Corwin was watching The Emperor’s New Groove and the emperor had just ditched Pacha and discovered that Yzma is really plotting to kill him. He runs back to find Pacha but Pacha is gone. Corwin comments “and he doesn’t even have a cell phone to call him!”.
Bear’s dad had a small child sized train engine (big enough to ride) and some track which started putting together in the driveway. Corwin volunteered to help and as soon as Corwin could put pieces together the adults retired to watch Corwin assemble the track. Bear tried to help but Corwin wouldn’t let him. Corwin said “Bear, you should take a break while I finish”.
We went to dinner at “Joe’s Crab Shack”. It was a good restaurant except that they had a small playland with a climbing structure that had three slides. The boys were all over that immediately. Even Charles ventured forth. Charles tried the small slide first. After a couple of rounds of that, Charles was ready to move up and he tried the orange tube slide, which the first time he had voluntarily tried a slide that big. One trip and Charles was hooked. He just circled around and around going down the slide and up the stairs. When he had to take him back to the table for minor things like dinner, Charles would just cry and struggle. If we put him down he’d immediately take off at full speed toward the playland, bobbing and weaving as he tried to put on a little bit more speed. After a couple of trips he was very conflicted - he climbed all the way to the top but once he was in front of the big spiral slide he started thrashing and crying. He didn’t want to go down but he didn’t want to go back. Eventually he came up with a plan. As always, Charles had a car with him so he sent that down the slide first to make sure it was safe. Afterwards he was sorry because now he didn’t have his car! This was enough to get him to try out the slide, which he found to be a lot of fun. Charles went back to his cycle except this time it was for the big spiral slide. He sent the car down one more time just to make sure but from then on he just carried it. He went back to the table a couple of times on his own to get a quick bite but then he was back on the cycle. The effort eventually took a toll and Charles started stumbling along, barely remaining upright but undeterrable from his appointed rounds. Finally, though, time was up for Charles and we had to leave. Charles was tired enough that he only whimpered a bit as we broke his cycle of addiction. Of course, the whole experience got him so wound up that he didn’t go to sleep for several hour afterwards, long after Mom and Dad had ceased to fully function. We had to trap him in the bed while he thrashed and cried, but eventually (after much milk) he gave up and went to sleep.
Corwin wanted to learn the Godzilla song again because he could only remember a little bit of it. So I taught him the “Oh, no, there goes Tokyo - oh no Godzilla!”, “Oh, no, they say he’s got to go - oh no Godzilla!” which is the main chorus. But Corwin wanted the other refrain, “History shows again and again how Nature points out the folly of men … Godzilla!”. So later in the evening we went out for dinner. On the way Corwin, thinking back to his orange picking experience, asks the two Moms ” do men fall out of trees?”. The Moms explained that it could happen, if people were up in trees. So Corwin, puzzled, asks what is meant by “the fall-y of men”.
Later of course, I taught Bear the song and it turns out that Bear’s Dad knows it too, so he can help Bear with it after I’m gone. Bear’s Mom was, needless to say, just as thrilled as you’d expect about this.
One thrill for Corwin was picking oranges out in the front yard. The house we’re staying at has an orange tree in front and it was heavy wth fruit. Corwin was somewhat suprised to see an actual orange tree, but he recovered quickly and wanted to pick some, especially after seeing Bear climb the tree. We showed him that twisting the fruit off was much easier than pulling. Dad peeled the oranges, to prove to Corwin that it really was an orange tree. After getting his hands soaked with orange juice he wiped his hands on his pants, leaving two big stains, but at least he will have a fresh orangey scent for the rest of the day.
There were two other children for Corwin to annoy, Bear, who will be 5 next week, son of the hosts and Philip, age 3, another guest. Corwin has met Bear before when Bear’s family visited our house last summer. There has been some tension because Bear is not used to having to share his toys but it was good practice because Bear has a little brother on the way (who, of course, will be named after me because of the deep and abiding respect his mother has for me). Corwin actually agreed to take a bath with Bear, something he won’t do with his brother. I think the main attraction was being able to have all of the glow sticks in the tub at the same time. At least Corwin washed himself in the bath for the first time, although I still had to wash Bear.
