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.

Realpolitik

Grandpa Gene is visiting, and asked Declan about the departed pup.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you remember Lawrence?

Oh, yes.

And he's in dog heaven now?

No, he's in the ground.

Cool kid

vintage: 21 November 2006.

Mwah!

vintage: 12 November 2006.

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?

Call to arms

If anybody (is reading this and) will be in the Hudson Valley the afternoon of Sunday, 10 June, and would like to attend Declan's fourth birthday party, drop me a line. The mare the Moorier, as Othello whispered to his favorite mount.

Fear of the singing rats

On the way into school this morning, I asked the boy what he was going to do today.
Do you think you'll sing today? Yeah. And make shapes.

Do you think you'll have Spanish class? I think we will.

Will it be fun? I have fun. Sometimes I get scared.*

Scared? What are you scared of? Singing.

You're scared of singing? Yeah. And the rats, and also I'm scared of the fires.



That is one hardcore preschool.



*I'm pretty sure, at this point, that "get scared" is a universal euphemism for "not have fun."

Further proof of my influence

The ducklings in Make Way For Ducklings are named Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack and Quack. That's a bit cutesy, but repetition is the spice of life for a three-year-old, so my only bow to silliness is to change Quack's name every time we read it (and we read it a lot). Every time I change it, He points out that I'm doing it wrong.

Today, after I read "Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack and Jehosophat," He said this:

No, Daddy! You're being silly. Now I'm going to kill you, and I'll kill your father.

So: sorry, Dad.

I suspect this is proof of my influence on him

As I crossed through The Play Zone into my office tonight, I heard The Boy exclaim, "I just have to kill somebody and then I can be the winner!"

Well, he's not wrong

Dialogue from The Boy's and my shared car ride home this afternoon, going on 6 pm. Just prior to this exchange, he'd eaten the final snack.


Oh well, we'll be home soon.

Yeah.

Do you think Mommy will have some good dinner waiting for us?

Yeah, she will!

Mommy's a good cook, isn't she?

Yeah. (pause - then, shouting:) But NOT YOU!

How brains work*

At 8:30 am, The Boy was being difficult. Wouldn't help with his shoes, wouldn't brush his teeth, something else. (I'm sure his greatest offense was that I was sleepy and cranky.) Finally, I took a fistful of trains away from him, so he'd concentrate on getting dressed and out.

Then he rode to school in the car then he drew shapes at school then he sang songs then he read a book then he had free time then he traced letters then he made a painting then he got dressed then he greeted me picking him up then he ate Goldfish in the car then he peed his pants a bit so we took them off then he ran up to the house with no pants then he finished his Goldfish then he got new pants on then he ate macaroni and cheese.

And then, at about 12:45 pm, he didn't ask where his trains were. No, he asked where I had put "the blue one, the purple one, the red one, the orange one and the two yellow ones." Intrigued, I asked him to repeat that while I looked at the up-high-out-of-his-reach crow's nest. And you know what?




Anybody still think they don't notice when you call someone a bitch?



*Original title was "How little brains work," but that's an unintended double entendre (albeit a pretty good one).

Don't trust the Joker

It was shortbread, and it was quite good. Everyone said so. And by the way, Karyl Bannister's shortbread recipe makes eight thousand cookies. We will have no more need of cookies until the next inauguration.

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The boy has mastered the form of the knock-knock joke, which would be heartening and delightful, except that he's a little looser on the content. I keep trying to think of real knock-knock jokes to knock his socks off, but all the ones I remember that are even worth telling

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Sam & Janet!
Sam & Janet who?
(sing) Sam and Janet evening, love will surely find you ...

are either clever or dated, or both, and what, you think my three-year-old wunderkind won't get the South Pacific reference?

His, though, come off as Dada experiments, like some deranged Turing machine spitting out sonnets that have fourteen lines, all right, and rhyme, but are just lists of taxonomic classifications.*

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Pillow!
Pillow who?
Pillow eye!


Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Pillow!
Pillow who?
Pillow gee gah!

This is followed by a programmatic chuckle - he he he hu - that's so machinelike, and so consistent, it should almost be pasted in as part of the delivery. Now, these two are the classics of the genre, and are the overture – like the slide guitar intro to the Looney tunes theme, they signify that the fun is really about to begin. After those two, the dam bursts.


Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Pala!
Pala who?
Pala gom be da do bo bo zuuu!


Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Car!
who?
Carny boody boody boody boody FOM! He he he hu!


Knock-knock!
Please stop! These jokes aren't funny!
Knock-knock!
They aren't even jokes!
I said Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Pillow!
Pillow who?
Pillow pillow mowmowmowmowmow ba! He he he hu!


