When boys play with teddy bears

Matthew was playing with Melissa's teddy bear last night. (He has a couple of his own, but playing with Melissa's is more fun, somehow.) Bear swooshed around the house, shooting bad guys, until Matthew had an even better idea.

Bear could turn into a spaceship.

Matthew folded up its arms and legs and tucked down its head until he had a compact Bear Cubeship. Then the cubeship swooshed around the house, shooting bad guys.

I'll take blue-collar bed sheets

I remember reading somewhere that really high-threadcount bed sheets are a waste of money because you can't tell the difference between them and cheaper ones, past a count of 2 or 3 hundred.

This is incorrect.

Rachel got some really high-count sheets, 6 or 8 hundred or so. They're supposed to feel cooler in the summer. They do. They also feel slippery. Like I'm risking a friction burn every time I get in bed.

So they have been relegated to the guest bed for now.

60 seconds

Matthew's latest thing when Mom puts him to bed is being rocked while they count to 60. (So it's really more like 3 or 4 minutes.)

He's very pleased with being able to count and likes to find new opportunties to practice.

It's 10:30. Do you know where Matthew is?

I know where he is: in bed. Wide awake. Alternately singing the
ABC's to himself and talking about Bad Guys.

Tomorrow he will wake between 6:30 and 7:00, as he always does no
matter how late he is up. And then he will be grumpy because he
really needs 12 hours of sleep to have his happy-batteries fully
charged. And his Mom will bear the brunt of the grumps. Poor Rachel.

Old news: after I wrote about Matthew learning to type his name, my
friend Mark told me that he gave his niece a really old laptop for
that sort of thing. Oddly enough, my Dad just shipped me my mom's old
486-33, I think it is, with grayscale (passive matrix) LCD. Windows
3.1 and DOS!

Matthew thinks it ROCKS.

It works fine except the battery is totally dead, and it seems to be
very sensitive to dirty AC, or something. It will work for anywhere
from 10 seconds to 10 minutes, then die without warning. Sometimes it
dies during the boot process. I'm tempted to get a UPS for it but
that seems silly given how much more the UPS would be worth than the
laptop.

Why I didn't sleep much last night

(Graphic descriptions of gross bodily functions ahead. You have been warned.)

Shortly after 2 AM last night, Melissa started making kind of a choking coughing sound, like you might make if you were trying to hack up a really big loogie.

Then BAAAAAARF she puked all over the bed. Got some on the quilt, too.

Trying to clean Melissa off was clearly a lost cause, so Rachel bathed Melissa while I changed the bed sheets. (I have to give "Totally Toddler" props for living up to its billing in getting the puke smell out of the mattress where it had soaked through the sheet.)

Melissa enjoyed her bath. It was like she was thinking, "Hey, this isn't so bad after all."

We got the sheets changed and Melissa bathed and dressed in under half an hour. We congratulated ourselves that it could have been worse.

It got worse.

Ten minutes after we went back to bed, and before anyone really got back to sleep, the hawking sounds started again. "Oh no!" I ran to get a cloth diaper for her to barf in. I was too late. And anyway, the way she flails around, it probably wouldn't have done any good.

Rachel bathed her again -- she didn't enjoy it as much this time -- and I changed the sheets. Again. At least Melissa didn't get quilt #2.

By this time Melissa was pretty awake. Rachel took her into the front room to rock her to sleep. I went to bed. For about 5 minutes, until she puked again. Poor kid.

This time she nailed Rachel pretty good. And the floor. Not so much on herself. I changed her onesie and wiped her off while Rachel showered. While I was rocking Melissa I heard crying from Matthew's room. I figured maybe the noise had finally woken him up. I didn't really want to, but I went to see what was wrong.

Matthew had puked on his bed, too.

Fortunately, Matthew was sleeping on top of his quilt, which, unlike ours, was machine-washable. None of the small amount of barf got through to the other sheets. Also, Matthew's old enough now that he knows that there are Good Places To Puke and there are Bad Places To Puke, and his bed wasn't on the good list. (He probably wasn't very awake when it first came up.) He said something about having more business to do, but he wasn't in any hurry to go to the bathroom, so I picked him up and deposited him in front of the toilet. He finished things off there, washed his mouth off with water, and went back to bed. Took it quite in his stride, really.

I got him a bowl in case he had more later. He said he didn't need it but I told him to humor me.

He needed it.

Fortunately that was the last incident for the night, and he kept it in the bowl. Rachel took Melissa again to settle her down while I went back to bed to try to get back to sleep.

Elapsed time: over 2 hours. It was probably another 20 minutes before Rachel got Melissa down.


* Rachel's note: Actually Matthew threw up 2-3? more times and I got up with him each time to console and clean the bowl. He mostly took it in stride. Poor kid. Poor parents. What a night.

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.

Peek-a-boo

Got Matthew to bed. Played with Melissa -- she was in a ticklish mood, right up Daddy's alley. Usually she's too busy with Important Baby Business to be tickled, but sometimes in the evenings she's more in the mood.

So, I played with Melissa, then sat down with my laptop to read some blogs. Melissa crawled over and climbed up my knees behind the laptop screen. I thought she was going to try to pull the screen down and chew on it the way she's done in the past. Instead, she poked her head out to the side and looked at me. Then pulled her head back. Then put it out again.

She wanted to play peek-a-boo! I played along: "Where's Melissa?" "There she is!" She giggled and giggled. We played for a good long while.

Burned out

Just for the record, my three-year-old-son can beat your three year old at Burnout: Revenge.

(A driving game that encourages crashing is right up his alley. Since that's pretty much his goal anyway.)

Our Happy Baby is Back!

Matthew and Melissa both had a really nasty virus for about a week- fevers, severely congested noses, throwing up, the works. For several days I just held kids in my lap and we ate popsicles and watched movies. Since they were feeling so lousy they were clingy and whiny. Fun fun. Matthew bounced back more quickly, but Melissa just started getting back to her old cheerful self Saturday. (She's starting to sleep better again, for a while she was sleeping only 2 hours a night. Ugh. This is also why I haven't been very diligent about posting- I'M still recovering from sleep deprivation!)

Today she's been so pleasant! She sits on her knees and bounces up and down while making happy hooting noises. She's so much more playful, giggly, and excited about everything. At church she flirted outrageously with other ladies and babies. Melissa really came to our family delighted about life. It's so nice to have our happy baby back.

-Rachel

Baby activities

[I actually wrote this before Rachel, but she didn't know, and covered the same material in her long post today. I liked hers better, so deleted this one. Now Rachel wants me to paste it back in.]

Melissa's picked up a couple tricks. One is blowing: Daddy blows; baby blows back. Yeah, it's kind of dull, but she likes interacting with us.

The other is clapping. She loooooves clapping. Then we'll clap back and she'll grin a huge grin and clap some more.

Rachel has ordered a baby sign language book.

It's quiet in the house...

...the kids went with Daddy so now I have some time to collect myself and write about the last 2 weeks. If only I could remember everything.

Marriage and Rings

Two weeks ago, on a Thursday, Jonathan flew out of town to speak at a computer language conference. He submitted his topic 6 months ago and committed to attend before he learned about his friend's upcoming nuptials. Friday, his best friend got married so I attended the wedding and reception following. Ellis, Jon's friend, is over fairly often, and used to come with Grant (Matthew's uncle). Matthew started calling him Uncle Ellis. (We didn't want Matthew calling adults by their first name, but Mr. So-and-so seemed so formal for a close family friend so Uncle Ellis stuck). I informed Matthew that Uncle Ellis got married to Aunt Merri (How's that for confusing to a 3 year old?)

Matthew responded, "Uncle Ellis not married. Uncle Ellis have no ring."

Where he picked up on marriage with rings I have no idea. When I took the kids to the reception that evening (a friend watched them for the wedding) Matthew wanted to make sure Ellis and his bride had rings. When he saw the rings he conceeded that they were indeed married. I think he was pleased, he does seem to like Aunt Merri. But then again, maybe his whole concept of marriage is having a ring. His Uncle Grant is engaged to be married in August. When Matthew heard of this, he again stated that Uncle Grant could not be getting married because he too lacked a ring. Perhaps it will sink in when he meets his new Aunt Lisa.

The rest of that weekend is a blur. I remembered being so grateful when Jonathan came home Sunday evening (late) even though he had to go to work on Monday. I was so tired.

Speaking of New Aunts

Matthew's Aunt Telitha and Uncle Nolan had their baby not too long ago. Yea! I'm an Aunt! Baby James is Matthew's and Melissa's first cousin on either side. I was pretty excited when I heard the news. When I told Matthew about his new baby cousin, he informed me,

"I have baby sister Lis lis (Melissa). Don't want TWO babies."

"No, Matthew. This is a cousin. We admire him from afar (too far! They're in Ohio!) and don't take him home with us."

"Oh, okay."

He seemed mollified that we would not be adding to our family another baby just yet. One is quite enough for him!

