Our weekend with SuperDada

Hot. So hot. And yet we were outside. What is wrong with us?

Before he leaves on his big sexy adventure, Dada had some work to do in the yard. Because we are like totally his groupies, we joined him outside. There was a chainsaw involved. Isaac wanted to play with it: "That's COOL, Mommy!" "NO, buddy, we don't play with the chainsaw." To soften the blow of chainsaw rejection, I let him play with Dada's unreasonably large socket collection. It is clear that the seriously useful and attractive handyman genes were passed down to this one.








Though I say "play with", a more technically correct description would be "litter the driveway with". Did you know sockets can roll quite easily under the car? Now I do.

When he finished his yardwork, Dada went to the Big Park with us, the one right next to our playgroup meeting place that we only go to every now and then to keep it freshalicious. The Big Park has two play areas and a gross, algae-covered lake that is Isaac's favorite place to be because sometimes there are geese there. Well, not this day, but sometimes.



We played together, getting microwaved under the insistent sunshine. Isaac had it all backwards, going down the stairs and up the slide. We'll work on that.

For the Grandmas. And Liam.

I give you...Jacob being Jacob:




The noise in the background? Cicadas. And I wish to fend off comments about the little painted wooden block in advance. Yes, it is probably giving him splinters or cancer. But he will play with it and its bretheren for hours. That's right, I said HOURS. So, to quote Isaac's newest favorite phrase, "Stop-a you mouf".

Mr. Caterpillar and Miss Hotsling

We are fast becoming bored out of our gourds with this awful heat. We try to get out when it's not ungodly stifling, but we can never stay out all that long because I don't want my baby's death from heat stroke hanging over my head. I try all to engineer all kinds of fancy toddler-entertainment (look, it's a mailbox made out of a shoebox! Let's cut the Einsteins' pictures out of this empty Kix cereal box!). Isaac falls for it for like 10 minutes and then he's bored again, too. I refuse, REFUSE to rescind on the "no TV before dinner" rule. However, I can sense mutiny on the part of the young man who is growing more than a little impatient with me and my lack of things up my sleeve.

So today I broke down and took the boys to the library for the first time since Jacob was born. Isaac and I used to go about once a week -- they have a nice and rowdy kids' section with toys and lots of other toddlers -- in part because our rental house was almost next door. Right before Jacob was born, however, Isaac ran away from me in the library, to the point where I had to ask an observant librarian where he had gone, and this has left me a bit fearful of returning. Bolstered by my new sling purchase and the promise of air-conditioned (and free!) fun, we went.

And it was fine. He stayed with me the whole time like a good monkey, and we found a Wiggles CD to check out as well as a book for Mommy to read while Dada is gone on his uber-trip to the Pacific Northwest.

When we got home, we had a visitor waiting for us on our front door -- this ginormous fuzzy caterpillar.




Isaac was completely taken with how "kee-yute" he was, and I must admit Mr. Caterpillar couldn't have timed his visit any better since we had just read my all-time favorite board book over and over the night before. We did our best not to poke at Mr. Caterpillar, but then Mr. C got this crazy idea to crawl into my pants leg and despite my best efforts to convince Isaac that our fuzzy buddy meant no one any harm, I started screaming like a girl and trying to rip Mr. Caterpillar off before he touched me with his grabby little feet. So thank you, Mr. Caterpillar, for giving us something to look at and while away the minutes till naptime.

Almost immediately after naptime, Dada came home. Despite the heat, we talked him into taking us for a walk down Main Street. I needed my iced black tea and Isaac needed to run around in a circle. Literally, that is what he requested.



I must admit I also wanted to show off my new sling around town. I threw it in the dryer this morning and it shrunk up to a nice and comfy feel. Jacob fits best in it in the "front carry", which takes advantage of his secret desire to become a yoga instructor and also elicited innumerable comments and melty faces from passers-by. I got Dada to take a picture of me and Jacob with our new toy (and me in another Threadless shirt, fittingly, "Geology")



Then we walked around on nearby campus for awhile. Isaac and Dada found an empty basketball court and after they finished chasing each other they laid down together to discuss how certain clouds resembled rabbits.



So we did, in the end, find some fun things to do outside in the summertime in this God-forsaken 90-degree weather. Now let's find some more, shall we?

Boom Boom Boom, Mr. Brown is a wonder... ing how those boys are still asleep

It's a little after midnight here and I'm thinking I should stay awake. Why? Because the fury of the Lord raineth down here on Newark, treating us to a fancy lightshow and enough noise to put an aircraft carrier to shame. The windows are rattling, the lights are flickering... and miraculously all three boys are snoozing in their nice warm beds. Even Sir Fat-n-Fuzzy, who I just put back to sleep not 20 minutes ago.

Today was nice. We started out with playgroup, and even though our good buddies weren't there, Isaac played well with some of the other kids and ran his tail off. Everything would have been perfect had his dumb mother refused to let him take his Toy Story figurines in with us. Mayhem amongst the two- and three-year-olds ensued when we left them unattended for a few seconds. "No, that's MY BUZZ!" said everyone in unison. Poor Isaac -- he even tried asking nicely to an awful bigger boy to give him back his Buzz Lightyear. He sobbed at this heartless child, "Please! Please! Please! Please, that's my Buzz!" It was heartbreaking enough to stir the assailant's flap-jaw-ing mother out of her gossipping reverie and over to FINALLY help my poor son. Jeez. Well, that whole episode doesn't sound very nice, but it really only lasted a few minutes, and then we all shared cupcakes in honor of one little guy's birthday.

The really exciting thing was that my Hotsling arrived. It is rad. I can even carry Isaac in it, which I think did his little heart some good. Jacob is getting a lot of unexpected attention lately what with his new solid-food intake, and Isaac turns visibly green each time I have to feed the smallest O'Neal. You could tell he was feeling pretty special to have a new place of supported honor atop Mommy's hip:


Sorry the picture is so blurry -- I'll get Dada to take some better pictures with each boy before he leaves town.

