I.
“Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime, when I was widdle, I had a widdle bruvver, and his name was Uncle Woocas. And I had a pond, and there was a BEAR. And it was SCARY! But I fighted him wiv my sword and I knocked him down, and the bear...ate some garbage!”
“Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime, when Mommy was pregnant wiv Fewix, I had a baby in MY tummy, and it kicked my tummy and twied to knock my coffee cup down.”
James: “Owen, sometimes I think that you are not telling the truth.”
“No, no! Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime when I was widdle I went to wiv on the MOON! And do you know what was there? Dinosaurs! And they tried to eat me, and I wode in my time machine!”
James: “No you didn’t.”
II.
Friendly Neighbor: “Hi Owen, are you out for a jog with your Daddy?”
Owen: “Yes, and today is mine BURFDAY!”
Friendly Neighbor: “It is? Well, happy birthday!”
Me: “It isn’t.”
Friendly Neighbor: “Well, when is your birthday?”
Owen: “In OCTOBER!”
Friendly Neighbor: “And how old are you going to be?”
Owen: “I’m going to be FIVE!”
Me: “Nope.”
Friendly Neighbor: “Are you going to be two?”
Owen: <holds up three fingers and grins>
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
50/100
I.
J: "I like this sign because it says to 'speak gently.' Do you know who we know that is SO good at speaking gently?"
James: "Who?"
J: "Nama is so good at speaking gently. She always thinks about her words before she says them, and she always says them in a very gentle voice."
Owen, cheerfully: "I don't!"
II.
At the liquor store
Lady in the line ahead of us: "Oh, look at this sweet little guy. How old is he?"
Me: "He is ten weeks."
James, not watching where he is walking, comes out from behind the lady, who nearly trips over him
Lady: "Oh, my! You surprised me!"
Owen, hopping out from behind a case of wine, in a tiger costume: "ROOARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!"
J: "I like this sign because it says to 'speak gently.' Do you know who we know that is SO good at speaking gently?"
James: "Who?"
J: "Nama is so good at speaking gently. She always thinks about her words before she says them, and she always says them in a very gentle voice."
Owen, cheerfully: "I don't!"
II.
At the liquor store
Lady in the line ahead of us: "Oh, look at this sweet little guy. How old is he?"
Me: "He is ten weeks."
James, not watching where he is walking, comes out from behind the lady, who nearly trips over him
Lady: "Oh, my! You surprised me!"
Owen, hopping out from behind a case of wine, in a tiger costume: "ROOARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!"
Monday, September 11, 2017
49/100
"Daddy, tell me a story from when you were little!"
This is a common request at the breakfast table now. Actually, it usually goes like this:
"Daddy, tell me a story from when you were little and Uncle Lucas was little and you had a pond!"
Owen is far more interested in hearing the various episodes of my childhood than James was at his age. So I tell him stories of adventures, clubs, scrapes, heroics, and near-misses, and at the end of each tale he always insists "and ANOTHER one!"
Often, though, having heard the story of Martha and the bear, he'll follow up the end of a story about breaking a window with a soccer ball or tipping a canoe over by asking "and then did the bear come?" I think he's a little disappointed that Martha's bear doesn't play a larger role in my childhood as a whole.
I think he has grasped the idea that the versions of myself and his uncles that appear in these stories were, in fact, little children, and he is spellbound by the idea of having lots of brothers to wrestle with, a big backyard for football and tag, woods to the North and the South, trees to climb, ponds to swim in, and a hedgerow. He usually wants more stories than I can remember in a single sitting, so if anyone does remember any particularly good County House Road tales, Owen would be happy to hear them.
And James is interested, too. As a matter of fact, he was drawn into a story I was telling Owen the other day about when I was in Kindergarten and I was terribly upset because I couldn't find my backpack anywhere and my Mommy and Daddy were laughing at me instead of helping me to find it, and I couldn't go to school without my backpack and the bus was going to be here any minute! (It turned out it was on my back the whole time.) James nodded along and asked whether I felt bad that people were laughing at me even though I was looking for it very hard. He's sympathetic to the frustration of not being taken seriously when you take yourself VERY seriously.
