Casey loves his Christmas presents

Erika finally had to draw the line: "No more fire truck until you eat breakfast."

Snow Day!

They say we have 12-18 inches already, and it's still snowing (although it looks pretty light right now). It was 32 degrees when we got up this morning, and the temperature is supposed to plummet today. I thought we could go play in the snow for a bit before it got too cold, but there's a really a biting wind. We only stayed out for a few minutes, long enough to see that there's no way we're getting out of our parking lot until it's plowed. Then Casey wanted to go back inside, and we had some cocoa. Chris is working from home, so we're all safe and warm. And it looks like the snow will stop today, and then there will be a couple days of decent weather for the state to clean up before we have to fly out on Saturday.





Darby was a little better sport about being outside today. That kid's up for anything.

Darby's First Haircut

The new haircut makes Darby look so much more like a little boy now. That, and he's not nursing anymore, and he's toddling around everywhere with sudden confidence--he's so grown up all of a sudden!

By the way

a belated happy Thanksgiving!

We had a nice trip to see my folks in Indiana. Fun was had. Mistakes were made. Lessons were learned, as follows:

1. The correct egg nog-to-Bailey's ratio is not half and half. That's what they get for letting me be bartender. I eyeballed the situation, and figured that half a jingle bell mug was about equal to one shot. Everybody else thought that was a really bad call and let me hear about it for the rest of the night. Talk about drunk and disorderly! It was as if this was the worst batch of mixed drinks anybody had ever made in the history of getting wasted. I didn't think it was that bad.

2. Don't put your 3-year-old in the middle of a merry-go-round and trust that he'll remain stable while you spin it. I won't name names, but let's just say it was one of Casey's parents, and it wasn't me! Casey shifted, lost his balance, and succumbed to the centrifugal forces. He wasn't injured, but he landed on his face and got a full mouthful and a noseful of playground dirt. His tongue was so caked that we couldn't be sure he still had a tongue. Poor kiddo was so unhappy. Then he sneezed, and ... well, I'll spare you the grisly details. But suffice to say, we had no tissues with us, and there was one mitten that had to go into the washer immediately after we got back to the house.

3. Never go looking for a gas station in rural Indiana. On our journey home, we didn't realize we were so low on gas until we had passed the point of civilization. Our GPS told us the best option was five miles off the highway in a little town (if you can call it that) named Thorntown. In the spot where it told us Joe's Marathon would be was a hollowed-out carcass of a building with a few ancient-looking pumps outside. We drove around a little, thinking every small town, no matter how microscopic, must have a functional gas station. Not true. So I ran into a convenience store, where an employee told me the nearest gas station was about six miles further into the cornfields, in Dover. Thankfully we made it before hitting empty. But Chris complained that the whole experience hearkened a little too close to the plot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Not to complain too much. Sure, Darby ran a fever between 101 and 102 the entire long weekend, and it took us 10 hours to make it back to Madison. But dinner was fantastic, family was all around, and my Mom took the kids so that we could sleep in a few times. And, we have much to be thankful for this year. I hope everyone had as good a holiday as we did.

First Snow of the Season

It started snowing up a storm this afternoon, and Casey watched in awe through our balcony door, waiting impatiently for Darby to wake up from his nap so we could all go out. He's young enough that snow still seems new and interesting each year.



I think this counts as Darby's first official snow, since last year he was still too new to notice. I remember that Casey kind of freaked out the very first time I took him out in the snow, when he was about this age. But Darby took it in stride and was quite happy. He loves to be outside, and he's a good sport in general.



Look, snow sticks to mittens. Amazing!



This is a pretty slippery sidewalk to be trying this maneuver (that is, standing). But no children were injured in the making of this photo.



Or this one, for that matter.

It's alive! ... It's aliiiiive!

OK, I'm gonna call it:  Darby is now walking.  He's just bad at it, so it's sometimes not so obvious.

Darby's nighttime decision engine

Who just entered the room?

Daddy --> oops, party's over, better roll over and go back to sleep.
Mommy --> FLIP OUT.

Halloween at the Zoo

The zoo had a special trick-or-treating event on Sunday, so we put the kids in their costumes and headed over. The line for the trick-or-treating was ridiculously long, so we skipped that. Casey didn't know the difference. He was just enjoying wearing his costume, seeing the other kids in their costumes, and just being at the zoo, his absolute favorite place in the world.

Casey is a monkey this year. I had some vague aspirations toward making homemade costumes, but in the end I just got him this off Craig's List. I don't even know where my sewing machine is packed. And every day, it seemed like Casey was telling me he wanted to be something different. Batman. Ghost. Lion. I heard giraffe quite a few times.

