!'" Uh. Thanks? Is there even a compliment in there? Maybe it was just a big ol' backhand.

Anyway, judge for yourselves, and then keep it to yourselves unless it's an actual compliment. I think he looks pretty cute, myself.

Blast From the Past

2009-10-24T10:07:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I've been wasting time looking at files I archived in 1996. To celebrate, I will now share with you a poem I wrote about my work environment in the dining hall at Brown. Enjoy.

Dishroom: a complaint

As we slump in the dishroom in the morning,
We can imagine the most frigid landscape to be idyllic.
There must be birds chirping out there,
There must be cars honking or people walking,
Breezes blowing or laughter or fun or even sleep --
Something better than the monotony of conveyor belts,
The steam rising from the diabolical dishmachine,
The defective beeping of the soap dispensers.
O you mess makers, you half-eaters of food,
You pourers of excessive syrup,
Takers of a thousand juice glasses --
Who scrapes the soggy pancakes from your saccharine plates?
Who pries apart your bowls stuck together with Cheez Whiz?
Who feeds your soup cups into the infinite, rumbling dishmachine
And retrieves them at the other end when they emerge, bone-white and
hotter than suns?
When you send your silverware through with your tray, who screams in
frustration at your trespass?
We, we few, we miserable few,
Denizens of the humming room, the stagnant, humid room,
We who watch the milk curdle as we mix it with orange juice,
We who sweat and scrape at 8:45 when all of you leave at once to make your
9:00 classes,
We struggle to keep the conveyor belt from stopping.
There is no fun, no laughter in the dishroom --
There are only the conveyor belts.
I would like to write on the conveyor belt
An endless message to travel around and around,
An enduring inspiration for future prisoners --
I would like to write this thing, this monument,
But the conveyor belt runs the wrong way.
My hands are covered with syrup
And they won't even give us a radio.

Little Victories

2009-10-14T13:38:00.003-04:00

It's not all failed DMV trips, rotten gutters and busted Hondas around here. Good things happen, too. This week has had lots of little bright spots, which I will now list so that I have something to look back on next time all my tomato plants get completely fungified and have to be destroyed.

Not only has my tiny orchid NOT died, it has even successfully bloomed and is now gracing the kitchen windowsill with a 1" spike of 1/4" white flowers.
I tried making Cook's Illustrated's quick puff pastry recipe for homemade apple turnovers, and even though I totally didn't bring my A-game to the dough shaping, they turned out AWESOME. And then I ate three of them, so I am no longer suffering from a saturated fat deficiency!
My much-anticipated root saw arrived yesterday, and I used it to finally remove the 11" arborvitae stump from the front yard. My mystical quest to remove all existing bushes from the entire yard is now underway, and my weapon is called Yewbane.
I cleaned the bedroom.
Sigrid looks really cute in the dark teal hooded sweater I made for her.
I scored a big play rug (printed with roads, of course) for Soren for $10 at Job Lot. This was especially amazing because I went to Job Lot looking for that specific item.
Soren got to participate in a child-development research project with a Brown student yesterday (at the Children's Museum). It was pretty cute to watch, and yay for science!

Soren's Friend Cheerios

2009-10-05T20:50:00.002-04:00

Soren's been composing lots of songs lately, and although they seem impromptu, he clearly puts some work into composing (or at least remembering) them, because the lyrics are mostly the same from day to day. Chris managed to transcribe one the other day; it's about one of Soren's matchbox race cars which is apparently sponsored by Cheerios. And now, without further ado:

My Friend Cheerios

My friend Cheerios
He's the best
My friend Cheerios
He's the best
My friend Cheerios
He can split Cheerios into a bowl
My friend Cheerios
He can string Cheerios on a necklace, as cars do
My friend Cheerios
He can make space on the couch for all his friends to sing
My friend Cheerios
He can have a birthday cake -- but only one

A Penny Saved is a Penny Spent on Something Else

2009-09-18T14:53:00.003-04:00

I just thought that up, but I like it.

