Turn Out Like Me! Wait! Don't Turn Out Like Me! Ugh, Just Don't Kill Anyone, Ok?

By her own admission, my Mom was kind of a geek. My Dad? I'm not so sure what he was. He grew up in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota, so I suppose we should be thankful I'm not milking a cow or fixing a thresher rather than typing this. Or not.

Growing up, I don't recall a lot of explicit "We-are-watching/listening to/reading-this because-it-totally-made-me-who-I-am-and-so-now-you-will-shut-up-and-appreciate-and enjoy-this-experience" moments. The Beatles? We had a stereo, a cupboard full of records and a lot of free time. The only reason my mom had Sgt. Pepper's is because my cool uncle made her get it when it came out. "Important album," he told her. I just remember liking the album art, so I played it. Sgt. Pepper's just happened to be right next to my Dad's Dave Brubeck, which was next to his Bill Cosby.

Even with that pedigree of early influences; all that said, the first two albums I ever bought were Kiss's "Rock and Roll Over" (again, cover art!) and Kenny Rodger's "Greatest Hits". I didn't even get into The Blues until, years later, I thought The Blues Brothers was the most ZAZAWESOME movie ever (Thank you, ABC's movie of the week!) and I began digging around.

Being a parent now, though, is weird. I know two kids Max's age who have watched the first three Star Wars movies (anybody who shows their kids the most recent, three pieces of crap should have child services called 'em! Jar-Jar, people, Jar-Jar.) And even I, in an effort to re-create my childhood while simultaneously distracting the boys, have popped in the Looney Tunes DVDs. I had to put them away because, later, Max kept trying to drop our anvil on Miles and, after some suspicious Max-clicking on the computer, all these big-assed boxes were showing up from ACME Inc.

So, while I'm trying to maintain the "organic-ness" of influencing (coughcoughindoctrinatingcoughcough) the boys, I have to say, this recent exchange made me pretty happy/freaked out:

Katie needs some space; the boys have been inside most of the day; energy needs to be burned off; Dad decides some dancing is in order.

"Ok, guys, we're going to shake it to Talking Heads!"

"Oh, Dad, can I put the DVD in?"

"It's a CD, Max, not a DVD."

At this point, Miles wonders aloud, "Why. CD. Daddy?"

"Because a DVD is for watching and a CD is for listening, Miles."

"Why. Listening. Daddy?"

I ignore Miles' inane questions because, seriously, it's time to dance.

Back to Max: "Can I put the CD in?"

"Yep."

"We are listening to Talking Heads?"

The CD is loading.

"Can I listen to the 'run away' song?"

Now, for some reason, the first thing that pops into my head is that he wants to listen to Flock of Seagulls but that's seriously impossible.

"What?"

"Can we dance to the 'run away' song by the Talking Heads?"

"You want to listen 'Psycho Killer' by Talking Heads?"

Max, smiling and sort of bouncing and clapping excitedly, "Yeah! Psycho Killer!"

So we danced our asses off to "Psycho Killer".

If it's any comfort, later that evening, he also sang along with a song about photosynthesis. . . .but then he stabbed a plant.

I Can't Stand it! I Know You Planned it! or This Year's Christmas Card

It's ostensibly Autumn. I'm not sure when this became, like, some national, sub-concious Parenting Law(tm) but, apparently, we're all supposed to take the kids to some sort of apple orchard/petting zoo/pumpkin farm/(Where the F is the bar around here?) country experience. I guess since my falls were spent watching combines and grain trucks crawl across the landscape, it still weirds me out that we have to pay to get a little hay in our hair.

Regardless, the boys and Katie went to the country experience place on the one sunny day we've had since mid-September and had a ye olde grande tyme.

Now, what I really want to talk about here is the annual damn Christmas card. Every year we (coughcoughKatiecoughcough) scour through our JPEGs to find the absolute epitome of the Look! At! Our! Cute! Kids! BTW! Merry! Christmas! picture. Then we get offended when we go over to our friends' houses and our picture isn't prominently placed on their fridge or mantle, preferably with it's own lighting. In my opinion, the best card we ever got was from a friend who snapped a picture with his a kids eating breakfast, smiling all cute, in the foreground and, in the background through the window behind them, there's dad, jumping crazily, kinda out of focus. Staged or not, it looked totally spontaneous and fun and seemed to more about what the last year had been about than posing your kids, oh, say. . . on some pumpkins.

