In a Nutshell

Amidst the total toy hedonism of Christmas. .
Max: "Woooaahh! Look what I got!"

Miles: "Goddammit, I want that!!"

Mmmmm. I can't wait 'til next year!

He Hates This Foam!

One of the ka-billion gifts the boys got this Christmas past was a kooky kidz shaving kit. It comes replete with a lil' plastic razor (with, I dunno, like, 5 blades), a lil' mirror, a lil' shaving cream brush and, or course, a 'lil can of shaving cream.

I love this set mostly because of the totally anomalous shaving cream brush. I mean, really, when's the last time you saw anyone outside of Deadwood or the last scene from The Godfather use a shaving cream brush? It's like giving the kid a "Daddy's lil' Communicator" kit and including a telegraph with the computer, the iPhone and the Twitter account. Nonetheless, I love it because it's some weird attempt to embrace the idea of shaving and, somehow, a brush is still part of that. I can remember finding a really nice shaving cream brush in a medicine cabinet at my Grandma's house. It was a brush that had belonged to my grandfather, she told me, that had then been used by my Uncle. For a few days, this shaving cream brush was an icon of manhood to this hairless teenage-ed dork. Now Max has a plastic one.

The most disturbing part of the kit is the foam. It's actually a very, very foamy soap that puffs up really big, stays foamy forever, fumes a very scary smell of "blue" which also affects my breathing and gives me long, dull headaches. Max, however, can eat handfuls without any obvious side effects. Miles, obviously, has his own issues with the stuff.

Tiny Bubbles

A few baths ago, Max squirted a fair amount of his bath soap into the tub just to be a jerk. Out of curiosity and some, long-dormant memory of bubbles; how they are fun and how you make them, I started in with some vigorous agitation of the water. Lo and behold: there were bubbles.

The repercussions of the bubble miracle are two-fold: 1. Max is totally pumped about bath time and no longer requires coercion to get into the damn tub and 2. He thinks I'm sort of bubble-creating god. Also, I guess, I've discovered that bubbles are fun.

Max and Miles seem to have discovered that, not only are they fun, they're tasty!

The Means of Production

As I've indicated before 'round these parts, shoveling is activity with a high rate of return and minimal risk: you push the snow, the sidewalk is clean. Back in the day, I remember being pretty psyched that I could help my Dad do anything. If you can walk and have enough strength to push a shovel, you're pretty much a shoveler.

On a slightly related note, I'm now sort of a cheater: we got a snow blower. Well, more accurately, we were gifted a snow blower by the super-dope G-man and Karen from the lake country. And, really, may god bless them. Tonight, not only did they facilitate a quick and mighty 2-cycle cleansing of our driveway, they also made a cool "Dad moment" happen.

I got home from work and we got the boys into bed. Lately, Max has been a pretty active little boy after lights out. So tonight there was some deal-making regarding activities and television viewing predicated on his staying in bed tonight. He seemed to get the message so I suited up and started in with the snow-hate. After a few passes, admiring the long arc of snow spraying out of the chute and the snow mist enveloping everything, I noticed I had an admirer: there, in his window, was the little Max face.

I can remember watching my Dad blowing snow and being pretty amazed by the guy out there, in the cold, wrangling some machine into tossing snow into the air. So there was Max, standing at his window, sneaking a fascinated look at his Dad with some crazy machine in the dark, snow flying everywhere in the street light-lit night.

I just hope it appeared appealing enough that it'll be him out there in a few years. I've got Scotch that needs drinkin'.

Smokestack Lightnin'

A "Is Your Kid Cool?" Test:

Walk up to your kid. Ask him, "Hey, where's the devil's haircut?" If he answers "In my miiiind!" in a very gravelly, raspy voice, yup, he's cool. Pretty cool.

Does your kid suddenly get up, turn off the TV and announce, "I want to dance!"? Ok, that's fine. Your kid might be cool. But to what musical stylings does care to shake his booty? (This is important.)

"Ok," freaked out enough just by the fact that he's turned off the TV, "What should we dance to?"

"Howlin' Wolfin'!!"

"Damn, kid! You are cool."

Once you child has mastered this, he will attain cool.

Clinkies!

