Picture Dump, pt. 1

Kids post hair-cuts getting screen time at church

Screen shot from my phone. We think Felix saw the picture of himself, said "baby," and made Siri search for it

Felix tasting ricotta cheese

Kids in a teepee at Corbett's Glen

Full teepee

"Can we wade in it?"

"Can we at least throw stuff in it?"

The handsome one

Felix the imitator

Waterfall shot

Looking for dead fish

Apple break. One of the few times Felix wasn't chasing after someone walking their dog.

He finished a bath about ten minutes before this

Easter afternoon. Owen found a dead worm and everyone wanted to see

James on the hearth at the Dudleys

In front of the ROM

Allosaurus

Stegosaurus

Pteradons

Owen staring down the Stegosaurus

Look, baby dinosaurs!

James staring down an Ankylosaurus

The leisurely pace was done once Felix was out. He just wanted to push the stroller around (with George in it) as fast as we'd let him

Felix with the T-Rex

Owen with the T-Rex. 

Enormous fish and an enormous turtle

Hard to see, but it's a Sabretooth tiger. James (and Hobbes) were impressed

A mammoth

Owen was freaked out by the mummies

"I found big checker pieces!"

Felix loved this bear

"These flowers are so big!!"

I have a great "bounce video of Owen going back and forth between the two beds, but can't get it to load into Blogger

The swimmers

The little swimmer

First, very cautious steps

The only reason Felix looks upset is because we were holding him still for a picture. As soon as I let go he went back to giggling and having a lovely time

James reading Owen a bedtime story

Owen examining bird/bat skulls

An experiment with barometric pressure

Baseboard Stories, part 2

Cleaner. Cloth. Dirt.

Simple, right? As in, a four year old should be able to do this task without destroying any major appliances? Apparently not.

I decided to clean the baseboard in our bedroom today. I still haven't finished cleaning all of the baseboard in the bathroom, but adulting is all about choosing your battles. I chose to move onto another room, because I thought there might be more interesting things to write about in the master bedroom. It basically just turns out that there are interesting things to write about whenever Owen is involved.

Per usual, I offered the kids options after they got up from nap. Option 1--draw pictures to mail to Grandma and Pop-Pop. Option 2--write letters to the Hamways. Option 3--put boots on and stomp in puddles outside. Option 4--work on baldrics for their swords and shields. Option 5--help with dusting and cleaning the baseboard upstairs. Option 5 was the only option with any kind of consensus, so I dug out our last two clean dusting cloths from the upstairs closet, (where are all the dirty ones?) pulled out a spray bottle of all-purpose cleaner, and set to work moving furniture.

I should probably mention the bribe. What really interested the boys in helping out upstairs was the promise of plunder--they would be allowed to keep any treasures (including money) that they found behind or underneath furniture items. Money is an especially big deal to Owen. What was his biggest temper tantrum of last week? James found a quarter on the floor and he didn't. He HATES it that James has more "money" than him. He was all about finding coins.

We pulled J's cherry dresser out from the wall and surveyed the first haul--six LEGOs and a marble. Normally the marble would have been cause for excitement, but they were just disappointed that there wasn't any cash. I showed James where to spray on the baseboard (further apart, we don't need to use that much spray) and where to aim (higher, and then gravity will make it trickle down over all the parts we need) while Owen complained about when it would be his turn to spray. He took one of the dusting cloths and helped me wipe behind the dresser, stepping over the short extension cord we pilfered from the Christmas box (just the right length to plug in tree lights) and the two strands of Christmas lights that we have framing the mirror in our bedroom. (Our "twinkly" lights, as J calls them) We have Christmas lights up around the house pretty much year round now.

We moved the ironing board out of the way, one of the relics (maybe a wedding gift?) that's survived all of our moves, even outlasting the original iron that came with it. It has a faded blue and white floral pattern and usually sits behind our bedroom door, except when J is wearing something that's particularly wrinkle prone. I tried to iron my clothes more often a few years ago, but then we had three kids and I just got used to wearing a jacket over my dress shirt if it wasn't completely presentable.

