While we were on vacation, Corwin got to play a couple of sports that he doesn’t get much chance at up here. Corwin spent a lot of time throwing a basketball around and in particular playing “horse” with Mom. Corwin liked it so much that he even played with another young girl and her father that showed up on the court at the hotel one evening.
While we were in Texas, Alice was playing with blocks at Mimi’s and she was able to stack up four blocks by herself. Of course, once I grabbed a camera she stopped, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Alice also grew smart and strong enough to lift the toilet seat to get at the fun things inside and satisfy her toilet obsession. So now just closing the lid doesn’t keep her out as it used to.
Alice is also a chocaholic. Now, the boyen like chocolate, but they came by their affection for it gradually. I can remember conversations with Corwin about him not liking chocolate. Charles liked chocolate before he could talk, but not much before (if there is any mention of ice cream, Charles immediately announces “I like chocolate!”).
Alice is already a chocolate fiend. For easter, Mom got the boyen some easter candy. This consisted primarily of Cadbury Eggs and Hershey’s Kisses. Charles left his on the table and over the next couple of days Alice would make grabs for it if she saw it. I’m talking about major lunges where it was all I could do to not drop her on the spot. While we weren’t looking she managed to get her hands on it and started eating one of the Cadbury eggs, tin foil and all. We finally had to move the baskets to high ground, out of sight to keep Alice away from them because she’d break in to a screaming fit if she saw them and was denied her fix (classic addictive behaviour). I just can’t decide if this is better or worse than Charles’ baby wipe habit.
Alice is starting to adjust to using sippy cups. I packed up all of her bottles and put them away. She’s drinking a lot less than she used to, which has very noticeably boosted her appetite for solid foods (why, today she even ate things that weren’t on the floor!). She’s been extra cranky, because it seems that she used the bottle much more for comfort than beverage intake. Since she will now actually drink out of the sippy cup, I think we can count on her not collapsing from thirst out of protest at this change.
Mom took the boys off to the dentist today. While picking up Corwin from school, his teacher talked to Mom a bit about some problems Corwin is having at school with crying. Apparently he spent much of his day on Tuesday in tears from various issues, although all we got at home was “I didn’t have a good day”. Corwin was upset because a group of boys asked his friend Jack but not him to play with them (this is an echo of Corwin’s complaint at Mimi’s house while we were playing badminton about people not hitting to him, that he was invisible).
I’m not sure what to do about it, but he’s going to have a very unpleasant time in the next few grades if he cries in public. It will be the equivalent of a giant “kick me!” sign. At least now it’s not a major problem, but I definitely need to work with him on being more sanguine about life’s little setbacks.
Charles has created a maze of ropes and strings out in the TV room (you can see a bit of it here). As I was rushing about this morning, trying to deal with the standard morning frenzy of activity, I tripped over one of the ropes. Charles looked up and said “be careful!”. I was touched by his concern, until he added “you might break the rope!”.
Alice checks her notes to see if she got everything she wanted done today
So I got a new tablet computer and, having the children that I do, I got a bump case which is a protective covering for the tablet to protect it from bumps. I took the tablet out to put it in the desktop stand and left the bump case on my desk, where it was rapidly located and used by POset.
A short history of a long trip.
Friday: We left around 7 pm and arrived at the hotel at 1 pm the next day. The traveling went much better when the kids were asleep. The last few hours with everyone awake took for-ev-er.
Saturday: We rested up during the remainder of Saturday. We visited with Mimi and Uncle Evil a bit as well. Corwin finally got his wedgie.
Sunday: On Sunday we went to church with Uncle Craig and Aunt Linda. In the afternoon we went over to Blaine’s house to see his family and for a cookout for all the corporate refugees. The boys had a lot of fun there, shooting squirt guns and playing volleyball and badminton.
Monday:
Shopping day. Mom had some stores she wanted to loot browse so we went downtown and shopped. Mom got some new, very fancy sunglasses for Alice to grunge up and Corwin got a bunch of new soccer gear, including goalie gloves and hi-tech under shirts, so it was successful outing. It did make the boys very tired at least. We went out in the evening with Aunt Linda’s family.
