Yesterday Alice managed to get up the short ladder on the playscape by herself. She went down the small slide a couple of times and then started doing the big slide, presuming that Dad would notice and save her before impact. Yes, with Alice one is always entering a new and more dangerous phase of her life.
P.S. Here’s a picture of her hair standing up in the playscape from the static electricity.
This is one of the many posters that Charles generates. I think it says “No Parking”, mostly in the middle there. Charles has attached a secondary sign although I’m not clear on what it means. The fun part is the first bit in the middle. I asked Charles what it was and he told me it was “no”. I said, “isn’t that the letter ‘I’ there?”. Charles told me “yes. ‘N’ … ‘I’ … no”.
A few days later, however, Charles had taken to spelling “no” with the letter ‘O’. If I could only convince him that his name doesn’t contain the letter ‘P’, which seems to be a particular favorite of his.
[Mom is watering the outside plants with the hose]
Mom: Charles, can you help me with the hose?
Just move it a bit for me, OK?
No, don’t put it on the plant! Move it around the plant.
Be careful, Charles! No, Charles, don’t —
Charles: I sorry.
[Corwin is resting by laying spread on the grass. Charles walks by.]
Dad: Hey, Charles, I think Corwin broke. Can you bury him for me?
Charles: I have a shovel.
Dad: Yes. Could you dig a hole and put him in it?
Charles: No.
Dad: Why not?
Charles: All his food come out.
Dad: Oh.
Charles. I not make holes. [heads off to being work on some mysterious Charles construction project]
The best part is that Charles delivers his lines in either a very earnest little voice, full of conviction, or in a puzzled and irritated voice with a scrunched up face when he can’t believe the kind of silly questions Dad is asking.
I think Corwin and his friends had a good time at his party / sleep-over. Although we ended up spending more time on the road than at the restaurant, the crew considered it a successful outing. They had a good time watching DVDs to and from the restaurant with quite a bit of interactive commentary on various points of cinematography.
We made the boys sleep in the basement. It’s linoleum over concrete, so I was planning on having them sleep on the play matting we have, which is plenty soft for boys in sleeping bags. However, I was worried that it wasn’t enough room so I had the boys put together the big foam world map, which I figured could hold an extra boy or two. Instead, all four of them crowded together so that they could all sleep on it. Why they didn’t do that on the regular mat (which is about twice as big) I’m not sure, but after a bit of initial argument I figured that I wasn’t sleeping there so it really wasn’t my problem.
The boys were up late, finally crashing out around 11:30. They claimed to have gotten up at 4 AM but I’m dubious. They were definitely up before 8, though. Mom made them waffles and eventually their parents reluctantly showed up to retrieve own special burdens gifts from above.
We let Alice get out of sight for a couple of minutes and this was the result.
I had to yank her out of the chair just as she was sitting down for … well, frankly, I’d rather not even think about that.
Corwin went camping with his Cub Scout den last night at the Den Mother’s house, so they could get up early this morning and go and put flags on veteran’s graves for Memorial Day. That was just a prelude to his hectic day today:
Dad: Charles, would you like to get some new shoes?
Charles: These [shoes] falling apart.
Dad: Yes they are.
Charles: There toys there [at the shoe store]
Dad: Yes.
Charles: Lots of toys. I like to play with toys.
Dad: Can I play with them too?
Charles: No. You too old. You don’t get to share[?]. You need be 161, 14, I not sure.
Dad: So I can’t play with the toys? [tries to put shoes on Charles]
Charles: I have two feet. Everybody has two feet.
Nobody does a non-sequitor like Charles.
1 Charles asked me the other day how old I was and I told him “16”, which is just a large number to him. Presumably he’s repeating that back to me.
I’m still amazed at what a strong baby Alice is. She still has the big chunky thighs of a baby but now they’re mostly muscle instead of baby fat. Alice had some night terrors last night, spending about 20 minutes crying and thrashing. It was a lot of work holding her so she didn’t fling herself on to the floor. She opens dresser drawers so that she can pull out all of the clothes stored in there. It’s really something if she’s got a messy diaper and doesn’t feel like having it changed.