In baby news

Melissa now claps her hands together. She really takes pleasure in getting other people to clap with her. She'll also grab a finger on each of her Daddy's hands and pull them together to clap his hands. I've decided that she'd probably like baby signs, because she enjoys interacting with people so much. We'll see how that goes. Melissa has also learned how to blow. She picked it up when I changed her diaper. I'd blow to distract her, or if her bottom looked sore, and she started blowing back at me! At first I thought she would only do that during a diaper change, but Jonathan demonstrated otherwise. The two of them were blowing at eachother and laughing like loons. Pretty silly.

On the Discipline Front
or Revenge Pee II

We found ourselves as parents nagging our son and giving warnings. As a result, we didn't see the desired action from Matthew until we sounded mad. So we scrapped all warnings and just administered the consequence immediately. (Usually by placing him in his room until he was ready to be pleasant again). Well, being the strong-willed spirit that he is, he decided to up the ante. When placed in his room he'd get back at us by delibrately wetting his pants. The first time it happened I was willing to give him the benefit of doubt. The second time it occurred it was unmistakably on purpose. So I had him put his wet clothes in the washing machine, wipe up the mess in his room (with help of course), and stay there until his clothes were clean again. He literally went through all his pairs of pants and spent the majority of the day in his room. Hmmm. At the end of the day I was frustrated, though I did get 7 or 8 loads of laundry clean and folded.

Daddy got a brainstorm.

Matthew's room was too comfortable a place to be while waiting for his clothes to wash. He had plenty of toys and distractions in there. In addition, the carpet was a poor place for urine cleanup. So Dad emptied the bathroom of all its contents. He didn't leave soap, toilet paper, or even cupboard drawers. The next time Matthew decided to get even we were prepared (and we didn't have to wait long). Daddy calmly told Matthew that he seemed to be having a hard time getting to the toilet in time, so he would be spending his time in the bathroom while his clothes washed. After that point he would be welcome to join us again. He was furious and raged for a while. After some time he told us he was ready to be good. We told him we were happy about that, but his clothes were not quite done. Again he fumed and then settled down. So far he's repeated the revenge pee only once more. I guess it sounds a little drastic, but we had to nip this habit, and other milder methods hadn't worked. Boy what a stubborn son we have!

But he can be so charming too!

It is one of the sweetest feelings in the world when he spontaneously wraps his arms around my neck and tells me "I love you Mommy!" (Just recently he switched from Mama to Mommy most of the time). He also loves to rock and sing together.

Recently he mastered the ABC song, though the LMNOP part is shaky. He is quite pleased about knowing his ABCs. Popcorn popping, Twinkle twinkle are also in his nightly reportoire. Currently his favorite bedtime/naptime book is Peter Rabbit. I can't even count the number of times I've read it. Occasionally I can tempt him with something else, but he remains a loyal Beatrix Potter fan. I don't understand why the repetition- he knows the storyline and will jump in before I even have a chance to read it! Oh well, maybe Daddy can read Peter Rabbit tonight.

Which reminds me

About a month ago Matthew watched a Seasame Street in which they talked about writing on the computer, and he decided he wanted to write his name on the computer. So I opened notebook typed his name and showed where the keys were. He was engrossed for half and hour! And he typed his name over and over. In the process, he learned how to spell his name written or verbally. He still doesn't have the coordination to write with a pencil yet, but maybe we can teach him more words on the computer.

-Rachel

In the kitchen

Matthew likes to play cook lately. Right now, he's "cooking" hot chocolate. His castle turrets are the stove burners; a ball is the marshmallows. He's careful to use oven mitts, because it's hot!

He also likes to "cook" his ball collection. He has a dozen or more balls that he puts into a pot, and simmers them for a while. Then out come the mitts again.

Sometimes he cooks with Melissa. This is more Mama's idea than his: "Melissa will help you! You put the balls in, she takes the balls out!" Matthew is a little dubious about this "help" but goes along with it sometimes. Melissa thinks Matthew is soooooo cool.

Guitar Hero

Last night Matthew beat his first Guitar Hero song. On easy, and with Dad doing the frets and whammy bar. But he hit the strummer all by himself!

When I first got the game 4 months ago Matthew tried it a couple times and just got frustrated. He could sort of connect the notes on screen with what he was supposed to do, but had no rythm whatsoever so anything less than a really long pause between notes baffled him.

He still has trouble sometimes concentrating -- he would have beaten his song several nights ago if he didn't keep getting distracted and offering me some random observation while the notes passed by unheeded -- but I'm very pleased. That's my boy!

Beverage adventures

Melissa's has a really bad cold and hasn't been nursing much with her nose so stuffy. (She hasn't been sleeping much, either. Maybe 2 hours a night for the last 3 nights.) So Rachel's had to pump some to avoid discomfort, not to mention possible mastitis.

So Friday morning I gave Melissa a snap-top sippy cup full of breast milk and sat her in the swing, while I went downstairs to take care of something. When I came back up, Melissa was happily playing with a topless, upside-down sippy cup. The milk was all over the swing and the floor.

Today I tried again, with a screw-top this time. I put the business end in her mouth as a hint. She grinned at me, grabbed the cup from me, reversed it, and tried to put the same end in MY mouth.

At least she's having fun with it!

A boy needs his dad

I was at PyCon in Texas for three days last week. Matthew missed his dad. When I got back he had started including in his prayer, "Bwess Dada come home [to] Whatthew [from] work." I was flattered.

Melissa Updates

Melissa cut a bottom tooth last week. She is also cruising with her walking push toy. She holds on to the bar and pushes it along. She is very pleased with herself. We suspect it won't be too long before she's walking.

Jonathan says that when he takes her in the morning (while I sleep, Thank you Jon!) or any other time I'm not around she'll be initially fine playing with her Daddy. After a while she'll start crawling around looking in various rooms and saying MamamaMa! MamamaMa! Jonathan thinks she's trying to call me. I haven't heard this yet, but it sounds cute. When he does bring her to me she acts very excited.

-Rachel

Time to Go!

Thursday Matthew was having a tough time getting dressed. He's fully capable of putting his clothes on once they've been laid out, he just wasn't in any particular hurry to do so. Unfortunately it was a preschool day and I was tired of being late. After an hour of dilly dallying, I told him I would set the timer (for 10 minutes) and when it rang we were leaving because it was time to go.

The timer rang.

The Matthew was only partially clothed and he gave me a "now what?" look.

The Mother was prepared.

I scooped up Matthew put him in the carseat with a blanket. Meanwhile he yelled at the top of his lungs about his lack of pants and socks. He seemed utterly shocked that his Mother would enforce "time to go." I let him protest in the car while I gathered the rest of his clothes and put them in a bag. I also called his teacher and informed her of the state in which Matthew would be arriving. She said, "Oh this is perfect! We will be discussing choices today!" So unwittingly, Matthew became the object lesson.

During the drive to the house where preschool was being held that day, Matthew let his outrage be known. I carried him to the house wrapped in a blanket. He sobered up at this point (I think because he knew it wouldn't affect the outcome). Once inside, I deposited him in the bathroom with his bag of clothes, gave him a kiss, wished him a good day, and walked away. I was a little worried about how he'd behave, but my concerns were unnecessary. "He was so good today! He offered to help and was so polite," his teacher raved. Yesss! Chalk one up for Mom. He was pleasant the rest of the day. I think it was a good learning experience.

-Rachel

Calvinball

In one of his anthlogies, Watterson answers what he says is a FAQ: "What are the rules to Calvinball?" And he answers, "It's simple: you make it up as you go along."

Little boys understand this instinctively. Yesterday during a LAN party for adults, one of my friends brought his son Ben over to play with Matthew. They chased each other around with one of Matthew's green balls, and I'm sure that what they played was Calvinball. It involved, at various points, ping-pong-ball guns, auxilliary juggling balls, and hitting each other. (Everything little boys do together will at some point involve hitting each other.)

A good time was had by all.

You can run, but you can't hide

Melissa wasn't in the living room where we'd left her. She wasn't in the front room getting into the plants, which is usually her first destination. Where was she?

Rachel heard giggling from the bedroom. We'd left the door open and Melissa was happily tearing into a roll of toilet paper.

Kids are terrible at being sneaky. When I play hide-and-seek with Matthew ("No way!"), I can almost always track him by the giggling coming from under the blanket or in the closet or behind the door.

Not that I'm complaining!

Peanuts

Rachel took both kids to the Lehi pool this morning. Brave woman! ("Do you have any idea how hard it is to get THREE people dried and dressed, when you're the only one doing the drying and dressing?") She said Matthew really enjoyed the water slide and Melissa kicked and kicked and played herself out, so much so that she slept all through lunch strapped in her car seat, which is pretty much unheard of.

During lunch, Matthew found his blue ball in his jacket pocket -- the one he got from the doctor's office months ago. (The good thing about having a 3 year old's memory is you're always pleasantly surprised by what's in your pockets.) Then he started telling me, "Maattew ball! Not Eesan ball! Eesan take Maattew ball! No! My ball!" I think if Ethan had been there he would have gotten slugged.

Rachel cleared things up for me: at joy school yesterday, Ethan had a ball, and Matthew tried to take it from him.

I don't think he's deliberately lying when he tells stories like this. Maybe he has a good imagination -- like Hollywood said, "inspired by actual events!" Or maybe it's that 3 year old memory thing again.

