Alice has become quite fond of wrapping clothes around her, as if she were modeling them. She does this frequently with either new clothes in the laundry basket or old clothes that some child has discarded on the floor upstairs.
Alice also like to get in containers so getting in a basket of clothes is the major win scenario for her. However, if that’s not available she will make do with other, lesser choices. Mom tells me that on a recent store strip there was a small box on the floor, which Alice immediately tried to get in to. It was not quite big enough for her but she struggled to get in anyway, becoming quite frustrated (what is the point of a box if it’s not suitable for containing an Alice?). She also likes to be in her little push wagon. Charles likes this as well, because he enjoys pushing the cart around with Alice in it. Sometimes, if he does it right, Alice will scream her little baby scream of joy.
I’d also like to note that I can’t have garbage cans on the floor in my office if Alice is around, because she will methodically empty most of the contents out on the floor, or at least the bits she doesn’t eat.
Alice has recently begun to watch TV. Just a month ago television was not something she was really aware of. Lately, though, she has been willing to stop unloading laundry and stare at the TV screen when something is on. She doesn’t care for the cartoons that Corwin likes, but she is quite taken with Teletubbies, Blues’ Clues and Bob the Builder. Alice was sick on Friday but I was able to lay her on the couch watching Teletubbies for a little while instead of having to hold her every single moment.
The other day I was annoying Corwin and decided to turn up the annoyance a bit.
Dad: Now it’s time for your double super atomic wedgie!
Corwin: Nooooo!
Dad: Yesss! [Dad turns Corwin over and slowly grabs hold of the back of Corwin’s underwear]
Corwin: Noooo! No wedgie!
Dad: Bwahahahaha! [At the final moment, Dad is struck by a pang of remorse and lets Corwin go]
Corwin: Where’s my wedgie?
Dad: I’ve decided to save that for later.
Corwin: You said you were going to give me a wedgie!
Dad: I’m not up for it right now.
Corwin: Give me a wedgie! Why won’t you give me a wedgie?!?
As a result of this, Corwin has been bugging me about getting a wedgie. He asks about it at least once a day. He explains that he’s never had a wedgie in his entire life and it is so unfair because Dad said Corwin would get a wedgie. Not only a wedgie, but a double super atomic wedgie!
But sadly, Dad is not pure evil — he’s only almost pure evil (with just a hint of lemon). Luckily, Corwin has relatives who are not as … overly concerned with moral considerations. We’ll be visiting the family at TexHome in a few weeks and I think I have something for Uncle Evil to do…
Relaxing with a cold one after playing a bit too hard
As noted, Alice likes the bathroom. I think she likes baths as well, even if she’s a bit reluctant to get in at first.
A couple of evenings ago I decided that Charles was getting a bit ripe and it was time for a bath. Charles wasn’t overly thrilled about it but I browbeat him in to acquiesing. As I’m drawing the bath for him, Alice hears the running water from downstairs and heads up the stairs with her new found stairing climbing talent. She managed to get up to just short of the landing before Mom caught her and brought her the rest of the way up.
As soon as she was set down upstairs, Alice rushed in to the bath room to see what was going on. She saw Charles in the tub and apparently decided that she should have a bath as well. I think she was trying to climb over the side of the tub to get in, but Charles and I were against it. After a few failed attempted at getting her leg over the edge, Alice started stomping her little feet in frustration. She stomped faster and faster until she was literally vibrating. I couldn’t tell if she was happy, excited or upset at first, but after her vibrational plea for help failed she collapsed in tears so I’m thinking “upset” was the operative emotion.
Charles had a containment failure at daycare yesterday, his first in months (I think it’s the first time since he became potty trained). He didn’t want to talk about it, so I’m still a little unclear on the details, but it sounds like he just got distracted for too long. I remember Corwin making messes on chairs because he’d get too involved in a computer game and not come out of his trance until he and the chair were soaked.
On the other hand, it’s been a month or two since Charles last wet the bed. For a while even after he was using the potty regularly, we were changing him in to diapers every night. We haven’t done that for a while (at least since his birthday). Charles’ present frequency of bed wetting is low enough to be what we in the parenting business call “an acceptable rate of failure”.
Charles has also improved on the aftermath as well. Early on, Mom or I had to help him because he had no concept of using toilet paper or cleaning after pooping. The problem here was that Charles wouldn’t tell us that he had used the potty and he would end up with a mess on the toilet or floor. That was bad enough, but Charles cared just enough about cleanliness to try and clean up the mess with anything handy, such as his pants.