Felix toddled into the room and started inserting himself behind the dresser, but wasn't being a particular nuisance, so we let him stay. Then we moved onto the north wall. The north and south walls are the long walls in our bedroom, and to get at the north wall I had to move J's hanging clothes rack out from the wall, as well as our two dirty laundry hampers and the cube shelf that also serves as our TV stand.

It was Owen's turn with the spray bottle. He started at western corner and started working his way towards the rest of us, humming to himself and spraying just like I'd showed James. (Owen hums to himself constantly. It's telling that when he's with Silas he sings that main theme to "Animaniacs," and when he's just around James he sings the "Pinky and the Brain" music. When he's with Felix it's the Imperial March.)

I realized what was going to happen about three seconds before it all went down. The TV was still plugged in, and a mess of wires from that, the Wii, and the DVD player were all trailing from the cube (which was pushed several feet away from the wall) back to the outlet.

"Owen," I said "be careful that--"

Owen, of course, overestimated how high he could step, and tripped as he tried to go over the TV wire. Whichever combination of wires he caught on the way down brought the entire top of the cube shelf down with him, and the it all smashed into the wall and on top of him.

Owen was fine. He just wanted to keep on spraying. Felix started crying. I picked the TV up the floor, expecting to see a shattered screen. Incredibly, it looked intact, though there was something white on one corner. I touched it, and realized it was a paint fleck. Then I looked down and saw that the HVAC vent behind the shelf had been dented and wrenched away from the wall. Somehow the TV landed like a wedge, and pushed it out.

There was damage to the baseboard and the wall as well. Some paint was chipped and some wood was missing. I kicked the kids out of the room and went back to take a closer look. Yes, my efforts to clean the baseboard had definitely left the baseboard in our room in a considerably less presentable condition. I turned the TV on to see if there was any obvious damage there, and it appeared to be working just fine. (I briefly considered pretending that it was irreversibly damaged so that I'd finally have an excuse to get rid of it altogether.)

I ended up taking the vent out and pounding the metal (mostly) back into shape with a hammer, but the base shoe came even more separated when I slid it all back in. Thoroughly frustrated and annoyed, I kept on working along the north wall wiping the baseboard, and then started to get behind the end tables and the headboard of the bed.

I unplugged our phone chargers, lamps, and alarm clock from the outlet under the headboard to make sure that nothing would get yanked out again when I pulled the bed back. I found a grip on the frame and then started to yank it back, but stopped when I realized that the headboard was coming loose from the frame again. This is one of those things that we have to deal with about once every six months or so...our headboard (somehow, and you can use your imagination) doesn't stay firmly screwed into the frame, and gets all loud and wobbly and creaky. I pulled some more on the frame, and saw how wobbly it looked, and at that point gave up on cleaning the rest of the bedroom baseboard. Adulting is all about choosing your battles.

I'll do the rest of it at some point. And I'll get out a bunch of wrenches and pull the mattresses off and grunt and contort myself to get the headboard on tight again. I'll wipe down the baseboard behind everything while I'm at it. And I won't let the kids in the room.

So that means I've done two rooms, although I didn't finish either room and I'm not sure that what I did left the room in any better shape than when I'd started. But, if nothing else, we recovered six LEGOs. And a marble.

Backyard Time

Every morning James walks up to the Google Home Mini parked on the console table and asks her, “Hey Google...what temperature is it outside?” And then, whether it’s visibly snowing or not, he’ll ask “Hey, do you think it’s warm enough to go outside?” (If the answer is ‘no’ he’ll volunteer to even wear a jacket.)

They know it’s Spring, and all three of them want to be outside. If Felix hears anyone mention the words “outside,” “stroller,” or “backyard” he’ll suddenly shout “OH YEAH!” and nod enthusiastically, then take off looking for his shoes. They gaze longingly out the windows. They hold conferences and talk about what they’ll do the next time they can go outside. If some of them (for example, the older two) are allowed to go play by themselves while they’re in the backyard while one of them (for example, Felix) is kept inside, the disenfranchised party will shriek bloody murder and attempt to throw books in the trash.

