That morning when I was cooking bacon and I heard little footsteps racing to the kitchen followed by Simon yelling "I smell bacon!"
My kids' cute little voices.
The way Simon asks to listen to "Jam" and he means "Millionaire" by Queens Of The Stone Age. Also, the day I introduced them to "Iron Man" and how Simon demanded to hear it a dozen times throughout the day.
The time Henry was all pissed off about doing his science homework until he started measuring things on the scale and got all into it.
The way Simon used to ask "What's his naaaaame?"
How the boys like to wrap themselves around my legs and make me walk them around the house.
How the boys like to wrap themselves around one of my arms and let me lift them up.
The way I'm able to make them both fall over laughing by pretending to be a dumb monster who's just stumbled across a lightsaber.
That Simon likes to sleep in a tent in his room.
Henry putting his arm around Simon and saying "we're little brothers!"
The time Simon shouted "I'm a princess!" and meant it.
Listening to Henry would rap along with "Egg Man" on the way to school during his kindergarten year.
Taking a walk with Simon and the treasures he found - a stick and a feather.
Taking the boys out of bed to go to the bathroom and the way they'll talk in their sleep. Or fart.
The way Henry asks to go to the donut store for breakfast by just saying in a deep voice "DOOOONNNUUUUUT."
Hearing Simon downstairs, singing to himself while he plays.
The way Henry ducks down in front of me, then leapfrogs up into my arms.
The time Henry went jogging with me, smiling the whole way, and how he said "I didn't think I could run that far" when we made it back to the house.
Showing posts with label funny things kids do. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funny things kids do. Show all posts
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Thursday, March 08, 2012
What I Hear In My Head Every Time I Look At This Picture
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| We took los boyos to the Sherwood Forest Faire a while back...kind of a Renaissance Fair kind of thing. All I'm saying is, if you ever have the chance to enroll your kids in sword-fighting classes taught by a guy named Oskar Hasselhoff, by all means, sign them up. |
Sunday, February 12, 2012
My kid left a note for the Tooth Fairy...
...and this is what it said:
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| Spelling translation: "I want to keep my tooth." Not sure what he intends to do with it, but then again, what does the Tooth Fairy do with them? Kind of a gross occupation if you ask me. |
Sunday, January 08, 2012
The Stage Is Littered With Fragments of Shattered Expectations
There’s a whole set of expectations that accompany you, as an audience member, when you step into a theater. You’ll keep quiet during the performance. You won’t attempt to engage the actors in conversation unless they ask you to. You will not ask the people on stage if it’s over yet. And though plenty may come to mind, you most certainly won’t offer suggestions as to how the performance might be improved - at least not in the moment.
These are pretty reasonable expectations, so much so that you might not even think about them most of the time. Except, that is, when you get handed a permission slip to ignore them.
The Ash and I were brewing beer on New Year’s Day, along with the generous assistance from our friends Bill and Brandon. The boys were thoroughly uninterested in what we were doing, having taken the measure of it and determined that it stood to benefit them in no way at all. And then their friend, Neighbor Kid, came over, and the three of them went off and got lost in Little Boy Imagination Land, a place which, if I remember correct, is populated by dragons, tanks, and mermaids with snakes for hair and flamethrowers in their boobs. Among others.
So there we are, four adults standing outside around the brew pot, each of us with a brew in our hand. One of us was probably stirring. Neighbor Kid sticks his head out the back door and tells us that we need to come in and see their play. I misunderstand for a second, think I’m hearing him tell us we need to come in and watch them play, which, what? Why do we want to...? OH, play noun, not verb. Though, now that I mention it, there are plenty of philosophical discussions to be had regarding the relationship between play the noun and play the verb, what amount of the verb goes into the noun, what the noun actually is. I’ve watched them happen, read the treatises. Or was it a manifesto? Right now, as I type this, as you read this, someone somewhere is declaring, "it's a play, not a show!" It’s sort of like “Stairway to Heaven” - it’s never not happening somewhere.
We adults file into the house and into the living room where Neighbor Kid and our boys are waiting, their excitement to reveal their creation to us causing their skin to bristle with energy and their hair to stand on end. Neighbor Kid, because he is the oldest, gives the signal, and the play begins.
It starts with my oldest rolling a bowling ball and knocking over a row of pins. Then a remote control truck races onstage and knocks him over, then zips around the playing area. My youngest bounces in on a horse and attacks the truck. People are falling over. Dialogue is minimal. It’s all very performance art. And through it all, we in the audience are speaking, not only to one another in unhushed tones, but also to the three players. We’re asking aloud what it is that we are seeing. We're cracking wise. We’re offering our learned assessments. We’re pleading with them to stop bashing the truck into the piano. At one point, someone asks, “Okay, is that it?” Can you imagine? But the kids seem not to mind our jibber-jabber one bit. Though they would have been perfectly entitled to do so, not a single one of them turns to us and snarls “Respect the fourth wall!” We applaud them from a standing position and they bow.