At one point I got him some flushable wipes to use, which he liked a bit too well as he went through the entire box in a single day. Now, however, he does a creditable job of cleaning himself up with toilet paper, although I have no idea how he learned to do that. It might have been through observation because Mom and I used it on him on a regular basis and it’s not that complex an operation.
Overall, we seem to be out of the woods on Charles and the potty, a state of affairs for which we are profoundly grateful.
Corwin had Monday off from school. To help him pass the time we had his friend Jack come over. I tried to take some pictures but that didn’t work very well. I ended up letting Corwin and Jack try. Here you can see Corwin’s reaction to Jack’s attempt at photography.
Shoulder launched air dog attack!
Charles ended up enjoying his cardboard box bus quite a lot. I ended up taking a number of trips on it, to and from my office. I had to find a small box for Charles to put the bus tokens in which he kept in the front of the bus. I eventually had to stop riding because, being the immense being that I am, I was crushing the boxes into uselessness.
At one point Charles decided that he’d rather have an airplane. But, before committing to that kind of reconstruction project, he decided to do a bit of a market survey, which consisted of coming in to my office and asking me “you want to ride on my airplane?”. I said that I would, at which point Charles told me that he hadn’t converted the bus yet, he was just seeing if he would have any passengers on the plane. Charles then did a beverage survey, asking me if I would want coffee on my flight. However, when I actually boarded Charles told me that he only had water. He had built a nice little table out of blocks in the middle of the airplane (which looked a lot more like the little beverage cart one finds on an airplane). For some reason, however, Alice hated the table. Hate hate hate. No matter what I did, she would look around until she spotted it and then try to destroy it. Eventually she succeeded, which made Charles sad.
And of course, a plane doesn’t take tokens, it requires a ticket. Luckily Alice was young enough that Charles let her on without one.
Mom has been doing some sorting of Alice clothes (because she’s getting bigger, if very slowly). This is fine with Alice, because she quite likes the box of clothes. If left alone for even a moment, she’ll pop over and climb in. That’s fine with me, because she can’t get out on her own and anything that restricts her mobility is a comfort.
Sunday Corwin, Charles, and I went ice skating. I have dim memories of taking Corwin skating when he was about Charles age, but that was a long time ago, so effectively this was a first time skating experience for both boys.
Charles was a skating machine. His preferred mode was to have me stand behind him, hold both of this hands and skate along. I would try to take a rest on each loop because this stance kind of got to my back. But Charles almost always preferred to keep going for another loop.
Corwin spent most of the time glued to the edge. I got to take Corwin a couple of times while Charles was taking a rest. Slowly Corwin would take a few steps a way from the edge and finally he was making entire circuits without touching the wall. Of course then he wanted to immediately go towards the middle. Fortunately, by this time, the session was almost over and the crowds of faster moving folks had thinned out.
We’ll have to try this again next weekend. I think another time or two and the boys will be little independent skating demons.
It’s been just over a year since we got the new van and I think it’s worked out very well. Having the sliding doors on both sides is nice. The remote control for the doors at the front is nice as well — no more yelling at the kids to shut the door. Of course, since the doors are powered even Charles can shut them (he can’t open because he can’t reach the button while he’s strapped in his seat1).
At the top of the list, however, is just having sliding doors. This is brought home to me if we take Mom’s car. Corwin just throws the door open with little concern for what might be near by and I doubt that Charles will be much better about it. A sliding door, however, can’t be swung out far enough to hit another car or some structural element of the parking lot. I wonder if I will be able to get a car with sliding doors in front for when Corwin is old enough to drive…
1 Although, now that I think about it, Charles should be able to get out on his own. He can unstrap himself from his seat and he knows where the door button is.
Note the two vertical blocks in front of Charles.
He rotates these to simulate the folding door on a bus
Charles: You want to ride on my bus?
Dad: OK. [Dad sits on Charles’ cardboardblock bus]
Charles: You forgot the bus token.
Dad: Oh [Dad finds a plastic coin to give to Charles]
Charles: Where you want to go?
Dad: What about the mommy store? I think it’s time for a new mommy.
Charles: I not see it.
Dad: No mommy store?
Charles: No. We got that mommy [points at Mom sitting nearby]
Dad: We should keep Mom?
Charles: [in a bored, “it’s so obvious” tone] Yes
Dad: What about the Little Girl Store? You could have two sisters.
Charles: No. We got Alice.
Dad: Yes, but we could get another little girl. Don’t you want two sisters?
Charles: No. One is enough.
I found out this afternoon that Alice can now go up multiple stairs. Before she was limited to basicaly the stairs she could reach by standing at the bottom of them. This afternoon I left her in the basement temporarily while I fetched some milk for her and came back to find her most of the way up the bottom flight to the basement. Apparently she wanted the milk right now.