Tuesday: The day for Mom to visit people officially at her old company, to see if she could get some funding for her research at her new job. That evening was the Chuck E. Cheese outing with the cousins. We were quite tired at that point and went to bed early.
Wednesday: We went downtown to visit Uncle Bruce at his office. Uncle Craig works there as well but he was out of town. In the afternoon we visited Uncle Evil and then went over to a local park with the cousins.
Thursday: We hung out with Uncle Evil at Mimi’s house in the morning and went down to the creek with the J-Clan in the afternoon. In the evening we watched a basketball game and Mimi actually came home early from work to hang out with us.
Friday: Family day. All of the four brothers and their associates gathered for hanging out with Mimi. We played a lot of four square and then some kickball over at the nearby middle school. After that it was time for everyone to leave. We got on the road about 7 pm once again and made it home by 1 pm.
Corwin had some problems with liquids early in the trip. He spilled at breakfast on Monday. On Tuesday at breakfast, I helpfully pointed out that he should keep his drink on the far side of his plate so he wouldn’t knock it over. Of course, within minutes it was knocked over on him. That evening, while out with the cousins, Corwin managed to spill yet another full cup of drink.
Corwin also spent a lot of time on his GameBoy. He got in to the habit of turning on either the TV or the DVD player in the van whenever he could reach the controls while simultaneously firing up the GameBoy.
Alice became so tired of riding in the van that she would break down in tears at just the sight of her car seat. She was desperate to run wild and free and engaged in some rather long walks at various points. She did insist on crawling or being lifted over the gap between the hall and the elevator, however.
The creek was a hit. Everyone had fun with only a few injuries (Jared scraped his tummy and hurt his foot, but managed to bounce a rock off the top of Corwin’s head). No actual bleeding or broken bones so that counts as a safe trip. On the other hand, the dam we built was washed away without a trace by the winter rains. I ended up going a good way down the creek looking for it, but eventually decided that it had been wiped out.
Charles got more adventurous in the creek as well. I was riding the current and Charles was willing to lay down on top of me and ride along. Charles also got quite a bit of sun and I thought he was sunburned, but other than one complaint the next morning it never bothered him.
It rained hard, several times. Mom had left the back vent windows open so we had to swab out the back seat. While we were in shopping for Corwin’s soccer gear, it started raining again. I turned to Mom and asked “are the windows closed?”. Well, at least I won the coin toss and it was Mom who had to stay in the store with the spawn.
When we visited the old gang at work, we all got little stick on visitor badges. Charles really liked his. He managed to keep it on for three days before the sticky ran out from switching shirts. Charles would insist on the transfer in the morning so he’d have it for another day.
Alice does seem to like her food served au natural. This morning I fed Charles some Crispix cereal and Alice grabbed at it. Using my keen Daddy sense, I was able to determine that
I sprung in to action, placing Alice in her high chair and putting both Crispix and Frosted Mini-Wheats on her tray. As usual, she ate a just a couple of them and then climbed out of the chair.
I thought that was the end of it, but as I was helping Corwin prepare for school I heard the ring of a bowl on the floor and a cry of dismay from Charles. Alice had pulled Charles’ bowl of Crispix off the table and spilled it on the floor. Some of the Crispix had remained in the bowl, a problem which Alice swiftly fixed by tilting the bowl until its contents were also on the floor. Alice then proceeded to dig in to the Crispix with some real gusto. Since she’s such a petite flower, I let her enjoy herself while I comforted a distraught (and now breakfastless) Charles with promises of a refilled bowl of cereal! and pushed Corwin to get ready for the bus.
Charles finally overreached himself with his barriers and ropes. Mom bought a small cabinet for DVDs a while back which sits next to the TV. Charles has been directing his tieing efforts toward that instead of the door for a while and on Sunday he managed to pull the entire thing down on himself. I had to pull the cabinet off Charles, who was stuck under it. One of the glass panes popped out but fortunately didn’t break. After I got it cleaned up, Charles went to work. He put a lot of scotch tape on it along with a sign to indicate that the cabinet was broken. So there it sits, one glass panel missing but marked as non-operational.