Getting them outside sounds like a great idea, but they’re actually just as destructive and noisy outside as they are inside. The most obvious problem is the digging. Owen has his own shovel now, and he wants to use it pretty much every day. I let him dig a hole, but then I filled it in when I prepped the garden. He wanted to dig another hole, but I wouldn’t let him. Not even in the garden. Not even behind the bush. Not even in the neighbor’s yard.

And even if they aren’t digging holes, they’re finding mud. There’s the garden, there are the soggy patches behind the bush, and there are the deep puddles of squelchy ooze that we’ve accidentally made by missing our driveway edge all winter long and tearing up part of the yard. I watched Owen stand next to the ooze a few days ago and even yelled out a precautionary “don’t” as I realized what he was going to do. It was too late. He took a spectacular leap into it and then burst into tears, explaining that James had told him to do it. (“No I didn’t.”)

If they aren’t digging holes or getting into mud, they’re probably going for the sports bin next. We have balls of various sizes (Felix is the only one interested in the oversized ball from Target that he can’t see over the top of when he carries it around) including footballs, baseballs, and soccerballs. Pretty much all of these balls are used as baseballs. We have an old traffic cone that serves as a tee, and James and Owen take turns batting off of it and then running “the bases” around the backyard. Sometimes they don’t take turns, because Owen, for whatever reason, has decided that James isn’t allowed to hit anymore.

The bats they use are either hollow or foam, but there are still usually tears involved in batting practice. Owen managed to hit Felix (line drive to the face) and James within the span of a couple minutes earlier this afternoon.

The most destructive outside habit, though, is the waterfighting. I, in my infinite wisdom, bought them each a little spray bottle last year. They found them (I didn’t hide them quite well enought) earlier in the week, and they promptly started waterfighting. (“It’s fine as long as you keep it away from me. No, stop. That’s not away from me, that’s all over my book.”) They spray the house, the winsdows, the grass, the car, the driveway, the mailbox, Felix, the inside door (“not inside the house, boys”) the garage door again, and then they’re out of water. And then they either need to track muddy footprints into the kitchen to refill the spray bottles (bad idea) or have someone help them fill them up from the hose (worse idea.)

So those are the problems with having the boys outside. But here are the upsides to having them outside--they don’t seem nearly as noisy when the shouting is taking place in a big outdoor space. The sun is warm and delightful and our faded old camping chairs are delightfully comfortable with a kindle and a glass of wine. They find all sorts of interesting worms and bugs and birds and they examine them and ask good curious boy questions. And, critically, they’ve been great so far about respecting the fact that they have to stay in the backyard.

Toronto Trip

So I took the kids out of the country by myself last week, because J was gone on vacation and if you’re going to do something interesting with your boys why not do something REALLY interesting?

And it went fine. They are good kids, and Canada is a relentlessly polite and welcoming place. Also, people go out of their way to help a Dad who’s alone with his little ones. I don’t think I had to open a single door for myself. It almost didn’t happen at all, though.

I (very fortunately) thought we ought to do some advance packing on Saturday morning, and it was at that point that I noticed my passport wasn’t where I thought it would be. (In the pencil organizer on the library shelves.) Wasn’t that odd? It wasn’t in the lockbox either, or in a trumpet case in the basement. Or in a jacket pocket. J thought that maybe she’d seen it on my nightstand up in our bedroom. I explained to the boys how important it was that we find my passport, and Owen thought that he’d seen Felix playing with it. The same Felix that likes to throw things away. (True story: Yesterday Felix emptied two large bins of dried fruits, spices, and other kitchen items into the trash can. Everything was saved. That we know of)

A few panicked hours later (including a call to the State Department that fortunately did not go through) I found it behind some Latin books one shelf down from where I thought it ought to be. (From now on I’m just going to keep it in the lockbox.)

So, with a valid passport and three original birth certificates, we started driving to Toronto. The boys naturally had lots of questions. How long would it take us to get there? Would it be as long as driving to Pennsylvania? Would there be snacks along the way? At what point in the journey would we see the Eiffel Tower?

We had beautiful weather on the way out, and the boys particularly enjoyed going over the Grand Island bridges. Owen’s allergies were acting up, and he did tell us all (in a tragic voice) that his nose was so stuffy that he wouldn’t feel better until his life was over. As we came up to the Canadian border I explained how we were just about to enter into a foreign country. James contradicted this statement and assured me that Canada was a state. It was the top state on his map. We had a talk.