Boydame

I took Matthew to his nursery teacher's house to drop off some cookies tonight. He announced our return with a loud "We're home!"

Then he started chanting, "Boydame! Boydame! Boydame!" We couldn't figure it out. It sounded like "board game," but his only board game is Candyland, which he knows by name. Blue game? Ball game? Boat game? He corrected us after each guess: boydame!

Finally Daddy figured it out: he wanted to play his gameboy! Gameboy, boygame... it's all the same, right?

I thought at first that this was proof that Matthew was dyslexic like his uncle David, who he resembles more than his dad in some ways, but while I was writing it, it occurred to me: maybe he's just applying English grammar to it. "Silly Dad. Game isn't an adjective. Game is a noun. Therefore it must really be a Boy Game."

Just a thought.

Either way, his mom and I were highly amused when we finally figured him out.

Happiness is a jar of pennies

A few weeks ago in a church meeting, I lamented Matthew's ignorance of financial matters. What prompted this was me breaking something -- I don't remember what -- and Matthew consoling me: "Don' worry, Dada. We go store, get new one!"

No! Wrong solution!

But how do you teach a kid who can barely count to three how to value money, I wondered?

One of the other men said that with his three year old, they give her pennies when she does her "chores." She gets ten or so chances a day to earn a penny -- they have a chart with them all laid out. Then when she has enough, they take her to the dollar store and she can pick something out.

Fantastic. We're trying this with Matthew now. We don't have a chart yet; we're just doing it on an ad hoc basis for now. He gets a penny if he puts on his clothes by himself; a penny for taking a nap without whining; a penny for fetching the newspapers; etc. He keeps the pennies in an empty canning jar. I think he's up to a dozen or so, plus a nickel he found somewhere.

Tonight he helped set the table, so I gave him his penny. The novelty definitely hasn't worn off yet. "I rich!" he yelled, and ran off to add it to his jar. I shook my head. "Where did he pick THAT up?" I asked Rachel. She had no idea either.

Today it occurred to me that pennies could be a stick as well as a carrot. He started whining at me a couple times and I told him if he kept whining, he would have to give Daddy a penny for putting up with him. He stopped.

Rachel isn't looking forward to explaining tithing to him, though. I'm more optimistic. I guess we'll see.

Two front teeth

Melissa's second top tooth came in today. This after a grumpy day yesterday and a restless night. HOORAY! Two teeth in, 18 more to go... I'll try to snap a picture of her new pearly whites.

In some respects Melissa is remarkable like Matthew. Just like her predecessor, Melissa doesn't like to be bothered with diaper changes. She prefers to be on the move at all times and 1 minute to change soiled pants is too tedious for her. I've run out of tricks to amuse her and have occasionally resorted to pinning her down with one leg while I do diaper duty. She squawks and tries to roll over during the whole proceedure. I guess it's in the genes. Neither Jonathan nor I are particularily docile.

"I have an Idea!"

Matthew picks up on things so quickly now and likes to play pretend too. Yesterday he asked me, "What dat noise?" I told him I didn't know, I hadn't noticed a noise.
He then said, "I know! I have an Idea!"

He launched into an elaborate tale about two cars crashing outside making the noise.

Matthew also pretends to make things. A few days ago he got out some stacking cups, his toy castle, and some balls. When I asked him what he was doing, he answered, "I making hot chocolate for Mama, Dada, baby sister Lel'lis. Here." And he handed me the medium sized stacking cup with a ball in it, and an admonition to be careful because it was "hot". He then took the big stacking cup with a a ball in it, placed it atop his castle and spun the turret and cup while making humming sounds. (I think he was trying to replicate the microwave.) "Der Dada hot chocolate done."

-Rachel

Count to five

Our son has a very short fuse and gets frustrated easily. This wouldn't be so bad if he weren't a "Monk" (fictional oc detective) in miniature. Almost everything has to be a particular way or he flys off the handle. Seriously. For instance, at dinner if he gets the slightest drop on his hands or face he insists on a napkin then and there and will throw a barely used napkin in the trash and demand another one for the next spill (he used to run to the bathroom every time so this is an improvement). If we state that he must use the same napkin throughout dinner he falls apart. Don't even think of altering his bedtime routine in the slightest or there will be howls of protest.

During a particularly exasperating episode I decided to institute the counting game. Amazingly it worked! He counts to five when he starts to lose it. Most of the time I prompt him, but occasionally he'll start counting on his on accord. Counting only works for minor to medium frustrations, but hey, it's progress.

-Rachel

A couple more thoughts

Melissa cut her first tooth Friday. It's on the left, on her upper jaw, which Rachel tells me is unusual. Marching to her own drummer already...

Melissa is eating more and more solid food. She feeds herself cheerios and such in her high chair; she gets about half in her mouth now, and I recycle the other half from the seat of her chair when she's done. She also eats potatoes and carrots and she LOVES her mom's bean soup.

Matthew's diaper is dry when he wakes up, most of the time.

Melissa is thrilled, in her baby way, when Dad comes home from work. She hoots and crawls towards me eagerly. It's very flattering. Saturday I took Matthew out to burn off some energy at a play area and Melissa was most displeased that she wasn't invited. I almost took her, but I know how this turns out: 15 minutes later she's bored and wants to go home and see Mom, while Matthew's just barely getting started.

It's been a while

12 hour days starting at 6 AM mean I need to be in bed early if I'm going to do more than stare sleepily at the screen all day. Here's some capsule summaries of Peanut goings-on:

Bought a car Monday. ('94 Lincoln Mark VIII. Overpaid a bit, but Rachel was going stark raving mad not having a car -- my vette having failed to pass emissions -- so the alternative was paying $200/wk to rent something.) Matthew attached himself to a happy meal toy at Darin the seller's house, and threw a tantrum when we gave it back, so Darin gave it to him. ("We have a dozen of those anyway.")

We ate at a restaurant to celebrate the new car, and Matthew left his new toy behind. He was TICKED. I called that night and nobody had seen it, so he went to bed angry. (It's all Dad's fault, of course.) The next night I called the restaurant on my way home and they'd found the game under the table, so I picked it up. Matthew thanked me for 3 days. "I glad you find my dame, Dada."

Matthew is playing Sonic Advance for the GBA. I'm so proud. (I picked up an extra GBA at a used store yesterday, and the guy threw in a battery cover from a busted one, so now I can fix my existing, afterburner-enhanced GBA too. Woot for Phantasy Star collection!) It's a bit out of his league, though. Maybe in another year he'll hit his game boy stride.

Son of Pedantic Man

As a kid I had something of a reputation as an annoying little twerp who liked to correct his elders. In this respect at least I can't complain that Matthew doesn't follow in his dad's footsteps.

Tonight, for instance, I got a little exasperated with his apparent inability to sit at the table while eating. (He found making swimming motions on the floor under the table more amusing.) "Matthew," I said, "Dada sits at the table. Mama sits at the table. Even Baby sits at the table." Matthew saw a hole in my logic. "Dats not table! Dats hightsair [highchair]!"

Smooth Talker

Matthew now employs his 3 year-old powers of persuasion on his parents. Instead of resorting to a temper tamtrum when his will is crossed he'll say,

"Pume on! (Come on) Id be Fun!" or

"Pume on! It's good!" [J: usually when trying to get me to eat something]

He says this in a chirpy voice and with a grin on his face . The lastest use of this "power" occurred just after I taught joy school today. He wanted to watch his new Superman DVD. I said not right now, son. "Pume on, id be Fun!" He was so funny batting his eyes and grinning at me that I couldn't help myself and I laughed. He knows the battle is won if he can get his mom to laugh. Little imp! I had had an exhausting morning and so on second thought Superman sounded like a good idea to me too.

Daddy, The Royal Bottom Wiper

Jonathan had been working from home the last 2 weeks of December and Matthew was delighted with the arrangement. Since Daddy was home, Matthew decided to bestow the bottow wiping honor on his Daddy. Lucky Daddy! Yesterday Matthew hollered from the bathroom,

"I allll doonnne!"

"Okay I'm coming."

When I get to the bathroom. Matthew declares, "No! Dadda wipe!"

"Ugh, Matthew, Daddy's at work, so Mamma will wipe."

"No! Dadda go work, Dadda come home Maa-tthew's house, Dadda wipe."

"Son, Dadda will come home when it's dark outside, it's going to be a long time still."

Reluctantly he granted me bottom wiping authority, "Oo-tay, Mamma wipe."

-Rachel

First day in Primary

Matthew graduated from nursery, where they pretty much let the kids under 3 run around and play and eat snacks during the last 2 hours of church, into primary, where they actually try to keep them to sit still and pay attention. Although some slack is cut for the youngest group, the Sunbeams.

His teacher said Matthew has a severe case of the wiggles (tell me about it...) but was happy to go back and sit still when reminded. Until he forgot again, of course.

This brings two thoughts to mind:

"They grow up so fast."

"Man, I wish I had snack time at church!"

Don't make a pig out of yourself, Dad

Apropos of nothing, Matthew comes up to me while I'm getting ready to go somewhere.

"Here, Dada! Hahburszer!" and he places an imaginary hamburger in my hand.

Uh, okay. Glad he's got an imagination, I guess. I put it to my mouth and make noises like a starving teenager inhaling the Best Burger Ever.