Alice is also demonstrating her jaw strength by biting chunks out of the bouncy balls that are scattered around the house. I find them laying there, slices neatly excised by the razor sharp teeth and powerful jaws of of the local Alice-saurus. Apparently she only eats the tasty bits and leaves the rest of the carcas to rot.
Alice’s wild wild hair is getting pushed in two directions.
First, Mom gave Alice her first trim, cutting some of Alice’s bangs away. I, personally, think that this was a grave injustice to Alice who should never have suffered from forced hair loss, but Mom whacked her while I wasn’t around. It does not hang in her eyes quite as much, but a few more months and it would have been long enough to not be a problem. Mom’s just too impatient.
On the other hand, the playscape in back is made of plastic. It’s also been cool and dry most days. This means that when Alice goes out to play on it, she generates a significant static electrical charge. This makes her hair literally stand out straight. I have not yet gotten a picture of that, but her hair is so fine I’m not sure it would really show up in the picture.
Charles has become fascinated by flowers over the last month or so. He frequently spends some time picking flowers when he’s outside. He brings them in and puts them in cups of water because “flowers are thirsty — they need to drink water”.
Charles mostly picks dandelions, but I showed him the chive blossoms and he’s been concentrating on those more recently because they have long stems, something that Charles finds particularly attractive in a flower. I do need to teach him to pinch off the flower instead of pulling it out by the roots or we soon won’t have any chives left.
The end result of all of this is that in addition to the bits of tape debris we now have dead flower parts strewn all over the house. Plus the water spills when Alice decides to interact with the flowers getting a drink.
Corwin had a good baseball game last night. He got on base twice in three at bats, getting out the second time on a fly ball. He spent most of his fielding time as catcher, which is a bit of a change for him. His team actually won the game as well, 7-6.
Here’s Corwin getting a hit:
Oh, no, wait — that was Layla, the first grade slugger. This is Corwin:
It’s just so obvious, I don’t know how I got them mixed up. Corwin is the one in the tight pants.
For the last few days, Charles has been nattering on about taking a long trip. At first it was just a long trip by train but later it became specifically a trip to Chicago. Charles obtained a long strip of desk calculator paper and used it to make a train ticket with a long list of stops. The strip was about 3 feet long and Charles wrote on it in his simple but beautiful script all the way on both sides. The ticket had to be long because the trip was long.
At first Charles just asked about going on a trip, but later he simply announced that we were leaving “tomorrow”. He also told me I had to drive, it was my “burden” because Mom had driven the last time. He has been a little bit disappointed by the fact that we don’t seem to actually go on the trip, but his enthusiasm has been renewed each morning.
Yesterday he set up a train ticket stand and made me buy some train tickets ($8 for me, $1 for Alice). He taped one of Mom’s planting strips to the front of his stand to indicate the direction of traffic flow (“please walk this way!”).
Some of this seems to be in reaction to Corwin’s birthday, as Charles announced yesterday that “today is my birthday”. He was very disappointed that he didn’t get any presents and that Corwin got the first piece of cake. He seems to be getting over it, as he was busy making letters for his class again this morning.
Alice was in fine form over the weekend.
On the other hand, Alice is a very messy child. The day Mom got back I had changed Alice’s clothes twice and given her a bath and she was still filthy for Mom. I used to think I should be worried about the boys going off to do dangerous and dirty stuff, but I’m beginning to wonder if it won’t be Alice I need to keep an eye on instead.
Corwin turns 8 years old today. He already got one of his birthday presents yesterday, from his Godmother Laurie. It’s going to be low key for him, as we planned on having the real party next weekend (because we knew Mom wouldn’t be recovered from her trip yet).
So Mom spent her first day back by being in meetings all day. She left at 7:30 this morning, came back for about an hour around 5 and is still gone as I type this. She’s hoping that she won’t have meetings all day tomorrow.
Corwin had a violin recital today. It went well, he only tripped up in a small way once and rapidly recovered. The recital was a lot more pleasant because they split the piano and violin children up. This meant that there were empty seats in a properly air conditioned room as opposed to the overcrowded and overheated situation in the past.
