Conversations with boys

It's funny 'cause it's true.

Midwest vacation

Freshly returned from the Wisconsite hinterland, we present 693 of your new favorite pictures. (The Northeastern vacation, which occurred before we'd set up the Flickr Pro account, is documented less substantively here.)

P.S. 01: About 20% of these pictures, by the way, are the somewhat obscure type that She calls, derisively, "art": intentional blurs, textures, or giant hissing cockroaches. The first Flickr Pro who can tell me how to easily get the art out of the set without deleting it wins the Boy's autograph.

P.S. 02, to parents: Flickr is a service like Snapfish, or Picasa, that allows you to order prints online. You can mail them to yourself, or pick them up at Target. These enormous image files should make good-quality prints as big as 8" x 10". Go wild.


Edit, 19 August: Aunty Christy's pics are posted here.

Sitting on it

Coins aren't a regular part of unsupervised play – there are still noses and ears to be considered – but The Kid loves finding "money," and it was fine that he came up to the counter and found two twenty-five-cent "moneys" while I did the dishes. After rubbing their edges together for a minute, he asked for help putting them in his pocket. As we both sat down, we had this exchange:


Did you get all your money?

I have all my moneys.

Where did it go?

It's in my pocket!

What are you going to do with it?

(Brow furrowed, as in 'Are you stupid man?') Sit on it! I sit on it in my rocking chair.


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So maybe he had the good fortune to be born with his aunt's fiscal sensibility rather than his dad's.

Cameron Simpson

This portrait courtesy of the good people at Simpsonize Me.

Now wasting your bandwidth, not just your time

Santa brought Mom a video recorder.

A new kind of tired

Her mom came out from Mannahatta for Mother's Day. No one was sure that that was in the spirit of the 'holiday,' but as Grandma pointed out, "you're a mother, too." So Grandma rode the bus, and arrived with bagels (still warm), lox and cream cheese. (The Boy has found his muse in cream cheese, by the way. It's ten days later and he still asks, nearly every morning, for "the white butter.")

Our contribution to the Kosher Lunch Festival was a bottle of white wine that She picked up the night before. Both of 'em are lightweights, and didn't even finish the half-glasses that they poured themselves with lunch. I don't know from wine, but I know from budget; as I prepped for an afternoon at the playground, I put water in the two yellow sip cups, then dumped the remaining wine into the pink sip cup. I figured whoever wasn't driving might enjoy a little secret sauce. They're insulated! It's fun to be a covert playground lush! She didn't think this was such a good idea.

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Have I mentioned that I never drank a cup of coffee prior to my thirty-fifth birthday? It was kind of along the lines of a personal sin tax. The thought process wasn't about aversion, the way I avoided booze & smokes, so much as: okay, it's an acquired taste. Well, given that it's basically bad for me, and that in every habit I harbor, I tend toward excess, let's just not acquire it. If I stopped by your house with some small rocks, and told you that sucking them could make you pleasantly jittery and irritable, and eventually you'd get used to the taste and even like it, and it would only set you back a few bucks at the market every week, would you suck some rocks to see how well they worked?

Yes, you would. As would I. I'm on my third cup as I write this.

(An aside - I mean, not my usual digression, but a real aside - if you want to read more prattle about drinking coffee, prattle I didn't write but recommend, here's a terrific paragraph by Jim Crace.] [Link to come.]

Coffee was a conscious choice, because this is a new kind of tired. I've worked summer stock theatre, and anyone who gets the reference will know what it means: I know what it is to be tired. But this is a new kind of tired, and it's coming when I 'm closer to fifty than I am to twenty. the other day, I realized that I was sitting on the third step on the staircase, idly-but-seriously trying to parse: if cooked, would I contain both white meat and dark meat? And if not, would my texture be more like beef or lamb?

I've often compared and contrasted rearing boys to rearing dogs (including, briefly, here, but more often aloud in conversation). Having the Kid around the house is no longer like having a demure, two legged pup. It is like having a caffeinated lemur with Attention Deficit Disorder. He leaps, shrieks and grabs. There's baby proofing, and there's baby proofing, and I had forgotten how hard we had to work when we went through this with The Boy. I had honestly forgotten that it means taking down all frames with glass in them. Clearing everything off the top of every dresser because he can get there. He can get onto the dresser! He's not even three feet tall! He's like a grasshopper!

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Monday morning is a time for breakfast. It's a time to start off the week right, particularly if you're three and there are so many available ways of starting it wrong. I made waffles; I cooked bacon. I served breakfast, and got down vitamins. I started cleaning dishes when The Boy pointed out that he didn't have any orange juice. No juice! At mention of it, The Kid starts to bay jooose! Jooose! Drop everything! Here's some OJ! Here are two cups! Cut the OJ half-and-half with water! Screw on the top! Serve it up!

The Boy pulled a swig (ever try to drink from one of those things? Some work is involved) and made a face. He held it out to me with the somber observation: "Daddy, this is not fresh."