"No, Dada! Stop! You eat too much!"

First prayer

Another first: last night Matthew said his going-to-bed prayer himself. All by himself. I remember my parents prompting my younger sister with things to say when they were learning to pray, but this was not for Matthew. He's far too independant.

(Letting Matthew pray was Rachel's idea. She remembers letting him try when he was younger, too, but he wasn't really verbal enough. I don't remember this so I'll take her word for it.)

It was a short prayer, and a lot was unintelligible to either Rachel or myself, but I did understand: "Bwess Mama, Dada, Maa-thew (he's almost entirely abandoned calling himself Wawa now), Lelyiss. Bwess two dwan'ma, Untoh Dwant, Untoh Eiyiss." [Two grandmas, Uncle Grant, Uncle Ellis. His emphasis.]

You trouszo!

Tonight Melissa was playing around the Christmas tree. (After all that work getting it set up, I don't believe in taking it down before the new year.) She got one of those cheapish round ornaments with the metal top holding a loop whose ends extends into the body of the ball to hold it in. She worried at it until she pulled it out. Matthew noticed.

"Mama! Lelyiss brote it!" [Melissa broke it!]

"It's all right, son," I said. "Mama can fix it." I was reading my Corvette Magazine at the time, lamenting the demise of my poor '87.

He took it over to Rachel, but paused on his way, and turning to his sister, pointed a stern three-year-old finger and declaimed, "Lelyiss, you trouszo!" [You're in trouble!] Rachel and I laughed.

Dental hygiene

Took Matthew to the dentist today for his first checkup. He got a brand-new Matthew-sized (roughly 1/2 of a normal toothbrush's bristle-area dimensions) green toothbrush.

I guess he couldn't wait to try it out because after dinner he grabbed it up, disappeared down the hall, and came out brushing his teeth.

Cute! we thought. Then Rachel did a double-take. "Wait -- where'd he get the toothpaste?"

"He goes into our bathroom and helps himself. I've seen him do it before."

He brushed his teeth once more before bedtime, and announced his intention to brush after every meal tomorrow.

Matthew causes his first (?) casualty

I left the living room briefly while Matthew and Melissa were watching a baby video. When I came back I didn't notice anything untoward. Then Matthew bounced on his seat a bit and CRASH! the plate he'd perched on the back hit the floor and shattered.

My parents got a 12-seat set of china as a wedding present. By the time I left home I think they had two bowls left.

Now it's my turn.

[Rachel's note: Alas, it is hardly his first casualty nor, I am certain, his last. Sigh]

Putting the fear of Mom in him

On Friday, I took Matthew with me to pick up some lunch from Rachel's favorite sandwich place. After ordering, they didn't seem in any particular hurry to fill the order, and I felt bad for Matthew, stuck in his seat with nothing to do but talk to Dad, who is, after all, incredibly old.

I asked him if he would like to draw, and handed him a pen and some small sheets of paper that were conveniently in the front seat. He seemed to be having a good time, but either he ran out of paper or needed something more exciting.

"Dada, you draw A B Cs my han' [hand]?"

"No, son. I don't want to draw on your hand."

"You draw A B Cs my leg?"

"No, son. I don't want to draw on your skin at all."

That seemed to settle it. Then: "I draw two A B C my pants!"

Uh-oh. I turned around, and while there was little resemblance to the alphabet, his pants were extensively festooned with ink.

"Son," I said, "It is not good to draw on your pants. It's not good to draw anywhere except on paper. I don't know what to do with you, but I'm sure your mama will when we get home. She will not be happy to see this." I wasn't particularly angry, and I didn't raise my voice, but he got the message.

We got the food and drove home. When we arrived, Matthew immediately made a beeline for his room and hid behind the door. I pulled him out to tell his mom what he did, and he ran back, this time hiding under the covers. For the next two hours he was very subdued, and insisted he'd rather be in bed than eating lunch.

Finally I went to check on him, and he was in much better spirits. He'd changed his pants and was apparently feeling much less doomed.

(We never did impose a punishment. Seems like two hours of feeling impending doom about to descend on you ought to be enough!)

On the proper design of robots

About 10 days ago, Matthew and Rachel were playing with his "oversized legos" blocks. Matthew asked his mom to make him a robot. She did.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo!" A tantrum looked imminent.

"What's wrong, Matthew?"

"Robot shoot! Robot shoot!"

Rachel added guns to the robot's arms. Matthew was pleased and took the robot on trips through the sky, shooting imagined bad guys.

Bedtime

Matthew started yelling for attention 20 minutes after being put to bed. There's usually several of these before he finally goes to sleep, ranging from "I lost my ball" to "I need to pee."

"What is it, son?"

"I nee' [need] sash [wash] han's [hands], Dada. I pick nose."

"New rule, son: when it's after bedtime, you don't need to wash your hands after you pick your nose."

I was rather pleased with this solution to the interruption, even if Rachel wasn't entirely satisfied. But a couple minutes later:

"Dada! Dada! Dada! DADA!"

"... What is it, son?"

"I nee' doh [go] pee."

Photos and such

Rachel has painstakingly ordered the photos on our flickr account to be in something closer to chronological reality. This was hours of work, thanks in part to the flickr organizr's total lack of suitability for sets of more than 4 or 5 pictures. Go check them out and tell her it was not in vain!

Speaking of photos, we had a pro over yesterday to do some Christmas pictures. Our children did not cooperate well. Matthew looked everywhere but at the camera, and Melissa uncharacteristically refused to smile. Of course, as soon as the photographer left, she was our happy baby again. Sigh.

Free advice for automobile manufacturers

I had a brilliant idea the other day, one that all car manufacturers should adopt.

When you are in the car and your wife has left the parking brake half-set, the brake release should have a light that turns on, so it's REALLY OBVIOUS how to un-set it completely, even if it's COMPLETELY DARK outside, when the dash illumination is TOTALLY INADEQUATE to show you where the release is.

Otherwise someone might start hitting buttons essentially at random, which could be dangerous if the car is in motion. And if someone actually heaven forbid got hurt, you could get sued.

So, lightbulbs for the brake release. 'kay? Good.

You may wonder how I came up with such a brilliant if obvious idea. While I frequently come up with such patentable improvements, this one has a special story to go with it.

I took Matthew to the grocery store a couple nights ago. We got groceries and a couple used games from the Gamestop conveniently located next door. (Not that this influenced my choice of grocery store at all.) When we got back, Matthew was really excited. "Dada push wrong button!" "That's enough, son." He'd already announced this a dozen times. "Dada push wrong button!"

We got inside. Rachel had dinner ready. Maybe that would distract him. "Dada push wrong button!"

Guess not.

You see, I explained to my wife, on the way back I noticed that the ebrake light was on. Not sure how I missed it on the way in. Chalk it up to a relentless barrage of three-year-old verbiage from my son.

"Hmm," I thought. "I should probably turn that off." So I rummaged about for the release. Ah, here's a button: Pop! and the trunk went up. Guess that wasn't it. Well, maybe it's one of those ebrakes where you push it a second time to release it. Push!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!!!!

The wheels locked and I struggled a bit to not veer into another lane. Good thing the light 20 feet ahead was red and I was already slowing, or I probably would have been rear-ended by the minivan behind me. Or if not him, someone; tailgating is a common hobby here in Utah. As it is, the drivers who saw it must have wondered what on earth my son had done to deserve the punishment that would surely follow such a drastic stop. That's what you get for popping the trunk, kid!

I finally found the ebrake handle and released it. I pulled into the gas station conveniently located on the corner to close the trunk, and continued home. Could happen to anyone. No big deal. Just a little emergency stop for no particular reason.

Matthew, of course, thought this was the COOLEST. TRIP. EVER. "Dada push wrong button!" Yes, yes, yes, already!

Sheesh.

Potpourri

[author's note: hope this comes out coherant, I've had a nasty headcold for a week. It doesn't help matters that Melissa's been really stuffy and waking up half a dozen times a night.]

Matthew the Rocker
Jonathan recently purchased a game called"Guitar Hero" in which the player strums a plastic guitar and places fingers on the fret keys to make notes corresponding to notes scrolling down the screen. Matthew loves to 'play' with his daddy. Several days ago, while Dad was at work, he got out the guitar and sang "Nair Nair Nairuuum" while posing on his knees, the guitar finger board vertical. Jonathan thinks it would be a 'great idea' to give this kid a drumset when he gets older. . . . Personally, I think that might be the little boy in Jonathan coming out. A drumset? Hmmmm. . . Maybe if we have a sound proof room then.

Melissa Games
Melissa loves paying the bee game. I circle my finger over her head and make a buzzing sound getting louder as I get closer and then tickle her. She laughs and squirms and reaches for my hand as soon as she hears the sound now. Sometimes she'll preempt the tickle by eating the bee. Another game Melissa enjoys is a version of peekaboo. I've had to come up with ways to keep her attention while changing her diaper, otherwise she'll roll over and crawl away even before I get the soiled diaper off. To entertain her I'll place a flat cloth diaper on her head and ask, "Where's Melissa?" She giggles and will swipe at the diaper until she gets it completely off flashing me a baby grin of delight as I say "There she is!" She thinks its even more funny if I pick up the diaper before she does and announce in mock surprise "Oh there's my baby!" This buys me some precious seconds to change her. I'm just glad I don't have to use pins with the diapers- I'm sure I'd have stabbed myself numerous times by now.