As soon as we’ve retrieved the luggage at the airport, Mom informs me that she’s forgotten the pack the phone number or directions to the house of her friend where we’re planning to stay. Fortunately she knew the address and Dad is never without his gadgets - I fired up the GPS on my notebook and we cruised straight to our destination. Foresightedly, I had insisted we stop at the office on the way out of town to pick up the CD drive and mapping software disk — right, Mom? As we drove to our destination, Corwin noticed that there are McDonald’s in Florida. We were able to presuade him that Thanksgiving was not the best time for going there. We made it to the house without Corwin going into fast food withdrawal so it was a successful trip.
We made it down to Florida and had an uneventful trip. We got up at 1:30 AM and started preparing for departure. Mom had put most of the luggage into the car the previous evening so we just had to move a few things, get the children dressed and slap them in the car. We actually got on the highway a few minutes before we had originally scheduled. After a brief two hour drive we were at the airport for our flight. By arriving at 5:30 AM local time we beat the rush (right behind us was a very large group of either older high school or younger college students - presumably a marching band traveling for a show). The flight wasn’t completely packed and the boys spent about half the flight sleeping, although for a while Corwin was “bored, bored bored”. He spent some time playing with one of my glow toys, which he promptedly lost as soon as we got up to leave the plane. The poor flight attendant pulled up the seat cushions to look for it, but we decided to move on as it only cost $3. We only looked in the first place because I wanted it as a child distracter later in the trip and I didn’t have a spare. It turns out that it fell into a side pocket on Corwin’s back pack. I picked it out of there and later “found” it in Corwin’s ear. Corwin claimed that he didn’t remember how it got there. Likely story.
Little Bill Bill is the most irritating show currently on television. I just can’t stand it. I can’t even bear having it on in the next room while. Think of all the things you didn’t like about The Cosby Show — the preachiness, the sacharine people, the relentless earnestness. Now subtract all of the things you liked about it — humour, dialog, occasionally flashes of reality. Now you have Little Bill. I have to write this because I got trapped with Charles on my lap when that show came on and it took me a minute or two to switch channels. Hopefully I can recover from the trauma before our trip tomorrow.
Corwin was a double-bumper grumper boy this morning. He collided with a door frame last night and he still had a headache this morning (although I couldn’t see a bump or any bruising). Corwin explained that he’d bumped the door because he “didn’t turn enough”. While he was getting ready for his bath (having wet the couch last night after he fell asleep on it) he agreed that he was grumpy. I told him that I’d get him a big heaping order of Charles’ hugs. Everyone likes Charles’ hugs. Corwin was unimpressed — “that would make me very angry. Very, very angry”. So I kept all of the Charles’ hugs for myself.
Charles helped us wash dishes this evening. The dishwasher was mostly loaded, so Charles went into the cabinet under the sink and got out a soap tablet. He closed the cabinet and took the tablet over to the dishwasher. He opened it up and tried to put the tablet in, but he couldn’t get the wrapper off. Dad helped with that and Charles managed to get the tablet into the right place and close the soap dish hatch and put the dishwasher front back up. Dad then latched it closed and fired it up. Charles was so happy at this that he immediately got out another soap tablet. Dad had to sadly inform him that he would have to wait until the dishwasher finished. Charles cried for a bit, but eventually he came to understand that everything has its time and place and that the time had not yet come to use the second soap tablet.
Corwin has a bad habit of not being willing to do things that he can’t always succeed at. In most of his racing games, he’ll only race by himself or if he does race with computer players, he’ll restart the instant he’s not in the lead. However, he’s been doing much better since he started playing Re-Volt. This time, even though he was finishing 7th or 8th of 8, he persisted and gradually did better until he finally finished first. He was very excited. I tried to point out that he hadn’t been very good when he started but after some work he had managed to win, yada yada practice yada yada but he was already focusing on the next race. It’s good to have goals.
Corwin’s bionicle Tahu, despite his upgrade in the latest Lego marketing campaign, was not sufficiently well armed for Corwin. Mom made the mistake of mentioning that Corwin could use the sword from the non-upgraded Tahu to make his new Tahu more powerful. Corwin couldn’t find the sword but he managed to find weapons from most of the other Toa. This lead to the very heavily armed Tahu seen in this picture.