These are pretty reasonable expectations, so much so that you might not even think about them most of the time. Except, that is, when you get handed a permission slip to ignore them.
The Ash and I were brewing beer on New Year’s Day, along with the generous assistance from our friends Bill and Brandon. The boys were thoroughly uninterested in what we were doing, having taken the measure of it and determined that it stood to benefit them in no way at all. And then their friend, Neighbor Kid, came over, and the three of them went off and got lost in Little Boy Imagination Land, a place which, if I remember correct, is populated by dragons, tanks, and mermaids with snakes for hair and flamethrowers in their boobs. Among others.
So there we are, four adults standing outside around the brew pot, each of us with a brew in our hand. One of us was probably stirring. Neighbor Kid sticks his head out the back door and tells us that we need to come in and see their play. I misunderstand for a second, think I’m hearing him tell us we need to come in and watch them play, which, what? Why do we want to...? OH, play noun, not verb. Though, now that I mention it, there are plenty of philosophical discussions to be had regarding the relationship between play the noun and play the verb, what amount of the verb goes into the noun, what the noun actually is. I’ve watched them happen, read the treatises. Or was it a manifesto? Right now, as I type this, as you read this, someone somewhere is declaring, "it's a play, not a show!" It’s sort of like “Stairway to Heaven” - it’s never not happening somewhere.
We adults file into the house and into the living room where Neighbor Kid and our boys are waiting, their excitement to reveal their creation to us causing their skin to bristle with energy and their hair to stand on end. Neighbor Kid, because he is the oldest, gives the signal, and the play begins.
It starts with my oldest rolling a bowling ball and knocking over a row of pins. Then a remote control truck races onstage and knocks him over, then zips around the playing area. My youngest bounces in on a horse and attacks the truck. People are falling over. Dialogue is minimal. It’s all very performance art. And through it all, we in the audience are speaking, not only to one another in unhushed tones, but also to the three players. We’re asking aloud what it is that we are seeing. We're cracking wise. We’re offering our learned assessments. We’re pleading with them to stop bashing the truck into the piano. At one point, someone asks, “Okay, is that it?” Can you imagine? But the kids seem not to mind our jibber-jabber one bit. Though they would have been perfectly entitled to do so, not a single one of them turns to us and snarls “Respect the fourth wall!” We applaud them from a standing position and they bow.
Children. Expectations. Explosions.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Clock Goes Tock-Tick-Tock-Tick
In the ongoing battle to get our three-year-old to eat (see, perfectly normal situation, right?), we have of course resorted to the age-old strategy of pointing out to him that if he doesn't eat, he won't get bigger, stronger, faster, smarter i.e. he'll never become the Six Million Dollar Man. However, as social scientists have proven time and time again, the simple presentation of facts does little to sway most people or cause them to change their behavior. As such, it becomes necessary to employ a measure of propaganda.
"If you don't eat, you're going to start getting smaller."
I don't remember who said it first, me or my wife, but big brother totally ran with it. Every meal, if little brother wasn't eating, big brother was there to remind him that it was his very size, strength, and speed that he was putting at risk. And then he added another element to it: age. If he didn't eat the food that had been placed in front of him, not only would he get smaller, but he would start to age backwards.
Then the other night at dinner, he put this all together in a way that I can only describe as masterful. We were all eating, all of us but youngest, who sat just picking at his food and babbling.
"You're never gonna turn four if you don't eat," said eldest.
"But my birthday's coming!" said his brother. It's true, but then again, when isn't a person's birthday coming?
"That's right," said big brother, eyes growing wide. "And we're gonna have a party-"
"A party!?"
"Yeah. And there's gonna be a cake-"
"A cake!"
"Mmm-hmmm." He spoke in a low voice now. "And mama's gonna bring it out, and everybody's gonna sing 'Happy Birthday' and on top of the cake, there's gonna be a candle on it for how many you're gonna be, and it's gonna be a two."
Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo....
Monday, January 03, 2011
Chicken Business
Happy New Year everybody! Hey, let's skip the part about how I've barely touched this blog thing here lately and jump right into a discussion of chicken business! Exclamation points!
What is chicken business, you ask? Well for starters, it's fun as fuck to say. Go ahead, give it a shot. Say it out loud. If anyone in earshot of you asks what you're doing, just look them in the eye and say it again.
Chicken business.
Chicken business.
Chickennnnn. Bizzznessss.
That's nice, isn't it? Perhaps it evoked certain images in your head, hmmm? Chickens exchanging currency for goods or services? Little chickens in little business suits squawking over their little deals? A rooster in a limo pulling up to a corner where stands a fake-fur-clear-heel-clad hen of the night?
Well, you're wrong, dirty and wrong. Chicken business is nothing of the sort. Except, I suppose, when it is.
Here be a picture of a hen:
This is one of our hens. She is of the breed known as Barred Rocks, and she sits at the top of the pecking order among our little flock. She doesn't have a name, but an apt one for her would probably be Busy since she conducts the aforementioned but as yet undefined chicken business.