So here's my nomination for this year's Christmas card: 





I want everyone, when they get it, to make a big sign that says: "Apple Tree Attack!" and then put both up on your fridge. Let's end the tyranny of the cute!







Oh, by the way, here's what will be this year's actual card:

That's Right, Hipsters, I've Been Listening to LCD Soundsystem Since Before I was Born

No, you're not going blind. The video is horribly fuzzy.

Now, let's be clear, we do some dancing in this house. For most of Max's life, though, the dancing has been done vicariously through me. . . literally. Mostly, for Max, what it means "to dance" is "I get on dad's shoulders and then sort of bounce around while he dances to Buddy Holly/Elvis/Jonathan Richman/Beck". This combination of two strikes is so brutal, it might as well be three strikes. Not only is the kid not actually dancing, he's got me setting the dancing example.

Counter-balancing all that, though, is Katie's Genealogical Rhythm Advantage(tm). Not only is Katie's mom (Grandma Kay: woot! woot!) a certified, actual, (formerly) professional ballet dancer, there's Katie. And, well, Katie. . . Katie is just one of those people you see in the center of a big circle on the dance floor. Over the sound of the funky drummer, what you hear is everybody in da club letting loose with a slack-jawed, "God-DAMN!" when Katie, mother of two, decides to tear that shit up. It's true: I've seen it. Actually, it happens when she's just walking, too. Even brushing teeth can get pretty boisterous. . . especially when that disco ball drops out of the bathroom ceiling.

So, much like the turtle that returns to the same beach where their egg hatched or a new-born colt begins to trot, Max proves -- thanks to his mom -- he's coded with the "Supah-Funky-Groovy-Tear-it-Up-YO!" gene.

Judging from little brother, Miles might be ok, too.

Booger Pedagogy

The Night Max Finally Wrote the Title to my Children's Book

 I won't bore you with the details; suffice it to say, today's adventures involved a broken stove (in our house), craigslist, an unbroken stove (in someone else's garage), a hundred bucks, two trips to the hardware store and a nervous wife who probably felt like she was getting updates from those fuzzy communiques in the first edition of "Myst": "Honey, I found a new sto. . garbled static . . just need. . . static. . .bungee cords. . . static. . . gas lines don't fit. . . static. . . a few parts. . . static. . hardware store. . . if it works. . .static. . . make Miles a pizza. . . static . . . garage painted red" And we wonder why Katie puts child services on alert when she leaves the boys with me.

Finally, finally, when the stove was installed and the pizza was baking, Max suggested we eat dinner outside in the dark. We made a game of tripping the motion detector on the yard light so Max didn't mix up his soy milk with dad's well-earned beer and Miles passed me star-lit pepperonis from his pizza slices. At the end, when it was bath-time, Max began his traditional whirling dervish chant exulting the night time.

Tonight, though, he pulled a large black, plastic, serving-type spoon out of the sand box, tossed it in the air and proclaimed: "I just made a wish with my wishing spoon!"

Me (pretty much drunk) "What?"

"This, daddy, is my Wishing Spoon!"

"Your Wishing Spoon? Do you have to throw it up in the air to make the wish?"

"Yeah, I throw it up into the air and. . I. . .makeawish!" He punctuates this by, again, throwing the spoon into the night air.

"What did you just wish for?"

Devilishly: "I wished for a tornado!"

"Yeah, that seems like fun in theory, Max. But, really, in practice, it's kind of scary."

"Oh, daddy."

So, folks, look for it at your local bookstore or in the "buy-this-out-of-pity-for-the-author" section of Amazon in a few years: "The Wishing Spoon" by Max's Tired, Drunk Daddy.

Miles Wallace

Freedom!

Oh, and, yes, the broom laying in front of the easel did indeed just get dipped in a big puddle of mixed up paints and then dramatically swiped across the canvas.

Your "Daily" Max Moment

It's been a good summer for Nice Summer Nights. The kind of nights that soon, when he's 15, Max'll stay up late, riding bike; looking at the stars, thinking about a cute girl (or boy), pondering life's meaning; or stealing cars. Those kind of nights.