We're just saving money all over the place this year! The gutters did NOT cost $28,000! The car is still under warranty, so we won't be spending $3800 on a new engine, unless Honda goes through some major contortions to avoid paying out, like declaring that the engine is no longer part of the powertrain! I love the word "powertrain"! And the word "harbormaster"! But that's neither here nor there.

On the other hand, who knew that it would cost so much to have a big pile of branches taken to the dump? And who could have guessed that we would end up paying someone to paint the new (wooden) gutters because we didn't feel like doing it ourselves? Actually, I guessed that last part.

In all, though, if you operate under the "a penny saved is a penny earned" philosophy, we made some decent money this summer, and we should totally spend our windfall on a huge TV and a pony.

Cleaning Conundrums

2009-09-11T14:42:00.003-04:00

Paradoxes? Perhaps! Dilemmas? Definitely! Cleaning Conundrum Quiz!

1. What do you do when you want to declutter your old house because you want to reduce the number of potential spider lurking spots, but then you're thwarted by spiders perched on the stuff you're trying to put away?

2. When the baby gets hold of a BJ's bottle of liquid soap and dumps a quarter of it on the floor and starts smushing it around with her hands and feet, is it funny that you then have to mop the floor and give the baby a bath? Or is that just annoying?

3. If you really need to vacuum the baby's room, but only get a chance to clean while she's napping in said room, can you find someone to spin dust bunnies into yarn and then knit it into a sweater while the baby's napping?

When the Laptop Breaks, it's the Blog that Suffers

2009-09-07T10:13:00.002-04:00

We have, shall we say, a flight of broken laptops right now: one from the 2004 G4 Powerbook vintage, which crashes every time you even slightly nudge it; one 2007 Macbook Pro, which only gets a wireless signal if it's sitting on top of the router; and one month-old Macbook Pro which is no longer on speaking terms with its own keyboard and trackpad. This is not to say that Apple does not offer a high-quality product. Leave Apple out of this. This is merely to say that my desktop (a delightful '06 Mac Mini) is the only functioning computer in the house at the moment, and it's all the way upstairs in my office where it was really really hot for a couple weeks there, and then we went on vacation to Santa Barbara, and then my older sister came to visit, and that's why I haven't been blogging. I am mainly making excuses for the benefit of the various grandparents who follow this blog. The rest of you probably didn't even NOTICE that there was only one post in all of August, and I think I'll go eat worms.

Anyway, it's been a busy month. The gutters done been fixed, which is great, although now they need to be painted, which I frankly don't plan on ever getting around to, so we'll probably hire someone. A bunch of gross overgrown bushes were cut down during the gutter project, and now the carcasses are sitting in the side yard waiting to be 1) chopped up and stuffed into countless yard waste bags; or 2) dragged across the street in the middle of the night and thrown into the woods, hopefully without any cops noticing; neither of which I plan on ever getting around to, so we'll probably hire someone. To chip everything, that is, not drag it across the street.

Meanwhile, we all went to Santa Barbara and enjoyed lounging around with Gramma and Grampa Richie and Kelly Ann. We experimented for the very first time with sharing a room (i.e. Chris, me, and both kids), and it went well until the last couple nights, when both children took turns crying and keeping each other awake. It's a good thing that didn't happen the first night, or we would have spent a lot of money on some enormous hotel suite for the remainder of the trip. When the room-sharing was good, though, it was very good; Soren and Sigrid seemed to enjoy waking up in the same room, and Soren even sang a few songs to his baby sister. The only one I can recall went something like "The dark night is oooooverrrr, and the sun came up! Yes, the sun came up! Oh, the sun came up!" It was very sweet. When we weren't sharing a room, we were doing all kinds of things like walking to Shoreline Park, driving R/C boats in the pool, going to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, visiting with friends, buying tiny orchids for each other, and waiting for the batteries in Soren's new toy train to wear out. We had a wonderful time, and I'd love to write in more detail, but it would be so much quicker just to post pictures.