Here is a picture of a backyard playset:
Ignore the snow. It never snows in Austin except for this one time last winter when it did, so I went around taking pictures of everything with snow all over it. Otherwise I would never just take a picture of a kid's playset, which is why I don't have any non-snow pictures of our playset, which is why you have to look at this one with snow all over it. AHEM!
So every now and then, the Barred Rock hen pictured above, who may be named Busy or Business Time or some such, likes to flap her little wings and transport herself up, up, up into the clubhouse section of the playset. It's amazing, really, the way she navigates herself through the little doorway. None of the other chickens do this trick. It's hers and hers alone. Perhaps it's this kind of initiative that propelled her to the top of the pecking order in the first place.
The boys took note of this little feat one day and asked their mom why the chicken was getting into their clubhouse.
"Oh, she's just doing her chicken business," my wife told them.
But wait, that's not all of it. There's more to chicken business than just that. Because you see, whenever Busy flaps up into the clubhouse and the boys are around to see it, they sound the alarm with a cry of "CHICKEN BUSINESS!" and spring into action. They race up to the clubhouse where one of them scoops the poor girl up in their arms and then, well, from there she meets one of two fates. Either she's thrown out the door that she originally flew in through and has to flap her wings furiously in order to prevent an unpleasant reunion with the ground, or else she gets to take a ride down the slide in the lap of whichever boy picked her up.
And that's what Chicken Business is all about, Charlie Brown.
What is chicken business, you ask? Well for starters, it's fun as fuck to say. Go ahead, give it a shot. Say it out loud. If anyone in earshot of you asks what you're doing, just look them in the eye and say it again.
Chicken business.
Chicken business.
Chickennnnn. Bizzznessss.
That's nice, isn't it? Perhaps it evoked certain images in your head, hmmm? Chickens exchanging currency for goods or services? Little chickens in little business suits squawking over their little deals? A rooster in a limo pulling up to a corner where stands a fake-fur-clear-heel-clad hen of the night?
Well, you're wrong, dirty and wrong. Chicken business is nothing of the sort. Except, I suppose, when it is.
Here be a picture of a hen:
This is one of our hens. She is of the breed known as Barred Rocks, and she sits at the top of the pecking order among our little flock. She doesn't have a name, but an apt one for her would probably be Busy since she conducts the aforementioned but as yet undefined chicken business.
Here is a picture of a backyard playset:
Ignore the snow. It never snows in Austin except for this one time last winter when it did, so I went around taking pictures of everything with snow all over it. Otherwise I would never just take a picture of a kid's playset, which is why I don't have any non-snow pictures of our playset, which is why you have to look at this one with snow all over it. AHEM!
So every now and then, the Barred Rock hen pictured above, who may be named Busy or Business Time or some such, likes to flap her little wings and transport herself up, up, up into the clubhouse section of the playset. It's amazing, really, the way she navigates herself through the little doorway. None of the other chickens do this trick. It's hers and hers alone. Perhaps it's this kind of initiative that propelled her to the top of the pecking order in the first place.
The boys took note of this little feat one day and asked their mom why the chicken was getting into their clubhouse.
"Oh, she's just doing her chicken business," my wife told them.
But wait, that's not all of it. There's more to chicken business than just that. Because you see, whenever Busy flaps up into the clubhouse and the boys are around to see it, they sound the alarm with a cry of "CHICKEN BUSINESS!" and spring into action. They race up to the clubhouse where one of them scoops the poor girl up in their arms and then, well, from there she meets one of two fates. Either she's thrown out the door that she originally flew in through and has to flap her wings furiously in order to prevent an unpleasant reunion with the ground, or else she gets to take a ride down the slide in the lap of whichever boy picked her up.
And that's what Chicken Business is all about, Charlie Brown.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Wanderer
Shaolin shadowboxing,
“Hmm?”
and the Wu-Tang sword style.
“Whazz?”
If what you say is true, the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang could be dangerous.
“The hell?”
Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?
That’s the kind of question that pulls you out of your sleep, especially when you haven’t the faintest idea who’s asking it. It was then that I rolled over to find the almost-two year old, my almost-two year old, sitting on the floor next to the bed holding my swiss army phone. He had pulled up the iPod and found his way to the Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers album, and hit play on track 1, “Bring Da Ruckus,” which opens with the dialogue sample above. He smiled up at me, overjoyed either by his own cleverness or by the fact that I was awake.
This was how I started that day.
We only just switched the little guy from his elevated cage of a crib to a toddler bed that he can easily climb in and out of. Actually, it had gotten to the point where climbing in and out of his crib was only a slightly greater challenge for him. We had this silly notion that when he woke up in the morning, he would enjoy being able to climb out of bed and play with his toys while we slept soundly. This vision has not yet manifested itself in our reality. Instead, he’s developed this pattern where he toddles downstairs to our room, walks his little self all the way around the bed to my side, and climbs in with me. He brings Cookie Monster too. He wiggles and talks and makes with all manner of the cuteness, which is nifty and all, but it brings the sleeping part of bed occupancy to an end. Apparently, he likes his parents better than his toys. Which is just goddamn inconvenient.