Owen was just disappointed that the bear didn't show up.
This is a common request at the breakfast table now. Actually, it usually goes like this:
"Daddy, tell me a story from when you were little and Uncle Lucas was little and you had a pond!"
Owen is far more interested in hearing the various episodes of my childhood than James was at his age. So I tell him stories of adventures, clubs, scrapes, heroics, and near-misses, and at the end of each tale he always insists "and ANOTHER one!"
Often, though, having heard the story of Martha and the bear, he'll follow up the end of a story about breaking a window with a soccer ball or tipping a canoe over by asking "and then did the bear come?" I think he's a little disappointed that Martha's bear doesn't play a larger role in my childhood as a whole.
I think he has grasped the idea that the versions of myself and his uncles that appear in these stories were, in fact, little children, and he is spellbound by the idea of having lots of brothers to wrestle with, a big backyard for football and tag, woods to the North and the South, trees to climb, ponds to swim in, and a hedgerow. He usually wants more stories than I can remember in a single sitting, so if anyone does remember any particularly good County House Road tales, Owen would be happy to hear them.
And James is interested, too. As a matter of fact, he was drawn into a story I was telling Owen the other day about when I was in Kindergarten and I was terribly upset because I couldn't find my backpack anywhere and my Mommy and Daddy were laughing at me instead of helping me to find it, and I couldn't go to school without my backpack and the bus was going to be here any minute! (It turned out it was on my back the whole time.) James nodded along and asked whether I felt bad that people were laughing at me even though I was looking for it very hard. He's sympathetic to the frustration of not being taken seriously when you take yourself VERY seriously.
Owen was just disappointed that the bear didn't show up.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
48/100
I. It's no secret that James has needed his "lovies" with a desperate intensity ever since he was little. First it was Steven Bear, and then George. There was a binky in there for a while too, and Thomas the train and Lightning McQueen have been necessities as well from time to time. We bought Owen his own Curious George just to keep him from grabbing James' all the time. I'm not sure that either of us thought he would get attached to it. But Owen loves "Dee" (from back when he couldn't pronounce "George") and he's been his unquestioned favorite bedtime friend. Still, even though he goes most places with Owen, it's never a big deal for Dee to be left home when we go out for groceries or to stay upstairs in bed for an entire morning. James would not have been able to handle these things, but Owen is just sort of less intense about everything than his older brother.
We couldn't find Dee last week. The first night, Owen took it in stride. He asked for him when it was time for bed. I told him that I couldn't find him anywhere in his room or in his bed, that I would look for him downstairs and bring him up if I found him. This was fine by Owen, and he went to bed without complaining. I looked through the downstairs and didn't find anything. The next day I don't think I thought about Dee again until bedtime. Owen asked for him again, and I said that I still hadn't found him, but this time I would really look hard.
I scoured the van, the closets, and looked under all the furniture. I went down to the basement and looked in the toy shopping cart that Owen likes to push him around in. I looked in the laundry baskets and behind books on the bookshelves. Neither J or I could find anything.
The next day we searched for real. I walked over to the neighboring playground and looked under the slides where the boys make "forts." When I was out running errands I stopped at the Wegmans' lost and found and asked if any stuffed animals had showed up. I made a note to call the other Wegmans that we'd been to that week and scratched my head in frustration. But Owen was nonplussed by it all. He didn't bring Dee up and didn't seem to miss him. He didn't even ask for him at bedtime that night.
The next day was an effort to find Dee, but really it was the long-delayed project of cleaning their room. "He has to be in here" we told each other. You couldn't see their floor for the mess, and we were sure he would turn up, and even bribed Owen into helping with the promise of looking for Dee while we did.
Nothing. The room looked great when we were done, and Owen asked at the end if any of us had seen Dee, but he didn't seem upset at all that we hadn't. He slept without him for another night without being bothered by it, and then the next day J got a message from our Kylie. It was Abby, and she was holding up a dirty monkey in a yellow shirt asking "Is this Owen's?" She quickly showed it to me, and then we called Owen over. I was expecting the same indifferent reaction. He saw his George and burst into tears.