We also had a talk about how some of the road signs would be in French, and how they might hear people speaking French and even need to say “bonjour” or “merci” themselves. They practiced saying “bonjour,” “merci,” “s’il vous plait,” and “au revoir.” Owen couldn’t do it without adding “stupid” on the end. James was fascinated by the idea that some people spoke French all the time. Also, I don’t think that he believes that English is an actual language.

Owen spotted the Eiffel Tower (for the first of many times) just outside Niagara Falls.

The border crossing went smoothly, and we began to talk about what they might expect once we arrived at the ROM. (Royal Ontario Museum) Owen assured James that “it’s okay if we touch just one dinosaur skeleton. It won’t hurt anything if we just touch one.”

“No Owen, that isn’t okay. You absolutely must not touch any of the dinosaur skeletons.”

“Yeah, but they have lots of dinosaur skeletons, so it is okay if we just touch one.”

“NO, OWEN. Not even one.”

<inaudible whispers to James>

We drove by the CN tower, got stuck in a traffic snarl, and eventually parked in the basement of a luxury condo complex. (There was a Whole Foods in the basement.) I unpacked the kids, loaded Felix into the stroller, and wheeled them into the lobby. Then I realized that we were supposed to take our parking ticket with us, so we went back to the van. I got our ticket out of the van and we went back to the lobby. I checked Felix’s strap and realized he was soaking wet. So we went back to the van again, feeling slightly nervous about how I’d only packed him one extra outfit for the trip.

And THEN we were on our way.

The kids did great in the big city traffic. They held onto the stroller at crosswalks, watched out for pedestrians, and were polite to everyone we met. James helped me carry things, and Owen kept an eye out for the Eiffel Tower. (“Owen, that’s in Paris. It’s on another continent.) (“No, I see it!”)

The fossil exhibit at the ROM really was spectacular. They have some big sauropods, an enormous pterodactyl, an allosaurus, a stegosaurus, a triceratops, and, of course, a T-Rex. I’ve brushed up on a lot of dinosaur height and weight statistics over the past few years and it still doesn’t really prepare you for how big those things are up close. We also got to see a mammoth skeleton and (to James’ delight) a sabre-tooth tiger.

There’s plenty to see at the ROM besides dinosaurs, of course. There were fantastic exhibitions from Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and Felix made sure that I didn’t get to really look at any of it. (I took him out of the stroller after we passed through the dinosaurs, and from that point on he just wanted to push his George around in the stroller as fast as I’d let him. He was, however, into the dinosaurs. He made continuous roaring/growling noises throughout the whole display.)

Owen was decidedly not a fan of the Ancient Egypt section. He was scared out of his mind of the mummies (which he called “mommies”) and had a lot of questions about what would happen if they came out their “chrysalis.” He was a bigger fan, though, of Ancient Greece. He found two amphora lids with striped patterns and declared that they were pieces for checkers.

The worst moment of the trip, behaviorally, came when we stopped in the museum cafe for a coffee. I told the boys they could pick something out to eat, but that we were going to be sharing. I think they would have been fine if they’d each got their own treat. Instead, we got two treats--a donut that James picked out and a piece of tiramisu that Owen chose. They were like animals. I tried cutting off some bites for Felix, and when I turned around Owen was leaning over the table trying to stuff the entire plate of cake into his mouth with his hands. James wasn’t much better. But he didn’t, like Owen, wander off to grab a napkin and then sneeze in a stranger’s face.

Felix, for the whole trip, was completely uninterested in food. I think he was just distracted. He had a couple bites of cake, but then just people watched and pointed out all the babies that he could see.

We made one more pass through the dinosaur section and then walked back to our car to head over “to the hotel we’re going to live in.” This, for the boys, was the real highlight of the trip. We got ourselves parked, Owen got an arm trapped between two automatic glass doors, and then we made our way up to check in. I negotiated down the parking rate (parking is expensive in Toronto), and then we took the elevator up to our very own double bed room, which smelled slightly of damp carpet.