We went to the park for a little while, because Charles pestered me about it all morning (even though he managed to avoid getting dressed and washed until after 11). However, when we got there Charles claimed he couldn’t extricate himself from the van, even though he does it on a regular basis, so I left him in there. He must have sat in the van, right next to the park, for 15-20 minutes before coming out when I went to check on him. He’s stubborn over the oddest things.
Alice went down the small slides by herself. I didn’t even have to catch her. She seems far more adventurous on the play ground equipment than the boys were. She zips right over things that I know Corwin and Charles were scared of. On the other hand, the boys were barely walking by this age while Alice is an old hand at it.
We had fun around the house in the evening. Charles had a potty accident right after he went in the house. Based on how much I had to clean up, he was packing quite the volume. Hopefully it’s just an accident and not a precursor of reversion.
Alice got to wear one of her new skirts today, which Mom thought was very cute.
Charles cuts the grass as a change of pace from cutting carpets, wood floors and sidewalks
I wrote the message and then Charles crossed it out because I did it wrong. I never got a good explaination about what, exactly, was wrong. Among other things, however, I used the wrong color and no letter ‘P’ (you can sort of see where Charles added it in the ‘O’ of “WELCOME”).
Corwin hadn’t really asked about Mom being gone (I was teasing him about not even noticing) until Mom checked in from the airport, about a three hour drive from home. After that, Corwin was asking “when is Mom going to get back” every ten or fifteen minutes. I thought he’d just been repressing his loneliness but when Mom did get home, she revealed that she’d told Corwin she had presents.
Alice can now climb the ladder all the way up to the top of the boys’ bunk bed. Of course, she has not the slightest hope of getting back down on her own but I’m sure she could manage falling off. Corwin was in his bed at the time and asked if Alice was going to sleep there that night. I responded that the ease at which she could fall off made that contra-indicated. Having gotten that admission, Corwin moved on to stating that he was now tired of Alice being in his bed while he was trying to read.
Corwin had a good game last night. His team won and Corwin got the final out by tagging the opposing runner. He only got one hit in three at bats, but he did get an RBI.
Why is it that when I’m trying to get the children asleep, Alice easy outlasts both of her brothers?
Anwen was over babysitting last night so I could get some work done. Sadly, Alice didn’t poop even once the whole time — I was bitterly disappointed. Anwen did get to experience stereo child screaming, as Alice screamed about not being allowed to make a major mess and Charles screamed about not being able to enhance important papers with his own simple but beautiful language.
When Anwen arrived, she, her mom and I went up to Alice’s room to demonstrate how to change a diaper (which Anwen had never done before). As we get to the top we ran in to an half-undressed Corwin on the landing, working on getting his baseball clothes on. Corwin yelped in dismay, but I pointed out that his parents, with great foresight, had purchased a house in which Corwin had a special room with a door in which he could change clothes in privacy. I even showed Corwin where it was, just off the landing, although I’m fairly certain he’s been in it before.
The same evening as the Cub Scout cookout there was also an event for Charles’ daycare, to which Mom, Charles and Alice went. As part of the set up for that, a map was sent home. This has had a big impact on Charles. That map was the focus of his attention for a couple of days, including his first words of the day the next morning being “where is my map?” resulting in crying, paniced Charles until I located the map for him. He spent some time explaining the map and how it would let Mom find the where they were supposed to go.
This morning Charles worked on a big sheet of paper, filling it with many long and short black lines, after which he explained that he had made a new map, which actually looked something like the real one. He was also able to say the name of the daycare and know what it was.
In other projects, Charles made up a rather elaborate construct of paper and scotch tape, which he described as a train ticket, which he thought would enable him to go with Mom on her trip (because Mom, the silly girl, had mentioned that she had received some Euro-Rail passes to go on the train). Charles was quite broken hearted when I explained that he wouldn’t be going on a train.