Charles’ skills continue to advance. We discovered that he can get himself up into his booster seat at the table all by himself, so that he can engage in one of his favorite activites, throwing stuff off the table onto the floor. He can stand at the sink on a chair and play for a long time without falling off and bonking himself. He can build small duplo structures, like a missile he built tonight which is flying around into Dad. He’s also getting quite an arm. Mom’s fun in Williams & Sonoma was kind of just a fling, but Charles can now really throw things. He can feed himself yogurt and get most of it inside of Charles. He can simulate explosions with his voice. He’s learn to paint and work with chalk.
Words, however, don’t seem to be on his priority list.
This is a belated story from our visit to California in October. I’m not as good as Dad about getting stories recorded in a timely fashion.
On the evening before we were to leave, we spent some time at Valley Faire Mall. It is a wonderful mall with stores representing all the overpriced catalogs we receive on a regular basis. Much more interesting than the standard card shops and teen stores at our local mall.
One of the stores we visited was Williams-Sonoma. I was carrying Charles, and he was carrying 2 toy trucks (as normal). We had been walking around for a while, and Charles was just hanging out and looking around.
Then Mom had the bright idea to check out the wall-full display of wine glasses. I spent about 5 minutes looking. Then Charles decided to throw a truck.…
After my heart started again, I saw that there was no damage. We picked up the truck and moved quickly away from the wall of glass.
Corwin spent the morning at Kid’s Day of the USTA Challenger tennis tournament. I spent a couple days at the tournament this week being a ball person. Pretty cool seeing really good players up close.
I took Corwin and Charles to see a match Wednesday night figuring that Corwin would be amused for about 30 minutes. But no doing. Corwin wanted to play!
So Kid’s Day was ideal. The USTA and the Atkin’s tennis center offered 90 minutes of clinic for kids from 3 to 18. I’d say roughly 50 kids showed up.
Corwin had great fun. They hit lots of volleys (net shots). Then they did some races that involved tennis balls but really wasn’t tennis. Didn’t matter. Corwin had great fun anyway.
Corwin has now relapsed to the point where he doesn’t remember what he is supposed to do in the morning after he wakes up.
Dad: Corwin, do your morning stuff
Corwin: I don’t remember
Generally I resort to
Dad: Ok, you can go to school naky
Corwin: No!
Dad: So how can you avoid that?
Corwin: Get dressed!
That’s usually enough to get him started, at which point his memory miraculously returns and he can complete his morning preparations. One of these days I need to find out how long he would sit at the top of the stairs before “remembering” what to do…
After I topped off Charles’ sippy cup again, he wandered off into the media room and found an old sippy cup. He picked it up, took it into the kitchen and put it up on the counter with the dirty dishes. He seemed very proud of himself afterwards. Now he’s putting all of the toy cars scattered across the sofa back into their container. Corwin went through a phase like that as well, but unfortunately they get over it in a couple years.
Update: Charles is really moving forward on the development scale this morning. He was playing with his lego’s, building a very tall car when he turns to me and says “dope is bus”. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him form sounds that map to actual (multiple) words. After I got him dressed, he was trying to put his pajama bottoms back on. He knew that the stretchy bit at the end needed to be opened and put over his foot, although he wasn’t clear that the foot goes in the open side, not the side attached to the leg. But that’s just an implementation detail.
This morning I”m spending some time with Charles as he reads. I had to wake him up because he was sleeping late, so I brought him down to sit with me for a while. He gets unhappy so I fetch him some milk, which placates him for a bit. Then he insists on getting up and walking over to the media room, where he picks up the Guide to Paper Airplanes fold out. He brings it back and gets back on my lap, eagerly looking at it. We played some peek-a-boo with it, but mainly he pretended to read it like a newspaper. Eventually, of course, he turned it into a road for a toy car.
While we were cleaning out the garage, Corwin saw my paintball markers. Ever since, he bugs me on and off about shooting them. So this week, my boss invited some of us out to his place to shoot some skeet. He has 4 kids of his own so I thought I’d bring Corwin along and some paintball equipment. Corwin was very excited about this. He’s shot a marker before, a couple of years ago, but he doesn’t remember and he just pulled the trigger while Dad held and aimed.