He never mentioned monkey, but I thought the monkey costume was cute and that I could talk him into it. Unfortunately the conversation went something like this:

"Casey, do you want to be a monkey?"

"No, I want to be a giraffe!"

"Hmmm ... I don't think I can get a giraffe costume. Wouldn't it be cool to be a monkey?"

"Oh ... ok ... I want to be a hippo!"

Seriously, how do you make a kid look like a hippo? Luckily, ever since we acquired the monkey costume, he has been very excited about it. I am still a little ashamed that I didn't try to come up with a giraffe costume, though. Maybe next year.

Isn't he cute? When he was first modeling it, he turned around and made me take a photo of his tail too. But I'm not going to post that.

This was a popular costume. We saw quite a few just like it at the zoo. One of the best costumes we saw was a guy dressed as the Man in the Yellow Hat (his kids were Curious George and a baby banana). And, we ate lunch at the same table as a family of penguins. That was a little odd, actually. They kept trying to make polite conversation, but I just couldn't take them seriously.

Darby's wearing the pumpkin costume that has been handed down to us from the cousins. He doesn't resemble a hobbit in the same way Casey did at this age, so we won't be reusing the Frodo costume I made. (Unless ... could he pass for Samwise Gangee?? I don't know ...)

One of the best moments of the day was when these three macaws knocked this pumpkin off the branch. They all looked down at the shattered remnants in stunned silence for a moment, then simultaneously started squawking at each other in this very accusatory way. Like, "I can't believe you just did that!" "ME?! You were the one shoving your beak in there!" "Now what are we going to peck at?" You kind of had to be there, but it was hilarious.

Fun at the playground ...

Darby intently watches the giraffes. (Giraffes plural! Two additional giraffes are staying in Wisconsin for the winter.)

Stay tuned in the next few days for "Darby: The Year in Review."

Family interaction

Darby likes to point. Sometimes it looks very dramatic, as it was this week when he posed with one finger pointed at the ceiling as if he was about to address the assembly.

"Friends!" I narrated.

"Romans!" Erika chimed in. All eyes fell expectantly on Casey, who clearly understood he needed to add something.

"Boys!" Casey said. Eh, close enough.

Sibling rivalry

I don't have much to add to Erika's last post except to note a particular flavor of the zoo game that's been cropping up when I play it. Casey assigns the roles: "Daddy, you're the daddy lion, and I'm the baby lion!" "OK, what's Darby?" "Darby's the food!"

Uh oh.

Overheard

After two minutes of silence, out of nowhere ...

Casey:  "Mommy, say thank you to Casey."

Mommy:  "Thank you, Casey."

Casey:  "You're welcome."

????

Why I hate Superman

In the spirit of posts about coconuts on deserted islands, I bring you: Superman is a bastard. (Subtitle: Work is slow the day before July 4.)

No, really. The guy saves lives and is generally a do-gooder, sure. But (regardless of what you'll hear elsewhere) laziness is the root of all evil, and this is one selfish, lazy superhero.

There's a scene in Superman Returns in which he soars above the clouds, gets a good satellite's-eye-view of the Earth, closes his eyes, and listens for trouble. He immediately finds it, so he zips back down, fixes some stuff, foils a robbery, rescues people in distress, and so on. It's terrific stuff, and everything that makes Superman Superman is embodied in this sequence. The invincible hero using his strength to better humanity, incredible acts of heroism and charity, etc. And yet, when he puts on the suit and does his thing, that's when I realized I hate Superman.

Because WHY DOESN'T HE DO THIS ALL THE TIME? He just spent 9 hours chatting it up with old colleagues and getting settled back into his old job as some hapless newspaper reporter. That's all perfectly natural, I thought, until he started in with the heroics and it occurred to me to wonder, how many people just bit it because you wanted to knock around the old office for the day instead of putting your talents to good use?

And it's not just that he's dividing his time: HEROISM IS HIS NIGHT JOB. It's his hobby. It's what he does when he gets off work. Heading into a fatal traffic accident during business hours? TOO BAD, CHUMP. I'm busy trying to win dates while acting like a tool because it's the only thing left that challenges me. Sure, I could save you, but where does it end? Nah, I'm gonna pretend to be a loser half the time and see where that gets me.

That ... makes no sense. If you want to be loved, just be yourself, and they'll love you, believe me. Also, there'd be more people alive, you selfish bastard.

And what's up with reporting? Hey, I love journalism, and I understand the allure. But really, you could be contributing more, earning more, and further along the path to self-actualization, and you wouldn't have to pretend to be a limp fool anymore in the process, which surely you must find tremendously disheartening after awhile. There is something seriously wrong with this guy's psychology.

