Matthew is BIG!

...and don't you dare say otherwise Michael.

Yesterday Matthew went to Michael's house to play. Michael decided to boast about his size relative to Matthew (all two inches!)

Michael: I big! Matthew is short. Matthew is little.

Matthew: I big too!

Michael: No you're not!

Matthew: Matthew IS BIG. Michael's big too. We're both big!

This back and forth started to get heated, so Michael's mom found something to distract the two debators.

We have learned long ago to never suggest that Matthew is anything but big and getting bigger still. Even Jonathan's affectionate nickname for him, 'my little man,' was met with indignation, and hence is no longer used.

-Rachel

A night from Hell

Last night Rachel felt like she was in the beginning stages of mastitis. Not cool.

Even less cool when Melissa decided to wake up 4 times that I remember. But these were not "wake up and go back to sleep when Daddy pats my back" wakes. These were "wake up and get angrier and angrier until Mommy nurses me, then grudgingly drift back to sleep."

It sucks that we can't just train her to sleep better by herself, because this training would necessarily involve a lot of yelling, and Rachel understandably can't sleep when her baby is yelling. (Daddies have less compunctions about this. At least I do.) So to keep the peace we do what she says, more or less.

Makes me feel like Neville Chamberlain.

(Even Melissa was tired after last night. After she got up this morning and refused to go back to sleep, I took her to the living room where she sacked out on my lap and slept there until her brother woke her up half an hour later yelling for Dad. Stubborn baby!)

Sam's choice: best float root beer on the planet?

Sam's Choice is strong root beer. Almost too strong. "Almost as strong as my Dad's root beer, the kind that blew up," says Rachel.

But it is fantastic root beer for floating ice cream in. Wimpier root beers get overpowered by the vanilla and surrender. Not Sam's Choice.

Mmmmmm.

More "Mercs"

Matthew really loves this game. He'll beat it 2 or 3 times in a row sometimes.

This morning as the ending credits rolled and it showed the two mercs driving away, Matthew told me, "He need go home, say Hi his kids."

"Mercs: he saved the president. Can he change the dirty diaper?"

Every boy wants to be a fireman or an astronaut

(Or possibly both at once.)

Matthew went deep into astronaut mode today. Rachel thinks this is a delayed reaction from the "imagination" lesson he had in joy school a week ago. (Matthew also figured out which symbol on the CD player corresponded to the theme song from that lesson and played it over and over.)

So today at the library he wanted nothing but astronaut books. With the aid of a helpful librarian he came home with around a dozen. Some are too advanced for him. That's okay; we'll talk about the pictures.

I read one of them to him tonight for bedtime. It was about different things astronauts do in the space shuttle. It was very short, so when he asked me to read it again, I did.

Gaming sophistication

Matthew's favorite game recently is Mercs, from the Capcom Collection. It has two main things going for it:

• Infinite lives
  
• Every life you start with 3 "bombs" that blow up all the bad guys on screen
  

So even a fairly impatient boy can beat the game fairly easily. Still, I've noticed that he's a lot better than he was when he first started: now (even though he has infinite lives) he dodges enemy fire and uses his non-bomb weapon occasionally -- as well as the more powerful vehicle-mounted weapons that you come across occasionally.

Peanuts

• I've mentioned before that Matthew helps with the silverware when it's dishes-doing time. (When he's awake for it, anyway. Which seems seldom, come to think of it.) Sunday was the first time I saw him sort the little spoons and little forks separately from their larger counterparts. He usually got the forks correct; spoons were harder, for some reason.
• Spring is here, the time when a young man's heart turns to... Mama! Practically every time he goes outside, he picks her a dandelion: "Here, Mama. Matthew give you flower! Put in water!" He's very insistent about the water. So I come home and there's a glass of water on the counter with a dandelion head floating in it -- he only picks the heads.
  

Daddy does dinner

"Finish your goldfish [crackers], Son. Then you can have a popsicle."

(And they were good popsicles, too. Even though the prominent "90% juice" declaration on the box turned out to mean that all the popsicles were 90% apple juice, even the "orange" and "grape" ones.)

My obsessive-cumpulsive son

I've written about this before, but here's a couple more examples.

Matthew came down with something today. He was bouncing around normally this morning, but after Rachel left to have lunch with friends, he grew listless. Unfortunately I'd already told him we'd go to a slide while his mom was gone, so I took him. (I did ask him if he was too tired, and of course he said no.) Once we were there he just sat on his bench and sipped root beer. Too tired to play on the slide basically means he's sick.

