There's such a thing as too much imagination

Matthew is very into imagining things. This is great, because he can entertain himself for a lot longer than he used to. But it does have a downside.

Tonight Matthew was playing on the neighbor's slide. Whatever game he was playing involved a blue gameboy, a ticket, and money. When we came inside, he started to get agitated. "I lef' gameboy, ticket ou'side!"

Daddy thought quickly. "I picked them up for you, Son. Here they are." And I mimed handing him the gameboy and ticket, and all was well.

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.