He's doing something no one else can do. This is a hugely rare and valuable service he's providing -- it's unique, in fact -- and certainly the governments of the world could put their resources together and compensate him fairly for it. Why is this not his full-time job? He's a massive violation of the principle of specialization. And another thing: you know how many people wish they could report for a paper like the Daily Planet? Stop stealing our jobs!

Clearly, from his portrayal, there is little to limit Superman's ability to locate and prevent disasters. And if the entire planet can be within scope, there will never be a shortage of work for him. But he wastes enormous opportunities to do good by piddling around with playacting for unconscionable stretches of time.

And don't even get me started on why he's decided an individual bank robbery is worth stopping when he could be fixing Africa.

Jerk.

I have failed to live up to my father's example, and let's face it: was the bar really that high?

An overdue story:

A couple weeks ago we drove up to Rochester for the Conners family's pregnancy-related revelation party. So now we know they're having a girl (and congratulations to them). But to make the trip reasonable to inflict on our two young boys, we had to arrange to stay overnight. Two four-hour trips in one day would have been way too much for any of us to handle.

So with the Conners' permission, we drove up Saturday, stayed the night, and drove back Sunday. Great party, and really great to see friends again. I don't know how often I'll get back to Minnesota now that we've moved, so I tried to make the most of it.

I could tell dozens of little stories from that trip. One of my personal favorite moments was revealing to Casey that it was time for bed. Steve wanted to administer bedtime, but as soon as he picked up Casey, the poor boy burst into tears. So I carried him upstairs instead, where Erika and I spent a few minutes trying to calm him down. He was SO distraught, and no reassurances were getting through until one of us mentioned that everyone was going to sleep, not just him, and we'd all have breakfast in the morning, and wouldn't that be fun? Suddenly he calmed down, and it dawned on me ... the last time Casey spent the night, we left him for days while we hunted for a place to live in Madison. He wasn't upset about bedtime, he was upset because he thought we were leaving him. Once we told him that mommy and daddy were staying too, he had no more problems. I was kicking myself for not thinking of that sooner.

But I had not yet begun to kick myself, because the next day, after a typically amazing breakfast and a thorough inspection of the house to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything, we hit the road, bound for Madison again. Twenty-five minutes into the trip, the phone rang. As soon as I saw it was Steve calling, I knew ... we forgot something. Grr. But then Steve revealed what it was: Casey's blue "100" blanket, so named because it has the number 100 stitched in a corner. And that's when the horror hit me.

Casey LOVES this blanket. It's more a constant of bedtime for him than Moonbeam Bear, and we've had many, many nights when the absence of the 100 blanket is an emergency preventing all sleep. Hell, you have to ORIENT the blanket properly so the corner with the 100 on it is located in arm's reach. Spin the blanket around so the 100 patch is at his feet, and you're just going to have to go back in there five minutes later because Casey can't find the 100 in the dark. Sleep is the household's biggest problem, and most of our family conversation centers on who's slept when, how much sleep they got, and how it is never, never enough. And the blanket that Casey absolutely needs for a peaceful bedtime is back in Rochester. Damn it.

Now before I go further, let me tell you another story from my own childhood. My dad used to play a lot of softball, and sometimes that took us to weekend tournaments at parks a long drive from our house. And my sister and I would go along, play on the playground until it was time to go home, and then we'd drive back. But on one trip, Susan burst into tears after driving home for an hour, because she'd "lost Bernie," a stuffed dog she'd left on the playground somewhere. And it is now family legend how my heroic father turned the car around, drove us alllllll the way back, plucked the dog off the swing where it had apparently been rocking untouched in the breeze for several hours, and then drove us home again. He added two hours or so to an already long drive just to retrieve this lost stuffed animal that my sister had to have.

And so when we'd forgotten Casey's blanket, it was a little different, because he wasn't yet upset, but we knew he WOULD be. But I didn't think twice about it. I set the car's GPS to take us back to Rochester so I could get the blanket.

"Really?" Erika asked. I sighed. I didn't tell her about the story with the dog and the park and my father. I just told her I thought we ought to go back, but -- with the GPS reporting a 30-minute drive back to Steve's -- it would add an hour to our already long trip. It's tough transporting a 2-year-old and a 7-month-old in the car that long, and nobody was thrilled at the idea of adding an hour, so with Erika expressing some reservations ... I called Steve back and told him we weren't coming, and he should drop the blanket in the mail.

And then I spent the next four hours fighting off the guilt while I drove. Somewhere inside me, a voice kept whispering, "A GOOD father would have gone back."