Half-Pint Food Critics
Matthew is typically a very good eater and not afraid to try new foods, even vegetables. I was surprised when he dug in his heals over yams on Thanksgiving. I insisted that he have 2 bites. After much face twisting and gagging and threats of "no pumkin treat" he choked them down. These were good yams too! I whipped them up and added a little butter and brown sugar. They were naturally sweet, so I didn't add much. The next day when we had leftovers and I insisted once again that he have a bite. I figured he didn't have to like them (hey, there's certainly foods I don't like) but needed to keep trying them. Just a taste. "Wah hew eat yams, grow big and tall. Reach pumpkin treat." Yes Matthew, if you eat enough yams you will grow big and someday you will reach the pumpkin treat. Reaching the Halloween candy is his current goal in life.

After Matthew's reaction, I shouldn't have been suprised that Melissa would act in kind. I gave her a taste of yams and her whole body spasmed. The look on her face was one of surprise and disgust. This is Not what I expected mom! She also rejects bananas and anything else I've tried to give her. I can't take it personally though, this is the child that will gnaw on shoes and newspaper given half a chance. Come to think of it, perhaps I should surreptitously leave mashed banana on baby spoons on the floor. Maybe it will be more apealing if she forages for it. It's a thought. Matthew didn't eat any solids until 8 months despite my cajoling so this might be what is normal for my kids. At any rate diapers get stinkier once solids are started so I'm not going to push matters too hard just yet.

-Rachel

Matthew inherited his father's vision

No, not the myopia. So far his eyesight is just fine.

But he did inherit Guy Vision.

What is Guy Vision, you ask? Allow me to explain...

Matthew was cleaning his room today, which means Mommy (or, rarely, Daddy) does most of the work. One of the last toys left was a turtle. "Matthew, please pick up the turtle." "Where?" he asked. "Over there," said Mommy, pointing. "Where?" "Over there!" "I can' see [it]!" he said, frustrated.

Mommy took his hand and pointed him to the turtle. "Oh!" and he picked up the turtle.

That is Guy Vision.

As I was writing this, Rachel asked if I'd noticed the newly-cleaned state of Matthew's room. I thought for a bit. "No," I answered, honestly.

That is also Guy Vision.

A peanut's goal in life

Occasionally after finishing his meal, Matthew will be proud of his accomplishment. "[Food] help Wawa det [get] big, strong!" Yes. Good boy.

So for lunch I thought maybe this would provide additional incentive to stop chattering long enough to eat. "Peanut butter sandwich helps Matthew get big and strong!"

"Peanu' bu' san'wich help Wawa det big, strong, reach pumpkin treat?"

Rachel and I laughed. The pumpkin treat is his plastic jack o' lantern full of trick-or-treating candy, kept safely on top of the fridge.

"Yes, son. But that will be many peanut butter sandwiches in the future."

Big boy bed!

So a little over a week ago Rachel finished Matthew's new room (formerly the guest room) and moved him in. He was very excited. Monday he got a twin bed, his "big boy bed." He was even more excited.

Tonight the inevitable happened: Rachel and I heard a thump about 10:00. Rachel went to investigate.

"He was lying on the floor, on top of some hard toys, still asleep."

Apparently Rachel's brother Brian used to fall out of bed and keep right on sleeping, too. Guess it runs in the family.

Melissa's on the move

Melissa has really picked up on the crawling thing. Something clicked on Thursday (the 17) and she's now very fast and coordinated. Of course this was the day I was frantically finishing the painting in the guest bedroom in preparation for my parents arrival. (I had a cousin getting married). I was used to the slow stop and start scouting, with plenty of time to retrive the forbidden before she could grasp it. Now I have to take baby-proofing to the next level. She can cross a room in a matter of seconds.

So it's been a week now of expert crawling, and she's not content. Now she's attempting vertical crawling or climbing. Melissa can now pull herself up to her feet. I predict that it will not be long before she's walking. She's got that same overwhelming desire to be on the move and into things that her older brother had, and he walked at 9 1/2 months. Like him, her sense of self-preservation is nonexistant at the moment, so she'll probably receive many clunks on the head and shins as she learns to coordinate her body better. I'm just glad Jonathan put up that baby gate at the top of the stairs on Saturday.

In other news, we had my parents in town last weekend for my cousin's wedding. My parents attended the wedding which we heard was nice. With Melissa still nursing frequently we opted to just attend the reception that evening. It was at a hall at This is the Place Monument- the same place he proposed to her. Kind of a romantic touch. The reception hall was beautifully decorated and the bride (my cousin) gorgeous, of course. Matthew has been looking forward to Ma' moe and Pawpa coming for weeks. He got to bake cookies with "my Ma' moe" and go to the dinosaur museum (unfortunately he was tired due to lack of a nap and not on his best behavior for the museum). Their visit was short, Dad left Saturday night and Mom Tuesday morning, but Matthew seemed to enjoy what time he had with them. When Grandma left for the airplane, she gave Matthew "Where the Wild Things Are" as a goodbye present. It's currently his favorite book. He even took it with him in the grocery store to read in the cart while I shopped for our Thanksgiving dinner. Some of the other shoppers noted the title and asked him if he liked his book. "Uh huh. Mae' moe give book Wha' hew."

-Rachel

What's that noise?

It was one of those rare occasions where Matthew was amusing himself. Rachel and I were still eating. I think I was having my 7th muffin, or thereabouts, on Saturday morning, while Melissa tried to eat my newspaper. "What's he saying?" Rachel asked. I listened more closely.

"Who's my baby dirl [girl]? Uh huh uh huh uh huh..."

He was singing one of my nonsense Melissa songs. I guess I should be flattered; it's apparently right up there with Happy Birthday and the Witch Song from preschool (which Daddy doesn't know).

My nonsense songs are mostly baby-oriented -- I had nonsense songs for Matthew when he was that age, but they kind of died out. But he felt left out now so I had to make up some more about Matthew the good boy who helps his Dad and is three years old (so much bigger than a baby).

Getting Big!

Friday Jonathan and I took M&M for their 6 month and 3 year checkups. Jonathan also had a physical and meet the doc appointment. Apparently health wasn't the only topic discussed- Jonathan found out our doctor is an avid gamer and they talked about games they both played.

Matthew is now just over 29 lbs and just shy of 3 feet. That puts him in the 40th percentile for height and weight. Not bad for a kid who was in the 3rd percentile for both for a while. That was when he insisted on eating only black beans, yogurt, bananas, and cheerios (he was nursing still, thank goodness or he might have been even smaller). His former doc even sent us for a blood draw and to an endocrinologist just to make sure nothing was wrong - there wasn't, he was just small. Now he proudly announces, "Wha hew Big!" He even corrects his Daddy if Jonathan calls him his 'little man.' "No Dada, Wha hew Big. Baby little."

Melissa weighed in at 15 lbs 10 oz and (if I remember correctly) is 26 inches long. That places her at the 60th percentile for both. She's getting bigger! In a way it's a little sad. I miss the newborn stage. Six-month-olds are such social creatures though, that it has its own pleasures. Since she's my second, I know how fast babyhood goes and it makes me want to hold on to each stage just a little longer. With Matthew I couldn't wait for each developmental milestone. With Melissa, I can wait and just enjoy....

-Rachel

Little pitchers have big ears

(Or is that "little pictures?" Either way it doesn't make much sense, if you ask me.)

Sunday morning it's getting cold--inside. It's not supposed to get cold inside. Cold is for outside. I go to the thermostat; it's 64 with a minimum of 62. I've programmed it to stay at 68 from 7 AM to 11 PM five or six times and it keeps screwing it up.

I manually override it instead of trying to argue with the programming again. I'm a bit peeved. I find Rachel in our bedroom getting ready for church.

"Dear, our thermostat is smoking crack again."

Matthew is listening.

"'Ermsa' smote twack, Dada?"

Crap. I have visions of him telling his 3 yr old friends that his Dad smokes crack.

"I mis-spoke, Matthew. The thermostat is confused."

Matthew's new room

Yesterday I finally finished the New Room. I tend to underestimate the work involved in projects and overestimate my time, and this was no exception. I must admit, though, that Jonathan did warn me. I painted our guest room a robin's egg blue (I took M to the store and he selected the color) and put in wainscotting and a chair rail which where painted white. Matthew's old room will be the new guest room once I get it painted as well. It was difficult playing the part of Bob Villa and Mama. No sooner did I get the circular saw set up or the paint can opened than some small person ugently needed me. Hence it took me a month to complete. Added to that Matthew wanted to "help." Paint and three-year-olds are a messy proposition. But it is Done. I am rather proud of the way it turned out. (I'll see if I can get Jonathan to link some pictures). More importantly Matthew is thrilled. "WOW! My new room! Tanks Mama! Mama Best!" Ahhh. For you anytime.