Protective helicopter parent that I am, I snatched the phone out of his little hands before The RZA began shouting for somebody to bring the mothafuckin ruckus. Not sure who he’s talking to, but he really wants them to get on with this ruckus bringing business.
The second night he was in the new bed, The Ash awoke to the sound of a repetitive clicking noise somewhere in the house. Just imagine that. Dark house, middle of the night. All is quiet save the hum of the baby monitor, and somewhere across the house, click.......click.........click. She followed it out of our bedroom, past eldest’s room, through the living and the dining where she found the little guy standing at the door that leads out to the garage, locking and unlocking the knob-lock. Had the deadbolt not been set, he’d have wandered into the garage where we would still be searching for him in all the accumulated debris.
I wonder what he thought about as he wandered through the house in the dark, unmonitored. I’m free! Free! I have vague memories of being little and wandering around the house at night. I remember doing that at my grandparent’s enormous house and feeling like I was really up to something dangerous, even though I never set foot outside. Freedom is relative, I guess. And the little guy just acquired a wee bit more.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Kids. Making.
Look at these fantastic little people. Look at them I say!
The two boys in blonde you may recognize as my progeny. The artist to the right with her back to us is Stella, eldest daughter of my friends Tim and Julie. Here they are gathered around, each with a pumpkin before them and a table full of paints, brushes, pipe cleaners, glue, and lotsa googley eyes. Everything a little person needs to transform an ordinary little pumpkin into something fabulous. This was the activity for Henry’s fourth birthday party last weekend. The original idea was full-on pumpkin carving, but after a wee bit of thought, we ended up realizing that the grown folks would end up doing all the work, and you know, why mess with the kid’s fun and the grown-up’s beer-drinking like that?
And no, you’re not imagining things. Simon’s smock is what you think it is.
I know, he’s only been hardcore since ’07, but whateva.
I love watching little people make things. I love going back and looking at pictures taken of little people engaged in the act of making, crafting shit outta other shit. Like when they’re really in it, you know?
They ain’t thinking about whether or not anybody’s gonna like it. They ain’t stressing being misunderstood. They’re not wondering what the hell they’re gonna do with it when it’s done. They’re just doing. Making because making is fun. They’re all process -- product is secondary, if at all. The whole project can be all but forgotten once the making part’s done and over.
Childwen and Cweating - peas and carrots, methinks. Which makes me think that People and Cwe - ahem - Creating also go hand in hand. All ages and sizes. It ain't a shirt with a firetruck on it, you don't outgrow it. I’m a believer in the idea that everybody’s got a healthy dose of creativity in them. When people say they’re not very creative, I have a hard time buying it.
I’ve started writing again. To clarify, yeah, I never really stopped putting words down on electro-paper, but I’ve found my way back to the form that most influenced my desire to do this word-slinging thing in the first place: playwriting. It’s been a while since I pulled some people out of my head, dropped them in a jar and gave it a good shake. In fact, it was during the run of last play that we discovered we were going to be parents. So yeah, been a little while since I rock and rolled.
But now here I am, at it again. And my god, it feels good. I can’t really say I’ve missed it, as I think maybe I needed some time away. I don’t know what I needed. But I’m back in a place where I’m full of story, full of pictures, full of these people that want to talk and interact and love and fuck and grow and change and sing and rap and all the other shit that us humanish types do. I feel like I’m doing good work, but more importantly than that, it feels good just to be making again.
The two boys in blonde you may recognize as my progeny. The artist to the right with her back to us is Stella, eldest daughter of my friends Tim and Julie. Here they are gathered around, each with a pumpkin before them and a table full of paints, brushes, pipe cleaners, glue, and lotsa googley eyes. Everything a little person needs to transform an ordinary little pumpkin into something fabulous. This was the activity for Henry’s fourth birthday party last weekend. The original idea was full-on pumpkin carving, but after a wee bit of thought, we ended up realizing that the grown folks would end up doing all the work, and you know, why mess with the kid’s fun and the grown-up’s beer-drinking like that?
And no, you’re not imagining things. Simon’s smock is what you think it is.
I know, he’s only been hardcore since ’07, but whateva.
I love watching little people make things. I love going back and looking at pictures taken of little people engaged in the act of making, crafting shit outta other shit. Like when they’re really in it, you know?
They ain’t thinking about whether or not anybody’s gonna like it. They ain’t stressing being misunderstood. They’re not wondering what the hell they’re gonna do with it when it’s done. They’re just doing. Making because making is fun. They’re all process -- product is secondary, if at all. The whole project can be all but forgotten once the making part’s done and over.