Yep, I served my three-year-old son a concoction I call a Bum's Mimosa: one part organic Tropicana orange juice, one part warm, day-old white wine.

It took less than twenty minutes

Daddy was on the phone with Sears.

Envy me / Pity me

Envy me.

The Kid came in and woke me early, as he's done every day this week, but then went on his way without much further input. I might have preferred to sleep until oh I don't know SIX, but given that that wasn't an option, lying in bed reading magazines for an hour while the sun shone in and birds sang loudly wasn't a bad second choice.

Eventually, like the iron filings they are, the monsters all (including the dogs) gravitated to me, and we all stumbled downstairs together at seven. Out onto the deck, where we all (including the dogs) ate cereal and drank orange juice. (The dogs have the Kid to thank for their share of breakfast.) I read the Times while The Boy had a second helping of Organic Cereal In Smug Packaging The breeze blowing o'er the fields across the way reinforced the pastoral setting. The whinny of the horses up the road getting their morning constitutional was interrupted only by the sound of the school buses going by. iTunes served Dave Brubeck followed by Thelonious Monk. I cleared the table, baby-proofed the kitchen and took a hot shower.


Pity me.

While I showered (in general, I prefer a nice, soul-cleansing, womb-returning, wallpaper-loosening three-hour orgy of hot water and suds, which I still observe sometimes on weekends, but this was my usual weekday responsible-parent slip-in-soap-up-rinse-off-roll-on-home), The Kid took a crap in his diaper, then loosened one of its strips, so most of its contents spilled onto the (white) rug in his room. Its other strip remained intact, though, so swung around his ankle like a tetherball as he wandered out of his room, leaving little tidbits; he then used his new weight and proficiency to defeat the baby gate that stands silent, now useless sentry over the door to the office. (The office is, in theory, the one Adult Safe Zone here at Toad Hall.)

To exercise his newfound freedom, he used a brown Sharpie to decorate the Wacom tablet and his own chubby arm. The only document he pulled off the desk was the multi-page contract confirming Her new job, which was awaiting only a signature and a stamp, but is now covered in poopy-foot poop (from stepping in the diaper). He gave the FM transmitter a good enough knock that I am now listening to right-channel-only mono. And did I mention that The Boy also dropped a load in his diaper? Did I mention that he's so old and so big, now, that when he does, what I clean up is roughly the mass and weight of an adult human head?







On the way to school, The Boy asked, "Daddy, what are we doing?" which is one of his usual Zen inscrutables (the most common is "What's that?," while not looking or pointing at anything). Today, though, I had a good answer:

"We're driving fast and playing the radio loud, because that's what you do on a morning when you get poo on your hands."

I mean, it is, right? Isn't it what you'd do?

Light reading

The Kid is still half of a person; he Sort Ofs. He sort of communicates, and sort of plays with you. I mean, there's a lot of interaction, and his brain is full every day, but the nature of being two years old is that he's still taking in a lot more than he's giving back (as opposed to his brother, who gives back all day).

Anyway, he's still prone to Favorite Things. An odd or end gets picked up and serves, for a day or two, as a totem containing the meaning of life. For the last two days, it's been a little book. It's just the right size for his little fingers. He carries his little book around the house; he insisted on taking it in the car when we picked up The Boy from school. Today he took it to his crib; he's napping with it right now.

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When my normal infrequent posting schedule seems to dry entirely up, it's usually because I've finally got enough work that I'm actually busy. So when you don't hear from me for two weeks at a time, be happy. (I know, I know, you already were. Fine. Ha, ha.)

The snow is starting to melt

and we've got mud puddles to visit.

Goes down smooth

Sweet, memorable moments.

Dropped The Boy off at school and came home with The Kid. He naps in the morning, but he went to bed mighty early last night, so this morning's nap might be short or canceled. I put him down and let him scoot around while I put snowy shoes away and hung up his down jacket. He was pretty peaceable, so I trusted him downstairs for a moment while I came up to change my shirt.

As I rebuttoned, I heard him downstairs, clanking happily, so I took an extra minute to check for an email from Chris. Nothing there, but I still heard him bonking on plastic animals and toy cell phones, so I took an extra minute to drink coffee and read the back half of the newspaper. Finally, one sane moment of respite later, I came back downstairs where I found him still contentedly bonking away on his toys.

Eating a stick of butter.

Four-day weekend is here -

Life is always hard these days, but sometimes it's also sweet.

Carrots: good.

Summer: also good.

Tiny shoes

The pictures in this entry are accurate but falsified: staged, the next day, for the dizzying visual thrill they provide.

As routines go, it’s a very routine routine. Three days a week, The Boy is at preschool at nine. That leaves The Kid and me with 150 minutes to kill before picking him up. The Kid still wants a nap in the morning if he can grab one, so this becomes my window to do whatever I’m doing – send letters looking for freelance work, or do some freelance work, or sit around worrying about the money I’m not earning from freelance work.