The day before the outing, Mom planted 170 bulbs. She went out at 12:30 and got back around 4:15 having spent the entire time planting bulbs. She was in a good mood then but after a couple of hours she was feeling a wee bit stiff. After getting a head cold over night as well, she wasn’t in the best of shape for an outing so we left her behind with Charles.
That morning Corwin couldn’t wait to go. After the tenth time he asked me if it was time to go, I told him that we would go at noon, when the little hand pointed straight up. Corwin immediately put his coat on and started watch the clock. An hour later, at 11:30 the little hand was vertical enough for Corwin, so we set out.
After we arrived I got the paintball stuff set up. We had 500 paintballs for ammunition, my Blazer, a couple of automags and a Tipman 68 Carbine. For various reasons we could only have two markers working at a time but the kids kept up a steady stream of fire. There’s a tree that looks leperous now with a huge number of yellow splotches. A number of other trees were visually enhanced as well. The kids splooged balls in every marker they shot, but Corwin had a lot of fun is what Dad told himself a lot as he was cleaning up later. We used up the 500 paintballs in about 15 minutes, but Corwin had a lot of fun I told myself. I’m sure we’ll be doing some more of that when it gets warmer, because Corwin will have a lot of fun.
I picked up some bread rolls for lunch. I got a few extra ones because the boys like them. Charles and Corwin dropped by in the evening for a visit and of course they wanted to have rolls immediately. Charles had a problem, though - he had cars in both hands so he was unable to pick up the roll to eat it. But he’s a clever boy and he figured out that if the roll was on a table he could push his face into the roll and take a bite. Obviously putting down a car to pick up the roll would be wrong.
NASA has a program where they are going to put a CD-ROM with names on the next Mars Rover mission in 2003. Anyone can sign up here to get their name on the list. Unfortunately, today is the last day to sign up so if you’re not reading this on the data listed above, it’s too late. Corwin and Charles are signed up. Corwin was very excited about it - he knew that Mars was “the planet with bad weather”.
Of course, immediately after the last post Charles decides that he needs some time with Dad (he must have noticed that I was lonely). So we put new clothes on (Charles is very cooperative about that) and Dad gets a cup of coffee, puts it on the table next to the chair and puts Charles on his lap. Charles sits for a moment and then wants up. He still wants to sit with Dad but since Dad has his cup of coffee on the end table, Charles needs to have his sippy cup there as well, right next to Dad’s coffee. So we’re sitting together now, Dad and Charles, coffee and milk. Of course, I don’t have a toy car in my hand but I suppose this computer counts.
For the last couple of months Charles has been a double-bumper grumper boy. Before that he was a very happy (if needy) boy. But shortly after we took him off the bottle he became excessively needy, grumpy and generally unhappy. I would have to physically hold him all morning until I dropped him off at day care. He would cry and be miserable all day, where before he had been the model child (happy and cooperative). The day care had some turnover at about the same time, so it may have been the combination of that and no bottle (Charles really liked his bottle).
But over just the last week Charles’ mood is much better. I don’t have to hold him much in the morning (in fact, he resists after a bit because he wants to go and do things). The day care reports that he’s mostly back to his previous self.
I thought that it would be so nice to not have to lug around 25 pounds of boy for several hours every morning, but now I kind of miss it. I’m sitting here typing while Charles is playing with his blocks, totally absorbed. At least his still likes it when I go over and pick him up for some squeezing - for a few minutes, until he gets bored and needs to play some more.
What I’ve realized in retrospect is that it was Erica who “fixed” Charles. His change in attitude came immediately after Erica’s babysitting. Erica claims she didn’t do anything special but Charles certainly seems much happier.
We walked down to the boys child care place today and picked up the boys. We talked with Corwin as we walked back, who was for once in a bit of a talkative mood. Mom had been planning to go away for a few days, but the meeting got moved. We discussed this with Corwin.
Dad: Corwin, Mommy won’t be going away next week.
Mom: Yes, Corwin, you’ll be stuck with having me around.
Corwin: [plaintively] Whyyyyyy?
Mom: Corwin, do you want Mommy to go away?
Corwin: HEY! A gingko leaf!