Childwen and Cweating - peas and carrots, methinks. Which makes me think that People and Cwe - ahem - Creating also go hand in hand. All ages and sizes. It ain't a shirt with a firetruck on it, you don't outgrow it. I’m a believer in the idea that everybody’s got a healthy dose of creativity in them. When people say they’re not very creative, I have a hard time buying it.
I’ve started writing again. To clarify, yeah, I never really stopped putting words down on electro-paper, but I’ve found my way back to the form that most influenced my desire to do this word-slinging thing in the first place: playwriting. It’s been a while since I pulled some people out of my head, dropped them in a jar and gave it a good shake. In fact, it was during the run of last play that we discovered we were going to be parents. So yeah, been a little while since I rock and rolled.
But now here I am, at it again. And my god, it feels good. I can’t really say I’ve missed it, as I think maybe I needed some time away. I don’t know what I needed. But I’m back in a place where I’m full of story, full of pictures, full of these people that want to talk and interact and love and fuck and grow and change and sing and rap and all the other shit that us humanish types do. I feel like I’m doing good work, but more importantly than that, it feels good just to be making again.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Too Big
Morning. I was strapping the boys into the car. As I often do, I swung eldest into the air before swinging him into his car seat.
"One day, I'll be so big, you won't be able to pick me up."
Damn, they do grow up fast. "That's right buddy, I won't. Maybe you'll have to pick me up."
"No, I can't because you're too big. You're SO BIG."
I'm doing the best I can here, kid.
"One day, I'll be so big, you won't be able to pick me up."
Damn, they do grow up fast. "That's right buddy, I won't. Maybe you'll have to pick me up."
"No, I can't because you're too big. You're SO BIG."
I'm doing the best I can here, kid.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
I guess you'd call that daddy style?
First, a bit of post pimpage: my latest contribution to the wonderful world of Dadcentric concerns breastmilk and the perversity that it inspires. Also, it is very mildly NSFW, as is this very post you are reading, for it features this fine illustration:
So go. Look. Find out why in the hell I drew such a thing.
And speaking of perversity, it seems that even the most innocent child's toy can conjur up the most salacious thoughts in our young people. You see, we have this toy:
It affixes to the refrigetor by means of magnets, and comes with a series of small magnets that make up the front and back of different animals, such as the cow shown above. If you match the front and back of a given animal, it sings a little song about that animal, concluding with the sound that the animal makes. However, if you mismatch the front and back to create some ungodly monstrosity, the toy will still sing a song for you. For example, if you put the duck's head with the pig's ass, you'll get to hear that happy little frog sing this:
You put a duck in front,
You put a pig behind.
Put them together
And what do you find?
A duck-pig?
That's silly!
Well, our children have heard these songs several million times now, so that little tune is emblazoned upon their memories, or at least that of my eldest, as evidenced by the song that he sang for us this evening:
You put a mommy in front,
You put a daddy behind.
Put them together
And what do you find?
I'm not sure how he concluded the verse, for I and The Ash were howling with laughter at our son's unwitting Yanchovichization. Three years old and already he's singing dirty songs. That's my boy!
So go. Look. Find out why in the hell I drew such a thing.And speaking of perversity, it seems that even the most innocent child's toy can conjur up the most salacious thoughts in our young people. You see, we have this toy:
It affixes to the refrigetor by means of magnets, and comes with a series of small magnets that make up the front and back of different animals, such as the cow shown above. If you match the front and back of a given animal, it sings a little song about that animal, concluding with the sound that the animal makes. However, if you mismatch the front and back to create some ungodly monstrosity, the toy will still sing a song for you. For example, if you put the duck's head with the pig's ass, you'll get to hear that happy little frog sing this:You put a duck in front,
You put a pig behind.
Put them together
And what do you find?
A duck-pig?
That's silly!
Well, our children have heard these songs several million times now, so that little tune is emblazoned upon their memories, or at least that of my eldest, as evidenced by the song that he sang for us this evening:
You put a mommy in front,
You put a daddy behind.
Put them together
And what do you find?
I'm not sure how he concluded the verse, for I and The Ash were howling with laughter at our son's unwitting Yanchovichization. Three years old and already he's singing dirty songs. That's my boy!
Thursday, March 05, 2009
A post with two endings
Today, my 3 year old answered the phone. We were riding in the car and he was playing a game on said phone, one of those memory matching games where you're supposed to flip a card and then flip another and if the pictures on the cards don't match you try again. When I had handed him the phone, I was very specific. "If it rings, you gotta hand it back to daddy." He had agreed to this arrangement. And he also knows full well that when I say "ring", I mean the phone starts playing a song all by itself, which here lately is the theme to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which was just the most rad thing to suddenly have pipe up in a meeting at work the other day. By the way, I played this little matching game for myself yesterday, and I only beat my son's best time by 5 seconds. You're slippin', old man.
So yeah, the phone rang just as I was pulling up to our destination, which is a whole other story in and of itself. I reach back and request my phone, but instead of the feeling of smooth sweet technology, I hear my son say "Hello? Hello?" And then proceeds to have a conversation with my wife, er, his mom. They're the same person. So on the one hand, he's violating our agreement, but on the other hand he's performing a basic task for the very first time, which is always fun to watch.