Don't B A Tom8o H8er

2009-08-03T20:55:00.003-04:00

The post title doesn't really mean anything. I just wanted to write "tom8o h8er". Since you asked, though, one of our garden tomatoes is starting to get ripe, which means that the tomato avalanche is beginning. 9 plants X 35+ tomatoes per plant = I am a tomato farmer. Expect lots of pictures of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes soon. In case you hadn't noticed, I <3 tom8oz, and gardening in general.

You will be pleased to know that we have chosen a carpenter, one who did not quote us $28,000, but I'm not going to jinx things by claiming that it will actually cost less than $28,000. The water stain inside my office tells me that there's more than just a gutter that's going to need replacing. And that really worries me, because water stains definitely shouldn't be speaking.

And now, for the grandparents in the audience, stories about the kids. First of all, if you haven't been in Soren's company in the past month, you might not be aware that he can now identify every make of car in the US, or at least the ones we see in our daily travels, by its logo. We were driving on the freeway today, and I could hear him in the back seat saying, "That's a Nissan. That's a Lexus. That's a Bokeswagen." Etc. Some people ask, "Why are you teaching him all the kinds of cars?" Like I'm grooming him to become the world's foremost expert in automotive field identification or something. The kid wants to know what the different cars are called, so I tell him. And now he knows all of them. He also owns half of them, in the form of Matchbox cars. You'd think that with a collection of 9800000 cars, a few might get ignored, but he cherishes each and every one. Very sweet.

Sigrid, meanwhile, cherishes Soren's toys as well, and has been working on getting within grabbing range of them. She can scoot around on her belly with some speed at this point, and is now getting interested in pulling up. Soren's not a huge fan of this, but he still seems to like her. Don't tell him that when he's not around, I plop Sigrid down in the middle of his play rug and let her stick all his cars in her mouth. I wonder what my mom used to let my sister do my stuff when I wasn't around. Parenthood really makes you think.

Gutter Bawl

2009-07-18T11:07:00.003-04:00

We have an old, old house with old, old wooden trough gutters which need replacing. To this end, I've been getting, or trying to get, estimates from a number of carpenters. I'm sure you'll be interested to hear my results so far.

Carpenter 1: Can't fit us in until mid-winter and also said that if I happen to know any carpenters looking for work, I should let him know. Good for him, I guess.

Carpenter 2: Won't take the job because it's a historic home and there's too much paperwork involved. Rough life.

Carpenter 3: Gave me a reasonable quote a long time ago and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

Carpenter 4: Tried to convince me that the preservation society probably wouldn't mind if we replaced the wooden troughs with seamless aluminum.

Carpenter 5: Very nice, professional, clearly knows what he's doing, wants the job done right, has plenty of experience with historic homes. I got his quote yesterday. For roughly 120 feet of wooden gutter, with related scaffolding, teardown, flashing, etc., he wants:

Wait for it:

Twenty-eight thousand dollars.

The estimate also specifies that the job will require about 530 man-hours of work.

I am still a little speechless about this, so I will just point out that Chris and I, an economist and a graphic designer, basically built an entire room on our previous house, and while we were lazy about it and took more than a year to get around to finishing the job, I don't think there's any way it took us 530 man-hours.

Here's the main thing. I'd rather spend four thousand dollars every ten years on the gutters than twenty-eight thousand dollars for gutters that will last seventy years. Because I will be dead by then. Also, I do not have twenty-eight thousand dollars to spend on gutters.

Luckily, I have at least one reasonable estimate from a guy who seems like he can handle the job, and a couple more quotes on the way. Wish me luck.

OMGWTFDMV

2009-07-16T15:31:00.002-04:00

HOW TO TRANSFER AN OUT-OF-STATE AUTOMOBILE REGISTRATION IN RHODE ISLAND

1. Ensure that you have the correct documents: VIN inspection report; TR-1 Application; Form T-333-1; proof of residency; and vehicle title.