We got home, and it got to be bedtime, and Erika sat Casey down on the bed and said she had something important to tell him. You could tell Casey sensed this was a serious matter, because he quieted right down and held still and studied his mom carefully to figure out what was going on. And so Erika explained that we'd left the 100 blanket behind at Steve's, and we'd have to have it sent in the mail, and we'd get it in a few days. Casey, in the sweetest voice he's got: "OK, Mommy." But we weren't sure he really got it. And sure enough, Erika started to get up, told Casey it was time for bed, good night, etc. "100 blanket!" Casey yelled. Erika explained again, we don't have the 100 blanket, it's at Steve's house. And that's when Casey started to cry.

Oh, the guilt.

A few days later the blanket arrived in the mail, and Casey was so delighted he wouldn't let it go, just clasped it around his neck and ran around wearing it like a cape for an hour. So it's got a happy ending, I guess, but still. I missed the chance to live up to my father's example, and now I'll have to live with it.

The sounds of naptime

Naptime has been going on for about 90 minutes now, and from the bedroom I can hear long, mournful harmonica notes. I wonder what he's trying to tell me.

Overheard

"Casey, are you hungry?  Are you ready for lunch?"

"No, I'm not hungry!"

"OK, well let me know when you're ready for some chicken nuggets."

"I want some chicken nuggets!"

No one puts one over on my boy

Mommy took the family out to dinner last night -- haven't been to the Olive Garden in at least a year, and we just wanted to get out.  Casey skipped his nap and apparently spent the afternoon giggling.  I'm not sure what he thought was so funny, but after the first 20 minutes I'd been home, I started to think that maybe it was the oxygen deprivation.  That stuff's hilarious.  So yeah, let's take the Joker here to a restaurant, great idea.

As it turned out, he was well behaved once we were there.  Except for the moment when he decided to try his crayons on a soup bowl instead of his paper placemat, I didn't feel any discipline was required, and that's a smashing success for a restaurant outing these days.

But we weren't pushing our luck either, so we weren't about to linger once his considerable appetite for breadsticks ran out.  We asked the waitress to box up our food to go.  Casey was back to coloring happily when she started removing plates, and as soon as she lifted mommy's ravioli from the table, Casey stopped coloring, whipped his head up, and shouted, "Hey, give that back!"

Where'd THAT come from?

Anyway, lessons on politeness can come later.  Today I'm proud he's standing up for himself, protecting his family's food, and speaking in surprisingly well-formed sentences while he does it.  Gold star, Casey.

Neurosis revealed!

Steve pointed out that I've been more open about my neuroses lately.  Can't explain that, but I can substantiate it.

Here's my nightmare scenario:  I'm stranded on a tropical island, and the only abundant source of food is coconuts.  Starve to death or subsist on coconuts?  I just don't know.

How hungry would I have to be to eat coconut?  If I reached that point, would I still hate the coconut?  Or could I actually achieve such a level of hunger and delirium that I could mitigate the awfulness of coconut?  As I ate and satisfied hunger, would I then reach a point at which my coconut hatred would return, and I would be unable to eat further?  I mean, then my life becomes a balancing act where I manage two levels of acute suffering, only eating enough coconut to reach that point again where coconut aversion exceeds my desperation.  See what I mean?  Maybe it's better just to starve to death.

And if it's pickles, I will never be hungry enough.  Never.

Darn it, Casey

This morning I prepared for work as usual and was about to leave the house -- all I needed was my ID badge, which I'd left on the nightstand over the weekend.  But it was gone.

Probably fell on the floor, I thought, so I scoured the area around the bed.  But I still couldn't find it.  I turned some lights on -- the ability to get into the office is kind of important, so I wasn't about to leave without the badge.  I didn't want to disturb Erika, who needs all the sleep the kids let her get, but I had to find that badge.  She's a light sleeper and already knew what was going on and asked if I was looking for the badge.  She said she hadn't seen it in the laundry or anything, to which I told her everything I already knew:  it wouldn't be in the laundry, because I left it on this table, and I know that for certain, and I know you wouldn't move it, and I know I didn't move it, and that means that a child has moved it, and that means that it could be anywhere.

When I hadn't turned it up myself within another minute, she got up to help me look.  I started checking the floor and the toy bins in the living room and was starting to think about whether Casey might have dropped it down the laundry chute when Erika called from the bedroom:  "I got it!"  She emerged, handed me the badge, and smiled at me.  "You have to think like a child," she explained.  "It was in the CD player."