It was a good night when J came back with him and we laid him in the arms of a sleeping Owen.
II.
James and Owen watched a bit of Fantasia the other day, the old/original one. They were both completely gassed out from having slept (but really, not slept) in the tent (in the living room) the night before. There was an hour left till bedtime, and we treated them to a couple scenes from a movie. I skipped the opening Toccata and Fugue sequence, and they watched a couple of the dances from Nutcracker. They didn't seem particularly interested, but were pleasantly spaced out on the couch. Then I remembered about the Rite of Spring animation.
"Do you guys want to see some dinosaurs?"
"Oh, yes!"
"I WUV dinosaurs!"
I skipped ahead. After a lot of initial complaining about "Where are the dinosaurs?"--there is a long opening sequence depicting the earth being formed--they started to get hooked, and when the dinosaurs came out they were both completely wide eyed. I had forgotten both how violent that cartoon is, and how explicitly it tells the story of evolution through chance and random cosmic upheaval. I wondered if any of it would stick to the next day.
It did. Owen woke up talking about how the dinosaurs could hear something. He'd then pretend to listen, and declare "It's a DINOSAURUS WEX!" And he'd run around shrieking and pretending to fight. James, on the other hand, declared that he was going to make a book of the movie. And he did. He drew scene by scene pictures of galaxies forming, nebulous clouds of gas becoming planets, comets flashing through space, violent eruptions of lava from the earth's volcanoes, amoeba-like creatures floating in the water, primitive undersea life, and then the entire dinosaur sequence. He stopped at one point and in near-panic declared "OH NO! I forgot about the part with the pterodactyls!" He even made the bit with the dinosaurs turning into skeletons at the end.
Oh, and they must have watched a little bit of the Beethoven Six sequence with Zeus, because he also made himself a bunch of paper lightning bolts that he was using to smite Owen.
We couldn't find Dee last week. The first night, Owen took it in stride. He asked for him when it was time for bed. I told him that I couldn't find him anywhere in his room or in his bed, that I would look for him downstairs and bring him up if I found him. This was fine by Owen, and he went to bed without complaining. I looked through the downstairs and didn't find anything. The next day I don't think I thought about Dee again until bedtime. Owen asked for him again, and I said that I still hadn't found him, but this time I would really look hard.
I scoured the van, the closets, and looked under all the furniture. I went down to the basement and looked in the toy shopping cart that Owen likes to push him around in. I looked in the laundry baskets and behind books on the bookshelves. Neither J or I could find anything.
The next day we searched for real. I walked over to the neighboring playground and looked under the slides where the boys make "forts." When I was out running errands I stopped at the Wegmans' lost and found and asked if any stuffed animals had showed up. I made a note to call the other Wegmans that we'd been to that week and scratched my head in frustration. But Owen was nonplussed by it all. He didn't bring Dee up and didn't seem to miss him. He didn't even ask for him at bedtime that night.
The next day was an effort to find Dee, but really it was the long-delayed project of cleaning their room. "He has to be in here" we told each other. You couldn't see their floor for the mess, and we were sure he would turn up, and even bribed Owen into helping with the promise of looking for Dee while we did.
Nothing. The room looked great when we were done, and Owen asked at the end if any of us had seen Dee, but he didn't seem upset at all that we hadn't. He slept without him for another night without being bothered by it, and then the next day J got a message from our Kylie. It was Abby, and she was holding up a dirty monkey in a yellow shirt asking "Is this Owen's?" She quickly showed it to me, and then we called Owen over. I was expecting the same indifferent reaction. He saw his George and burst into tears.
It was a good night when J came back with him and we laid him in the arms of a sleeping Owen.
II.
James and Owen watched a bit of Fantasia the other day, the old/original one. They were both completely gassed out from having slept (but really, not slept) in the tent (in the living room) the night before. There was an hour left till bedtime, and we treated them to a couple scenes from a movie. I skipped the opening Toccata and Fugue sequence, and they watched a couple of the dances from Nutcracker. They didn't seem particularly interested, but were pleasantly spaced out on the couch. Then I remembered about the Rite of Spring animation.