2. Have a full sippy cup and two kinds of snacks ready when you pick your toddler up from day camp, as well as a backpack which unzips to reveal a road playmat; fill backpack with Matchbox cars. This will keep your toddler entertained at the DMV.

3. Set off merrily to the West Warwick DMV, thankful that you don't have to go to the Seventh Circle of Pawtucket.

4. Resist the urge to listen to that voice in your head that starts up every time you try to go somewhere new in Rhode Island. This voice likes to wait until you're pretty sure you've missed your unmarked turn and then start screaming "BAIL BAIL BAIL OH GOD TURN AROUND NOW," and you used to obey, only to find that you hadn't driven far enough yet originally and so you had to turn around again, and lo, there was your turn about 500 feet beyond the point where the voice had started yelling at you. Anyway, resist the urge to bail, and bask in the glory of persistence, finding Rt. 33 East, and not being bossed around by crazy voices in your head.

5. Pull into a vacant spot right in front of the DMV building. Get a bad feeling.

6. Hop out and find that the West Warwick branch of the DMV appears to have been closed for some time, and maybe that's why it wasn't on the DMV web site even though you found it listed on other web sites. Wonder why you had thought there might be some secret ninja DMV branch that no one knows about. These things don't happen.

7. Refuse to dial Information on your cell phone because it costs a dollar, and try Google's phone thingy even though you know it only has commercial listings. Get the result you figured you would get.

8. Decide for some reason that you'd rather go to Pawtucket than spend a dollar dialing Information to find out where the Wakefield DMV branch is.

9. Attempt to be fancy about finding your way to the interstate, while in the process needing to turn around because you ONCE AGAIN mixed up east and west. For the love of all that is good and holy, you have three-quarters of an Ivy League education, so WHY can't you JUST ONCE get that right the first time?

10. Find interstate. Drive north. Stop at Whole Foods to pick up some coffee and a couple cookies -- one for you, and one for the so-far angelic toddler.

11. Make the requisite number of wrong turns in downtown Pawtucket before finally getting to the DMV.

12. See the number of cars in the parking lot. Ask yourself that timeless question that humans have been asking themselves since they became self-aware: Why am I here? Except, in this case, by "here" you mean "Pawtucket".

13. Sigh a mighty sigh and gather up all your children and supplies and head in to the DMV.

14. Where's the thing where you take the number?

15. Well, here's a long line for registrations. This must be where I'm supposed to go.

16. But what if this isn't right? What if I get to the front of the line and they tell me I should have taken a number somewhere and then I have to start waiting all over again some where else?

17. BAIL BAIL BAIL BAIL

18. See that there is really nobody to ask re: the take-a-number thing or the long line. Get back in line.

19. Give the kid a cookie.

20. When he finishes the cookie, open up his backpack and give him some cars, but not as many cars as he thinks you should give him, and then get down on the floor and play cars with him for a little while so he won't start screaming.

21. Bask in the admiration of some women who appreciate that you're down on the floor playing cars with a three-year-old. It's nice to have your good work appreciated.

22. Continue this for, oh, 45 minutes.

23. Finally get to the front of the line and present your complete and thorough folder of documents to the nice lady, who makes some chit-chat about how cool it is that your car is from Alaska and what you think about Sarah Palin.

24. At this juncture, the woman will see that you have everything you need.

25. Except you didn't get the signature of the second owner of the car notarized.

26. Come on, you knew something like this was going to happen.

27. And WHY THE @#&$^%^@# do you even have a second owner on the damn car? Isn't it enough that YOU own it? Why does your husband have to own it too??????? MOTHER$#*&%^&!@#&^&@#&$&&^&$#%^()*@#^&$&%^#

28. Think entirely in swears for about seven minutes.

29. Load everyone back in the car and go home.

30. Blow up your car. That way, you don't have to get it registered.

31. Be thankful for your two wonderful children who didn't throw any major fits. They are the best.

Bum Rap

2009-07-05T11:44:00.002-04:00

On a recent walk, Soren informed Chris and me that he needed "a big big big big big big stick to measure your bums." THANKS.