Building nightmares

This hasn't been a good week for my instincts as a father.  First I subjected Casey to the horrors of Young Frankenstein, and then I took him out to the store on Saturday. Actually, that was a pretty good trip -- Casey always seems really good for me when we're out in the world, and I don't know what his mother's problem is.

But on the way home, I suggested we stop at the car wash so Casey could touch Mommy's car again without coming away with gray hands. "Car wash broken!" Casey told me. Wow, he remembers that? Two weeks ago we were going to stop at the car wash, but I wasn't given the option at the gas station, so we went home without one. He was pretty upset about it; he'd really had his heart set on going through the car wash. So I told him it was broken, and as far as he knew, that was still the case.

But I picked a different gas station this time, fueled up the car, and got us in line for the car wash. Casey seemed pretty eager about it, until the thing actually started. Even the start of the wash wasn't so bad, when it was just dumping soap on the car. But when the high-pressure spray started and swept past his windows, it got a little too loud for him. I did my best to keep him from bursting into tears, and except for a few panicky squalls, he held it together pretty well. Still ... he wasn't happy and kept telling me in that quavery voice that the car wash was "all done" -- long before it was over.

And then he got home and ran inside the house, threw his arms around Mommy, and started to tell her all about it. You had to know what he was saying, but with a little help from me, we got it translated, and the thrust of it was simple enough: "Car wash scary!" He spent the rest of the weekend randomly exclaiming about car washes. "No car wash!" he'd tell us at dinner. "Car wash over!" he'd tell me as he got up from his nap.

I mean well, but I just keep inflicting mental scars on this poor kid.

No spilled soup! Noooo!

Casey's getting more sophisticated every day. In this context, we're talking about what he sees on TV. He's a big Pixar fan by necessity because it's what I let him watch, but there are some frightening moments even in stuff like "Finding Nemo" -- and it's been interesting watching him grow up and gradually realize when a character's in peril.

He particularly hates the first dentist's office scene -- near as I can tell, it's because they introduce the location by showing a guy strapped into a chair while the dentist pokes strange equipment into his mouth.  For the sake of humor, there's some pain and yelling and thrashing around -- hardly Marathon Man material, but I suppose that for Casey it's a little scary. The fish he can mostly handle, but I think it's easier to identify with something like a dentist's office -- he's been to the doctor before, and he gets that.

Then there's last night. I was in charge of the remote, and Casey was playing with trains on the coffee table, so I wasn't looking for a "Thomas the Train" episode. I avoid violence and language when Casey's in the room, but that's easy enough. I don't worry too much about him, particularly when he's not even paying attention. But last night I picked something I thought was safe, and it turned out ... well, time will tell how scarring it really was, but he wasn't happy at the time.

So anyway, I switched to Young Frankenstein.

It had been on for a little while, and every now and then it caught his attention, but mostly he ignored it and did his own thing. But then came the moment where the monster meets Gene Hackman -- I don't know why, but that grabbed him, watching the monster settle into the blind priest's hut for soup. And once Gene Hackman started ladling hot soup into Peter Boyle's lap, and the monster started roaring, that was all Casey could handle.

"Oh no! [somethingsomething] spill soup!" Casey exclaimed.

"Oh no," I agreed. I didn't quite get how freaked out he was yet. "Did the monster spill the soup?"

"Yes!" Casey cried. He turned to watch again -- and Gene Hackman's still ladling soup into the monster's lap. "No spilled soup! No!" And that's when he latched on to me.

A moment later, Mommy arrived with pajamas. "Time for pajamas, Casey!"

And then he REALLY latched on. "No! [extended passage of mystery sounds]"

"Wow," I told Erika. "He's really got a death grip going here."

We tried to talk him into sitting down for pajamas, but apparently that would mean lying down in front of the TV, where for all Casey knew, soup would be spilled on roaring monsters with wild abandon. Eventually we figured it out. It took a little while, because in his distress, he became a little difficult to understand. "Casey, is the monster scary?" "YES!" So we turned the TV off, and he finally released me, and that was the end of the problem. Or so I thought.

Later it was bedtime, and shortly after we got Casey down for the night, I disappeared downstairs for half an hour or so. When I got back, Erika was glaring at me. Apparently he kept calling for her, and every time she went into his room, he spent the time earnestly telling her all about monsters and spilled soup. "I blame you," she tells me. Yeah, no kidding.

It's remarkable to me how much he remembers. I'll say something or he'll see something, and I won't think much of it, but months later he'll bring it up again. There are a lot of little things that make bigger impressions on him than I thought they did. So time will tell what the repercussions will be after irresponsibly exposing Casey to the terrifying soup scene from Young Frankenstein.

What was I thinking?