Later as we drive home Corwin look out and sees the Moon. “It’s a semi-circle Moon!”. I tell him “that’s called a half-Moon, because it’s half a circle. ‘Semi’ means ‘half’ so ‘half-Moon’ and ‘semi-Moon’ are kind of the same thing”. Corwin then proceeds to talk about the “semi-Moon” all the way home. He asks why it’s half and I tell him that I will explain it when we get home (so I can use props). Corwin then proceeds to explain to me where the Moon came from, based on the latest planetary formation theory - “Meteors come at the Earth blam! blam! blam! and knock it around and then stuff comes off and turns into the Moon”. I mention that it was supposed to be a really big meteor, as big as a planet. Corwin responds “Oh! Well, I’m glad we weren’t here then. It was a long time ago so we don’t have to worry now. Just one meteor killed the dinosaurs - just one! It came down boom! and no more dinosaurs.”
Charles now has two games he likes to play with Dad (besides working on puzzles) to help Dad get back into shape. We play chase, which consists of Charles giggling so hard that he almost falls down as he toddles around the house while Dad walks behind. After that as a warm up, it’s time for the leg lifts. Dad sits on the couch and Charles sits on his feet. Dad then raises and lowers his legs until Charles falls off. Repeat until Dad’s legs are so sore that he can’t lift Charles anymore. Mom watches this with the “am I sure they didn’t mix up the babies at the hospital?” look. Dad thinks it hurts a lot, but he does it “for the children”.
Since Charles returned from his night out with Erica, we have been unable to find one of this shoes. It could be anywhere — Charles is quite good at popping it off his foot at random intervals. This wasn’t good, but we weren’t too worried — we figured that the shoe would turn up and he could wear some of Corwin’s old shoes until then. How wrong we were…
Charles apparently likes his shoes a lot. Any attempt to put different shoes on him was met with a storm of protest and immediate efforts to remove the inappropriate footwear. We eventually gave up and just took him out shoeless, because he hardly walks anyway when he’s with us.
The next day Mom took Charles to the shoe store, as his shoe was still missing in action. Charles tried on half a dozen different pairs of shoes, but the only ones he didn’t try to push off his feet were the blinkie shoes in the next size up, just like his old shoes.
But age and treachery beats youth and skill every time. I waited until this morning when Charles was barely concious and put Corwin’s old shoes on him. By the time he was fully awake he was already used to the shoes and has been ok with them all day. Ha ha!
UPDATE: We did eventually find the shoe. It was in the toy room, under a blanket.
It’s driving time for the boys. Charles is enjoying Midtown Madness again. He’s driving the F-350 truck (in black). I can still reach around and blog while I hold down the accelerator for Charles. Corwin has rediscovered his Hot Wheels Stunt Track 2. This is a much simpler game, where you are forced to run along a track (it’s Hot Wheels) but you can make jumps. While in the air, one can spin the car (pitch and yaw). Doing this and landing successfully generates “stunt points”. Last time Corwin played this (about a year ago) he couldn’t do the stunts at all. Yesterday he started playing again and working on the stunts. Today he was in fine form, getting (as he says) “some gnarly air”. The game counts up the number of stunts per run. While Charles is driving Corwin managed to get 32 stunt points. He got very excited. “Thirty two stunts! Wow!” He jumped up on the chair and started dancing. Then he was back to racing again, saying “I hope I get even more”. But first I send him racing out to tell Mom. Mom is very excited as well, as you can imagine. Next time Corwin gets 33 (Mom is stunned at the news), but then Grandma arrives. This doesn’t initially slow Corwin down until I whisper to him “I think it would be better if you played with Grandma”. Corwin is disappointed until he gets a bright idea - Grandma can watch him drive! With Grandma and Mom watching, Corwin really goes for the gusto and gets 54 stunt points. His audience is suitably impressed and Corwin acquieses to doing something other than driving, basking the glow of his stunning performance.
Mom had tickets for an event last night, so we had Erica over to babysit. While we were getting that set up, Jacob’s parents decided that they were going out for an evening as well and asked Erica if she could look after their three children in addition. Erica, being far too nice and naive, agreed to do this. Unfortunately, she was unaware of the “Jacorobwin” effect, where Jacob and Corwin “spin up” when they get together. Corwin is somewhat bouncy (as in off walls) naturally, but he and Jacob go to a whole new level when they are together. The two of them unite to become the Jacorobwin entity, a single unsuppressable explosion of boyish enthusiasm.
