So how was your morning?

Wake up.

Shower.

Get kids dressed.

Get self dressed, but not completely, not just yet, lest one or more children dribble some type of child gunk or half eaten food substance on your clean clothes.

Get kids fed.

Get self fed. Curse self for allowing coffee to run out the day before.

Put all our stuff in a pile by the front door. Rack through brain to make sure nothing is being forgotten.

Clean up 1 year old's breakfast mess. Check his diaper, be thankful he hasn't pooped yet, hope he holds out until you get to daycare so it can be somebody else's problem. Feel absolutely no remorse at this dodging of parental responsibility.

Finish getting self dressed, confident that the kids are clean and can't grody up your clothes.

Strap kids into car.

Load stuff into car.

Get in. Start car. Back out of driveway.

Note that strange bumpa-bumpa vibration that wasn't there yesterday, that's never been there before.

Pull back into driveway.

Get out of car.

Spot the flat tire.

Curse.

Curse some more.

Remove children from car.

Attempt to provide sufficient answers to three year old's 18 zillion questions as to why you're going back in the house, thus deviating from the morning routine.

Remember you haven't had any coffee yet, give universe the finger.

Beg children to stay inside and play nice while daddy changes the tire.

Go about business of changing the tire.

Hear screams of children coming from inside, recognize that it's not quite bad enough to check on yet. Also recognize that there's little you can do about it at the moment as you have to get this goddamn tire changed or nobody's going anywhere.

Look up and see three year old standing there. He announces he's there to help.

Ask three year old where his brother is. Get no answer.

Hear banging on the front door. Recognize that it's the baby trying to follow his big brother outside.

Command three year old to stand in one spot while you finish with the tire.

Finish with the tire, realize that you and your clothes are filthy.

Go back inside. Rescue crying baby who has gotten himself stuck in the door.

Start to clean up baby, realize that you're getting grease all over him.

Clean up self while baby screams and three year old continues his line of automobile-related questioning.

Clean up baby. Find that he has now pooped. Realize that you would have had him dropped off by now. See your morning encapsulated in your baby's pants.

Change baby's diaper.

Change into clean clothes.

Still no coffee.

Strap kids back into car.

Drop kids off.

Arrive at work an hour late.

Savor that first cup of coffee.

Doings of the young man as of late

Henry's got a thing about containers and shuffling the contents of one to another, particularly when those contents are liquid. Today, I watched him pour some water from his water bottle into his little red wagon, then lift the wagon to his lips and drink the water from there. I guess sometimes the easy way isn't the fun way.

When I was young and I heard adults talk about how fast kids grow up, I thought they were full of shit because it seemed to me as if I couldn't get grown up fast enough. Being a kid felt like a long drawn-out pain in the ass. And of course, now's the part in my little narrative where I tell you about how I see things differently now that I'm on the other side of the generational divide. It seems such a cliche thing to say but it's so damn true. It seems like Henry does new and amazing stuff everyday that I don't manage to get down in writing. I suppose I have this idea that I'll have this blog to look back on in my old age as a record of what was going on in our lives all those years ago, but who knows, maybe, hopefully I'll still be too busy with the present to spend too much time on the past.

I will say that Henry's in this language phase now that I already know I'm going to miss when it's gone. It's as if he's taking all the words he knows and trying them out in combinations to see how they sound together. By far, the best of these combos is "doodoo-mao." To explain: Doodoo is Henry's name for his crazy great aunt from New Orleans, a name he came up with all on his own, lest ye think we were calling her names. And mao (as in Tse-Tung) is his word for cats, a word he settled on after hearing a cat talk its talk. How doodoo and mao came together is a mystery for the ages, but together they are.

There's also this love affair with cars that's brewing. When we walk out to our car, he points and shouts "tacah!" Cars drive by us on the street. "Tacah!" He sees the car out the window. "Tacah! Tacah!" It could be that he inherited the love of all things mechanical that seems to run in his mom's side of the family. He sure as hell didn't get it from me. He loves cars so much that we even bought him one. Yes, I know, spoiling our child with a fancy car before he even has a license, contributing to the ruination of today's youth. It could be that the car is one of the best places to rock out. Just tonight, the little guy got to hear that kickass new White Stripes song for the first time, and he banged his little head as much as his car seat would let him.