"Do you guys want to see some dinosaurs?"
"Oh, yes!"
"I WUV dinosaurs!"
I skipped ahead. After a lot of initial complaining about "Where are the dinosaurs?"--there is a long opening sequence depicting the earth being formed--they started to get hooked, and when the dinosaurs came out they were both completely wide eyed. I had forgotten both how violent that cartoon is, and how explicitly it tells the story of evolution through chance and random cosmic upheaval. I wondered if any of it would stick to the next day.
It did. Owen woke up talking about how the dinosaurs could hear something. He'd then pretend to listen, and declare "It's a DINOSAURUS WEX!" And he'd run around shrieking and pretending to fight. James, on the other hand, declared that he was going to make a book of the movie. And he did. He drew scene by scene pictures of galaxies forming, nebulous clouds of gas becoming planets, comets flashing through space, violent eruptions of lava from the earth's volcanoes, amoeba-like creatures floating in the water, primitive undersea life, and then the entire dinosaur sequence. He stopped at one point and in near-panic declared "OH NO! I forgot about the part with the pterodactyls!" He even made the bit with the dinosaurs turning into skeletons at the end.
Oh, and they must have watched a little bit of the Beethoven Six sequence with Zeus, because he also made himself a bunch of paper lightning bolts that he was using to smite Owen.
47/100
The second day of 1st grade. Still in pajamas, today's schoolwork done, in his G.R.O.S.S. treehouse with Hobbes and George. This was followed by a snuggling party. "A snuggling party is when you have a nice, quiet morning and you sit in a comfy chair with your friends and read books and be happy."
Monday, August 28, 2017
46/100
I was hoping to do a blog while the kids were sleeping, but the internet is down and J is also sleeping. I'd have to wake her up to get back behind the couch to the router, and that hardly seems fair, even for a properly written blog with full-color pictures. So instead I'll tap out an improper blog while sitting at my desk, which was clean this morning but is now littered with a morning's worth of well-intentioned projects that started out promisingly but were left unfinished because my attention was required elsewhere to sort out a dump truck dispute or to flip a load of laundry.
We were going to visit the zoo today, but the whole family was in a haze before the day even started. Our veteran parenting move this week was putting a zoo date on the calendar but choosing not to tell the kids about it, just in case we decided that it was more important to stay at home on our pajamas than to watch the elephants. After a full weekend of church and a trip to Albion, the elephants never stood a chance. And no one was upset at us, because we broke no spoken promises.
The folder of our exercise DVDs lies open on my desk. We were going to exercise this morning, because the kids would definitely be able to entertain themselves while we did a short 20-minute workout. This turned out to be not quite so straightforward as we had thought, so we were going to exercise as soon as they were all down for naps. But Felix started crying as soon as we had shut the other two in their rooms, so we were going to exercise as soon as he had eaten and been assuaged. But then J was having nasty allergies and she took a Claritin, and she was just going to nap for a thirty minutes, and then her alarm would go off and we would exercise then. And that was about an hour and half ago, so I can't really say what the forecast for exercise is.
There is a lab slip on my desk as well, which J is supposed to complete before her next physical. I don't know which labs she can use to do her blood work, because we don't have the same insurance. And I was on the phone with her insurance for a half hour this morning getting through the automated menu and then trying to figure out with a supposedly living human being whether and where she could get an eye exam. Then there were two more phone calls, and lots of waiting on hold while Felix screamed his lungs out, and I just don't have it in me to interact with the insurance world again for at least 24 hours.
And there's plenty more on my desk--a zoom recorder, a Sunday School registration form, and a bank bill and a dentist's office registration packet, but Felix is crying again, and I hear Owen. So I think that's the end of this blog and this nap.
We were going to visit the zoo today, but the whole family was in a haze before the day even started. Our veteran parenting move this week was putting a zoo date on the calendar but choosing not to tell the kids about it, just in case we decided that it was more important to stay at home on our pajamas than to watch the elephants. After a full weekend of church and a trip to Albion, the elephants never stood a chance. And no one was upset at us, because we broke no spoken promises.