The cabinet, closed with tape, and the “broken” sign
Attention to detail – note how the cloth chain is reinforced with rings of scotch tape all along its length
Alice was moved up to the toddler room today. This means, among other things, that we need to move her from using bottles to using sippy cups. I remember this being a traumatic change for both of the boys, although they got over it within a week.
Mom said that Alice did reasonably well, although she had a bit of a long day because Charles insisted on going in early. At one point she cried at the gate between the rooms until one of the baby room ladies picked her up. Change is always hard, but Alice seems to adapt relatively quickly.
We’ve also shifted Alice’s diet to drink a lot more water instead of milk from her bottles. She just wasn’t eating because she had so much milk all the time. She’s doing much better on consuming solid food since we cut back. It was rough for a few days but Alice is now comfortable with not drinking milk from her bottle. Just in time to switch to sippy cups.
Today Charles went in to the towel selling business. He loaded up his wagon with a bunch of dish towels, put a cover on them and set off about the house to find customers. Charles claimed that he was selling paper towels and he and I got in to an argument about that later on. I claimed that he had cloth towels, a charge which he vigorously denied — “that not true! they not made of cloth!”.
The traveling towel salesman makes the pitch
We did Easter Sunday kinds of things today. We went to an Easter egg hunt at church and then attended Easter services. Afterwards we came home to rest up from the trip, except for Mom who cooked up a nice Easter dinner for us. Other than that, Mom spent most of the rest of the day watching college basketball games. Apparently there’s some sort of tournament going on. I spent most of my time catching up on e-mail and other web related tasks, and looking through the pile of photos from the trip.
Corwin and Charles enjoyed the Easter egg hunt. It was inside, because it wasn’t a particularly pleasant day out. They gathered the children together and then announced “you can go look now”. The children exploded out of the room like a swarm of locusts. The turnout wasn’t as high as expected so there were a lot of eggs and the limit was set at 20 eggs / child. The older kids hit the limit within a minute and then argued on and off over who hit it first. Charles required a bit of guidance to find his limit but he did find quite a few on his own. Alice was too young to participate, although she did look fetching in her Sunday dress.
Charles lunges for an egg at the hunt
We made it back after only 18 hours on the road. Alice only cried for the last 3 or 4 hours. But I think the boys had a good time. Alice was a bit under the weather during most of the trip, although she did enjoy some of the sites (see below) and definitely had fun the few times we let her run wild and free.
P.S. Final damage: 530 images taking 1447 megabytes of space.
Alice hangs out in the coffee shop just like Mom
We hit another milestone on this trip — the boys have started to fight over who gets to push the buttons in the elevator. Corwin has liked to do that for a while, but it’s only on this trip that Charles has started to assert his right to push buttons. it’s bearable right now because there are naturally two buttons to push (calling the elevator and selecting the floor), but I’m not sure what we will be able to do once Alice is a button pusher as well.
Yes, we are now in glorious Texas. We survived the long trip down without pitching even one of the children out the window. Although we had to stop for a couple hour nap in the wee hours, the trip still went a lot faster when the kids were asleep. The last few hours seemed to take a very long time.
After Charles woke, up, he spent a lot of time asking where we were going (“Texas”). This despite the fact that Charles spent most Friday, as we were getting ready to leave, asking “Are we going to Texas now?”. Once we got here, Charles announced a few times “I not see Texas”. We tried to convince him that we were in fact, in Texas, but apparently it didn’t look different enough. Alice got pretty cranky towards the end as well, although Corwin was mostly fine with the DVD player and his Gameboy.
When we finally arrived Alice insisted on walking everywhere, even all the way from the car to the room on the third floor. Alice was very concerned about getting over the gap between the hallway and the inside of the elevator so we boosted her over it, which Alice thought was quite fun.
We’ve been so busy since we got here that I’ve just now worked on the internet connection. Mom and the boys tried the hotel pool, but it’s outside and the heater is broken. The weather was quite nice so we just hung out near the pool for a little bit until it was time for the next event in our whirlwind day. I’m hoping for a bit of a slower day today to try and recuperate.