*I hereby solicit, and will pay one dollar for, a rhyming fourteen-line sonnet composed of taxonomic classifications.


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Despite the title of the forum, and the amount of attention and effort we all expend on toilet functions, I have tried to be merciful to you, Dear Reader, and keep mentions brief and sporting. Last night She made a splendid quiche employing Salmon Bits (don't you love it? It sounds made up, but there it sits on the grocery shelf: Salmon Bits; I mean, this stuff just writes itself), and we were sitting down to a very civilized meal. (Very Civilized, in our house, tends to mean Both Seated At Once. Just plain Civilized means Not Actively Walking Around While Eating. Uncivilized you don't want to see.) Declan announced that he had to make poopy. Mother wearily suggested the potty. And he agreed! Do you know that this means? What if the Joker announced plans to make a fortune, and Batman suggested he do it by means of no-load high-yield mutual funds, and the Joker agreed?! Headlines! And up he sat! And he squeezed out a little memento, and it sank, and was flushed! And She gave him a cookie, and a toy, and darn near wiped away a tear as she asked me if I appreciated the import of this moment. And I said yes, I do, but I also read enough Detective Comics, as a yoot, to internalize an important lesson.

Don't trust the Joker.

One slice of quiche later, he had put on a diaper, deposited his real load there, where it didn't fit, spilled out onto his legs, which he didn't like, so he walked around, dropping poop all over the rug, where Amy saw it and shrieked, and I, in trying to keep The Kid out of the room, unknowingly stepped in a camouflaged turd and tracked it into the kitchen and living room.

Now that's Uncivilized.

Note to future Declan, reading this on archive.org: Sorry about this. But you pushed me to it..

Four-day weekend is here -

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

Life is what now? Eh?

The mercifully brief treatment of The Saga Of Number One Going Number One is that The Boy generally uses the toilet to urinate. It's called the potty, and he gets candy or a dime afterward, but with these exceptions his experience is much like yours (well, half of yours). When it's time for something more interesting, though (a sculpture, as we used to say, instead of a painting), he's not interested. He gets a diaper from the shelf, he puts it on himself, and then he ... stinks. Which is my cue.

I don't know if it was reaction to, or commentary on, that state of affairs. I don't know if if was standard Dada for Daddy, kid-level goofiness playing dressup. I don't know if it was simple wanton property destruction. All I know is that She called as she got off work yesterday, and as I went to get the phone, I walked by him putting a diaper on. Not too strange, not too shabby. After I hung up, I came back into the playroom and found him rooting around in a by now largely empty diaper bag. "Bleargh!" I shrieked. "Why are you doing that?"

As he answered, my eyes and ears both told me the same story at the same time.

"Because I put them all on!"

Infallibility

As with most of the behavior that I note in my boisterous charges, I have no idea what the doctors think it means or what the clinical names are. All I knows is what I sees. And one of the chief conversational factors that sets Declan apart from most humans is that when he hears something he doesn't like, he denies it.

So maybe he's not that different from most people after all.

If Declan is playing with Thomas and James [two favorite trains] and wants Scruffy [a third favorite train], he'll ask me for it. That's not odd. If I don't know where Scruffy is, I'll say, "I don't know where Scruffy is." That's not odd. What's neat is what he says next: "Yes you do!"

It's neat in the way that a lot of what comes out of him is neat – it's an unvarnished, egoless take on what any of us might say if we hadn't learned about the world. When a cop pulls me over and I know I was speeding [which seems like once a week, these days], it would feel good to say "I wasn't speeding and you should go away!" and have it be, y'know, true. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

What I don't know is whether he's placing faith in my omnipotence or his own. When he insists that what he sees isn't what's real, is he talking because I'm the daddy and I provide? Or is he just conflating what he doesn't want with what shouldn't be and the only verb tense he knows is it isn't?

Carrots: good.

Summer: also good.

The blog's title, by the way?

It's true.

Burgeoning literacy

How washable are those things, anyway?

Boy, pretty darn washable, it turns out.

Paint by letters

Boy, was this fun. The boy's writing skills bound along, and like anyone who's just learned a little, there's nothing he likes better than being tested on it. This started out as another scribble session to keep everyone away from Mother for a while, and ended up being a game of "what letter does this begin with?"

So that's I for ice cream cone, natch. Most of these are probably pretty straightforward for such a hip, literate crowd:


[That's generic cats & dogs, by the way. We'll get specific soon enough.]



All right, now we move from the six-pack to the can. Not just any black pooch, this is Billy,

Lawrence,



Jiggsand Maggie.
Who all live in a _____.
And finally, some portraits and self-portraits to finish off the session.

Kid!


Boy!


Daddy!