East Greenwich Music and Wildlife 2009

2009-06-27T19:17:00.003-04:00

Last year, it was bagpipes and owls and foxes; this year, it's brass bands and hummingbirds and deer. The bagpipers seem to have moved on to another venue, or maybe demand for bagpipe artistry is another victim of this economy, or else they all got some kind of brain infection that caused them to actually hear the instruments they were playing; in any case, Wednesday night is no longer Bagpipe Night at Ichabod House. Bummer. I guess.

I haven't seen any owls so far this summer, but I also haven't been looking for them. On the other hand, I also wasn't looking for a teeny tiny hummingbird nest in our ash tree, and I found that, so I guess I'm doing something right.

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you have to ask someone if they did something that only an idiot would do, and you know that person isn't an idiot, but the thing happened, and you can't think of a good alternate explanation, so you go ahead and ask the person anyway and make it seem like you think he's an idiot? No? Well, anyway, on a related note, I asked Chris last week whether he had happened to swerve wildly the last time he'd mowed the lawn, thus shearing off the tops of all the hostas along the edge of the backyard. With a look that said My God, what kind of idiot do you take me for? he replied that no, he had not shaved all the hostas with the lawnmower. In fact, we have been visited by a deer. I've seen her eating the shrubbery across the road every day for the past week, and the neighbor's hostas have been clipped as well, and I don't think Chris ran next door with the lawnmower just to destroy the landscaping, so all signs point to the deer.

As for the brass band, there was a small brass ensemble playing at the church ice cream social up the street. I don't have a witty story about that. We enjoyed hearing it.

Potty Mouth

2009-06-13T12:31:00.002-04:00

I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that this post actually has nothing to do with the potty.

Since Soren learned to talk about five years ago, I've been pretty good about watching my language in front of him. In fact, he's only picked up one curse from me, and it isn't one of the really bad ones, so I consider that a victory. He was taking a bath a few months ago (he's had a couple more since then), and I remembered that I'd forgotten to bring my library books back or something like that and said "Dammit!" Of course, as soon as it left my mouth, I knew it would come back to haunt me, because kids and parrots love to repeat words spoken with a lot of emotion. Leland never did learn any curses that we could decipher, but now "dammit" has entered Soren's vocabulary. He's only said it a couple times, and only busts it out when our friend Bryn is around, for some reason. She must be a bad influence. (I kid)

So yesterday, Bryn and her boys were visiting, and Soren dropped the D-bomb. I calmly called him over and let him know that it wasn't a nice word, and that if he said it again, he would get a time-out. A couple minutes later, whaddya know, I had to give him a time-out.

He sat out his three minutes without much trouble, and when the timer went off, he came down for his usual hug and non-specific apology, which prompts me to ask for a little more detail because I want to make sure he remembers what he got in trouble for in the first place:

"Sorry, Mama."

"Sorry for what?"

You know what's coming, right? Because I did.

"Sorry for saying 'dammit'."

So I sent his butt straight back into time-out.

Awww, no, not really. I just let him know that maybe next time (not that there will be one, right?) he could say "Sorry for saying a bad word" instead.

Blogging is Hard

2009-06-09T21:58:00.002-04:00

It involves typing so many WORDS all right after each other. Lots of things have been happening lately, too, which means even more words need to be typed to communicate all the happenings.

Our little boy turned THREE on June 2nd! We went to the Children's Museum with our friends Bryn, Xavi and Maxi the morning of Soren's birthday, so he got to run around and play and get all tuckered out, and then he took a three-hour nap, and then he woke up on the wrong side of the big-boy bed and whined the whole time he was opening his presents from Grammy and Grampy. Besides that, it was a very lovely day. We have since abolished naptime, since it seems to be doing more harm than good lately.