Today’s the frantic day, as we desperately try to get ready to leave for Texas in the evening. Mom’s off to do a lab with her students that she was up till the wee hours getting ready. I’ve got all three monkeys at home so I’m not sure I’ll get anything done before I drop them off at daycare. Should be a good day.
I forgot to mention that for the first time this week I saw Alice wave goodbye. Normally when I pick her up the staff says “goodbye!” and I encourage Alice to wave, frequently moving her hand myself. The last time I picked her up I was in too much of hurry, but when they all said “goodbye, Alice”, Alice responded with the typical baby fist clenching goodbye wave. That’s better than Charles, who studiously ignores all of the staff when entering or leaving daycare even as they greet him or call goodbye.
And this evening, Mom was watching the basketball game and Alice ran out of milk. I was called in to fetch some new bot for Alice. Mom said that Alice’s empty bottle was floating around the room somwhere. I started to look for it but immediately after Mom said that, Alice hopped down from Mom’s lap, walked over to the empty bottle, picked it up and handed it to me. She then followed me over to the refigerator to watch me refill it. It’s nice for Dad to help but you need to keep an eye on him to make sure he follows through.
Alice is communicating in other ways. Her current signal for “I want down now” is to switch from clutching at the back of one’s shirt to flinging her upper body at the ground. On a good day she can get herself inverted before I manage to halt her forward momentum. I can’t wait for when she fearlessly leaps off objects like Charles.
Alice also knows that I have pens and pencils in my vest. Almost every time I pick her up now she immediately searches for said writing implements and plucks them out so she can either chew on them or fling them in to the great beyond. Neither choice is really optimal for proper maintenance but she’s just so darn quick.
Alice is just racing through the milestones these days. She’s just started being able to climb a step or two on ladders. She can now get up a rung or two, although she’s not coordinated enough to do more than get stuck at that point. She just can’t get her foot in the right spot for long enough to make progress. It doesn’t seem so long ago that Charles was mastering the bunk bed ladder (although that was Charles being able to make it all the way up).
Alice is also engaging in one of the cute little habits that Corwin had when he was young, which is getting down and crawling in order to transition between surfaces or traverse shallow inclines. Alice can get down stairs by backing down. When she has to switch from the sidewalk or grass to the other, she gets down on all fours and carefull backs over the boundary. She will also do that for even shallow slopes that drop an inch or two over a foot or so. Sometimes Alice will even back carefully over large cracks. That’s something I strongly remember Corwin doing, although I don’t really have much memory of Charles doing that sort of thing. Given Alice’s penchant for falling on her face and bloodying her lip or (yesterday) scraping up her chin, I suppose this extra care is for the best.
Alice is also acquiring the driving bug like both of her brothers. I hadn’t really noticed her being interested before, but the last week has seen a definite awareness on her part of driving and steering wheels. Before, when I would hold her at Corwin’s computer she would just chew on the steering wheel but now she puts her hands out and turns it like she was driving. At soccer practice this evening it got cold and so I bundled up Charles and Alice in the van to keep them warm (Corwin, I will note, was out playing in short sleeves without complaint). Alice was very excited to be able to turn the steering wheel and fiddle with the other controls.
Yesterday afternoon it was a nice day and Mom was off doing some kind of Mom thing so I was stuck with the crew. We ended up hanging out outside until it was time for Corwin to go to Cub Scouts. Alice had a lot of fun riding the back of Charles’ tractor, pulled mainly by Dad or Corwin. After we got tired, I decided to pull her out of the trailer before she fell over followed Charles’ footsteps in the ways of head trauma. Mistakenly, I put her on the front part. She thought that was great and immediately grabbed the steering wheel to go cruising. I tried to pull her out but she would have none of that. So I had to lean over in a very uncomfortable way to push the tractor along, which Alice thought was great fun. It was only with some reluctance and much pushing that I managed to get her back in the trailer for Charles to zip around with her (how she didn’t fly out the back from Charles’ sudden starts and stops I don’t know - strong hands that girl has).