James and Owen took the beds, I brought the pack and play up for Felix, and I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. I figured this would be the simplest way to get everyone a decent night’s sleep. Within minutes their stuff was absolutely everywhere.

James had brought a miniature library of books about the Titanic and a couple of stuffed animals. Owen basically packed as many stuffed animals as he could fit into his backpack. James arranged his bed just so. Owen immediately was making acrobatic leaps from one bed to another. James objected every time he landed on “his” bed and messed up the covers. Felix just wanted a bottle. (I brought a quart of milk in a refrigerated pack and refilled plastic bags from the vending machines every 12 hours to give him bottles. We heated them up by running the coffee maker over the bottle without any grounds in it)

“We’re not going to nap,” I said “but I think we ought to have 30 minutes of quiet time before we do anything else.”

“Like swimming?”

“Yes, I need a little quiet time before we got swimming.”

TV on. Instant quiet time. They watched about 10 minutes of Star Wars. Fun fact, if you turn on Star Wars to the part where Luke and Han find out that Leia is on the Death Star you get to see about 10 seconds of Darth Vader, but all he does is stand in a hallway and look confused for a minute. James thought it was great and wanted to keep on watching. Felix and Owen both stood as close to the TV as they could without actually falling into it.

After I’d figured out how to get onto the hotel wireless (a big deal, since my phone was on airplane mode ever since the border) and checked in with J, I started changing them into swim trunks. We took an elevator down to the second floor, and Felix (who over the course of the day had been in an elevator about 12 times) did what he’d done on every trip: As soon as he felt it starting to move he ran over to me and buried his head in my legs, clutching my knees as tightly as he could. Except this time he confused me with the cleaning lady who we were sharing the lift with. I don’t know which of them was more surprised.

We finished stripping down in the locker room and showered off, then went into a sunny pool room full of big tropical plants. There was a decent sized cold pool and a little whirlpool tub in the corner, or as James and Owen described it “two pools!” One of the ways in which I’m not a great Dad is that I’ve done nothing to teach my boys how to actually swim. But they had a great time wading about and splashing. Felix and Owen both slipped and fell in multiple times, but neither of them seemed to mind after I’d fished them out. Felix just wanted to keep on walking around

Eventually another family came in and their son tried to play pool games with James (he was a much better swimmer) but had to settle for Felix, who ended up taking over their pool ball. (I tried to give it back, but the Mom insisted we keep it when Felix broke into tears. Canadians are so polite.)

We cleaned off and decided to head out for some dinner. The whole point of this trip, as far as the boys was concerned, was ordering a pizza. If you asked them to describe what we were going to do in Toronto, they would have said “We’re going to live in a hotel and order a pizza and go swimming and see dinosaur bones.” And the pizza was the nonnegotiable part of that. So we set of walking and looking for a place along Yonge Street where we could find a takeout pizza.

We walked a lot. And we didn’t see anything. But we did see a bunch of Lebanese places, and James got to asking me questions about what “shawarma” was. I described it, and he thought he might want to try to shwarma instead of pizza. Owen still wanted pizza. We walked another two blocks. Owen decided he could try shawarma too. Felix didn’t care about food at all. He kept seeing dogs and enthusiastically greeting them with a “HIII!!!”

We went into a shawarma place and got in line. Owen almost immediately cut his hand against the wall somehow and became a big sobbing mess until the head clerk offered him a beef sambusa. Somehow that made his hand feel better. And then James and Felix got free sambusas too, because Canadians are very nice.

We brought our spicy, garlicky, hot-saucy, raw-oniony shawarma back to the hotel room for the boys to reject and complain about. They devoured it. It’s amazing what the power of hunger (plus a long day and lots of walking and swimming) can do for picky eaters.

After dinner we FaceTimed with J for a few minutes, and then attempted to start putting them down to bed. James read Owen a Titanic book while Felix got another bottle, and I had the lights out by only an hour after their usual bedtime. My biggest problem that night was just being thirsty from the shawarma, and figuring out how to sneak out of the room to go get more ice for milk. Felix woke up once in the middle of the night and then passed right out again when I put a hand in his pack and play.

