Quality Family Time

Posted on January 6, 2008 by Natalie

One of those days right around Christmas, Steve decided it would be a good idea to engage both of our children in the task of making bread. Yes, really. He has been doing this more and more lately – suggesting activities out loud, in front of the kids that he knows have a success rate hovering somewhere in the single digits. And when I say ‘success’ I don’t mean that the project reaches full completion, but that any of it gets completed without one or both children or parents experiencing complete emotional breakdown. He did it again this week, when he suggested that we do finger painting. Indoors. With both children. He might as well have just opened the knife drawer and told them to go for it. I also find it quite odd that it is he – the one with the irrational fear of messes – who suggests these activities. I can only imagine that it is akin to throwing someone out of a plane to cure their fear of heights.

After suggesting the whole finger painting ~~fiasco~~ activity, I told him it would require that I had a cocktail in my hand. That day, happy hour began at 3:00pm. Steve was mopping the floor within the first 15 minutes. He was rocking in the corner within 30.

The bread making digressed not so much because of the floury mess that was created, but rather due to the volatile nature of the participants. If you lean in close, you can hear the anguished cries of Porter’s protest from pretty much the first moment he joins in the process.

(click photo to see the entire set)

Porter: The Cute vs The Angry

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Natalie

Hey McGoo,

Big surprise, but I managed to miss my arbitrarily set, semi-regular post wherein I tell you how adorably cute you are and relate my amazement at how you can elevate angry to a level not commonly found in nature. Otherwise known as The Cute and The Angry, respectively. So instead of me telling you about The Cute and The Angry at 18 months, I will be doing it at 20 months. And later, when you are relating to your therapist how you can only find your happy place by hiding under your desk at work, you’ll think back to this moment and know why.

In our household, your 18-month birthday meant one thing: cheaper child care. Meaning that, instead of going obscenely over-budget every month, now we can just go grossly over-budget. Although the day-spa we send you to really does a very nice job of fanning you with palm fronds and catering to your infinitely short fuse, I still find it somewhat depressing that our monthly child-care costs rival the GDP of a medium-sized country. I guess this is nature’s way of preparing us for the high-priced, private college tuition you will be draining from our account in about 16 and a half years.

Aside from becoming less expensive, you actually have been showing us signs that maybe, perhaps, OH GOD PLEASE, your actual communication skills might be developing enough to begin diffusing The Angry. Don’t get me wrong, there is so much more to you than The Angry. But buddy, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the reality is that you have gotten quite a reputation for using tantrum-theory as your go-to method for conflict resolution. Generally speaking, The Angry results from one of the following two scenarios: 1) You don’t get what you want, 2) No one will make the air stop touching you. Both are equally explosive, and both take a significant amount of diversionary tactics and bribery to diffuse.

Let’s take for example yesterday, when I had to endure an endless barrage of The Angry because I would not give you some of my coffee, and in an attempt at reconciliation, offered you some trailmix instead, only to be yelled at all over again because I wouldn’t let you carry the entire bag around the house with you. This is my life. My life where I do things like cut the crust off sandwiches and bribe you with candy. The kinds of things that, in another life, I would have judged with all the harshness of a person who hadn’t had her will broken by a toddler. Wait, make that a toddler and his smarter-than-her-own-good older sister.

Because of your intense desire to do EXACTLY what your sister does, we have had the volume of our lives cranked up to 15. On a dial that only goes to 10. The simplest of issues – without fail – digress with a true grace and elegance. Which is none. We have pretty much given up trying to make you drink from a cup with a lid. It usually works fine for a little while, but eventually you are guaranteed to get distracted or lazy and eventually drench yourself and your surrounding area with milk, or juice, or whatever other consumable you have convinced us to give you. You won’t sit in a booster seat, high chair or any other appropriate height accommodation unit. Instead, you stand. You stand in the bathtub, you stand at the kitchen bar, you stand at the dining room table. Little did I know that when I requested your father construct us a dining room table with benches, I was, personally, sealing my own fate. Dinner in our household consists of all four of us sitting on one side of the table with you pacing up and down the length of the bench, stepping over and on us whenever you decide you want to pick off someone else’s plate. And, usually you are doing it all shirtless because I can’t get you to wear a bib, and it is easier to clean spaghetti sauce off skin than it is to clean it off a beige polo shirt.