Charles’ daycare wanted a picture of him when he was a baby. I sent this one one, from his second Christmas. Charles is just over 1 year old here, wearing what was my favorite outfit for the children, the happy face tie-die onesie (and, I note, black pants).
25 Dec 2001
One of the ladies at Alice’s daycare told me some Alice stories as I picked her up today. It seems that Alice can kick balls. I was told that, instead of the normal just walking in to balls, Alice enjoyed actually kicking a ball.
Alice also has a bit of an arm on her. She can throw balls forward, instead of them falling off behind or dropping right in front of her. I remember Corwin hurting a few people when he was young because of his strong throwing arm. The victims would hand him something like a tennis ball and say “throw it to me!” expecting a typical baby loft. Corwin would fling the ball hard enough to hurt instead, taking the target by surprise. Perhaps Alice will be able to do the same thing. Charles, though, still can’t really throw things.
But to make up for all of this marvelous Alice progress, I will leave you with this picture of Alice chomping in to a big clod of dirt like it was an apple:
Mmmmm, I love these earth-apples!
Today was Mom’s and my last day official day at our former employer. A number of corporate refugees gathered for one last lunch on the company expense account. A couple of short-timers (people who signed up for the 6-month extension, which is down to 4 months now) were there to pick up the check because what can the company do about it? Fire them? “Oh, if only!” they said in a wistful voice.
I’m hoping that now that it’s all finally really over, I’ll be able to concentrate on my new work more effectively. Yessiree, I’m sure it’s all going to be smooth sailing from here on out…
Yesterday was Mom’s first gardening day. She managed to get all of the kids out to help her (I, of course, was unavailable due to the necessity of providing photographic support for her endeavor).
One of the tasks was to loosen up the dirt in Mom’s raised boxes. While working on this, Charles and Corwin were impressed by the fact that there were earthworms in the dirt. Corwin thought that perhaps we should keep one of the worms as a pet, although Mom didn’t think that would work out so well. I pointed out to Corwin that Mom has a worm farm, for which Mom was deeply appreciative as it gave her an opportunity to interact with Corwin by answering his rapid fire sequence of questions on the precise dietary habits of earthworms.
Charles liked the worms as well and demanded one to put on his shovel so he could carry it around as his friend. Mom made the mistake of just grabbing a nearby worm, which nearly drove Charles to tears because Charles had already picked out his special worm. I think the worm survived — at least Charles never deliberately squished it.
At a later point Mom got out a box of biodegradable packing peanuts and let the kids go wild with it, although they were supposed to put the peanuts in the raised bed.
I’ve got all sorts of Charles goodness.
Charles has been a bit of a clutchy boy lately. He definitely missed Mom while she was gone, asking about her repeatedly. (He even asked about Alice a couple of times) After she got back he was physically much more friendly than previously and mentioned that he didn’t want to Mom to go to work and leave him. Even Dad would do in the pinch. One day when I dropped him off at daycare he clung to my legs saying “I want to touch you” when I tried to send him over to hang up his coat. He’s getting back to normal now, although I wonder how he’ll handy Mom having two more long trips this spring.
Charles continues to enjoy his scotch tape. Mom broke down and bought him a little plastic wheel barrow which has been his constant companion for the last couple of days. One of his projects with it was putting scotch tape across the top in separate strips. I’m not clear on what purpose this served but Charles did do a nice job of evenly spacing the strips. Charles also used a long piece of scotch tape to section off part of the media room so that he could clean the floor there (we didn’t get to the actual floor cleaning effort due to Mom insisting on eating supper instead).
Charles also made a new door for his metal school bus, the one that got the sun roof a few days ago. Charles cut out a little (mostly) rectangular piece of paper and drew a rectangle with crossed lines to look like the original door and attached it on one side with scotch tape.
Charles has also been doing construction with some magnetic toys.
