I've Got Dreams to Remember

If you want to go base, baby, way down into the cerebral cortex, and I'm talkin' pre-caveman brain, just have a kid.

I don't remember my dreams very often, that's Katie's gig. One dream, though, that I've had frequently since Max came on the scene, is about the gorilla. The gorilla always is out to get Max and I've got to f' him up before that happens. Mostly what happens, though, is a lot of gorilla and Baby Daddy avoiding each other. The gorilla never accomplishes much Max damage: he just kind of sulks around the house, which, even in the subconcious, is freaky enough. I kinda run around, half avoiding the gorilla/half thwarting the the gorilla (also the title of my next album) -- as much as you can thwart a gorilla without confronting him, I guess.

I'm sure these dreams have nothing to do with the little ape-person, grunting on the floor right now. Nothing at all.

Feel free to do some dream interpretation in comments.

When You Can't Find the Words: Say it with Bacon

Everytime I go into the Pig Barn at the Fair, man, I have to be honest: my mouth starts to water. All those piggies in there just look so, I don't know. . . flavorful! It just gets my salivary glands rockin'. Perhaps I am sick but, hey, if we don't eat the pigs, they'll just end up running the farm, right?

This weekend, the whole fam-fam was invited (and, yes, Katie will design the invites for your next party or event!) over for a super-spectacular Domingo Gigantico brunch-a-thon. Katie and I tried to say something eloquent to express how much we appreciate how generous and giving our families have been over the last year (keep up the good work, everyone!). They all have busy lives and yet, somehow, Aunts, Uncles, Grandmothers, and Sisters have managed to make time, lots of time, in their schedules for Max. Not only do we have the bestest, cutest baby in the universe, we have a fantastic family as well. Basically, guys, we'd be screwed without you; so, thanks!

We tried to say all this at the party but, I hope, in the end, that the bacon did the talking for us.

He'll Hate Me for Posting this One

Max got his first cold this week. There's no real way to express the absolute dismay and confusion that he was feeling when this picture was taken. Confused, tired, feeling crappy. Somehow, the camera wasn't quite able to capture what his eyes were saying. Underneath it all is a little "thank god mom is here and holding me". Actually, there's a lot of "thank god mom is holding me" in there.

I'll never forget, when I was young, the morning I woke up and couldn't talk. Mom woke me up, asked me how I felt and the first words out my mouth were going to be, "I feel okay, I guess." However, when I started to say that, and I heard my voice squeak and felt the pain in my throat, it became: "Mommy! I can't talk!" Lemme tellya: if Ferris Bueller had tried that one, he would've been "home" for a week, no prob.

Ol' Max, he woke up an hour after going to bed when he noticed that his schnoz was plugged with goo and it doesn't work when it's plugged with goo. I can't imagine the feeling of your body suddenly rebelling (a little) after working so well for seven months. He got up, his Mom held him, he whimpered his sad, tired, hurting-and-I-don't-know-why heart out. He fell asleep, eventually, and figured out that the mouth functions for O2 intake as well as the nose.

Auntie Allie's Flavor Factory

Here we have Max in full second-lunch, Bumbo glory with Auntie Allie. Allison is of the mind that we are speaking too much Max tongue in our house. Katie and I kind of follow Max's lead when it comes to communicating. What that means is that, for the most part, it's less like "Gosford Park" and more like the opening from "2001: A Space Odyssey" around these here parts.

Allie thinks we need to speak less "monkey" to Max so, what you see, is Allison trying to undo all the damage that we've done so far. I think Max would pick up flavors and their differences faster if he didn't expend so much energy from the knees down.

It Runs in the Family

Last night, lovely, was our 2nd wedding anniversary. Our super-duper friends, Tan and Ann Marie (who, if they would get a website for their architectural and design firm, I would link to it a thousand times) came over and sat while Max slept. Katie and I went out to an old haunt for a snackie and a drinkie. It was nice.

After our late dinner, Katie wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. The area around the bar were we went has, like every other neighborhood in the Twin Cities, gone through a condo-ification with an extra dash of hip-ification for an already mega-hip neighborhood. Right down the street, we discovered that Max gets his happy grunting and table-smacking gene from his Mom. How do we know? 'Cause when we walked past this store, Katie softly pounded against the window and grunting with lustful hunger. I have to admit: the little baby mannequin wearing shoes with the Republican "elephant" logo and a Darth Vader t-shirt made me kind of grunt, too. Uh-huh-huh-huh-uh-huh: funny!

It's Like Walking on Air!

The Baby's Mama knows a good shoe. Back in the day, when Max was in the early "glint in daddy's eye" stage, we lived in a lovely place, faraway from anything, where there were lots of spectacular people. Some were pragmatists (romantic) and some lived in yurts. One day, a yurt-dweller who had a three-year old, was trying to tell Katie how, really, cheap, early on, kids are. "Babies don't need that much!", she explained.

Or course, this was early on, when my arguements against having a kid consisted entirely of fiscal concerns (this, to mask my actual concerns which were "the-ways-in-which-I-will-screw-the-kid-up" kind). Of course, all the fiscal talk was before we had the boy and, now, as you know, I work three jobs so that we can tote him about in a golden baby seat. Heavy, yes, but quite comfy.

Where was I? Oh, yes: The old, anti-baby me, upon hearing the logic (they're cheap!) of a person who lived in house with a dirt floor, snorted: "Yeah", I said. "But, the issue is not how you feed the kid, it's how you accessorize the kid. See above shoes.

No Real Evidence

Max has begun forming what, I guess, you could describe as a "word". It's a distinctive sound with a beginning and an end and two, for lack of a better term, syllables. It's a seperate sound from all of his goos, gahs, and squeals. This seems to be a sound he's actually conciously making. He says it a lot but, mostly, he reserves it for drifting off before nap-time. It's simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious to listen to him, laying there in his crib, repeating over and over: Ahhnnn-yawn, Ahhhnnn-yawn, Ahhhnnn-yawn, Nan-nan-nan-nan-nan. Then, you think he's fallen alseep. There are moments of silence, the monitor sits there on the armchair quietly hissing. Your shoulders relax and. . . "Ahn-yawn!" One last time.

Katie and I suspect that, possibly, Max is Korean and he just saying, "Hello!"