-Rachel

[Jonathan: here they are -- http://flickr.com/photos/30305691@N00/sets/1377661/]

Great inventions

I've long been a fan of the mostly-forgotten inventor of the air conditioner. Some guy who started Carrier, I think. How many places would be unlivable, or at least impossible to work in, without A/C? Just in the USA there's a lot of them, including most of the east cost where it gets unbelieveably humid in the summer. (This is perhaps the biggest reason behind my resolve to never live there again.)

So the A/C guy gets my "probably the most important underappreciated invention of the 20th century" award.

But the vacuum cleaner guy is closing in. Almost every night Melissa falls asleep to the soothing roar of our Hoover. Without that, she just keeps fussing, increasingly cranky and increasingly unlikely to rest long enough to forget why she's angry and sleep.

My theory is, she thinks something like this: "Wow, that thing is way louder than I am. I guess my work yelling at Mom is superfluous. Now I can sleep."

Bonus extra subject

This isn't a separate post because (a) it's short and (b) Rachel already gets on my case about how many defecation-related posts I've made. So I'd like to stress for the record that this one was her idea.

Matthew postponed his BM today until just before bedtime in a cunning ploy to stay up longer. (I think we're losing the bedtime war. Tonight he was up til almost 9.) "Are you all done?" I called out. "No! Almos' done!"

After he was through, he gave the "all done" call and I wiped his butt. "I make five poops!" he announced. Uh... okay. Well done. Let's flush and wash your hands. "Dada, count poops!" he insisted, motioning towards the turd-infested bowl.

I don't think I'm an excessively sqeamish man, but absent a better motivation for compliance than potentially starting a tradition that could prove rather embarassing among polite company, I declined. Then I flushed it myself to prevent further discussion.

[Rachel's note: I was joking. I didn't seriously intend for Jonathan to write about that.]

The apple orchard

Matthew was so disappointed when we left the orchard earlier this week, that I promised him that we would come back. So today I bundled up M&M and we met my friend Jessica and her crew there. It's a really kid-friendly orchard. They have large groups of 1st graders tour the farm. Jessica's two daughters and Matthew were the only little kids at there at the time, but an orchard worker offered to take them on a hayride. Needless to say, the kids were thrilled. They really went out of their way to make sure our kids had a good time. On top of the hayride, Matthew polished off a gala apple, learned about making apple-cider and sampled some, got a coloring booklet on Johnny Appleseed (in which he colored all the apples blue, but that's another story), charmed the lady out of not one but two lollipops, and of course picked apples. Little boy heaven. Really wished I remembered the camera! Now I need to make applesauce and pie out of all the apples we brought back. Mmmm.

-Rachel

Making Faces

One of Melissa's favorite ways to play is making faces in the mirror at me. She's quite good at copying some silly expressions. (Tongue out and in, raised eyebrows, surprised expressions etc) She gets her whole body into it. When I make a face that particularly delights her, she throws all her limbs into motion and chuckles with baby pleasure. Looking at her today, I think she got my eye shape if not color. They crinkle into two cresents when she laughs. This is another difference I've noticed between Matthew and Melissa. Melissa is much more interested in faces (both watching and making) than Matthew was.

-Rachel

What a stubborn son I have!

Jonathan is right, I haven't been pulling anywhere near my share in posts. I'm trying to make up for it now.

Right now Matthew is in his room. In an effort to enforce the wearing of clothing, I instituted a new rule "Thou shalt wear at least underwear while in the presence of the rest of the family or remain in thy room." Since it is getting colder, pants and shirts are strongly encouraged as well. He's been testing this new rule for the past hour. Rather than yelling at him to get dressed (this uses too much of my energy and isn't very effective) , I've just shooed him back to his room. I've decided I've been expending too much energy lately on things I can't control and it's been wearing me out. (I can't make him eat, sleep, or get dressed- so I'm not going to try anymore.) I don't like being a grumpy frazzled mom. From now on my goal is to conserve my energy and instead use up his. He's got plenty to spare!

There he is now- dressed! He's cheerful, I'm cheerful this is good.

-Rachel

The semi-reluctant cloth diaperer

Melissa seems to have inherited the same sensitive skin that Matthew had. I tried all kinds of different brands of disposable diapers and barrier creams to alleviate the chronic rash, but to no avail with him. Finally I tried cloth diapers and it cleared right up and I didn't need to use zinc oxide again. Seems to be the same for Melissa, so that's what I've been using the past 2 months. I decided though, that since I am saving so much money on diapers, I could use some cute diaper covers. I've been using the utilitarian prowraps and bummis pants, but they're not cute. So I spurged a little on different types of covers and prints to try out. I now have little froggy and bee prints in soft fleece covers. I've decided that my kids' sensitive skin has a silver lining- no disposable diapers are as soft or sweet looking as cloth diapers. Now that I'm back in the swing of things it's really not much more work either. The flat prefolds make good toys too. Melissa likes to chew on them and Matthew turns them into capes, hats, and plays peekaboo with them.

-Rachel
[Jonathan's note: also, Rachel's husband put her last set of diaper covers in the dryer, ruining them. I knew this was bad for them but I was half asleep at the time and forgot.]

-Rachel's comment: Well some of the covers aren't supposed to go in the dryer, but they still seem to work. No harm done.

Only a matter of time now

Melissa crawled last night, just a bit. I got some of it on video. I'll see if I can post it on Google. Pretty cute stuff -- she was grinning and so pleased with herself that sometimes she'd forget to hold herself up and just fall forward. "I'm such a big girl now!"

Wrapped Presents

I left Matthew and Melissa together for two minutes today while I took a much needed potty break. Matthew took it upon himself to entertain his baby sister in my absence. Suspicious I called him to me. "What are you doing Matthew?" "Give presents baby sister, see!" He had gotten some tissue paper and wrapped her toys in it. "Baby like presents!" I laughed and said ok, just don't give baby sister the paper. When I emerged from the bathroom, Melissa had a pile of toys on her and was surrounded by a circle of tissue paper. Matthew's a good big brother.

-Rachel

Matthew Tiger

For about two weeks now Matthew's been calling himself "Wha hew Ellis." While driving in the car after receiving a tiger costume from Grandma, he announced, "Wha hew Tiger." "Aren't you Matthew Ellis? "No. Wha hew Tiger. No Wha hew Ellis." Ok. He was so excited to be a tiger for Halloween. He roared at Melissa to their mutal amusement. Baby and little boy giggles ensued. Very cute.

-Rachel

The incredible shrinking wardrobe

Rachel was picking out a jacket for Matthew from his closet. "I wan' blue jacket!" Rachel got it down. "Oh, too bad! Blue jacket too small!"

Can't trust those clothes. When you turn your back they start shrinking. Until you're old like Mom and Dad.

Dad loses a battle

We had a late dinner tonight. After it was done and Melissa was bathed it was half an hour past Matthew's bedtime, so I intended to put him to bed. "I need bath!"

"What you need is sleep, son." He didn't nap today and was cranky and whiny. Unsurprisingly, he took this opportunity to whine as well. Partway into his tantrum he thought better of it and went to Rachel. "Mama, I need bath!" Rachel thought this was a fine idea, so he came back to me. "Mama say otay! [okay]"

I was defeated, but I muttered something less than gracious along the lines of being ganged up on. Matthew didn't understand and thought I was still contesting his bathing priviledges. He went back to Rachel. "Mama, Dada l'rass me!" Neither Rachel nor I had any idea what he meant. We guess a few words. Then Rachel figured it out: "Was Dad harassing you?" "Yeah! Dada l'rass me!"

Hmmph.

Photos up

Those of you with access to my private section on flickr will see around 900 new photos. These are the ones that I had on my homebrew photo site before I decided this was getting out of hand and my wife would be _seriously_ pissed at me if the non-RAIDed disk on the 15 year old Sparcstation running the site went bad, and decided flickr's fee was worth not having to worry about backups and stuff. Also I believed them when they said they'd have grandparent-friendly features like one-click print ordering "just around the corner," which 6 months later obviously wasn't the case, but oh well. They'll get to it eventually; it's too much potential income not to. Right?

(Mom: this includes all the historical photos I scanned for you.)

On parenting

I posted this on carnageblender last night:

I'm so proud. My 3 year old son is playing Ghouls and Ghosts from the capcom collection for ps2. I know what he's playing without turning around, because I recognize the music.

That's my boy!

This morning he was excited to help Dad do the dishes, and so proud of helping Mom clean his room that he borrowed her phone to call me. ("Matthew?" I said. "Does Mom know you have her phone?" She didn't.)

Tonight we took Matthew to a party store to get Mom and Dad costumes. (Matthew and Melissa were each taken care of by a grandmother: they're going to be a tiger and a lion, respectively. So Rachel wanted me to be a bear, but I talked her out of it.)

All was well: I "zoomed" around outside with Matthew and we had a fun time. Then we went inside to see how Mom was doing. Matthew was still being good. But when Rachel dropped off the basket with me in the checkout line while she went to try to find someone to get her costume down, he threw a tantrum that he wanted to go with Mama. He'd been with me the whole time, totally fine, but now that wasn't good enough. I tried to reason with him. (Ha.) I told him if he kept it up I would spank him. His yells said, in effect, Whatever, Dad. You can't make me shut up. So (after the promised spanking) I trundled the basket off to Rachel from my position at the head of the very long line, handed Melissa back to her, and took Matthew out screaming under my arm to the car, where we stayed.