But no matter how much of The Angry you unleash, I can now say the following words: We, as a household, are sleeping. All night. Almost every night. It is a beautiful thing. I am sorry there hasn’t been more fanfare, more ticker-tape, more tequila-themed celebratory dinners, but it is one of those things you don’t want to say out loud, lest you permanently jinx it forever. And this Coke machine, it rocked. Sleeeeeep. No Sleep. Sleeeeep, No Sleep. Then, there was a week, and another, where I would dare to go to bed at the scandalously late hour of, say, TEN O’CLOCK gambling that you wouldn’t be up 3 more times throughout the night.

And it gets better. Better than sleep, you say? Oh yes, better. In the last month or so you have begun communicating with real, live actual words. The kind that the rest of us use. The sweet beautfil words that will form the bridge between The Angry and The Cute. And more and more come every day. Enough, that I have a blindingly optimistic hope that The Cute will become the over-riding theme for all posts to come. And rainbows and unicorns will be the new theme of this site. And all my words both in print and in real life will be shades of pink and purple. And the glorious harmony will reign supreme! Ahem.

To any outsider, it may not seem much. The gist of our conversations with you consist of you saying something that we can vaguely understand, us repeating back what we think you want, with you giving us an affirmative “Yeahuh” or the usual “NOOOOOOOOOO!” For example, last night at dinner there was this exchange:

You (screaming): “NOOOOOOOOOO!”
Your father: “Porter, would you like more milk?”
You (screaming subsiding): “Yeahuh”
Your father: “In this cup?”
You (calmly replying): “Yeahuh”
Your father: “Are you going to spill this one too?”
You: “Yeahuh”

See? Not much. But to know where we are coming from, it is like witty repartee amongst friends. You are at a place now where we can get you to attempt a repeat of just about any word we ask, and I have even gotten you saying “yeesssssh” instead of “Yeahuh” to everything. It is such clear and tangible progress, and something that is helping me on those days when I worry that instead of making the “Bring on the Cute” t-shirts, I will be needing to commission a “Save me from The Angry” tattoo.

I took a couple of video clips showcasing some of your cooler tricks of late, because really, with you, it is all about The Cute.

Anatomy Lesson

Zoology Practical

Barbershop

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Natalie

I managed to procrastinate Porter’s first haircut long enough for his mullet to reach it’s full Trans-Am-driving-Scorps-listening-leather-moccasin-boot-wearing maturity. And although his father would be ever so proud for this to be his lifetime achievement, I knew it was time. And can I say that men and haircuts? Are you kidding me? It is like nothing I have ever witnessed in my life. There is no complimentary beverage. There is no pile of Glamour Magazines. There are no shampoo basins, or endless wall of product. There is no long and convoluted description of that haircut you saw last week on that one show, where you want it, but longer, and blonde. Un-uh. No, you are asked a simple question: Boy’s haircut? As I glanced around this place with it’s wall-to-wall taxidermy museum, and webbed lawn chairs, and the man in the opposite chair having hair VACUUMED FROM HIS SHIRT, and the gigantic lettering that reads ‘Haircut: $12’, I realize that this is the anti-salon. This is like if you took a salon and tent-bombed it with testosterone. Then decorated it straight out of 1961. And left it that way. Forever.

Little surprise when Porter left there with his hair smelling like Old Spice and looking like Dennis the Menace.