Speaking of showing pictures to the children, I’ve been meaning to write about showing some old photos to Charles and Corwin.
A couple of months ago I was digging through some old digital archives (I didn’t take nearly as many pictures back then). Corwin came in to bug me while I was doing that and so I started showing him some embarassing pictures of himself and Charles. Corwin was all for deleting some of those, although he laughed quite a bit at some others. Charles wandered in while this was going on. Charles quite liked all of the pictures, although for a number of them he refused to believe that they were pictures of him, ascribing them to either Corwin or Alice. For instance, on this picture (taken 18 May 2001), Charles insisted that it was Corwin and Alice.
Still, Charles did seem to enjoy looking at some ancient family history.
Charles was bitten by another little boy at daycare yesterday. It was one of the few children Charles can actually remember by name. Apparently they were rough-housing (which with Charles can get rough) and got over excited. By the time Mom picked him up Charles was completely over it. We tried to ask Charles about it at dinner but he fell off his chair and cried because he got stuck on a word that Mom and I couldn’t understand so we had to leave off.
You can see the marks from both sets of teeth
I like to show the kids pictures of themselves, but it’s become very difficult to do with Alice. Yesterday the daycare people told me that they needed a picture of Alice for their wall of pictures. When I got home I ran off a couple of pictures and showed them to Alice. She immediately tried to eat them. Removing them out of her reach caused her to break down in to tears. She was completely obsessed with those particular pictures. I had to hide them and then spend several minutes comforting Alice for the loss.
Alice has also started to demand to eat the same food that Mom and I eat. Not similar food, but the particular food we are eating. I would mind that less if Alice followed through on the eating part, but generally she just takes a small taste and then proceeds with her standard discard routine, i.e. ejecting the object off to the floor like a little catapult.
Alice has taken to the Po doll in a big way. It’s wet with Alice affection. It’s a tempetuous affair, though, with frequent flings.
We all went to the park yesterday. A good time was had by all. Alice enjoyed eating the sand in the sand box. Well, maybe she didn’t enjoy it exactly, but she certainly did a lot of it.
Charles set up shop on one of the play structures and then insisted that Mom and I “buy” stuff from him. We ordered various things which had quite odd prices. For instance, a slice of pizza was 3¢ while a banana was 32¢. Charles’ store didn’t stock everything. Some things, like milk, he didn’t carry at all. Other things, such as salad, he was out of that day.
Charles’ store design was a bit strange as well. The storeroom / kitchen was off in another section of the play structure as you can see on the left. It’s the part with the round window. The store front in the previous picture is to the left.
Whenever an order was put in, Charles would walk over to the kitchen and retrieve item and then carefully carry it back. A few things, like potato chips, where stored up front. For some items, Charles would know that there were none in stock, but a couple of times he had to go check the kitchen before he realized that the item was out of stock.
If you look off in the distance on the left, you can see another play structure with blue columns. The shop here apparently being a bit of a financial failure with only two customers, Charles later set up a new shop in that building. The design was still not completely ergonomic, as order fufillment tended to involve Charles circling the structure at least once, with different items stored in a number of different locations. I think Charles blamed the crowds in front of the old shop for its poor performance, as in the new shop loitering wasn’t allowed. As soon as the food was served, the customer was ordered over to a nearby table (which you can see under the red roof behind the slide).
Corwin spent much of his time on the swings and avoiding Dad’s camera. Here you can see Corwin fleeing the swing because Dad’s about to take his picture.
Nevertheless, I got a couple of good pictures I’ll post in a day or two.
One of the things I indulged myself with last year as a nice leather jacket. I had an old one that I had purchased back in Pittsburgh but Mom wasn’t very fond of it. The first thing she asked when she saw me with the new jacket was “you threw the old one out, right?”.
I had intended for the jacket to be a normal, everyday jacket, although I actually had a stranger ask where I got it. Even Mom thought it looked quite nice, even though the advertising had pictured it on people doing farm work and hanging in a barn. I thought “OK, it’s expected to be a ‘working’ jacket’” but apparently not. Apparently my fashion sense is so off that I can even do unstylish correctly.
But fortunately, I have children, Alice in particular in this case. She’s been a great help with getting the jacket looking like a work jacket by generously sharing all of her bodily fluids with it. When you get something new, you always fear the first scratch / dent / stain. Alice cured me of that within a day. Maybe the new jacket will look the same as the old one in just a few short months, thanks to the dedicated efforts not only of Alice, but Corwin as well (who has quite the knack for filling the side pockets with snow which subsequently melts for some water damage). Won’t Mom be surprised!