The next morning was all about cleaning up the colossal mess the kids had made of the hotel room. I turned on the TV again, and Owen found who SpongeBob SquarePants is. (He thinks he’s hilarious. He would have far preferred watching SpongeBob all morning to going to the Science Centre.) I picked up all their clothes and books and animals and got them dressed in going out clothes, then walked them to a little diner down the block for breakfast.

Our waiter was great and endlessly patient. He brought a booster for Felix right away and replaced our silverware every time the boys dropped theirs on the floor. (This happened about four times before I just asked to let them eat with their floor-dirty forks.) He advised that there would be enough pancakes on James and Owen’s orders that we wouldn’t need to order separately for Felix, and he chatted with James and Felix when I took Owen, who had assured me a dozen times at the hotel room that he really didn’t have to go to the potty, to the bathroom in a state of “I must go now or I’m going to explode crisis.”

I left Owen in the bathroom and checked on James and Felix. Two college girls haing breakfast in the back of the restaurant were giggling when I went back to the bathroom. Owen was screaming “DADDY! DAAADDYYY!” at the top of his lungs. The toilet had an automatic flush that was scaring him.

The food came and Felix ignored it. (There was a TV near us, and also two construction workers who kept talking to him.) James and Owen did a decent job on their pancakes, and my coffee wasn’t totally cold by the time I got a few sips.

We checked out of the hotel around 10 and drove over to the Ontario Science Centre. Huge parts of it were exactly how I remember from when I was 13...the Vandegraf Generator was in the exact same place, the marble run, and the play exhibit. The kids looked at bugs, experimented with barometric pressure, walked through a rainforest habitat, scaled a wooden bridge, found a turtle and multiple frogs, examined rock crystal formations, looked at aquariua, played with a wind tunnel, climbed through a cave, played with levers and fulcrums, zapped inert gases, banged on steel drums, and cranked engine parts. And that was all BEFORE the giant marble run. The best part for them, though, was the kidzone, because that was where they could get soaking wet. There was a big water table where you could do sundry experiments, and they were all soaked before we headed over to the planetarium.

It was in the planetarium where Felix finally reached the end of his tether. He basically hadn’t eaten anything in over a day and was in a big-kid exhibit. It was crowded because of all the school groups, and there was one particular group that we’d seen several times throughout the day that was rather ill-behaved. One group of girls had been playing tag in the lower levels, and apparently the game wasn’t over. A big girl ran up next to Felix, and then without looking where she was going took off running at full tilt and knocked him over, landing on him in the process. She ran off as soon as she realized what she’d done. I got him calmed down as best as I could (and found the girl and got an apology out of her) and asked the boys if they were ready to head home. We stopped at the Tim Horton’s on the way out for some coffee for the road and the one thing I could be sure Felix would eat--cheese.

We crawled through downtown Toronto in a rainstorm (you could still see the CN Tower clearly, though) and managed to find a Wendy’s just outside Missisauga where we got a little late lunch. There was another stop at Niagara on the Lake for souvenirs and a bathroom break, and we were back in our own house by 6.

I would do the ROM again in a heartbeat. It was a great museum, and the kids absolutely loved the dinosaurs. I think James got a lot out of the Science Centre (we had to find him a couple of times when he got interested in something and wandered off), but it was probably a bit over the heads of Owen and Felix. But anytime, and anywhere, I’d be happy to take these kids traveling and exploring again. They were champs about riding in the car, finding parking, and staying in a hotel room.

Final Owen quote, information he shared with the hotel clerk upon check-in:

“You know what’s weird about my Mom? She doesn’t even have a penis!”

Cleaning the Baseboard, Part 1

Of all the spots in the house, the southeast corner of the upstairs bathroom makes me the most anxious. It's the corner of the bathroom with the toilet, and that bathroom was always the eyesore of the house. While we laid in bed and looked over the Zillow ad for the first time, J remarked to me that "it isn't a good sign that there are no pictures of the bathroom." We've made some progress with it. We put in a nice threshold (there wasn't one), replaced the door handle that didn't lock, put in a recycled tile floor, and even repainted the tub. The tub repainting hasn't stuck though, (the bottom coat always peels away after a few weeks) and the grout got so dirty in the great Leaking Kitchen Ceiling fiasco of 2015.