After we were done, we went on home and he proceeded to not eat dinner, after which he voluntarily washed all of the baby's bottles and hung them on the rack to dry. And they're actually clean. And now he's in bed. The end.
I guess this was sort of a minor bragfest, but what's the point of having kids if you can't brag about them. And pick their noses. My youngest had the biggest goddamn bugger you've ever seen earlier today. Okay, the end for real.
So yeah, the phone rang just as I was pulling up to our destination, which is a whole other story in and of itself. I reach back and request my phone, but instead of the feeling of smooth sweet technology, I hear my son say "Hello? Hello?" And then proceeds to have a conversation with my wife, er, his mom. They're the same person. So on the one hand, he's violating our agreement, but on the other hand he's performing a basic task for the very first time, which is always fun to watch.
After we were done, we went on home and he proceeded to not eat dinner, after which he voluntarily washed all of the baby's bottles and hung them on the rack to dry. And they're actually clean. And now he's in bed. The end.
I guess this was sort of a minor bragfest, but what's the point of having kids if you can't brag about them. And pick their noses. My youngest had the biggest goddamn bugger you've ever seen earlier today. Okay, the end for real.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Speed...I am Speed
He bolts through the yard and screams "I'm so fast!" He carries heavy objects up the stairs and declares "I'm so strong!" He colors a picture and gasps "I did it!" In other words, he has reached the point of being amazed and overjoyed at his own awesomeness.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Naked Protest
I had the boys all dressed and ready to go this morning. Henry was in a bad mood, but it was improving. I went downstairs to finish making myself reasonably presentable. When I came back up, I found my eldest sitting on the stairs completely naked, his clothes piled in a heap in front of him. I shrieked in disbelief. What are you doing?! He looked up at me with the expression of a protester coming face to face with riot police for the first time, that moment when The Man arrives and you have to stand behind whatever it is you're standing up against. That makes me The Man, which isn't such a great notion, but I can live with it. His cause? Choice. I had made the fatal mistake of choosing his shirt for him instead of letting him choose. The kid's learning to make his own choices. He's learning which choices are his to make and which will still be decided for him. And he's realizing that the choices that belong to him are precious few, and he's just not going to let them be taken away just because it's more convenient for somebody else, like The Man. He didn't want the striped shirt, goddammit. He wanted the froggy shirt.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
In the darkest depths of Mordor
Henry has apparently been getting into the Tolkien. How else to explain this creation?
Clearly, he has visions.
Clearly, he has visions.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Who's been teaching my kid synonyms for the dirty-dirty?
THE ASH: Henry, what are your trains doing? What are your trains doing?
THE HOLMES: Fornicating?
HENRY: Boinking?
Wha? Where he got that silly word from is a mystery. This term, "boinking," we do not use this word in our house. Also a mystery is what possessed me to blurt out that the trains were fornicating. We all know that trains, like teenagers who have had abstinence-only sex education, don't engage in that sort of thing. Unheard of. Maybe I was secretly hoping that Henry would pick up on it and start repeating it at random, and I could be all "that's right, four syllables baby."
Oh, and check this out. This is a picture of Henry playing his newest game:
It's called Blind Thomas Bumper Ghost. The object is to walk around underneath a Thomas blanket and not bash your head into a doorknob or fall down the stairs or otherwise injure yourself in a manner that could have been avoided if you didn't have a blanket over your head and could see. I suppose I could have done something more to intervene besides steering him away from the more dangerous blocks in his path, but that would have ruined the fun for everybody. Every obstaculary encounter was met with an examination of the obstacle in question and a stoic declaration of "I'm okay!", followed by immediate return to gameplay. I want to believe there was a time when I was this easily amused.
THE HOLMES: Fornicating?
HENRY: Boinking?
Wha? Where he got that silly word from is a mystery. This term, "boinking," we do not use this word in our house. Also a mystery is what possessed me to blurt out that the trains were fornicating. We all know that trains, like teenagers who have had abstinence-only sex education, don't engage in that sort of thing. Unheard of. Maybe I was secretly hoping that Henry would pick up on it and start repeating it at random, and I could be all "that's right, four syllables baby."
Oh, and check this out. This is a picture of Henry playing his newest game:
It's called Blind Thomas Bumper Ghost. The object is to walk around underneath a Thomas blanket and not bash your head into a doorknob or fall down the stairs or otherwise injure yourself in a manner that could have been avoided if you didn't have a blanket over your head and could see. I suppose I could have done something more to intervene besides steering him away from the more dangerous blocks in his path, but that would have ruined the fun for everybody. Every obstaculary encounter was met with an examination of the obstacle in question and a stoic declaration of "I'm okay!", followed by immediate return to gameplay. I want to believe there was a time when I was this easily amused.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Further Dispatches From The Holmesfront
Between all the rememberating that's been going on here on this little blog, there's also been a wee bit going on around here in real life, and some of it might even be worth recording for my posterity's posterity to look back on and think, "Damn, Grampa T wasn't always an incoherent ass-grabber." So let me drop a few bullet points.