Now, it’s also been a lesson for me in the malleability of humans. I’m sure it illustrates something more interesting than our tendency to form habits, but that’s what I get out of the fact that a twenty-month-old, roused from a nap three times a week at 11:15, will start waking up at 11:14. And generally, that’s what I’ve found. The Kid is out at 9:30, and minutes before I would get up and go through his door, I hear him begin addressing his citizens in his crib. Ba too ridey kin soo pop! Go guy guy GUY go! Then I pop in, he’s all smiles, and we head out the door to do our duty.

I don’t remember why he overslept. Perhaps he was up late the night before. Perhaps he got up at 6am. Perhaps we played until ten instead of 9:30. I only know that at 11:15, I walked away from his door, figuring he’d be up soon enough, and suddenly it was 11:28 [I can’t be the only person with a wormhole in my house – you walk away for two minutes, and it’s TEN minutes later]. So okay, up from the crib, shoes in my hand, coat thrown over you, shelter you out to the car, get the coat off, put the shoes here, strap you in, here’s a sip cup, here are some crackers [Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies, natch], start ‘er up, dial in Paul Harvey or This American Life, and fifteen minutes later we’re picking up The Boy.

And that’s how it always goes, and that’s how it went. School is exactly fifteen minutes’ drive from home, which feels to me like people will think it’s part of why we bought the house. It’s not fourteen minutes, it’s not sixteen, it’s fifteen, which makes me imagine people imagining me, in a series of OCD fits, starting at the preschool, driving exactly fifteen minutes, and then – “Nope. Cornfield. Back to the school to try again.” Until, finally, you end up at an abode that the resident is willing to sell, so that you can be fifteen minutes from your son’s preschool.

We’d made it about thirteen minutes toward home – we were close – when this greeted me:


It gives you a Stupid Moment™. Your brain is putting the strawberries in the mustard, putting things together that it doesn’t expect together. My brain actually guffawed as it said to me: What are the odds, d’you s’pose, that ANOTHER kid’s shoe, that looks just like YOUR kid’s shoe, is there on the SAME rural road that you traversed not THIRTY minutes at which point I looked in the back seat, at The Kid’s stocking-clad footy, and told my brain to shut up. I looked forward just in time [and we were stopped, by this point, as if my car were just a big fat metaphor for my big fat brain, struggling to keep up] to not go get the shoe because of the red Ford pickup that ran it over. Well, I should specify: it didn’t just sail over the shoe; tires flattened the little thing. Both of them.

An aside, triggered by the above picture: are there many sights sadder [I mean, intrinsically, semiotically, sadder] than a little kid’s shoe in the road? There are plenty that are grosser and plenty more outrageous. But one little shoe – a shoe whose name at the Stride Rite, for godsakes, is the Baby Murphy – in the road? That’s sad.

We drove up and down the road very slowly, looking for the other shoe that had surely flown off the roof the same way this one had surely flown off the roof. The same way a spindle of fifty CD-Rs, a year ago, had flown off the roof. It should be one of those Meyers-Briggs [do I have that right, Lauren?] personality test questions: Does your stuff ever fly off the roof? I suspect Lauren would be in the two-thirds of the class that didn’t even understand the question, while my third of the class could only answer by nodding our heads vigorously, rolling eyes and directing our contempt inward.

The roads where I live don’t have gutters. They don’t have curbs, or sidewalks, or lawns. The roads where I live are where the ox-trails between farms have been paved, and they have steep grades on either side so all the rainwater and melting snow will run off the road [where it is not useful] and onto the adjacent farmland [where it is useful]. What else might run down this steep grade? Oh, I don’t know … maybe …[Church Lady voice] BABY SHOES? [/Church Lady voice]

After I picked up the [surprisingly resilient!] Baby Murphy shoe, after it rebounded pluckily from its interaction with the Ford Explorer, we drove oh so s l o w l y up the road, another mile. There was no other shoe. There would be no other shoe. The paved graded ox-trail held only despair.

Of course, it was Wednesday, which meant we all had another date for 1pm, which meant Get Home Microwave Lunch Not Grilled Cheese After All Sorry Kid Up To The Attic Where Are Those Boots Here They Are Two Pair Of Socks And You’re Good To Go Amazon.com New Shoes tomorrow Please Can’t Afford That But What Am I Gonna Not Get Him Shoes? Did You Finish Microwave Lunch? Eat The Rest In The Car and, on the way to the 1pm date, I of course called Her and left the ridiculous message “The Kid is getting a new pair of shoes!” [I only ordered them a half-size up, too. That was the criminal aspect of all this – they still fit him!]

And do you know what She saw in the road when she finally made it home to Orange County at 4:15 pm? A mile farther up the road than the mile I went? Of course you do.



The title Tiny Shoes, by the way, is reference to one of my favorite Jack Chick tracts.

The blog's title, by the way?

It's true.

At the zoo [October 2006]

Mostly, I just realized I've posted thrice and included no shots of le petit monstre. So here's one.