Charles sold me a cup of coffee this morning for $8. We were using poker chips for money, which he had provided to me earlier in a stack with exactly 8 chips. He won’t count for me so this is good confirmation that he knows numbers up to 8 at least. He did complain that dollars were rectangles and not circles, although he was mollified when I mentioned that there were dollar coins. We then had a crisis because he couldn’t find the key to his cash register. I told him that it was upstairs in the bathroom, he having desperately clutched it on the way up to bed the night before. He immediately denied this (“It not in the bathroom!”) but a few minutes later he came downstairs with the key, announcing “it was up in the bathroom”. If only I’d thought to mention that to him!
At last night’s baseball game, Corwin caught his first fly ball. He was very excited about it and simply gawked at it after he caught it, instead of throwing it back. The coach referred to it as an “very difficult and improbable catch”. It was the last out of the inning which really made Corwin’s day. Corwin also got an RBI and scored a run as well.
A double rainbow off our back porch. It was much clearer to the eye than in the photo. Note how the sky darkens above the main rainbow.
P.S. The red lines are edited in to show where the second rainbow is, they weren’t actually in the sky.
This morning I found a picture of an Allosaurus and told him “that’s your sister”. Charles immediately denied this and claimed that it was a picture of Charles, not Alice. I can’t tell if he did it because he liked to think of himself as a giant carnivorous dinosaur or he just likes to contradict Dad.
On the way back from picking Charles up, he gave me a tour of his own persona preferences among the colors.
Charles: I make this picture for you. [hands Dad a coloring book page carefully but thoroughly colored red] It all red because I like red.
Dad: I thought you liked green.
Charles: I like red and green.
[exit the building, get in the van and start driving]
Charles: I like red and green but I don’t like purple. I like yellow. And white. But not purple or blue. I like lots of colors, but not blue or purple.
Dad: You don’t like blue?
Charles: Alice likes blue and purple because he [sic] a girl. But I don’t like them. I like lots of other colors though. I like red, and green, and yellow … and white!
In other grammatical news, while Charles always uses the male pronouns for Alice, he did use the female pronoun for POset the other day. A bit odd, but being a bit odd isn’t odd for Charles.
Mom has checked in — she made it to the conference without much problem. Charles got to talk to her on the phone but Corwin wasn’t interested. Charles also inquired (later that evening) as to why Mom wasn’t coming home. I explained that she would be gone for several days, working, which seemed to be OK with him.
As for our petite flower, she hasn’t expressed much of an opinion. She’s been quite the bouncing ball of energy, though. I can’t get much done except following her around. So we mostly vegetated around the house. When Mom called, I mentioned this to her. Shortly after that, I tried picking up a bit anyway and as a result Alice snuck off to play in the kitty litter. Based on the kitty litter I cleaned off her lips, I suspect that she wasn’t just playing with it.
Otherwise, all of the kids are still intact and breathing. That’s probably all Mom really expects anyway.
Today was the last game of the soccer season, one week late because of the canceled game. It was an OK game (win, 5-1), although we had to loan one of our players to the other team to bring them up to a full count. The coach gave them one of our weaker players who turned out to be a strong player for them. That left the team with an unbeaten record. That’s a bit different from Corwin’s first season of near unrelieved defeat. Now it’s our team with the second graders who have ball handling skills. Bwahahaha!
I hear, however, that the (now) third graders have all had terrrible seasons. They’re apparently hoping to get back on our coach’s team for the 3rd / 4th grade season. I think that would be nice.
Oh, the picture off to the side there. Well, all of those were taken in a space of about 6 seconds, which is how long the animation runs so it’s close to real time. This is how Corwin is when he’s sent out in to the field to play. It beats him crying because he didn’t start.
It wasn’t a good day for pictures, very overcast. I had to shoot at a rather slow shutter speed and the pictures were still underexposed. It was wonderful for the coach, however, as (since he’s British) he likes cold, wet mornings for playing soccer. As soon as the game was over and we headed off for brunch, the clouds cleared, the sun shone and it turned in to a wonderful day. I guess the coach has friends in high places, or it was pay back for putting up with the horde of kids.
P.S. Check out the dimples on that kid! Even with pictures as grainy as this, it’s still obvious.