Corwin prevented me from working one day by insisting I rebuild a magnetic sculpture I’d made last year which consisted of an outer framework and a hanging bit inside. I couldn’t remember how I had done it, so instead I built a hexagonal tower with a hanging tetrahedron. Charles quite liked it and built this addition to it:
This is Charles’ “hose pipe”. It comes up from the top of the tower and then spreads out, delivering water across the width of the table and beyond. It is, sadly, destroyed by a rampaging Alice, which was a traumatic experience for Charles.
Charles has also acquired a number of utterances that we can’t figure out at all. One of his favorites these days is “pour yourself a sugar!”. This is a common response of his to any verbal repartee, such as “how was your day, Charles?”. He repeats it over and over to put up a solid wall of chatter that crushes his conversational competitors. Another rising favorite is “You be a you buy”, which astoundingly makes even less sense.
I hear stories of children who refuse to go to the dentist, kicking and screaming the whole way. I just can’t picture it. The boys like to go to the dentist. I had a dentist appointment last week and when the boys heard about it, they asked when they could go to the dentist. Mom signed them up and the boys are pumped for their own appointment.
Obviously, you’ve all been hanging breathlessly for a report on the results from today’s Pine Wood Derby.
It was a cold, windy day. Luckily Corwin and Dad had finished the car the night before so everything was ready to go and we had a leisurely morning before the race. To compensate for that, Corwin lost his neckerchief and we spent a paniced half hour desparately searching the house and cars for it before we gave up.
I took some tools of the trade along, and although I didn’t have the opportunity to fix Corwin’s car and thereby become his idolized role model, I did fix the cars of two of his competitors, which is unlikely to be quite as endearing.
The track awaits
Corwin did reasonably well. He finished first in his den and fourth overall. The cars seemed faster this year. After the event I ran last years car against this year’s and this year’s was a little bit faster. On the other hand, it was so close last year that had a couple of coin flips gone the other way Corwin would have been third instead of first. So, really, he did about the same. Corwin was a bit distraught over his failure to triumph, but he got over it with just a bit of whimpering. Fourth is also good enough to go on to the council level races, although I doubt he’ll do as well there as last year either based on his showing in the pack. Corwin’s hot to do it, though — he handed over his car for safe keeping until then without prompting. That’s serious.
In terms of Corwin’s construction skills, I worked on the car about as much this year as last, but I think it turned out much better (can you tell the difference from the picture? ).
Corwin did a lot better on his parts. Next year I’ll definitely be cutting back on the number of things I do on the car and leave much more of it to Corwin.
P.S. Immediately after the race, Mom rushed Corwin over to his friend Kyle’s birthday party which ran for 2½ hours, which seemed like an insanely long time to be stuck with a bunch of 8 year olds hyped on sugar and presents, but it was at an indoor swimming facility which probably helped work off some of that energy.
P.P.S. As you can see, I took my camera but I didn’t get many good pictures. While the event is fun, it’s not really much for taking pictures. I forgot to bring the little camera to get some video, but frankly that’s not terribly exciting either, so that’s not much of a loss.
Today Alice showed me that she now understands CD trays, at least enough to open them and pull the CD out of the tray. She used to get them out by accident by randomly pawing the front of the computer, but today I saw her deliberately and with forethought press the button to open it. At least she’s acquiring important modern survival skills.
In other progress news, Alice can now navigate the stairs on her own not only up but now down as well (controlled descent, you hecklers! Not just tumbling!).
[It’s 8:30 and Charles is still in his clothes from yesterday, playing with his school bus]
Dad: Charles, it’s time to do your morning stuff.
Charles: I busy right now.
Dad: It’s getting late, we need to start getting ready to go see your little friends.
Charles: But I don’t want toooooo!
[It’s 8:45. After some struggle, Charles has finished his washing and dressing]
Charles: I want to go see my little friends now.
Dad: It’s not time to leave yet.
Charles: But I want tooooo!
[It’s time to pick up Charles. He is happy to be re-united with the airplane Mom gave him when she returned]
Dad: Hey, is that Daddie’s airplane?
Charles: No! That my airplane.
Dad: Why doesn’t Daddy get an airplane?
Charles: Hmmmm.
Dad: Is it because Mom doesn’t like me?
Charles: Hmmm. She like you. She don’t like you have airplane in your office.