Anyway, the other evening, post-sunset, Katie pulled into the garage after a dinner at Pop-Pop and Gange's. Max jumped out of the car and proceeded to run around the backyard in large circles, yelling "I like the night-time! I like the night-time! I like the night-time!" over and over again.

It's the Shoes: A Post Not Really About Shoes

I won't post explicitly about the gargantuan collection of fantastically cute shoes that Katie has stashed away for the boys. That would be validation and validation would be taken as implicit approval to spend even more on cute shoes. Let's just say that when Katie implores the boys to eat, it's not really about health or protein or fiber, it's about growing bigger, sooner, to fit into the next size up of shoes that wait, oh so patiently (and cutely) in the closet.

Really, what this post is about, is Miles: Super Baby. Hey, how many times have we seen the kid with the ice cream cone go to lick the scoop on the cone and they lick the scoop right off the cone. There they stand: empty cone in hand, scoop on ground, time machine being built in kid's head to get scoop back on cone? How many times?

You'd think 22 month-old Miles -- Miles "Hey-I'm-not-going-to-walk-'til-I'm-18-months-old-I'll-just-scoot-ok-thanks" Miles -- that Miles, would be a prime candidate for the aforementioned cone/scoop tragedy. So, tonight, at Pumphouse Creamery (We love you, Pumphouse!), not only did Miles NOT need his time machine (he uses that for hunting dinosaurs), he grunted and stretched and contorted his way up onto a bench, holding his cone the whole time and, people! It did not spill. In fact, after twisting and contorting into a sitting position, he nonchalantly lifted the perfect cone to his mouth like it had been in some magic pocket the whole time. . . . or a time machine.

The Torch, um, I mean, The Whisk is Passed

 Now that Max has mastered all things pancake (less the flipping), he's grown bored with the process. Thankfully, Miles has stepped into the role of pancake mixer and all I have to do is slide ingredients at him while I lean on the counter, drinking coffee.

Nothing Even Remotely Cute

Oh. Hello. I was just digging around under the couch for the last of Monday night's popcorn and I found this blog. It seemed familiar, somehow; didn't appear to be edible. So with a shrug and a crack of the knuckles, I decided to write a posty-post on this bloggy-blog-blog.

What really happened (although, the popcorn part is true. I'm always amazed by how tasty it stays!) is I got promoted. Somebody fell off a forklift or got hit by a forklift or something at the giant, non-evil wholesale club and they needed a manager. Stat! At first, the nine or ten or eleven-hour days didn't put too much of a crimp in my blogging lifestyle but, sort of suddenly and unexpectedly, Katie's work schedule also increased significantly.

I bore you with all the details but, for the last month or so, we've pretty much been "Hi/Bye" parents. As in: "Hi, I'm home from work." "The kids are in bed. Bye, I'm going to bed." Katie, who was home more frequently and normally took all the cute pictures that kinda fed the writing, hasn't been around to capture the cute. And our wonderful, free, super-generous babysitters, while dexterous enough to change diapers and microwave Boca burgers, have enough trouble getting the Thomas DVD going without worrying about snapping images for the blog.

So, while I am comfortable half-assing it when it comes to plumbing, running electrical wires and fixing my car, I am uncomfortable half-assing it when it comes to coffee and blogging about my kids. Faced with a choice between pictures and pithy commentary (fully-assed blogging) or just pictures (half-assed), I chose no blogging.

Bad choice.

Once things get back to "normal" or, better, I figure out how to big, sexy blog in the ten, non-catatonic, kid-free minutes I have each day, we'll get back to the insightful, hilarious and touching observations all three of you have come to expect. Until then, enjoy the pictures and the captions!

Dog Whistle

We have to thank Sean, the homeowner and landlord next door. First, for renting his place to Nick and Jen. And, second, for smashing up his front steps and leaving a pile of rubble in his driveway. The detritus of his home improvement project provided Double M Construction and Demolition with close to a half an hour of simultaneous, fight-free play time.

I'm starting to think that Max (and probably Miles) can channel a fair amount of Radar O'Reilly. Instead of helicopters loaded with wounded, these kids can detect concrete being broken and earth being dug from a mile away.

