Category Archives: Steve

My really cute, garden-variety nerd of a husband.

The Winged Walstons

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Stella was resolute from the very first moment we asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween: A Beautiful Butterfly. As the pieces of her costume started coming together, however, it became more and more apparent that Beautiful Butterfly had actually metamorphosized into Disco Butterfly. The true turning point came when the thin, pink glitter belt was added. It looked as though she fluttered straight in from a Donna Summer video. As usual, this doesn’t come without some relevant back-story. Of late, Stella has found the wonderfulness that is disco. Her #1 request that she repeatedly implores from the back seat is YMCA. Yes, everyone, my child is hooked on the Village People. Running a very close second is We Are Family, as in – I got all my sisters and me. In both cases she knows the words, and sings them with great gusto. Reason 376 we know, unquestionably, that she is our child.

I took Porter’s non-verbal cues of BEING UP ALL NIGHT that he wished to go as something nocturnal. This, coupled with the fact that he is getting four teeth at once and BITES ON EVERYTHING, made it a no-brainer that he should be a bat. He looked adorable, natch, and (along with his sister) posed for about a zillion photos .

We opted for a loop around the Arcata Plaza again this year, and after witnessing the unsavory types that trick-or-treat our neighborhood, I decided we would invite ourselves over to Dore & Lewis’s house for the remainder of the evening, so as not to have to pass out candy to the taller-than-I-am “kids” that ring our doorbell into the late hours of the night. Plus, that meant we didn’t have any left-over candy that I would surely consume by the fistful.

Little did I know that we would get to see one of the more memorable moments of the evening when Steve, Lewis and Porter all went to the door to hand out candy, as Steve casually remarked that they were dressed up as a gay couple who had just adopted their first baby.

Pretty much, just another Sunday.

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The winner of last night’s sleep-off was Porter – but purely in terms of consecutive sleep hours, which was 8. Nevermind that it was from 7:00pm to 3:00am. From that point on it was just two more hours of fruitless attempts at getting him back to sleep.

Stella’s cumulative sleep time will never be actually known, but from the time the lights were turned out, until the time she was finally granted permission to be “up” at 5:15am (new time) she emerged from her bedroom no less than a dozen times. To be truthful, I don’t know if she ever actually slept at all.

Steve and I probably, each, garnered between four or five hours. There was even one point (at about 3:30 am) when all four of us were up and roaming the house.

As of 7:00am this morning, Porter is already back in bed taking a nap, Stella has watched two Wonder Pets videos, we have listened to the most recent podcast version of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, and Steve has spent the entire morning seranading me with something he created based on the opening riff of Rock Lobster, wherein he spells D-E-N-N-Y-aPOStrophE-S. He even told me that if we all went dressed as we were (me, of course in my pajamas, and going on my second day without a shower), he would buy me a new pair of shoes. I am sorry, but no matter how sleep deprived I am, I am not willing to trade my dignity for a new pair of Danskos.

One of the reasons Steve is so obnoxiously chipper is that today is The Day. A day, to him, better than all gift-giving holidays rolled into one: the return to Standard Time. No, this has nothing to do with what time it gets light, or that he has some strange vendetta against Daylight Savings Time. To a man with the thorough tendencies that he possesses, there is nothing better than the day he is allowed the celestial opportunity to get up and methodically change every single timekeeping device in our possession. I fear, however, that this holiday (yes, in Steve’s world, this is a holiday) is being diluted with the advances of technology. I could hear the crest-fallen tone in his voice as he attempted to change the time on his cell phone only to find that it updates automatically. This is also true with the computers. He hasn’t checked yet, but I think he is a tiny bit concerned that the VW will also have reset itself. This is a car, after all, that will alert you when the temperature drops below 39 degrees so you know to watch out for icy conditions. I wonder if I can program it to get up with my children at night? Ah, but I digress.

So here we are. Again. Me, complaining about the fact that I am this far from standing on the corner holding a sign that says Will Work For Sleep, Steve, celebrating the opportunity to touch all the doorknobs, and my children, reminding us that being a parent – first and foremost – requires an enduring and impenetrable sense of humor.

Oh, and I’ve gotta go, because Porter’s up again.

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Update: So how’s this for irony? After reading this post, Steve informed me that I hadn’t updated the timestamp on my blogging software. See? I’m not kidding, people.
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