I took the boys outside this weekend (yes, actually outside of the house. It was Mom’s idea). There was still one pile of snow left, so Corwin and I grabbed some to throw snowballs around. Charles saw this and called out, in his serious voice, “How many times I tell you no throwing!”. Charles repeated this a couple of times, and re-iterated it at several of the subsequent snowball exchanges. He also used a variant of the phrase to indicate that I shouldn’t be in the street, although he admitted I could be in the dead-end street. I’m not quite sure where he got this, as that’s not something Mom or I say. It’s good to know that Charles is looking out for us.
I’ve started Corwin on doing some minimal amounts of cleaning around the house (better him than me!). While Mom was out I gave him the choice of picking up and sweeping around the media room / kitchen, or scrubbing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. Corwin elected to handle the dishes, on which he did an OK job of brushing the big chunks off with a scrubber and loading them in to the dishwasher.
When Charles saw this, he wanted to help too (if Big Brother is doing it, it is definitionally way cool). To Charles I gave a wet wash cloth and told him to wipe off the kitchen table, which was encrusted with debris from the ravening wolf boys who don’t quite see to grasp the concept of a plate as something one eats over in addition to being a convenient resting place for not yet consumed food. Charles did a good job and got the table almost clean. Charles then tried sweeping up a bit with a small brush and dust pan (as the table thing is kind of iffy for the boyen). He was not quite as successful in this endeavor but I give him points for trying. Sadly, Corwin used to want to do that kind of thing as well but he grew out of it in short order. I expect the same from Charles (who already will not pick up any of his toys).
For your reading pleasure, a disjointed set of tiny stories of Charles and his progress.
This morning, for the first time that I know of, Charles put on his pants by himself. I had gone in to check on him after Mom and Corwin headed out and he was, as is his wont these days, sitting on the floor in his room wearing just a shirt. He apparently grasps that in the morning he needs new clothes, so he takes as much of his old ones off as he can. But then he simply waits passively until Dad happens to wander by to get him new underwear. I did that and wandered off again to deal with Alice. When I got back, Charles had put on both his underwear and gotten out some pants from his dresser and put them on. Shirts are still a bit much for him, though.
Charles can also now put on his jacket. He does this by laying it on the floor, outer side down and inverted relative to him (so that his head and the jacket’s hood are next to each other). He then leans over, sticks his arms in the sleeves and flips the jacket over his head. He’s inventive, if not efficient.
Charles is also learning about storing things. I let him take cars and trucks to his daycare, but make him leave the in the van so they don’t get lost/broken. His previous habit was to simply drop them on the floor in front of his seat, but now he carefully puts them in webbing attached to the base of his seat so that he can more easily find them on the return trip (presuming he doesn’t go on the bus with Mom).
Charles is not acquiring good eating habits, however. He’s turned from “if it’s on my plate, it’s good to eat” to being a rather picky eater who likes only macoroni and cheese (and sometimes hot dogs). When he’s forced to eat things like peas or lima beans, he chews on them a bit and then pops over to the garbage can to spit out the remains. This is hard to stop because the alternative is for him to not use the garbage can. This seems to be the worst of both worlds, but he’s probably getting some nutrional value due to the chewing.
Corwin has been singing a lot lately, apparently to pass the time or just as a background task. He tends to alternate between hymns and cartoon show theme songs. Now and then he’ll sing ones he’s learned at school, including one interminable one about Farmer Brown’s travails with pesky critters eating his crops. Apparently he sings better than I do, because Mom has never turned That Voice on him and said “please don’t sing”.
On the instrument front, Corwin is starting to play real musical pieces instead of practice pieces. Mom is very excited about this. I suspect that Mom is planning on retiring in a few years on his concert earnings.
[Dad is hassling the boys, who are goofing around in the upper bunk]
Dad: You’re a Cor-izard!
Corwin: No I’m not!
Dad: If you’re not a Cor-izard, what’s your evolved form?
Corwin: Mr. Corwin?
Alice is gradually gaining more mastery over her body movements. She can now deliberately perform the “lay on the floor, screaming while flailing limbs” technique for remonstrating parents. Of course, she’s not coordinated enough to do it with the grace and flair of the boys. Instead, she has to first kneel, then put on her arms out and lower herself to the floor. I’m hoping that she can avoid the continual forehead bruises that Charles suffered from.
Alice also likes to grab all of Charles’ clothes in his dresser and throw them on the floor. Previously it was enough to shut the drawer, but Alice is now almost able to open the drawers on her own and be able to fling the clothes all about the room.