- Crawlariffic - this kid'll be mobile soon. He sees his big bro on the go, and he wants to join in the fun. Once that happens, I get to join the ranks of y'all who already get to enjoy chasing multiple kiddos around. It should make trips to places like Target that much more life-affirming.
Oh, and let's not forget the sitting up:
So much better than the spitting up:
- Agree to disagree - so I knew kids could be disagreeable little beast dwarves at times. What I was not prepared for, however, was my child's ability to completely ignore any and all facets of this thing called reality, even when they are sitting right there in front of him, politely introducing themselves. "Hi there, I don't believe we've met. We're Facts. And you are?" Here are a few things Henry has argued with me about in the past few weeks:
- I am beautiful in the mornings:
This is not so much news, but more of a reminder. Don't front, you know you'd love to peer over your morning coffee at this vision of manly loveliness.
- I am the best husband on my block - So we bought one of those little kiddo crawly tubes from Ikea so that Henry could have something to crawl through other than the underside of our deck. I stepped out of the shower one lovely weekend morning to hear my wife calling for help. I walked downstairs and found this:
I hummed "Mack the Knife" to myself as I strolled to the office to fetch the camera, grabbed it with a flourish, then danced back to the playroom to snap a few pictures. The awareness that I was creating photographic evidence of her predicament served as sufficient motivator for The Ash to work her way out of the child-sized tube, so you see, I was actually just helping her out. And creating blog fodder. It should be noted also that I asked her if it was okay to blog about this, and got the yeah-totally-for-sure on the condition that I point out that she was NOT stuck because she's fat, because she's not fat. No, she was stuck because the tube is made for a child...so my wife isn't fat, she just doesn't think things through sometimes.
- Aesop Rock - Hip-hop show buddy and I headed out for another night of hipping and hopping, this time with the mighty Aesop Rock.
It's funny, I live in a city full of music, but on the rare occasion that I take a night out, this seems to be the music I'm interested in seeing lately. I may be on course for a bit of genre burnout, but no biggie.
- And one last thing - See this face? It's gonna rule the world.
- Crawlariffic - this kid'll be mobile soon. He sees his big bro on the go, and he wants to join in the fun. Once that happens, I get to join the ranks of y'all who already get to enjoy chasing multiple kiddos around. It should make trips to places like Target that much more life-affirming.
Oh, and let's not forget the sitting up:
So much better than the spitting up:
- Agree to disagree - so I knew kids could be disagreeable little beast dwarves at times. What I was not prepared for, however, was my child's ability to completely ignore any and all facets of this thing called reality, even when they are sitting right there in front of him, politely introducing themselves. "Hi there, I don't believe we've met. We're Facts. And you are?" Here are a few things Henry has argued with me about in the past few weeks:- Whether or not I am hungry...not him, but me.
- Whether or not the dog is hungry.
- Whether or not Simon is hungry/sleepy/upset.
- Whether or not I'm driving the right way to Grandma's (I was, thank you very much).
- Whether or not dinner is on the table.
- Which shoes I wanted to wear.
- Whether or not Yoda is a Jedi Master - I found this one particularly upsetting, so much so that I actually allowed myself to get pulled into the discussion. Always a mistake.
- I am beautiful in the mornings:
This is not so much news, but more of a reminder. Don't front, you know you'd love to peer over your morning coffee at this vision of manly loveliness.- I am the best husband on my block - So we bought one of those little kiddo crawly tubes from Ikea so that Henry could have something to crawl through other than the underside of our deck. I stepped out of the shower one lovely weekend morning to hear my wife calling for help. I walked downstairs and found this:
I hummed "Mack the Knife" to myself as I strolled to the office to fetch the camera, grabbed it with a flourish, then danced back to the playroom to snap a few pictures. The awareness that I was creating photographic evidence of her predicament served as sufficient motivator for The Ash to work her way out of the child-sized tube, so you see, I was actually just helping her out. And creating blog fodder. It should be noted also that I asked her if it was okay to blog about this, and got the yeah-totally-for-sure on the condition that I point out that she was NOT stuck because she's fat, because she's not fat. No, she was stuck because the tube is made for a child...so my wife isn't fat, she just doesn't think things through sometimes.- Aesop Rock - Hip-hop show buddy and I headed out for another night of hipping and hopping, this time with the mighty Aesop Rock.
It's funny, I live in a city full of music, but on the rare occasion that I take a night out, this seems to be the music I'm interested in seeing lately. I may be on course for a bit of genre burnout, but no biggie.- And one last thing - See this face? It's gonna rule the world.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Bow-chicka-choo-choo
So I left this little story in the comments of a post over at Terrible Mother's blog where she asked people to recount their embarrassing kid stories, but seeing as how the ratio of teary-eyed giggles per retelling of this story doesn't seem to be decreasing at a very accelerated rate for either Ashley or myself, I figured that perhaps it would enjoy a place in its very own post.