[The drive home]
Charles: That broken! [points at partially constructed building]
Dad: No, it’s just not finished yet.
Charles: Oh. [pause for pondering] Why we not fix it?
Mom made it back from her trip just fine last night. Charles was very happy to see her in the morning, even though he couldn’t bring himself to actually answer who she was until after Mom left for work. I think even Corwin was happy to see Mom back in the house.
Corwin and I are making slow but steady progress on his pine wood derby car. Yesterday I decided that the middle section was hopeless because of bad cuts that we had made. My solution was to just pour a bunch of epoxy glue on it to straighten it out. Corwin was excited about wearing rubber gloves and messing with grown up stuff, even after the stern lecture on why he shouldn’t get epoxy on himself. Of course, as you can guess, Corwin did manage to get some on his thumb, which he then proceeded to rub at to get on more of his hand. He was unable, however, to explain why exactly he took off his gloves. I rubbed it down with isopropyl alcohol, during which I mentioned to Corwin “this is poisonous too, so don’t mess with it”. Corwin had some pretty big eyes by this point. I think I managed to convince him to wash his hands thoroughly afterwards.
Anyway, the first pour didn’t go so well. I had drilled some small holes in to the frame to help lock down the epoxy plug but it cured too fast and wasn’t smooth at all. I did a second pour with finishing epoxy that turned out very nice, though. It filled in a bit more than we wanted but it still looks OK. It boosted the weight quite a bit so we won’t have to add as much as we did last year. Hopefully we can get everything painted again and wheels on by Saturday.
I am completely worn out from a long shopping expedition with the boys (Charles never saw home — we picked him up and he crashed on the trip home and didn’t wake up even as I took his coat off and put him in bed). So, all you get today is this picture of Alice:
You can’t pose pictures like this. I actually wanted to get a picture of her standing up for the sidebar, but she must have sensed that and insisted on getting in the chair. But, haha, I got a picture anyway! This pretty dress was a gift from Laurie.
Another item that Mom picked up for Corwin was a bag of cloth rings for his potholder kit. I haven’t seen Corwin use them yet but once again something for Corwin has made Charles very happy.
What Charles does is tie the rings together to make long chains. He’s actually quite good at it after so much practice. He has been using the chains of cloth to substitute for the DENTIST LINE to hold the door shut. This is a better situation as the cloth has a lot more give in it than the plastic tape.
Charles is a boy that has more fun with scotch tape than any other boy I’ve seen. He loves to tape things up. Anything. Just random pieces of paper that are lying around. In fact, he cuts up paper so that he can tape them back together. I used to have to get the pieces of tape from the roll for him but now Charles can do that by himself. I noticed this morning that his metal bus has a see through roof constructed entirely of scotch tape.
Charles is also exploring drawing, mostly in monochrome red these days. He will sometimes draw literally a dozen pictures and then give them to Mom or Dad. Sometimes they are taped together as well, to make them extra special. Charles made a just such a drawing for me this morning.
(Note the tear on the right. That’s from Charles trying to get the paper off the pad. Oh, the screams he made when it tore as it he was taking it off!)
After pondering the work, I asked Charles about his artistic intent and the conversation went something like this:
Dad: Charles, what is this?
Charles: A picture.
Dad: Is it a helicopter?
Charles: No, it a picture.
Dad: I thought it was a helicopter over a train track.
Charles. No, it not a helicopter, it a picture!
Dad: But what it is a picture of?
Charles: [pauses in thought] … It just a picture.
Abstract art. Yet another thing that’s obvious to the younger generation but beyond an old fogey like me.
Alice’s scavenging is rewarded by her being able to look just like Mom in the morning!
Mom, the source of all evil, took the kids out shopping on Sunday (Corwin was enticed along with the promise of getting supplies for his pine wood derby). One of the toys she got for Corwin was a kit for assemblying bead patterns. It has a flat piece of plastic with tiny little spikes in a grid pattern and a bunch of tiny plastic cylinders. You put the cylinders on the spikes to assemble a pattern (like cross-stitching) and then use an iron to melt the cylinders together.