We had a little party on Sunday and invited Soren's friends Ian and Xavi (as well as their associated parents, since they needed rides, and Xavi's baby brother, since he couldn't very well stay home alone). I baked a red velvet cake (Soren had asked for a red cake after I suggested that his original request, a white cake with white frosting, might need a little color), which was well-received even though it wasn't red enough, and the boys played in the yard while the grown-ups ate oysters and grilled pizza and drank sweet sweet sangria. Your typical third birthday party. Hey, we sang Happy Birthday and ate cake, and he got presents and had fun and felt special, so we got the job done. I'll upload the (very cute) pictures soon.

As proof that he is officially a big boy, Soren is fully potty trained! He is completely diaper-free -- even at night, which blows my mind. I'm very proud, and so is he. I still can't convince him to use anything but his potty chair, though, so we'll have to work on introducing him to the full-size toilet unless we want to start carting the potty around everywhere we go. I'm not sure how to go about making that transition -- he's really resistant to it so far. At this point, though, I'm way too happy about his progress to worry about it much.

Schkernky is also doing well, and is working on rolling all over the place and sitting independently. She's also working on making my life miserable by waking up several times a night and being unwilling to fall asleep anywhere but the swing or the car. The potty training success has left me feeling like I can do anything with my crazy parenting skillz, so I am now picking a fight with Sigrid about sleep. She will learn to fall asleep in her crib. This is my mission. It is a mission fraught with much crying and wasting money on expensive Fisher Price Aquarium Bubble And Light Action Crib Soothers That Don't Seem To Be Working. But I will not back down, and I will face these obstacles with back-patting and shushing at intervals of increasing length over the course of each night, as well as a thorough review of Babies 'R Us's return policy. In the end, I will emerge victorious, with a self-soothing baby in her crib and $44.99 credited to my Visa. It will be beautiful. You just wait.

Have I Ever Told You...

2009-05-29T15:14:00.002-04:00

... my racy letterpress limerick? You won't get it, but I feel like showing it off anyway. There are a total of 9 letterpress/printing references, including some homophones.

A gal fair of form and of face
You should strive to impress, just in case
She may someday be led
To be tied up in bed
But her type likes the thrill of the chase.

Mainly I'm just posting this so that someone can get a good result if they Google "racy letterpress limerick".

In other news, if it were sunny and twenty degrees warmer, the weather would be perfect.

Go Potty Go Potty Go Potty Go

2009-05-25T17:28:00.003-04:00

We've been working on Soren's potty training for the past week, which is a little hard to sustain at the moment because I don't feel like sitting around the house all day for a week, which is what it seems to require. But we'll have to deal with it eventually, so i figure I'll start off with a half-assed effort and see how that works out. So far, it's OK -- he seems to have the necessary control and awareness of the relevant processes, so he has used the potty successfully a number of times, and yet he does not have the ability to put his diaper back on, so there's nothing he can do about his (short-lived) antipathy toward Potty Time. Grammy sent us a couple potty training videos which are purported to be successful, and Soren certainly does enjoy watching them and singing along with the songs and claiming that, like Paige and Parker Panda, he wears big kid underwear every day. That last item is a lie. We bought him some Cars underwear, but he hasn't put it on yet.

Sigrid, meanwhile, is working on the essential skills of eating, sleeping, and not eating when she's supposed to be sleeping. She's being a little difficult about these things (I'd say she's being very difficult, but I know she's being easy on us in the grand scheme of things). I haven't even tried giving her a bottle lately, since I really seem to be getting nowhere with that, and have instead been giving her some solid food. You know, the basics -- rice cereal, mashed bananas, guacamole, that kind of thing. She digs it in theory, but is not very good at keeping the food in her mouth or swallowing it. She usually gets so excited about the food you put in her mouth that she screeches and sends it oozing into her neck folds. We should probably bathe her more often than we do.