We sent Mom off this afternoon. She’s spending the next week in France, presenting a paper at a conference. It shows her dedication that she is willing to spend an entire week in a foreign country without any of her children, just to futher the academic reputation of her employer. [sniff] It brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?
It was a busy day on top of that. We had soccer in the morning, then a brunch for the coach, then Mom freaking out over train tickets for lunch and finally a cookout / Cub Scout pack meeting in the evening. Alice didn’t really nap all day. She conked about for about 10 minutes before we left for the cookout and fell asleep on the way back, but woke up shortly after we returned. Charles, on the other hand, also conked out on the way back but never really woke up. After leaving him in the car for about an hour, I hauled him out on to the couch, which woke him up for about five minutes before he was out again. I finally hauled him up to bed. Dang, he’s putting on some weight. Alice, despite the lack of nap outlasted Corwin staying awake.
As for the cookout, it went OK. There was a graduation ceremony which took a while, which would have been fine except for the biting cold wind and having to physically restrain Alice from running off the entire time. She wanted to run wild and free, even though she’d had a lot of that before the ceremony. I might have let her go if she had any separation anxiety at all, but it was more likely that she’d just wander off in to the woods with out concern.
Alice also demonstrated how she’s a little too clever for her own good. There was a slide, which Alice wanted to go on but it had a stair that consisted of a rising spiral of square platforms. Alice encountered the second one and tried to get up on it, but it was too high for her. She was stuck there for a good long time , apparently quite happy, until she spied the first platform next to it. She then realized that that was the key to ascent and off she went, climbing most of the way up. However, the fourth section was open on two sides and for some reason Alice was driven to back down one particularly open side with a four foot drop. More fun than the slide it seems, although Dad meanly would pluck her off before she could consumate the experience.
It’s now officially summer — the dehumidifier in the basement has started up again.
Mom took the kids in to daycare today and when she announced that she needed to pack up and get moving, Alice picked up her jacket and brought it over to Mom to have it put on. This was more helpful than Charles, who I had to literally drag up the stairs to brush his teeth. I tried to make it unpleasant, bumping his head on the stairs and making sure the rest of his body rubbed on the carpet, but he still thought it was fun.
P.S. Nothing to write about yesterday, the kids didn’t do a single cute / memorable thing. I think we’ll have to start up the beatings again until the cuteness improves.
Alice can now (sometimes) put a pen cap back on the pen. She’s been trying for a while but yesterday I saw her succeed for the first time. Of course, having proved the point she no longer bothers. She does like taking the caps off, though — if she’s reaching for a writing implement and I give her one without a cap, she flings it away as obviously inadequate. I got her back this morning, though.
Over the weekend Charles got some drawing paints, which come in little bottles with a sponge top and a screw on cap. Alice saw Charles using these to draw and instantly wanted one for herself, but she couldn’t figure out the cap because it didn’t pull off, although she could clearly see that it did have a cap. Haha!
Alice is starting to enjoy music. I’ve finally gotten around to copying the music from my CDs to my computer (it’s my technophobia that’s kept me from it all these years). As a result, I’ve been playing music while working and Alice has been listening to it. Last weekend when she sat on my lap while the music was playing, she started moving around in time with it. The next day she found her old baby arch which plays music when dangling bits are moved and once that was going she started dancing. This was generally either side to side waying or modified squats, but it was clearly a response to the music. She doesn’t dance quite as well as I do yet, but there’s hope.
Alice is living up to her nickname of “Alice-saurus”. When confronted with a hamburger, Alice rips the bun off and eats just the burger. She is very fond of meat snacks as well. I guess it took getting her off the bottle to awake her inner carnivore.
Mom is playing tricks on me with her clothes as well. The other day I put her outfit on backwards because Mom had gotten some new ones which buttoned in the front. Having finally trained myself to remember that baby clothes have the fastenings in the back, I naturally put the buttons on the new outfit in the back, until I noticed the big tag sticking out. When I complained to Mom, she claimed that it was obvious stylistically that the buttons went in front. Oh, yeah, that helps a male engineer.