The ups and downs of raising a three year old.

Life with a 3 year old

I wake up from my nap to a commotion in the hallway.

"Wash your hands with hot water and soap! Don't touch anything! Hot water and soap! Hot water and soap! ... Yes, that's why I told you not to touch it! Hot water and soap!"

If I didn't know my son, I would have thought my wife had lost it. (He'd gotten into the raw steak Rachel was dicing for stroganov.)

In other news, Melissa can push herself up to her knees, but isn't quite sure what to do once she does. I predict she'll be crawling within a month.

Today is your birthday

Sunday was The Day: the day Matthew had been looking forward to ever since Dad's birthday earlier that week. Matthew opened his presents, and a good time was had by all. Dad was even able to glue back together a piece of his wooden train set that came broken. (Rachel found an outstanding train set for $25. Less than 1/4 the price of "Thomas the Train." I'm very glad I never got any of those videos for Matthew.)

But the birthday saga wasn't over yet. On Thursday, his joy school class had a belated birthday party for him, complete with crown and singing happy birthday. (Photo of Matthew proudly wearing his crown.)

This morning, the first thing he wanted was his crown. For the next hour, whatever he was doing, he'd start singing Happy Birthday to himself. ("Hap' birsday TO you, Hap' birsday TO you... Hap' birsday Wawa...") Sometimes I'd sing it with him which pleased him very much.

Finally I prevailed on him to sit and eat his toast. He got in his chair, but then more important matters got his attention: he faced himself in the mirror and sang Happy Birthday again, admiring his regal birthday crown.

... and speaking of the capcom collection

I played Final Fight--2 player co-op--with Matthew last night, up to the 3rd level. The one with the flames that come from everywhere and toast you. This was frustrating for a kid who barely gets the analog stick.

So this morning he asked to play the "new game, hit bad guy" again. Sweet! I set it up for him while I played with Melissa. When she was ready to take a break in her swing, I joined Matthew for the game. He's been making good progress, mostly by taking advantage of the small amount of damage all enemies on-screen take when you die. (Capcom, fortunately, gives you basically infinite lives, or I would have a very frustrated three-year-old.)

"No, Dada! I do it! You ea' cereal!"

Hey, youngster! Whose game do you think this is, anyway!

My new favorite fast food

We ate at Arby's last night, because it was next to the GameCrazy store where I bought Capcom Collection. (There are something like 20 games included, but the best are Final Fight, Ghouls & Ghosts, Street Fighter 2, and Forgotten Worlds.)

It turns out that Matthew can eat an Arby's sandwich without dropping the beef all over the table, getting frustrated, and ruining everyone's dinner. This is incredible. Something about it just makes it hold together better than your average sandwich. (And don't even think about feeding a 3 year old a hamburger; within seconds the bun will be in one place, the patty in another, and the condiments all over the 3 year old. Of course, any attempts by his parents to help before the disaster are rebuffed.)

I forsee many roast beef sandwiches and BLTs in my future.

Daddy's boy

It's a rainy day. Rachel calls me up to say hi. Of course Matthew wants his turn on the phone.

"Hi, Matthew!"

"Hi Dada. I home."

"Yes, you're home."

"Dada... you come home?"

Mini-Monk

I was rereading some old posts (another reason I'm glad I write this, even though it's hard to find time) and came to October 1 from last year, where Matthew seemed to have inherited his dad's inability to sense dirt.

Such is not the case now. Any time his clothes get the least bit dirty, he announces, "take shir' off! launry! [laundry]" And so on for other articles of clothing. We joke that he's our mini-Monk (after the fictional detective with OCD).

Rachel says he couldn't have gotten it from her, since she is not that bad. Still, I think it's pretty clear that he definitely didn't get that from my side, either -- although his grandfather is reasonably fastidious about most things. (And my father's father even more so, I hear.)

In other news, I went to my mission's reunion tonight. ("Enter Sandman" came on the radio as we drove over. How apropos.) Some people I barely recognized. Others had hardly changed at all. Huh. Wonder which side I fell on.

I also noticed that Jeff Stokes and I were the only ones sporting facial hair. President Watts didn't say anything. I wonder if he's mellowed a bit.

That's my boy

On Tuesday, Rachel ruled that Matthew Shall Not Watch TV With Dad in the Morning. Period.

Crap.

So Wednesday morning I tried the next best thing: I got out the Matthew-sized travel mouse and looked up some Flash games.

I tried this with him about 6 months ago and it was a total failure. He could not associate the mouse's movements with the screen pointer. He got frustrated, I got frustrated, even Rachel got frustrated when she tried to teach him. Hence, the TV-in-the-morning-while-Dad-pulls-pillows-over-his-head-on-the-couch-and-tries-to-sleep-another-ten-minutes routine.

But Wednesday, he was ready. He wasn't very good at it, and he still got frustrated when he moved the mouse too far outside his flash window, but he could understand the basics of, "I move the mouse left, the little guy on the screen moves left." Hurray!

So now our mornings go something like this:

1. 6:00-6:30: Matthew wakes up. I tell him to go back to bed; it's still dark outside.
2. 7:00: Matthew gets up for good. (He's surprisingly puctual for a kid without any clocks in his room.)
3. 7:01: Matthew asks for "crackers and cheese." (His breakfast of choice for the past couple weeks. Both his parents enjoy crackers and cheese, so I guess it's not hard to see where he gets it, but neither of us eat that for breakfast. I'm more of a cereal guy, myself, and Rachel's into actually cooking stuff like eggs and oatmeal.)
   
4. 7:01: I tell Matthew he can have his C&C if he first eats something healthy. Bananas or slices of toast frequently appear here. Hey, it's better than jello and oreos.
   
5. 7:45-ish: Matthew finishes breakfast. (He's easily distracted. This morning, for instance, the garbage truck, peeing, getting on a jacket -- "I told [cold], Dada" -- and his baby sister all took significant amounts of attention.) Daddy busts out Rachel's dell for him to play a flash game on.
6. Hopefully he doesn't get bored until I start to get ready for work around 8:30. Otherwise we have to move on to messier activities, like destroying magazines with scissors.
   

The difference between Daddy and Mommy

Melissa spent a few minutes tonight playing with my beard. She thought that was pretty strange stuff. I could almost see her thinking, "How very strange. Mommy's face doesn't feel like this!"

Then she started pulling it, which brought a swift end to that experiment.

Comparison shopping

I took Matthew until 2:00 today. It was a heroic effort. My wife has one of the hardest jobs I know.

We stopped at a dollar store about 11:30. (On the way to the dollar theatre -- Dad's a big spender.) I told Matthew he could pick one item from the store. Almost the first thing we saw walking in the door was a row of plastic battle-axes. He chose that. "All right."

Next we came to some swords. Cool ninja swords with a sheath, and a (safe, plastic) throwing star too. "I wan' sword! I wan' sword!"

"Do you want the axe, or the sword?" This was not a question easily answered. After some thought, he decided, "sword." "Then you need to put the axe back," I told him, and he did -- at a run.

For the next ten minutes we wandered about the store, which was full of things a little boy wants. He'd mutter to himself, as we passed particularly tempting items: "Ball... sword. Sword." "Car... sword. Sword." "Baloon... sword. Sword."

So Matthew walked out of the store with a new sword and without whining.

A boy and his watch

Matthew's been trying to get me to take him outside all morning. Poor harassed dad.

He came up to me at about 9:30, "watch" (Jimmy Neutron compass with armband) in hand. "Wash! Up high!" he demanded, pointing at his upper arm where he likes to wear it.

"No, not with that shirt; it would be too tight. I'll put it on down low."

Once it was on, Matthew looked at it and declared, "Five o'clock! Time doh [go] owsi'e! [outside]"

The fair

Matthew was a Good Boy yesterday, so we took him to the state fair.

I myself am not a fairgoer by nature. I went to Comdex once, before it started sucking and then dying. That was pretty cool. But animals and overpriced rides and bad food and stalls selling kitsch? No thanks.

Which is probably why I didn't think to take the camera: who would want to record such things? It just didn't occur to me. But with kids along you should always take a camera in case they do something cute, such as the "little farm hands" fair attraction (which, among its other virtues, was free).

Matthew got a (Matthew-sized) basket and an apron. He scooped some corn out of a bin and put it in his basket, before his parents could help him put it in a bag as instructed. He wanted to stay and be the Official Corn Scooper but we moved him along.

He planted a wooden carrot seed. Picked up a plastic potatoe and apple. Rode a tricycle "tractor" with an appropriately-sized bale of hay. "Milked" a wooden cow and fed it his corn. (I'm not sure what the white liquid was, but it smelled kinda nasty.) At the end he got to choose from various farm treats (still free! w00t!); he chose strawberry-flavored milk.

That was the high point of the fair from Matthew's perspective. He also liked the "Giant Yellow Slide" that charged $3 for the priviledge of me taking Matthew down it on my lap. (Rachel said he looked like he was in Boy Heaven, though, so I guess it was worth it.)