The stage is set. Erica arrives at our house, picks up Corwin and heads over to Jacob’s house. We arrive a few minutes later with Charles. Jacorobwin are already highly energized although still moving slow enough that we can perceive them as distinct objects and not just blurs, Jesse and Jared are wandering underfoot, Jacob’s parents are trying to achieve escape velocity, so we drop off Charles who immediately begins screaming because Mom and Dad are leaving. Mom lets Erica know that Charles did some major vomitting the previous night and had diarhea during the day, but he hadn’t pooped in a couple of hours so maybe the worst was over. One look at Erica’s brave but resigned face and I can see that she won’t be reproducing anytime soon.
But Mom and I have a nice evening and everyone survives with no permanent (physical) injuries. When we get back Charles is asleep and the Jacorobwin tempest has mostly blown over (they’re so spent that they are actually walking). We leave Erica with the three J’s, hoping that the worst is over because we’d like to have her baby-sit again. Speaking with Jacob’s mom this morning, I’m told that Erica got the J’s to bed shortly after Corwin and Charles left but she still bolted out the door as soon as Jacob’s parents were home. But we think she’ll be back and as they say, any evening where the baby-sitter will come back is a good one.
Charles said “ma-ma” this evening. Mom was somewhat excited but what Charles really meant by “ma-ma” was “give me the Bionicle assembly manual” which is not quite what Mom thought he meant. We tried to indicate to Charles that Mom was a better choice for “ma-ma” but the pictures of Pohatu Nuva had taken control. We’ll try again when he’s back from Mata-Nui.
One of the games we play with Charles is “what’s under there?”. We ask Charles this question several times, and then pull up his shirt and tickle his tummy saying “there’s boy tummy under there!”. I tried this on him this morning and after the standard number of repitions Charles pulls up his shirt himself! So of course we tickled his tummy extra and then we did “piggies” on his toes.
One of the more bizarre habits the boys have is the attempt to have their tongues washed. Normally when I try to wash a face there is some resistance. But once I get started Charles’ primary goal becomes to have his tongue washed as well. He opens his mouth wide and gets that tongue out, desperately trying to connect with the wash cloth. Corwin did this when he was younger, but he’s much more of the grim endurance school now.
Charles also likes washcloths as a drinking mechanism as well. Frequently, given the choice of a sippy cup with some fresh milk or apple juice and an old, wet dish cloth Charles strongly prefers the dish cloth. I generally have to deal with it by forcibly ripping the dish cloth out of his hands and mouth. Right now he’s having a bath and drinking his bath water via a wash cloth. He likes it best if he can dip in the incoming water stream as the tub fills, but if that’s not available then the generic bath water works. Sippy cups just can’t compete with that kind of taste sensation.
We have a plastic duck cover for the faucet on the boy’s bathtub. It’s there mainly because the steel faucet has sharp little points that the poopers smack their heads into on a regular basis. The duck, despite being made of soft plastic, doesn’t soften the blow but instead serves to prevent them. Once the boys realize that it’s not dangerous, high speed contact with it is no longer a priority.
However, one may wonder about whether the duck might accumulate dust and other detritus, becoming a center of filth in an environment for cleansing. Never fear, Corwin is on the job. It’s standard practice for him to wash the duck very thoroughly while he is taking a bath. This of course is the boy completely incapable of washing Corwin but a plastic duck - that’s easy! For his bath this morning, Corwin first announces that “I don’t need any help”. Mom quickly ripostes with “So you’re going to wash yourself?”. Corwin considers this and responds “Maybe I need a little help. But I don’t need any help from little brother”. Charles immediately responds, rushing into the bathroom to help, which consists of him slapping the water vigorously, in case there were parts of Corwin that were not yet wet. Corwin doesn’t appreciate the effort and says, while watching Charles splash away, “that’s not helpful”. No, but it’s important for everyone to feel that they are contributing.
Charles is advancing his puzzle skills. He can now assemble the large fire truck with only a little help. Of course, after several hours a day working on it, one might expect him to get a little better. He signals his desire to practice by picking up a single piece and running over to Mom or Dad waving it. He won’t do this for anything else (like milk or food) but a puzzle — that’s important.