Alice is an alert baby and one thing she keeps an eye out for are tissues. She does not like to have her nose cleaned up and if she sees a parent preparing to do so she will immediately respond by either rubbing her nose on the parent’s clothes (if available) or smearing everything all over her face. Over time this tends to give her a crusty face until we have to wipe it off, which she doesn’t care much for either.
Alice is a long distance walker who will just walk and walk, without fear or exhaustion. She does enjoy going around on the scooter, which is why I have a sore upper back now. I pulled her around for 20 minutes or so, during which she never fell off but Dad was in bad shape from leaning over.
We had a low key Mother’s Day. Mom got a card, signed by everyone else in the family. Mom was good enough to pick out Alice’s vs. Charles writing (she claims to have recognized some of Charles’ “letters”). When Charles was signing, he told me he was drawing an ‘H’ at one point. I asked about a ‘C’ and he told me that it was already done. After that he drew a “double-I” and an ‘S’. I got to have a long, very interactive afternoon with the kids while Mom escaped to a three hour “brain-storm” meeting at work. Oh well, anything for Mom on Mother’s Day.
Dinner time conversation with Charles:
Charles: [farts, giggles]
Dad: [looks crossly at Charles]
Charles: [giggles some more]
Mom: You should say “excuse me”
Charles: It wasn’t a cough.
Dad: You should say it anyway.
Charles: It not a cough. It was my butt.
Mom: You should say “excuse me” for any rude noise.
Charles: [begins making beeping sounds] That not a rude noise … that a train!
Charles also went out on his first long trip on his scooter today, all the way to the pond and back.
Charles also set up a gate in to the media room. His innovation this time was to charge for tickets to get in. I bought a ticket, on which Charles carefully inscribed his version of my name. I gave him a dollar (the same one he got last time). Charles looked at it and announced that it was “four dollars” because it was from the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and so had the number ‘4’ in each corner, next to the denominational ‘1’s. Luckily, though, my ticket was good the entire evening.
The soccer game today was a very good one. The other team had some coordination and several good players. After the first half it was 1-0 on a Jack goal. During the second half Keith and Jack both had a goal so it was 3-0. However, the other team had been taking shots at our goal on a regular basis and managed two during the fourth quarter, leaving Corwin’s team with the win at 3-2. Lots of action, good play and shots at both goals. Early on the other team’s goalie was doing very well, blocking a lot of shots. Keith’s goal and the last for the other team were both high kicks, unstoppable by the goalie.
Corwin played goalie for the first quarter but after that he played mid-defense and offense. He had a good day, dropping at least one goalie kick that bounced past the midfield line and was stopped at the edge of the other team’s goalie box. I was impressed by Keith and Jack’s foot work. They’re actually getting the ball past other players by fancy foot moves rather than just power or getting lucky. Lots of good passing going on as well. Quite the change from the first season.
My two favorite moments were comments from the goalies. At one point while the other team was pressing our goal, Jack started yelling “get it out of here! get it out of here!”. Shortly after that, after the other team had survived an attack on their goal the goalie castigated a teammate for poor playing with “if you’re going to tackle the man, tackle the man!”.
Corwin had a good baseball practice, although this is going to be a trial for Dad. Unlike other sports, baseball practices apparently require the aid of all of the fathers present and even a mother or two. This means that I get a work out as well. Also, since I don’t know anything about baseball I can’t really lead anything because the odds of my telling the kids the right thing to do is infinitesmal. So mainly I run after balls during fielding practice.
While I was doing that, one of the first grade girls on the team came up for batting practice and the coach called out “back up, we’ve got a power hitter”. I thought he was joking because the girl was a petite little thing. However, she could really wallop the ball . Her hit percentage was in the top tier as well. I’m not sure Corwin could out hit her. She has a sister on the team in second grade who can also pound the ball with good frequency. Even their mom had a good arm.
I am starting to grasp what an awesome mess generator Alice is. Even Mom is starting to come around to that point of view. Let me give two examples.