Alice has gotten to be quite fast on her feet. She can zip around the house at high speed so even a moment’s inattention means that she could be anywhere.
We no longer feed Alice any baby food. She eats regular food with her fingers, although we still use the spoon when we feed her yogurt. We may have to change that because Mom dropped the spoon on herself three times this morning. It probably won’t be too many more years before the kids are feeding us.
The cub scout pack had a “lock-in” for the scouts last night. I hadn’t originally planned on sending Corwin but he was very excited about it so after some whining we relented and packed him up. It turned out well. Corwin’s entire den was there and there was enough other stuff to do that I persuaded Corwin to not use his gameboy the entire time. They had pizza for supper and pancakes for breakfast. Corwin got a bit of a stomach ache from eating too many Cheetos but he came through. The remaining adults didn’t look overly frazzled, so it must have gone reasonably well for the other boys as well. It did take Corwin a while to find his socks and shoes but I think we managed to retrieve everything.
Charles and I have been taking the bus home pretty regularly the last month. Charles is still fasinated by the bus. We wait at the bus stop and watch alll the other buses come by until our bus comes. He is even ok if the bus is crowded and we have to stand for a bit. Today we were a bit late and had to take the non-optimal bus which doesn’t go directly to our neighborhood, but drops us on the other side of the part about a mile away. Charles got to ride on my shoulders on the walk home.
Thursday I got to take all three kids on the bus. Corwin had his violin lesson on campus, so Dad dropped of Corwin and Alice and I picked up Charles as normal. The bus was kind of busy originally, so Corwin and Charles sat together and Alice and I sat elsewhere. This was Corwin’s first city bus trip, and he found it very engrossing. I guess we will try it again next week.
Mom is starting to try out sippy cups on Alice. Alice doesn’t think very highly of this, but she’s willing to wave the sippy cup around for a while. She’ll put them in her mouth but I’m not sure she gets anything out of them (and certainly not when she’s mouthing random parts of it). Alice should be able to work a sippy cup, as she can generate enough back pressure on a bottle to completely invert the nipple.
Corwin is getting old enough that he needs to start working on his composition skills. Since he also has some Cub Scout electives that involve using a computer (and Mom says his gaming addicition doesn’t count) I thought that it would be nice if Corwin wrote something for this kid log. I suggested this at dinner this evening to Corwin and Mom. Corwin looked up and announced “writing on a computer isn’t really writing”. Ouch!
Since Corwin took over Alice’s dog, Charles has become fond of some of Alice’s dolls (including her Binkie Baby). Here you can seem him tucking in the dolls on the couch so they can watch a DVD in comfort.
The folk at Alice’s daycare are talking about moving Alice up to the toddler’s room. I suspect this may have something to do with the fact that Alice toddles quite well these days, even if she is a tiny little thing.
As a result of this, Alice has been spending short amounts of time with the toddlers. She’s apparently doing very well in adapting, although it seems more like being in princess mode to me. She pushed right through the crowd of bigger, taller children to the toy area and grabbed what she wanted. The daycare people were very impressed with how adventurous she was. I wonder how much her interactions with Charles are an influence. She doesn’t seem to mind Charles’ over enthusiasm so perhaps she views the the toddlers as slightly smaller Charles and if he doesn’t frighen her, none of them will.
[The family is seated for dinner. Suddenly Alice is moved to speak]
Alice: Num num ya gi go ku! [gestures dramatically with her hand]
Charles: [laughs]
Dad: Charles, what did Alice say? Can you translate?
Charles: Num num ya gi go ku! That what Als say! [laughs]
Obviously some kind of inside joke. I don’t see why they can’t tell me, though.
Corwin, Charles, and I did another theater outing last Saturday. We saw “The Phantom Tollbooth” at the local community college. We had read the book a couple months ago. It was a book I enjoyed from my youth. Lots of good word play and teaching lessons of thinking for yourself.
The play was pretty faithful to the book but skipped some sections to fit into the time allotted. The play added 1970’s elements through costumes and background music. The Princesses of Rhyme and Pure Reason were dressed in groovy hippie chick clothes. The Humbug had an afro, bell bottoms, and a polyester shirt. As they drove around the stage in the little red car, the disco ball would spin and the Jackson 5 would play in the background.
The boys liked it. Corwin liked it better than last week’s Magic School Bus, and it was probably more age appropriate for him. Charles also seemed to pay attention. He was ready to go home after intermission, but once we got back in he sat through the second half ok.
I saw that Willy Wonka is playing this summer at another local theater group. We’ll have to put that on our schedule.