And he was sick. Oh yes. "Matthew is sick," he told me. Uh-oh. "Do you need to go to the bathroom?" "Yes." "Right now?" "Yes." He still didn't move, so I picked him up and ran to the restroom, where we found... a toilet whose previous business had clogged it. Matthew just stood there and moaned. So I whisked him to the sink where he promptly puked all over. Fortunately he didn't get any on himself or me. (But he did the next time a couple hours later...)

Sick as a dog, but not going to use a dirty toilet!

This afternoon after two more purges, he was feeling a little better. Wandering through the living room, he noticed a box of flash cards that was upside-down. Absently, he came over, righted it, and moved on.

An night of firsts

Last night at dinner, Matthew was playing with his food. He split his green beans apart to extract the seeds and wouldn't shut up about it. "Dada! Two seeds! Dada! Three seeds!" etc.

Finally I said, "Son, I don't care how many seeds there are! Just eat them, okay!"

He turned back to his plate and rebeliously grumbled, "Dada stupi'."

Somebody got a timeout in the bathroom.

On a happier note, Melissa had a first last night, too: she's old enough to play "Daddy chases Melissa;" she giggled and giggled as I crawled around after her and occasionally grabbed her foot.

She only wanted to be chased to the open bathroom, though. Maybe the thought that she was going somewhere she shouldn't added spice to it.

Tigers in Matthew's house

Today they had a lesson on imagination in preschool. This is right up Matthew's alley. When we got home Matthew wanted to go on a spaceship ride.

"You sit here in spaceship Mama."

"You need buckle up."

He then turned the "ignition," pressed some buttons, put on his pretend helmet and goggles, grasped his steering wheel and we were off to the moon.

Once we arrived on the moon it was time to go on a tiger hunt. He uncoiled his pretend rope and tossed it to catch a tiger. After petting it for a while he decided to let it go so it could go home to his mama. So we went back to the spaceships and flew back to Earth.

Ever since, there've been tigers everywhere in our house. Whole families of tigers.

"Tigers not dangerous Matthew. Tigers like Matthew."


Melissa Shares

I gave Melissa some crackers during dinner tonight. She was quite content to crumble and munch on them. After a while she slowed down so I made mmmm! and smacking sounds. She looked a me, looked a the cracker in her hand, and then offered me the cracker! At first I tried to graciously decline, but she held her hand out still, so I nibbled on it and said "Thank you!" She thought this was pretty funny. She took a bite herself and then offered it again. This time I was able to decline the soggy cracker by distracting her. Still, a sweet gesture.

-Rachel

The ERT

I was talking to Rachel last night. Matthew was off in the bathroom washing his hands, but just to be safe, I spelled something out that I didn't want him to understand. I don't remember what it was last night -- we were talking about bedtime, and I can't figure out what I would have considered sensitive information wrt that -- but I'll often say things like, "Should I take Matthew to the S L I D E?" or, "Would you like some C H O C O L A T E?"

I think he's on to me. He came back and asked, "You take Matthew E R T?"

E R T?

Okay, so spelling isn't his strong point yet. But if he's figured out that "take Matthew [group of letters]" means something exciting, I need to come up with a new strategy.

Old is such a relative term

"Daddy, sha' dis! [watch this]"

Matthew spun around on the hardwood floor on his back and his hands and knees. "I spin 'round! You try, Daddy?"

"No thank you, son."

"Why not?"

"I think I'm too old."

"I old! I three! I do it! You try?"

Reason #435 I'm glad I married Rachel

A couple weeks ago, I was playing Guitar Hero with Matthew while Melissa crawled around on the floor. It was a good evening. Baby was happy. Rachel was probably organizing things or something. (I don't remember exactly, but it seems like a pretty good guess, since she does that a lot.)

So Matthew and I were shredding away when Melissa decided to crawl through the guitar cord. She's a very ... determined girl, so when it arrested her forward progress she simply applied more force. I watched in horror as she dragged the PS2 off the shelf, crashing onto the floor.

It was not a happy playstation. The disc drive would not open. Repeated reboots only got "disk read error." It was dead.

Figuring that, hey, what brute force broke, brute force can fix, I got my vice grips to pry the drive open. I only succeeded in breaking off a piece of the face plate, then tearing off the rest -- which was not insecurely attached!

I tabled it in disgust. I knew I could open it up with a screwdriver, but there were a lot of screws, and I wasn't in the mood, that night or the next. Matthew was disappointed that we no longer played "yutarr game."

Then a couple days later when I got home, Matthew told me the good news: "Mama fix playsasion! We play yutarr game!"

Rachel said she just jiggled it the right way to un-wedge the disc inside, and that was that. Some people are just better at these things than others, I guess!

Guitar Hero is in the house again.