A couple of weekends ago, Mom cleaned up the floor and then left to go to play tennis. When she got back she looked at the no longer clean floor and said “Oh man, my nice clean floor has been Aliced!”.
The other night I took all three spawn out for Corwin’s violin lesson and dinner. Alice was terrifying. Within a couple minutes of sitting down she’d spilled my drink and her own milk carton, despite the fact that I was trying to hold on to the latter. She got my drink because she was much quicker off the mark for mess making than I had anticipated. Alice also discovered that if you hold a bag of french fries in your hand while waving your hand about, the french fries will fly out all over the place. Alice also peeled the bun off the hamburger and literally rubbed the condiment covered side of it on her face.
Now, the boys caused messes too, but I just don’t remember them being as quick, industrious and persistent as Alice. The boys would tend to do the same thing over and over, making it easier to prevent. Alice is just incredibly fast on realizing that what she just did won’t work anymore and switching to a backup plan. If only she would use her powers for good.
Corwin had a “walk-a-thon” at school today to raise money for a charity. The basic idea was that the kids would walk a small circut at the school for an hour and see how many laps they could do. Corwin did fourteen, although I’m not sure how far around the circut was.
Mom volunteered to work one of the stations and not wanting to keep all the joy to herself, asked me to show up for a while as well. Mom’s job was to write the letter ‘F’ on the walker’s tag for each child that got a freeze-pop, so that each child could get exactly one. Because Mom was working hard at that, she decided I should participate as well and sent me out to do some laps with Corwin.
Once I started walking with Corwin, he cast about for some moral support and managed to get Megan to walk with us as well. This solved one problem but created another — what if Dad started chatting with Megan and said something embarassing? So Corwin actually made conversation, on purpose, with someone else. I was stunned.
Of course, just like his Dad, he had the way with sweet talking cute young things (what, you think Mom married me just for my rippling muscles?). Being a chip off the old block, Corwin plyed her with lurid arithmetic problems, such as “what is 8 plus 2 times 3 divided by 2?” and sweet little nothings like “Six times zero is zero. Zero times zero is … zero! Zero times anything is zero!”. Megan claimed that she didn’t know division yet at which point I thought “oh yeah, that’s how you reel them in!”. Ah, he’s gonna break some hearts.
Alice has learned how to get pen caps off pens. This is not a good thing. She’s always been obsessed with pens and particularly the ones I carry in my vest. This used to just be annoying but now she can scribble over anything near by. Alice has known about the marking properties of pens for a while, but it’s only recently that she has become able to do that on her own.
I’m working on introducing her to paper as a writing surface instead of a source of evil that must be destroyed, but frankly Charles still doesn’t quite grasp the “write on this paper, not my desk” concept. So I expect a long period of using alternative media by Alice.
This is one of Charles’ signs. It can mean “stop”, “slow” or “go” depending on what Charles needs at the time. It has a green part (“go”), a yellow part (“slow”) and a red part (“stop”) which “switch on” as Charles needs different meanings.
[Dad tries to wipe Charles’ face after some fast food]
Charles: I all ketchupy!
[As Dad tries to get some soccer information out of Corwin, he replies with a series of non-sequitors until Dad gives up]
Dad: [to Mom] Why exactly did we have kids?
Corwin: Were you excited about children? I mean, before you had some?
[Charles fell asleep on the couch, clutching Alice’s bitty baby doll. Dad hauled him up to bed.]
Charles: [in near panic] Where my baby?
Dad: I’ll go back downstairs and get your baby for you.
Charles: Mmmmmm [settles back to sleep]
In the sincerest form of flattery, Alice is obsesseed with cans of Diet Coke. If any can is left in a place where Alice can reach it, she will spill it. There were some old cans in the garage and it took Alice less than a minute to locate them and spill their contents on the floor. If Mom leaves a can in one of the cup holders in the van, Alice will find it. I had to put the garbage can up this morning to prevent her from digging through the garbage looking for a can. At first I just put it up on a low bench so that she couldn’t look in to it, but she started grabbing at it so I had to put it up on a counter to be completely out of reach. So Alice climbed up on a chair and grabbed Mom’s beer bottle. She was able to do a fairly good impression of Mom, so she’s clearly been paying attention. If only we could get her to imitate some of Mom’s other habits, like putting food in the mouth instead of flinging it on the floor.