Charles quite liked the kit as well and insisted that Corwin make patterns for him, the preferred pattern being, of course, a tow truck. Corwin was actually cooperative about doing this, which was nice. The problem is that while the melted together cylinders are sufficiently sturdy for display purposes, they don’t stand up to being used like normal toys. Our evening was punctured by cries of despair from Charles, plaintive moans of “it got broken!” and pitiful requests of “you fix it?”. Any delay in immediately jumping up and fixing the truck would create a melted down Charles, puddled on the floor in misery.
In addition to his torture at the weakly connected tow truck, Charles was cranky from being tired (no nap, busy day) and he wouldn’t eat supper yet wanted a treat anyway. What I still find a bit odd about Charles is that in situations like this, when he’s being a major pain, he sends himself to his room. After a firm denail of treat, Charles stumbled off in tears. I left him for a few minutes and then went to check on him, expecting him to be lying on the couch in front of the TV in mute suffering. Instead he was in bed, asleep, apparently having passed out while crying after going to his room. Charles also generally falls asleep after he send himself to his room because it’s very rare for him to be so difficult unless he’s also very tired. I suppose it’s a habit from his potty training days.
It’s been a busy weekend.
Corwin got a toy detective kit a while back, which he played with for a bit and lost interest in. Charles discovered it a few days ago and has become very fond of the “POLICE LINE — DO NOT CROSS” yellow ribbon that came with it.
At first, Charles told me that it was a “DENTIST LINE” as he strung it across the doorway between the media room and the back hallway. This made getting to and from my office a bit more challenging, but not as challenging as when Charles started to wrap the ribbon around the door knob as well. Later, he added some old shoe laces from Corwin’s shoes. I’m not sure what the purpose of that was, as Charles carefully arranged the shoelaces to fall off when the door was opened. I made the mistake of removing both the “DENTIST LINE” ribbon and the shoelaces, which vexed Charles no end. He put the shoelaces back and then demonstrated for the ignorant Dad how the shoelaces fell off properly by themselves when the door was opened.
On the other hand, it does restrict Alice’s mobility so it’s not all bad.
An update on the Alice climbing stairs story —
Today I saw Alice get all the way from the basement to the first floor by herself. I had left her down there, once again, to refill her bottle (she’s drinking less but spilling more these days). As I returned I saw Alice rising from the top step and beginning to search for her bottle.
Mom tells me that Alice has made it all the way up the stairs from the first floor to the second floor, so theoretically Alice can now traverse the entire house. Oh joy!
Corwin’s teacher is attempting to teach the class how to write compositions. She’s started them each with a journal in which they write short essays. For the first one, Corwin wrote about his favorite season, which turns out to be spring. He likes it because of
Parents were required to provide an illustration for the story. Because I draw worse than Corwin, I decided to fiddle with a couple of pictures of Corwin doing the previously listed activites and jazz them up with some of the “artistic” effects from my photographic software (the effects must be good if they’re “artistic”, right?). I liked how they turned out, but Corwin and Mom were a bit dubious. However, their only option was skipping the illustrations or doing it themselves so they gave in. Corwin reported that it turned out OK, so I don’t have to do it over this time at least.
Alice looks for a better seat to watch the ice skating while Charles wonders if Mom knows where she’s going
Charles has discovered twigs. Since our trip to the park Charles has been become much more consistent about acquiring a twig when he’s outside. He calls them “sticks” and isn’t very happy with me when I tell him that his piece of wood is actually a twig. Mom, the softie, acquiesiesin this mislabling leaving me the only defender of the language.
Despite this, Charles is still fond of his dear old Dad1. Charles demonstrated this by going out with Mom to work on the landscaping and returning with a big handful of sticks twigs clutched in his little hand like a boquet. He marched in to my office and announced “These for youuuuu!” and then put the twigs on the table. They’re still there. This afternoon Charles grabbed a couple on his way out but, realizing that he had given them to Daddy, stopped and returned them to the table.
1 Still, Charles is rarely a Daddy’s Charles boy. The other day he even preferred to be Miss Darcy’s Charles boy.