It was during the Leaking Kitchen Ceiling fiasco that the southeast corner of the bathroom went from bad to dreadful. We'd made a mess of the baseboard and wainscot while putting the floor in earlier that summer, and then when the kitchen ceiling started leaking we made several vain attempts to figure out what was wrong with the leak. To make a very long and painful story short, a bad contractor from Craigslist spent an hour drilling into the cast iron pipe underneath our toilet and spattering flecks of sickly brown effluvium all over the new floor and the already dirty baseboard.

I feel anxious whenever I look into that corner because it reminds me that I haven't figured out a way to clean it up. Should I repaint? Do I just need to get down on my hands and knees and give it a really thorough scrubbing? Should I use some sort of multipurpose bathroom cleaner, or just a bucket of hot water and soap? Every few months I'll try to do just that and then get frustrated when it doesn't look any better, aside from having taken up the layer of dust and bathroom tissue shards that accumulated behind the toilet.

Nobody wants to clean behind the toilet. That's the real thing. I'd rather read. Or practice. Or anything else. I look at the stained/peeling/dusty paint and have this uneasy feeling that our grandparents would have kept their bathrooms spotless with once a week cleanings, even after mucking out the stables and making homemade applesauce and fighting in a World War earlier in the day. I'm a defective adult for not being able to look after my own living space. I must have missed this bit in home economics. I know that I took that course in high school, but I can only remember the bit about how to write a check and how store brands are indistinguishable from name brand cereals.

So I stand, with children of my own howling about my knees, unready for the task of giving them a sanitary bathroom. I end up dumping them in the bath. Felix fell off the toilet earlier while I was trying to floss and he was trying to be in my lap. Owen is upset because he fell off the stairs and because he doesn't understand that everyone else in the family has different standards of personal space. James is hiding somewhere, probably trying to avoid Owen. Felix and Owen are happy to be in the bath at first, but then Owen remembers that he needs to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW so I put him (dripping all over the floor) onto the toilet seat. This is good, because I still don't know whether I should be using hot water and soap or some kind of cleaner, and now I have both all over the place.

I pull on my elbow length rubber gloves and start scrubbing away at the baseboard and the floor. Bits of dried grout that I didn't clean up properly from when I regrouted last summer get scraped off. I pick at stubborn patches of stained paint with a razor and it comes off a bit. I wipe off with paper towels and move onto the next spot, one tile at a time, careful to get up everything that I can possibly scrape off.

Eventually Owen and Felix lose patience for playing in the tub. Felix is crying because Owen is splashing him in the face on purpose. I douse Owen with a cup of water, but it doesn't deter him. He's just happy someone is paying attention to him.

I finish wiping the floor down and stand up to survey my work. It doesn't really look any better. The floor is shining, but you can still see the stains on the baseboard and the wainscot. I didn't even get around to the baseboard on the west side of the bathroom (which is in much better shape, but dustier, since the shelving we have there is screwed into the wall) because the kids pooped out too soon. After I get them out and dressed I take the plunger, the toilet brush, and the trash can down to the utility sink.

Again, do real grown ups actually clean these things? I guess they must. We've never even taken the plastic cover off of the toilet brush stand, and you can see that there's grime inside the plastic. I rinse them all and then scrub them with disinfectant. Some of the gunk inside the plastic trash bin is stubborn, and it's the same color as the gunk from the wall. Probably residue from the clean up of the Craigslist guy.

Next time I'll finish the bathroom and go into the bedroom. The knees of my jeans are soaked (from kneeling on the towel that I used to clean up after Owen's bathroom timeout) and my hands are all dried out. But I'm glad I tried, even though I didn't get anywhere. I suspect that someone who knows what they're doing would have been intensely frustrated if they'd watched me, kind of like how I feel watching James muddle through cleaning up his room without really paying attention to what he's doing. But there are stories to be told along the whole length of the baseboard, from that awful, anxious spot in the bathroom through the dusty stretches behind our bedroom furniture, even out to the leftover bits that I found in our basement and re-purposed into an ugly looking garden square. (Caring for a garden was another bit that I must have missed in home economics.) I'm going to keep writing about cleaning it all up. It's one of those child's-eye level parts of a house that holds a thousand unspoken stories in it. (I can still remember where the snag is in the bit of baseboard next to the heating vent in my parent's house where I'd lie down behind the couch on winter mornings, or squeeze in next to a brother who'd woken up before I did.) Maybe, just maybe, one of the stories that my kids will think of when they go into their child's-eye view of our bathroom is "that's the part that used to be really dirty before Daddy cleaned it up."