Ya see, Mr. Henry has this Thomas the Tank Engine video - yes, this story involves Thomas the Tank Engine, but stay with me on this one, I promise you a payoff - wherein one of the stories revolves around a friend of Thomas's, a green train named Percy. Foolish little train that he is, Percy loses control and crashes into a chocolate factory. It's a great big mess with chocolate kersplosions and everything, and at the end of it, poor Percy is completely covered in chocolate. Cute, right?
But then you take into account the fact that little Henry's pronunciation isn't always completely accurate, and you can completely understand why when two of my aunt's, Henry's great aunts, were at our house visiting, Henry asked them if they wanted to watch chocolate pussy. And why he then went on to ask me if I liked chocolate pussy.
It wasn't the first time Henry had brought up the subject of chocolate pussy. At Easter, he told everybody at his uncle's house about chocolate pussy. He likes to ask me if I'd like to watch chocolate pussy with him. He tells his mom to go get the chocolate pussy. I know it'll get old at some point, but Ash and I are 6th grade boys when it comes to this kind of thing, so that point's still way off on the other side of the horizon.
As for my aunts, I registered only the slightest of reactions with either of them, but I can tell you that I forced my laughter down and launched immediately into explanatory mode, even going so far as to jump up and grab the tape off of the shelf. "Look! It was totally innocent!"
Maturity: we needs it.
Ya see, Mr. Henry has this Thomas the Tank Engine video - yes, this story involves Thomas the Tank Engine, but stay with me on this one, I promise you a payoff - wherein one of the stories revolves around a friend of Thomas's, a green train named Percy. Foolish little train that he is, Percy loses control and crashes into a chocolate factory. It's a great big mess with chocolate kersplosions and everything, and at the end of it, poor Percy is completely covered in chocolate. Cute, right?
But then you take into account the fact that little Henry's pronunciation isn't always completely accurate, and you can completely understand why when two of my aunt's, Henry's great aunts, were at our house visiting, Henry asked them if they wanted to watch chocolate pussy. And why he then went on to ask me if I liked chocolate pussy.
It wasn't the first time Henry had brought up the subject of chocolate pussy. At Easter, he told everybody at his uncle's house about chocolate pussy. He likes to ask me if I'd like to watch chocolate pussy with him. He tells his mom to go get the chocolate pussy. I know it'll get old at some point, but Ash and I are 6th grade boys when it comes to this kind of thing, so that point's still way off on the other side of the horizon.
As for my aunts, I registered only the slightest of reactions with either of them, but I can tell you that I forced my laughter down and launched immediately into explanatory mode, even going so far as to jump up and grab the tape off of the shelf. "Look! It was totally innocent!"
Maturity: we needs it.
Monday, March 24, 2008
The kids like to party
Between kid's birthday parties featuring egg hunts, egg hunts coupled with feasts, feasts accompanied by bottles of wine, visits from one grandmother while taking care of the other grandmother's dog, it was one of those weekends that managed to be extremely full and yet somehow still low stress. Whenever weekends are full, I tend to complain about not having any downtime, whereas when weekends are completely unscheduled, I complain that we never do anything. I'm just impossible to please.
Saturday morning found us at the party for the second birthday for Henry's friend Stella. It's a lot of fun having friends whose kids are around the same age as our own. Indeed, watching toddlers interact is one of the true joys of being alive.
Seeing as how it was bunny weekend and all, there was an egg hunt.
And as the party wound down, the goodbyes got a bit emotional.
And that was just Saturday morning. That afternoon, the boyos got a visit from Grandma and Great Aunt Holmes.
Can you tell my mom is in total baby heaven here? Yep, she is.
Sunday found us at not one, but two feasts, the first of which featured only the children brought by us. This meant that all those pesky eggs had to be handled by Henry and Henry alone.
The second feast featured the same crowd of parents and children that had been at the previous day's birthday party, except that since it was evening instead of morning, and Easter instead of Stella's birthday, we were free to pop open the wine.
Saturday morning found us at the party for the second birthday for Henry's friend Stella. It's a lot of fun having friends whose kids are around the same age as our own. Indeed, watching toddlers interact is one of the true joys of being alive.
Seeing as how it was bunny weekend and all, there was an egg hunt.
And as the party wound down, the goodbyes got a bit emotional.And that was just Saturday morning. That afternoon, the boyos got a visit from Grandma and Great Aunt Holmes.Can you tell my mom is in total baby heaven here? Yep, she is.Sunday found us at not one, but two feasts, the first of which featured only the children brought by us. This meant that all those pesky eggs had to be handled by Henry and Henry alone.
The second feast featured the same crowd of parents and children that had been at the previous day's birthday party, except that since it was evening instead of morning, and Easter instead of Stella's birthday, we were free to pop open the wine.
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