She's also being a pill about going to sleep in her crib. She'll do it 5% of the time, although she'll sleep fine in there if she's already snoozing when you put her down. The rest of the time, she will only fall asleep in the swing. For whatever reason, I really want to pick a fight with her about this, so I keep putting her in the crib, and she keeps yelling for extended periods of time with no sign of stopping until we finally cave and put her in the swing. Chris thinks it's more important to get her used to sleeping 7-hour stretches at night than it is to get her to accept the crib, and I know he's right, but it still bugs me. Why don't children just do as they're told????? Punks.

Luckily, they're cute.

I'm excited because Soren has been writing letters and a couple names ("Soren" and "Ian")! It's so cool! He even drew a picture the other day, of "a cake and an animal that wants to eat the cake". He claims to have drawn the picture for his birthday. I scanned his renditions of his and Ian's names:

"Ian" reads from right to left.

"Soren" is written kind of in a circle; the S is sideways, middle right, and the rest of the letters read clockwise from there (the "N" went off the paper a bit).

I'm so proud!

One for the Grandmothers

2009-05-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

I'd like to give a shout out to the grandmothers today! I happen to know that Nana (Kathy, my stepmom) checks every day to see if there's something new on the blog, which means she suffers disappointment about 95% of the time; sorry about that. I know Grammy (Margie, Chris's mom) checks regularly as well -- not sure if it's every day or every hour. That's a lot of pressure. Gramma (Claudia, my mom) may be subscribed to the RSS feed, so she gets some kind of trumpet fanfare every four months when I post something. The other two grandmothers might want to look into that to save time.

All three are clearly devoted to their lovely grandkids, and I should probably post more often so they can get more details about Soren's and Sigrid's daily doings. I certainly wish we could get together more often.

Happy Mother's Day, grandmothers! We love you!

Quiet Time: Now With Less Noise

2009-05-05T15:30:00.004-04:00

Soren took an hour-long nap today! Taking all the scatterable toys (i.e. his three sets of magnetic letters and the butterflies from the Elefun game) seems to have helped keep quiet time a little quieter. Chris gets full credit for that idea. Soren spends more time reading books now and less time making crashing noises. I heard him sounding out some words yesterday -- "Ssss....mmmm....eh..ull...ull...yuh. Smelly." Pretty cute.

Last night, Chris was putting Sigrid in her crib, and I wanted to share my observation that she flips onto her stomach in one direction exclusively. If you put her toward the wrong side of the crib, she gets hung up against the bars when she turns over, which makes her mad. My advice to Chris, therefore: "Put her against the far end of the crib so she can move toward the middle, because that's how she rolls."

Aww yeeeeah.

The End of an Era

2009-05-01T16:02:00.003-04:00

Soren has always been a good sleeper. He started sleeping 7 hours straight at 7 weeks old, and hasn't made a fuss about it since. He's even been excellent about taking a nice looooong nap (2.5 hours) pretty much every day in the last year.

But no more. He's only napped once this week. He's upstairs right now, actually, in the process of figuring out what "Quiet Time in Your Room" entails. (Hint: it does not entail yelling down the stairs every five minutes that you want to come downstairs)

I don't know about him, but I really need Quiet Time. Ever since he's been out of day care, I've tried to engage with him during the vast majority of his waking hours (except when Sigrid needs something or he's busy playing with other kids). I wonder sometimes if I should leave him to his own devices more often, since he hasn't been playing independently very much lately. Plus I have that other kid who seems to want attention sometimes. She seems mostly happy grabbing her toes and watching Soren do stuff, but I'm not sure that's a recipe for a fulfilling childhood. Anyway, Mama needs some alone time to recharge in the afternoon, and maybe I've been spoiled by both kids napping at the same time, but if it's wrong to be spoiled, I don't want to be right. Because being right is tiring.

We'll see how well the Quiet Time thing catches on. I've noticed he's quietest when he's doing things he's not supposed to be doing. Maybe I should stock his room with Sharpies, jars of rainbow sprinkles, and the diaper bag.