A few days ago I was working on the dishes when Alice wanted some more milk. I refilled her sippy cup and gave it back to her. Charles for some reason decided that Alice didn’t really want milk, but wanted water instead. He managed to put get a sippy cup put together, fill it with water, put the lid on and hand it to Alice. And of course, by “hand” I mean “attempt to force feed it”. I had to intervene to explain that just because Charles had made something for Alice, she might not want to permanently bond with it.
Corwin’s friend Jack was over after school yesterday (it was the first time he had ridden a school bus home). He and Corwin had a good time, while Charles tried to interact with them and, failing that, just watched them do their boy stuff. Apparently, though, Charles had quite a good time at it because after Mom took Jack and Corwin off to their baseball game, Charles asked about Jack.
Charles: Where Jack?
Dad: He and Corwin went to play baseball.
Charles: Jack come back?
Dad: No, his dad will be picking him up at the game.
Charles: Why?
Dad: I think his parents like to have him around.
Charles: Jack come over every day?
Dad: No, I don’t think so.
Charles: Why?
Dad: Jack just came over so he could go to the game with Corwin.
Charles: Jack come back tonight?
[repeat as necessary]
On Sunday Grandma and Grandpa were over for a visit. In the afternoon, the kids all went out to play in the backyard, despite it being about 55°F out. Mostly barefoot, of course, although I sensibly wrapped myself in a warm coat (and regretted not getting a hat). Because the boyen were climbing about on the playscape in the backyard, Alice wanted to as well. She wasn’t able to climb up the built in ladders so I had to boost her up.
Alice then explored the structure and found the tall slide (the short one apparently not being a thrilling enough ride). She was just a bit hesitant at the top and so I thought that for once she had some sense of discretion. How little we know our own children! Moments after I looked away to track the boyen and make sure they weren’t razing the neighborhood, Alice flung herself down the slide head first. That is normally an advanced technique used by skilled sliders but Alice is nothing if not impetuous. Even Corwin was impressed (“she went down head first!”), as he took a couple of practice slides before he was willing to duplicate her feat.
Fortunately I managed to lean over and grab Alice at the bottom of the slide before impact. Alice immediately wanted another round, which she also did head first. Sensing a possible incipient problem with this style, I cast about for a way to discourage it. The answer came to me in a flash and I immediately retrieved my camera to record Alice’s adventure. As expected Alice immediately reverted to a more sedate style of sliding. Still, it’s a big slide for such a petite flower and one parent (or grandparent) was still needed to catch her at the bottom. At least she couldn’t get up to the top of slide by herself.
I’m having some difficulty in taking pictures of Alice now because she’s fascinated by the camera. As soon as she sees either the camera or the flash go off, she wants to interact with the camera. She particularly likes my “little camera” because it has a large LCD on the back for showing pictures. Alice will let me take one picture but then she wants to see it and will spend minutes looking and poking at it while making comments in Alish. She has even guided me in to my office so that I could get the camera off the desk.
Alice quite likes physical photos as well and any that are left where she can grab will be mauled. Oh, it will start out with a careful examination of the picture as a picture but soon enough the fact that it’s paper will dominate. And Alice has only one solutionwhen she is faced with the problem of paper — complete and utter destruction.
After Corwin’s hard day on Saturday (soccer, baseball and helping to clean up around the pond) he popped in to the jacuzzi to have a relaxing soak. His enjoyment was marred, however, because he thought the water should be cooler and no one else wanted in. No one, that is, except Alice, who was desperately eager to hop in. Mom couldn’t even watch Corwin with Alice in the same room because she struggled so violently to get at the jacuzzi. I tried it myself, thinking she just wanted to splash at the water. That was true for about 30 seconds, after which Alice tried to climb right in. We had to close the doorway to the hall and let Alice moan piteously against it. Charles is still scared of it but I suspect that will change soon enough and we won’t be able to keep the kids out of it.