We also saw a bird show that left Matthew and Dad getting restless after about 20 minutes. (After about 30 we talked Rachel into coming with us down to the slide.) And a magician/comedian that Matthew's parents enjoyed far more than he did.

Matthew's favorite was probably the Basilisk tank the National Guard had standing near the slide. He would have played there until they closed the fairgrounds and kicked him out, I think. (I'm not having any luck googling Basilisks in this context, so maybe that's not the kind of tank it was after all. Still, it was very cool.) He climed in and looked around excitedly. "Wawa hewoh [hero]! Tank shoot bad die [guy]!" He was in Guy Heaven. When I told Rachel about this, she started giggling. "This kid is so full of testosterone! That came from you! Not me!" Maybe it's just as well I didn't mention how manly I felt next to that tank. Shoot bad guys. Awww yeah.

Oh, and Dad left Mom's purse at the burger stand for about 10 minutes. Someone handed it inside the stand where it was waiting when I arrived breathless to look for it. When two of your hands are full of food and your third is collaring your three-year-old, it's easy to forget little things like that...

My David

One of Matthew's favorite book series is one about a kid named David who gets into all sorts of trouble and doesn't mind his mom too well.

Tonight, out of the blue, while harranguing his mother to read him a David book, he announced, "My David ah' [at] Mwama [Grandma's] house."

Awww.

Soup and toast

Tonight, Rachel proposed split-pea soup for dinner. She cooked up a huge amount a few months ago and "canned" (pressure-bottled) most of it, so all I had to do was go downstairs and bring up a quart bottle.

Matthew met me at the top of the stairs. "Don' want soup!" he announced. Rachel wanted to get him fed and abed quickly and wasn't inclined to argue with him. I cast about for something healthy enough to meet Rachel's approval, but easy enough for Dad to handle.

"Okay, son. Would you like toast or soup?" Hey, it was whole-wheat bread.

He tried to escape my dichotomy with a third option ("cheese!") but I was not to be swayed. Another night, perhaps, I would have gotten him cheese for dinner, but he had diarrhea today so cheese was off the menu. Eventually he settled on toast.

I got him the toast, and some for myself. He likes company eating and Rachel was nursing Melissa, who had turned decidedly grumpy. He was in no hurry, so Rachel sweetened the deal: "You can have cotton candy [from our trip to the fair yesterday] if you eat the toast all gone."

I was halfway done by now. "Daddy's eating his toast all gone. Daddy's going to get candy!"

Matthew became alarmed. "Dada ea' blue tandy! Blue! tandy!" Blue candy? Huh?

He stood up on his chair, facing the refrigerator where we'd put the candy he brought home from the birthday party in the hopes it was out of Matthew's reach. (So far, so good in that respect.) "Blue tandy Dada tandy! Dada don' tush [touch] Wawa tandy!" A light dawned. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I like an occasional Jolly Rancher, and Rachel had purchased a bag for me. It stood on top of the refridgerator, and yes, it was blue. Rachel and I started laughing. "Yes, Daddy will have the blue candy. Daddy won't touch Matthew's candy."

Somewhat mollified, he still wanted to cover all the bases: "Baby sister don' tush Wawa tandy!" We assured him that Yes, his sister was too little to have Matthew's candy.

Not long afterwards he had a huge barf (he warned us first, so we had a bowl ready: good boy!) and Rachel decided he could dine on popsicles instead, but that's another story.

A dark day

Matthew figured out how, with enough effort, he can remove the anti-peanut locks around almost every doorknob in the house. This Is Bad.

As I write this, for instance, he is 20 minutes past bedtime, opening and closing his bedroom door, just a hair.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

I am going to go send him back to bed but he will just get up again. It's that kind of night.

It's hard being 3

Hard on your parents, anyway.

Rachel and I were going to take Matthew to the fair yesterday. I went in two hours early to work so I could leave in plenty of time.

But Matthew decided he was going to be grumpy and not mind his mom. So, just as he missed that birthday party a few months ago, he missed going to the fair.

Too bad; we're doing our product beta launch on Wednesday so I might not have another chance to take him.

A birthday party

Matthew went to his first birthday party on Saturday. (He was invited to his friend Mason's party a couple months ago, but couldn't attend due to high tantrum levels. He spent the party time taking an involuntary nap instead.)

He had cake and ice cream, played with Michael's toys with at least a dozen other boys (Michael has brave parents), and generally enjoyed himself very much. A good time was had by all, except the dog, whose foot I stepped on when I picked Matthew up. (It tried to trip me, I swear.)

Matthew came home with a brown bag full of various forms of processed sugar. When Rachel saw it, she said, "I should have let Matthew give Michael your toy!" I'd picked up a very cool toy gun that shoots rubber discs, but I got one for Matthew too and it turned out to be very obnoxiously noisy, and Rachel wasn't about to inflict that on a fellow mother. But for a mother who gave her son candy to take home, she decided, it would have been appropriate after all.

... In other news, Matthew's picking up words fast enough that Dad has fallen behind in translating ability. (His pronunciation is still lacking, so you still need the Matthew -> English key.) This morning, for instance: Matthew heard me getting ready for work and woke at 6:30. I told him it was still dark outside and he should go back to bed. "Chichi breh [bread]," he told me. "Mama say okay."

Matthew has discovered who the real boss is in our house, and often tries to con me into letting him do something or have something he shouldn't by claiming his mom gave it her blessing. I'm wise to him now, but I didn't know what Chichi bread could be.

I asked my wife. "What is Chichi bread?" "Gingerbread," she translated sleepily. Ohhhhh. "And do you let him eat that in bed?" I was pretty sure of the answer. "No," she said, "it gets crumbs all over."

So I got Matthew some warm milk and a granola bar (I know what you're thinking, but it's less crumbly than gingerbread, apparently) and told him good night.

Scooter

Last night, Melissa settled on a new goal: crawling.

Every time I put her on her back -- on the bed, on the couch, on the floor -- she almost immediately starts rolling onto her tummy, where she commences squirming mostly-aimlessly.

Then she gets frustrated because she's only moved a few inches and yells at Dad. Like it's my fault...

Good thing that baby gate for the stairs is on order already.

All choked up

Melissa is normally a mellow girl, but at nights if she wakes up to discover herself anywhere but next to Mama, she completely loses it. Dad is not acceptable. Every so often Rachel "lets" me have a turn, just to make sure Melissa hasn't changed her mind on this score, and Melissa turns the full power of her baby fury on me.

She starts loud and gets louder, and louder, and louder, until she hacks and coughs on the spittle she's spraying. (Then continues where she left off -- even louder, if possible, to make up for lost time.)

Then Rachel takes her and she is content. Is that a glare in her eyes as she starts to nurse?

I didn't know the origin of the expression "choking with rage" before Melissa.

Matthew corrects The Incredibles

Watching Matthew's favorite movie, Matthew paid more attention to the first Edna scene than he has before. "You're the best, E."

No, Matthew corrected. "Dada bes'! Dada bes'!"

And for good measure, "Wawa tyute [cute]. Mama zsayzso [angel]."

Wawa doh work

Matthew came out of the bathroom this morning carrying a handtowel and demanding aid. "Help me! Help me!" His hair was soaked. I helped him towel off. "Thank yoo Dada! Wawa hair wet! Wawa doh [go] work!"

Just like Dad.

Clarification

I had called to see what Jonathan would like to have for dinner. As far as working out, I have always discussed it as something both of us should do to get in better shape. We've got to last a long time to reap the benefits of grandkids someday, right? (Married men last longer than their single counterparts probably because of their wives' active interest in their health and well being.) Lest there be any doubt, I think Jonathan is even more handsome than when I married him.

-Rachel

A couple more firsts

Rachel called me at work today. I think she wanted to make sure I was going to be well-fed. (Then she tells me how I need to work out more or I'll keep getting fat.) (She only says the first part. The second is implied.)

Matthew wanted to talk with Dad. He told me that he went to the gym ("I mind teester! [teacher]") and other inconsequentials, some understood, some not. Then Rachel told him to say bye-bye. "Bye bye Dada! I wuv you!" Awwww.

Later, in the evening, we all went outside. Rachel was watering growing things, Matthew was playing with his new R/C stunt car, and I was planning to read the paper. Matthew brought me a plum from Rachel's year-old tree: "zsoosi! [juicy]" I took a bite and juice went all over. "Mmm! Yes, it is juicy! Thank you, Matthew"

He paused on his way back to his car. "You weltum! [You're welcome]"

Rachel tells me she hasn't heard that before, either (she did get a spontaneous "wuv you" first, though). Daddy scores on the Welcome!

Melissa rolls over

Melissa is now arching and rolling over. Actually this first occured several days ago. She seems pleased with this new skill. Perhaps she's calculating how this will aid in her primary goal in life- getting everything she sees into her mouth.

-Rachel

Dance Dance Dance!

I was reading on the couch when I saw Matthew crouched over Melissa. Uh oh I thought. When I asked him what he was doing he said "Baby dance!" He had his hands on either side of Melissa and was wiggling her back and forth. Melissa was gurgling and laughing with Matthew. "Dance, dance, dance!" They both were having a grand time.

-Rachel