Our homeboy, Gary, from the Haus of Tacos, is a wonderful, embittered soul who knows that joy in life derives from friends and drinking with those friends. At his happiest, pouring something wonderful for everyone to share over something amazing to eat, he raises his glass to you and gives a gleeful, "Clinkies!" This never, I'm not kidding, gets old.

I think it might've been last New Year's Eve at Gary and Margot's when Max first became cognizant of "Clinkies!". We've spent the last year "Clinkies!"-ing our share or juice glasses, milk glasses and water glasses.

Miles, a wee, smart cookie himself, knows fun when he sees it.

So, yo, to all our super-spectacular friends and to our totally awesome fam-dam-alies: CLINKIES!

The Greatest Place on Earth will Only Break Your Heart

Some people are into Tikal, others, are Machu Picchu-types. For Max, his Taj Mahal (currently) is Choo-Choo Bob's. Not only do they have every train you could ever imagine for kids of all ages and multiple tables filled with tracks and trains where kids can just come to, uh, you know, play and a super-liberal policy about said kids playing with every damn thing in site. Except for that 300 hundred dollar O scale engine! Max! Max! MAX!

On top of all that, they also have a room where train addicted children and their enabling parents can have birthday parties. Tonight, Max's homeboy, Remy, had his fifth birthday party at this train-centric wonderland. Pizza and cake were provided, however, the only sustenance Max needed was quality time with trains, trains, Thomas the Train and some more trains.

After a few bites of cake and some more trains, it was time to go:

"Max, let's go."

Max runs off, "Noooooooooooo!"

We dress Max while he's distracted by a train and he's only crying a little.Getting out to the car was a full-on, leg-flailing, screaming mass of toddler.

As we drove away, Katie and I stifled laughs as Max called out to Choo-Choo Bob's: "Noooooooooooo! Choo-Choo Booooob's!! I want to stay with youuuuuuu! I want to stay with you, Choo-Choo Booooooob's!!!!! NooooooooooOOOOOOoooo!"

By the time we got home, it wasn't entirely clear that Max wanted to go back to Bob's, scarred as he was by their separation. When offered a party at Bob's, he declined, probably thinking that he didn't want to enjoy Bob's again, only to wrenched from train heaven. So, to Remy, we say Happy Birthday and thanks for traumatizing our kid!

Here's Max, at the easel, wearing his Brother's pants, pondering how best to express his pain.

Coca-Cola, The Gateway Drug

This counts as a Thanksgiving recap.

Cousin James walks into Grandma Kay's den. I'm not sure what James was doing in there, but he walks into the den. Recounting the story later, he spoke of walking into the slightly gloomy room and not quite feeling alone. Before his eyes could adjust to the light, he heard the sound of liquid being chugged. James is a currently a college student, so, really, his credentials as an identifier of chugging sounds are pretty much unimpugnable. His eyes adjust to the dark and James is able to match up an image to the sound: Max, head tipped back, emptying a can of Coke into his gullet.

"Max, what are doing?"

"Drinking a Coke!"

"Did your Dad say you could have that Coke?"

"Yeah!" (Lie!) And Max runs off: thump, thump, thump, thump.

A few minutes later, Max was racing around Grandma Kay's house, running through the rooms, waving his hands in the air and screaming happily. Thanksgiving Day-type conversations would pause briefly as this three-foot, blond blur raced through each room. Everyone would give an amazed "Woah" and get back to their discussions of computers/the Vikings/how the heck does this HD conversion box work?.

While we have no visual evidence of the actual event, here's a similar bit of non-Coke fueled madness from earlier this year.

Sometimes the Captions Write Themselves

 Is anyone else freaked out by the fact that Max looks seventeen in this shot? I guess we really have to stop blasting Right Said Fred's "I'm too Sexy" every morning. "Walking the Runway" was just something that Katie got us into as sort of a morning workout. Even after the kids were born, we kept it up. Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate.

And Then He was One

Miles celebrated his first birthday by trying to eat sweet potatoes with a 9/16ths wrench. This is my confirmation that my second boy is wise beyond his year. Obviously, he has noticed that his parents drive Volvos, old Volvos. And, in his own subtle way, is is trying to create a metaphor about the pointlessness of having tools near old Volvos. He's seen the futility of using these wrenches around the cars enough times to show me that, here, you might as well try to eat pureed tubers with one.