Today was Corwin’s first picture day at school. We made him take a bath the night before so he’d be squeaky clean. In the morning he wanted to wear his Harley Davidson shirt but Mom made him wear a blue turtle neck. Corwin wanted to know if he looked “handsome”. Mom assured him that he did, and he acquiesed in wearing the turtleneck (even though, as he assured us, he looked handsome in his Harley Davidson shirt). When he got home, of course, the only detail we could extract was that at some point, in some fashion, someone somehow took his picture.
Charles is now obsessed with his puzzles. We put them together over and over. Dad has had to take them away a couple times because Charles was getting too upset. The big problem was that he seemed to think that once assembled, the puzzles are actual toys. He tries to push them around like he does with real toy trucks and it doesn’t work. This makes him very frustrated. I think he’s beginning to figure it out, though - he seems to have stoppped trying to push them across the floor or off the table. But now he fights with the cats - they frequently sit on the puzzles and mess them up!. How can the cats we feed and shelter be so rude?
We got a jigsaw puzzle set for Charles. The different trucks have different numbers of pieces. Charles has managed to put together the smallest (3 piece) one. Mom remarked “So he can put puzzles together but he can’t talk”. Yep, that’s my little engineer!
Mom took Corwin and Charles out trick or treating while (as seen in the previous post) I held down the fort. Mom unfortunately got Corwin ready by 5 pm while the official start time was 6 pm. She was done in by Corwin’s strange eagerness to get dressed and ready without a lot of whining and resistance. But Corwin was not completely insufferable while he waited around asking “is it time yet?”. Even Charles had adapted to his cute little pumpkin costume and was happily playing with cars.
But there was yet more disappointment in store for our brave little boy. His friend Jacob (the local one) had to go with his parents to trick or treat at friends of his parents, to Corwin had to venture forth without Jacob. But, the thought of candy was eating his brain and demanded that he go out. So Mom, Corwin and Charles bundled up and headed out.
They returned after a little while, cold but successful in their first foray. And then, light a ray of sun on a cloudy day, Jacob’s dad called and said that Jacob had finished his command performance and was ready to trick or treat with Corwin. Shortly thereafter Jacob himself arrived and Corwin, who had been only lightly affected by the candy, really spun up. Mom took them out again and when she got back, Corwin was still a dervish, apparently having bounced around non stop for the entire time (which solved the problem of not wanting to wear a coat over his costume).
Once again we bought too much candy. I handed out glow sticks and candy, but sometimes I had to chase down the kids to give them the candy - as soon as they got the glow stick they took off and I didn’t want to be stuck with huge mounds of future love handles. So the parents watching from the driveway got to see me chase after their children calling “wait! wait! I’ve got candy too!”.
Another big day that Corwin has been anticipating for a while, Halloween. Corwin was originally unhappy because he didn’t get to go to both the party at kindergarten and the party at day care. But he got over it.
Charles had his costume parade at 9 am, which is much earlier than we normally drop him off. But we managed to get there in time. Charles was not overly fond of his costume, but beyond that he refused to walk so Mom had to carry him. I didn’t get many good pictures because Charles wasn’t the happiest kid in the parade. But it was fun and Charles got to have too many cupcakes afterwards. We were the parents in charge of cupcakes, but apparently other parents brought some too so there were many many cupcakes. Strangely this overhanging mass didn’t frighten any of the toddlers.
Corwin had his parade at school, and it was a much bigger affair. Mom had to rig up something quickly the previous evening because the school rules required that the costumes be both non-scary and capable of being put on and off by the child. Corwin’s skeleton costume was borderline scary (although I saw other children with the exact same one) but there was no way Corwin was going to be able to get it on and off by himself. So Mom whipped up a wizards outfit for him from my silk bathrobe and a sparkly shawl. Corwin was ok with it.
I arrived a bit early to help out, but other parents were there already. The teacher got all of the kids costumed and lined up in time, and then we had to wait while other classes paraded out. After the parade I went back to Corwin’s room, where Corwin told me that he wanted me to stay, which I did until Corwin had juice and cookies at which point he volunteered “you can leave if you want”.