I just have no idea how, yet.

What We Did This Morning (turning into a letter)

Owen:
We went to the park. I don't remember what we did. There was a waterfall. Because there were many. We hiked. The waterfalls were my favorite to look at. They were huge. I loved the dogs. I think there were actually five. I made friends with them. James and Felix hiked too. Then we did the CAR WASH. That was fun. We got scrubbed and we got cleaned out. Then we went to Wegmans and we went to the restaurant. I got milk and drank it very fast. I ate chicken tenders and gave one to James. And french fries and ketchup and also some ice. And then we had <whispers> ice cream. A twist in a cone, no sprinkles. We got in a lot of muddy stuff. And I got some sandcastles.

James:
We went for a hike in the woods, we went to the tepee. We went over a long bridge and a short one. We had a lot of driving. I don't want to talk anymore.

Owen:
Hi Silas and Roland, how are you doing today? I hope you send a message. It was fun to see you the other day. Come here soon. You'll see a great thing in our house. We'll tell you what it is. A HUBCAP. We found the hubcap in the playground. We hanged it in our room after we went to the playground and we cleaned it on the front step. I want to show you how big our hubcap is. We got big pancakes from Grandma and Grandpa. I got the airplane kind. If it was warm out do you know what I would want to do with you outside? Play "hike football." Please come here very, very soon. Silas. Roland. That's all I want to say.
Love, Owen

Music and Book pairings

I.
Tomorrow we're performing a narration of Ferdinand (the delightful children's story about a bull who doesn't want to get trapped in society's expectations that he follow a traditional career path and would rather get stoned on flowers and look at pretty ladies) set to the music of Bizet's Carmen (the delightful adult opera about how if you give the lead role to a mezzo-soprano, lots of people will die.) It actually works pretty well, although the whole thing, inexplicably, ends with the "weak" cadence in the Toreador song instead of the final "strong" cadence which would make more sense. Maybe the arranger was afraid of the Bizet estate coming after him if he copied too directly.

This made me wonder what other story books could be narrated in front of an orchestra and which famous operas ought to be paired with them.

Story: Are You My Mother? (P.D. Eastman)
Opera: Oedipus Rex (Stravinsky)

Story: Where the Wild Things Are
Opera: Abduction from the Seraglio

Story: The Giving Tree
Opera: Fidelio

There have to be some more obvious ones, but I can't think of any in my pit stupor. Once I'm out from underneath the stage and get some fresh air I'll try to come up with some more.

II.
The plan to take the boys to Toronto is up and running. James and Owen have summarized it thus: "We're going to live in a hotel and sleep on the floor and order pizza and maybe go swimming. Also, we're going to see dinosaur bones and maybe climb to the top of the big tower." That's mostly true, although I'm not sure if it's worth it to do the CN tower thing or not. Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations about the zoo, the waterfront, or Casa Loma? We are strongly considering the Science Centre and the Royal Ontario Museum at this point, and I don't know how much we'd be able to squeeze in on top of those.

III.
Felix is saying "shh!" It's more of a "th" than a "sh" sound. And it's adorable. He puts his finger to his lips and whispers "Thh!!! Th!!! Dada!" I'm not the loud one, of course. Owen is the loud one. It amazes me how loud he can talk, and how he can do it all day long. Also, he's been flipping out whenever someone holds Felix. If you have Felix on your lap, he needs to burrow in between the two of you. We've had to institute an "only two people in the chair at a time" policy. James, meanwhile, just desperately wants someone to take a picture of him mid-sneeze, but he can never seem to conjure one up when the camera is out.