The folder of our exercise DVDs lies open on my desk. We were going to exercise this morning, because the kids would definitely be able to entertain themselves while we did a short 20-minute workout. This turned out to be not quite so straightforward as we had thought, so we were going to exercise as soon as they were all down for naps. But Felix started crying as soon as we had shut the other two in their rooms, so we were going to exercise as soon as he had eaten and been assuaged. But then J was having nasty allergies and she took a Claritin, and she was just going to nap for a thirty minutes, and then her alarm would go off and we would exercise then. And that was about an hour and half ago, so I can't really say what the forecast for exercise is.
There is a lab slip on my desk as well, which J is supposed to complete before her next physical. I don't know which labs she can use to do her blood work, because we don't have the same insurance. And I was on the phone with her insurance for a half hour this morning getting through the automated menu and then trying to figure out with a supposedly living human being whether and where she could get an eye exam. Then there were two more phone calls, and lots of waiting on hold while Felix screamed his lungs out, and I just don't have it in me to interact with the insurance world again for at least 24 hours.
And there's plenty more on my desk--a zoom recorder, a Sunday School registration form, and a bank bill and a dentist's office registration packet, but Felix is crying again, and I hear Owen. So I think that's the end of this blog and this nap.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
45/100
Felix screaming. Always screaming.
Trying to make ham and cheese sandwiches one handed.
Owen doesn't like swiss cheese.
I forgot to put mustard on James'.
More of Felix screaming.
The feta cheese fell and spilled all over the bottom of the fridge.
Boys, get in the van.
More of Felix crying.
A traffic jam.
Owen wants the windows down.
James wants the windows up.
Felix just wants to cry.
No, I can't carry you, I'm carrying Felix.
Owen, do you have to go potty?
Boys, don't wrestle on top of the big rocks.
Boys, get out of the flower beds.
Seriously, Owen, you can't try to push James off that rock. Do you need to got potty yet?
Yes, you can play on the playground.
Owen, did you poop in your diaper?
Wait, is that poop on your fingers?
Is that...on your face...?
Don't. Touch. Anything.
We're getting back in the van.
The windows are staying rolled up.
More of Felix screaming.
No, I can't carry you, I'm carrying Felix.
Straight up to the tub, don't touch anything or sit on anything on the way.
No, stop putting your hand in it and let me get it cleaned off.
More of Felix screaming.
Who is getting out first?
Nope, sit on the potty before we put your pajamas.
Wait, wait...come back and brush your teeth before you go out of the bathroom.
No, we can't play outside anymore, it's bedtime.
Okay, Felix. It's okay, I can pick you up now.
The warm damp of spit-up, lots of it, rolling down my back.
Trying to make ham and cheese sandwiches one handed.
Owen doesn't like swiss cheese.
I forgot to put mustard on James'.
More of Felix screaming.
The feta cheese fell and spilled all over the bottom of the fridge.
Boys, get in the van.
More of Felix crying.
A traffic jam.
Owen wants the windows down.
James wants the windows up.
Felix just wants to cry.
No, I can't carry you, I'm carrying Felix.
Owen, do you have to go potty?
Boys, don't wrestle on top of the big rocks.
Boys, get out of the flower beds.
Seriously, Owen, you can't try to push James off that rock. Do you need to got potty yet?
Yes, you can play on the playground.
Owen, did you poop in your diaper?
Wait, is that poop on your fingers?
Is that...on your face...?
Don't. Touch. Anything.
We're getting back in the van.
The windows are staying rolled up.
More of Felix screaming.
No, I can't carry you, I'm carrying Felix.
Straight up to the tub, don't touch anything or sit on anything on the way.
No, stop putting your hand in it and let me get it cleaned off.
More of Felix screaming.
Who is getting out first?
Nope, sit on the potty before we put your pajamas.
Wait, wait...come back and brush your teeth before you go out of the bathroom.
No, we can't play outside anymore, it's bedtime.
Okay, Felix. It's okay, I can pick you up now.
The warm damp of spit-up, lots of it, rolling down my back.
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