(click photo to see full set)

Personal Ad

Posted on October 16, 2007 by Natalie

Single White Toddler Male seeking companion who doesn’t need much sleep. Must enjoy being ordered around, and be physically capable of carrying 25-27 pounds for extended periods of time. Must be tolerant of miscellaneous dependency issues such as (but not limited to), security blanket, thumb-sucking, and a mild-to-moderate dry cereal and granola bar addiction. Although I am both height challenged and lacking in fine motor skills I refuse to employ the use of any sort of high chair, booster seat or tippy cup. Other quirky habits include refusing to sit down in the bathtub, eating things I find on the ground, playing in toilets and throwing up without warning (although I do this much less these days). I am totally into horses, although I refuse to actually touch one – however, I will require that you haul me out to the fence numerous times throughout the day and stand there while I look at them. I have been told that I am a really good dancer, and I am able to run really really fast – usually when no one is looking, and usually towards places I have no business being. I am wicked cute, but do have some anger issues. And watch out, because I have 16 teeth and I am not afraid to use them. Oh, and I can identify all the major parts on my body, just be careful when you ask me to identify your eye, because I will probably jab my finger in it. There will probably be some language barriers, but I do know all the animal sounds and can easily identify my Mama and Dada. For everything else, I will just point and yell. And when that doesn’t work, I will use my chubby little fingers to grab your hand and drag you where I need you to go.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, look no further because I’m your man.

The Maker of Mayhem

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Natalie

At his 15-month check-up, we found that the fluid behind Porter’s ear drums still hasn’t cleared out. This, coupled with the fact that he is still yelling at us in some unintelligible Eastern European dialect meant we were directed by the pediatrician to take him to an audiologist and ear-nose-throat specialist. After a string of hearing tests and some poking and prodding, it was determined that he would need tubes. As the ear-nose-throat doc so scientifically put it: “Once that fluid sits in the ears for a while, it turns into Jell-O; we call it glue ear, because once it’s there, there ain’t no getting rid of it without forcibly removing it.” I could tell from his explanation of the procedure that he has done it no less than a gazillion times. I don’t know if it is because every child in Humboldt County has “glue ear” or if it is because we found the most popular doctor in the area, but we couldn’t even get in for the procedure for 4 weeks.

Both the audiologist and the ENT indicated that although both ears have fluid, the left one is definitely the worst, and where he is experiencing the most hearing loss. Given this knowledge, we are now known to talk loudly and slowly as though he were 80, and use insanely crude and ridiculous sign language. We are also getting used to saying catchy things to each other like, “Make sure you are talking into his good ear.” Our sensitive and nurturing tendencies shining through, as always.

We are confident this will be a fairly routine procedure, and are looking forward to having his hearing back at full speed so that he may actually begin using speech and language and quit barking at us like an angry, pint-sized dictator. Who can’t speak English. And has no patience. And throws things.

What he lacks in speech and hearing, he is making up for in physical activity and his iron-willed determination to get his way. Do not leave this child unattended. Ever, ever under any circumstances. Ever. I realized – a little bit too late – that I needed to be photographing all of the various and sundry predicaments he gets himself into these days. Missed, were the photos of him disassembling, climbing into and frolicking in the ashes of the free-standing fire pit. Or the photos of him eating handfuls of catfood. Or the photos of him “typing” on the computer (read: banging fists wildly against the keyboard).

As for that last item, it was accomplished because of his new favorite pass-time – climbing onto table-tops. He is wicked fast, and once up to his desired elevation, begins dancing around in sheer delight over his accomplishment.

There are days where I am almost certain his head is going to explode because of his rage feuled tantrums over fairly benign issues. On this particular day, I didn’t have the strength to get into another battle of wills with him over whether or not he could abscond with an entire package of toilet paper. I managed to negotiate him down to a single roll. Of which, he made quick work of shredding:

And if you have the audacity to deprive of utensils at mealtime, you may as well just call CPS right now, because you are obviously THE WORST PARENT EVER:

And this day? This day, all he would eat was cup after cup of frozen berries. I think I managed to cut him off somewhere around his 4th serving. (I can only assume it had something to do with the 4 eye teeth he is getting simultaneously!)

And, all I can say is that when he asks for your sunglasses, you had better damn well give him your sunglasses. (Also know as: the number one reason why I no longer own sunglasses whose replacement cost is over $20 per pair.)