"Daddy, can we go see the excavator?"

"What excavator?"

"The excavator that will be working at the corner of 46th and 15th tomorrow at 2:31pm? I think there might be a concrete mixer there later, too."

"Oh! There's going to be a concrete mixer?! We're totally going!"

Apoca-Lee-lypse

Continuing in our series of "People We Love", we recently had the pleasure of hosting, for one sweet evening, our super-awesome friend, Amanda, who was passing through on a cross-country road trip with her dad (who, admittedly, we may now like more than even the fabulous Amanda).

I had assumed that the boys, having spent most of their lives around their spectacularly beautiful and tantalizingly intelligent mother, would be, at least, politely interested or, at worst, dismissively unimpressed by the amazing Amanda. I pictured something along the lines of: "Oh, hello clever and attractive person. Have you met our equally glorious Mother? She is also quite frequently pithy." Or: "Augh! another hilarious, confident woman?! How many of these are there?!"

I suppose, had I thought about it for two seconds, I'd've seen what was coming. Yep, as has happened to other males throughout history, when exposed to something or someone inexplicable and fascinating, their brains and composure peed promptly into their diapers. Max began by trying to impress Amanda with some Krazy Karate moves. When that didn't work, he spit carrots on her. (That earned an over-my-shoulder-while-Max-screamed trip to his room.) Miles. Well, Miles, to his credit, did try to play it cool. He appeared pretty chill, there, in his high chair. Belying this exterior calmness, however, was the fact that all the food heading towards his face kept missing his mouth. He'd lift a handful of spaghetti, get lost in Amanda's eyes, it would land on his forehead and roll down his cheeks. Though, I do have to say: I've been on dates -- especially early ones with Katie -- when this came off as charming.

As evidenced by the photo, the real trouble started once our guests moved on down road. Miles, in his dismay, began some bizarre ritual of toddler keening and basically ran around the yard dumping everything he could grab into his hair; then smearing it all over his body.

Amanda and her super-cool dad drove off, blissfully unaware of the anguish (and traumatic hair-washing) they left in their wake. They're welcome back anytime, though. Amanda's dad can help me polish my wizened, bemused dad-face and, with enough exposure to Amanda, the boys might be able to get food in their mouths on their first dates.

No Good Neighbors

Except for the guy that lived next door to our first apartment together, this was the guy who'd ask you for a ride to work if, in the morning, you ran into each other in the hallway. He'd then proceed to talk, talk, talk, talk your ear off. . . before you'd had your damned coffee. Eventually I got wise and just waited for him to leave every morning. Yes, I am that sad.

Except for that guy, we've been pretty lucky as far as neighbors go. There were the very stylish guys who collected antiques and were quiet in Pennsylvania; there was the super-hipster who worked as a chemist for Aveda; there was the goof-ball, postman/landlord who liked to get high and had a crazed killer of a giant-assed dog; and there were the sweet, racist couple who took very good care of us in what could've been the very scary mountains of North Carolina.

And then there were Nick and Jen. Nick and Jen who became ersatz baby-sitters on the fly; Nick and Jen who'd happily let the boys come into their yard and give Katie and I ten minutes to catch our breath or mow or paint the kitchen (again); Nick and Jen who were quiet, friendly and treated Max and Miles like favorite nephews. They were the best neighbors in a long line of good neighbors. No matter how many times they came out their back door, they always gave Max a little bit of their time. Let me tell you: that's a lot of "Oh! Hello, Nick!"s/Oh! Hello, Jen!"s. A LOT OF THEM. Of course, now they've up and moved away, off the the wilds of Anchorage, AK.

I'm probably jinxing ourselves in the worst possible way by simply posting this. 'Course, it probably isn't helping that, everytime the Landlord brings prospective, new renters around, we amp the boys up on M & Ms and send them outside, streaked with red marker and fake knives.

To our good friends, Nick and Jen, from all four of us, we give the heartiest of thanks and the best wishes for good luck on their new adventure.

I say No! No! No!

We've previously documented Max's substance abuse issues. Suffice it to say: Miles loves to copy his brother. . . to the extreme. Looks like we're going to have to pony up for another stint in Juice Box Rehab.