To balance out the universe, however, Sigrid slept from 9:30 to 7:30 last night! I'll take some more of that.

Singer/Songwriter

2009-04-22T14:31:00.002-04:00

One of the fun things about having kids is the fact that you can make up weird songs for them and they won't think you're insane until they turn ten. I think my talents as a lyricist have been underappreciated, maybe because my fan base consists of two people under the age of three. But I sure do know what my audience likes. Take the timeless classic The Baby Truck Song, for instance. I've posted the lyrics on the blog before, but why not trot it out again?

[Sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star]

Baby trucks are very nice
Kiss them once and kiss them twice
Whisper something in their ears
I don't know if trucks can hear
Baby trucks are very nice
Kiss them once and kiss them twice

I've made up a couple songs for Sigrid which don't have set lyrics, per se; they're more improvisational.

[To the tune of What Do Ye Do With a Drunken Sailor]

What do ye do with a naked baby
What do ye do with a naked baby
What do ye do with a naked baby
Earlye in the mornin'?

Put her in her crib until she's sober
Put her in her crib until she's sober
Put her in her crib until she's sober
Earlye in the mornin'!

Hey-oh, and up she rises
etc.

And this one, inspired by her nickname (Schkernky), "sung" to the "tune" of the admittedly vulgar song Berserker from Clerks:

She is wearing stripy pants, a Schkernker
And she has a fuzzy head, a Schkernker
Kicking with her tiny feet, a Schkernker
Does she need a diaper change, a Schkernker

Not all my most popular works are kid-related. There's one I like to sing when we're making toast, because our stupid toaster oven insists on making an annoying ticking-timer sound the ENTIRE TIME the heating element is on, like I need a constant reminder that it's doing something. Anyway, the song goes like this, and is sung along with the ticking.

Making toast, making toast
Here I am, I'm making toast
I hope you will like the toast
That I make for you

Would you like butter on your toast
Or would you like jelly on it
You can have anything you like
On your luscious toast

Now, the tune to The Toast Song.... well, you know the "Helllooooooo!!!" voice on Seinfeld? I think one of Jerry's girlfriends had a weird-looking belly button that looked like it was talking to him, and he made up this funny voice for the belly button, and he and George and Kramer went around for a while saying "Hellllooooooo!" to each other in the weird voice. Anyway, imagine that belly button singing a song about toast, and you pretty much have the tune of The Toast Song.

Of course, I didn't come by this songwriting talent completely out of the blue -- I have to give full credit to my dad, who is bit of an accomplished singer/songwriter himself. I'll leave you with the lyrics to one of his best works. This song meant a lot to Erica and me when we were growing up, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that it still brings tears to our eyes. Without further ado: The Dump Song.

We're goooooooo-ing to the dump
To the dump
To the dump!

We're goooooooo-ing to the dump
To the dump
To the dump!

We're goooooooo-ing to the dump
To the dump
To the dump!

[ad infinitum]

Eye Candy

2009-04-14T09:13:00.002-04:00

I have things to write about, such as Easter fun, my deep fear of wind turbines, and an analysis of why Facebook is better now for old people like me than it ever will be for subsequent generations of old people, but I don't have time to deal with any of that right now. Instead, please enjoy some lovely children.

Trash Talk

2009-04-05T09:57:00.002-04:00

I was playing Mario Kart last night for Soren's amusement, racing the courses he requested (usually Bowser's Castle and Mushroom Gorge) while trying to hold Sigrid in my lap and keep her from grabbing the controller. So my usually superior skillz were severely compromised. At one point, when I fell off a bridge into a lake of molten lava for the third time, this conversation ensued:

Soren: Mama, what's that sound?

Me: Um, what sound? I'm not sure.

Soren: That's the sound of you not playing very well.

Did I just get smacked down by a two-year-old??? Excuse me? Well, at least we know where he got the sassiness from.