I am a hard-core Bjorn-ophile, so this sling business will take some getting used to. I think it's a little big for me right now, as it fits looser than the manual suggests it should. This is likely fixable with a trip through the washer and dryer, but in the meantime I test-drove it around the neighborhood this evening with Jacob in it this evening wherein he was happy, chewing on his plump toe-nuggets the whole time, and I was happy, yammering away on my cell phone with one hand and slurping down a Coke from Mickey Ds with the other. And no decreased circulation in his upper limbs! Hands-free parenting at its best.

The second addition to the mommy-uniform collection

I give you..."Alphabet Zoo". Because "N" is for Narwhal.


Isaac hearts this shirt. He is convinced that "J" for Jackal is a wolf and argues with me when I tell him otherwise. We play "what's that?" with this shirt over and over, even with the obvious animals and the ones I know he knows.

Again, from Threadless. My credit card seems to leak when exposed to their website. And you may have guessed that they give me a little in store credit when I give them a picture of myself wearing one of their t-shirts. They also give me store credit when somebody follows a link to their store from my website and buys something, which an unknown somebody did this morning (and made me feel very, very special and popular). So, if the spirit should move your mouse towards their killer funky shirts (and the girly t-shirts are sweatshop free!), try to intervene and....
CLICK HERE FIRST.

A little hole in the middle there for Mommy

Off to join them! Blog you later.

Bananas

Mashed, with boobie juice. Bon appetit!

When Mommy gets a new camera, everybody wins

Especially the credit card company. And you! You, dear readers, who I know would much rather look at pictures of my foxy young men than listen to me ramble on about sleep disorder this or hissy-fit that.

Dada, bless him, came home this morning. We didn't expect him back until late late tonight at best or tomorrow morning at worst, so this was a delightful surprise. The poor boy was so tired and needed a late nap to continue breathing, so I took the little people to the park, along with my itsy bitsy camera.

Isaac pushed his brother in the stroller for the first time. He loves pushing the empty stroller, as it used to be when I was carrying Jacob in the Bjorn. I think Isaac was a little weirded out by the extra effort it took to roll it along with His Royal Fatness securely fastened inside.



Isaac kept stopping the stroller for no apparent reason, so it took us forever to get to the park. When we did it was empty and Jacob was happy to chew on his shoulder straps, so Isaac and I got to climb all over the jungle gym together just like the olden days. Good times.







There's Jacob below, trying to decide if he should start fussing or not.



The answer? Why, fuss, of course. Oh well. I took the opportunity of having Isaac occupied for a little to do something I had been meaning to do for some time -- earn my Threadless Street Team points. Oh yeah.

It is here I must confess my new obsession. Dada has joked that I have a "uniform," as almost every day I wear jeans and a tidy t-shirt. My tidy t-shirt collection has shrunk in recent times from various unsightly collisions with blueberries or the nuclear furnace of a dryer in our rental house. With a portion of my meager earnings from my children's book, then, I decided I was entitled to get some more t-shirts.

Enter my new sister-in-law. She walks into my parents' house one day wearing this t-shirt. "Where on earth did you get such an awesome shirt?" I ask. "Why, Threadless Dot Com," she replies. I go there and blow a few bucks on some t-shirts of my own, t-shirts specifically chosen to blow Isaac's mind. Hence, I give you... "Ask Me How I Became a Pirate":



My pirate t-shirt is a huge hit with AnthonyCarlos.

And then I posed my children on a splintering picnic table so as to get them in the same picture at the same time, since it has been a great while:



Eventually other toddlers came about and Isaac played happily and, for the most part, graciously with them until the mosquitoes started eating everyone for a late dinner. Note to self: hang mosquito carcasses on stroller to ward off bites on the baby.

When the Dada's away, the boys will play

Dada was out of town today and we all handled it pretty well. There was stinky Jake getting up at 5:30 to the sound of that silly Dada trying to use his electric razor in the bathroom at such an ungodly hour ... but other than that, everyone was cool. This is mostly because I played Isaac like a fiddle, having previously arranged with AnthonyCarlos's mommy to bring her luscious self and her darling boys to our house for a luxuriously long playdate this morning. All morning long, here's me: "Isaac, we have to do thisandthat because Anthony and Carlos are coming." "OKAY! OKAY!" he replies. Those boys, they all played hard. And when AnthonyCarlos got tired? I force-fed them pancakes so they would stay longer. Mwhu-hahaha.

Here's AnthonyCarlos's mommy (a crazy woman who is 6-1/2 months pregnant -- with a baby girl!) sharing her sunglasses with Isaac:



Everybody, all together.... into the itty-bitty sandbox! And no throwing sand on the grass, either, or you'll get an earful from your respective mother!



After the AnthonyCarlos entourage left the building, there was much napping. Suddenly we found ourselves ready for dinner, followed by a drive (to Starbucks! Cow milky for everyone!). When we got home it was too late to go to the park, so I indulged my little addict in a small dose of Toy Story while his brother joined him on our new basement couch:





Then came bathtime:



Then oh-my-lordy-Jacob-it's-10:30-why-aren't-you-tired-yet time, which I used to play with the settings on the new digital camera Dada bought me as an anniversary present. It has this nifty color-picker, ala Photoshop, where you can choose a color in the scene you wish to snap and highlight that color and make everything else black-and-white. So here's Jakey in his yellow jammies:



I had these grand plans for the evening of making Jacob some homemade baby food out of the apricots we have in the fridge, but now I fear waking him with the blender. Hm. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe I will chicken out and buy some when we go to the grocery store.

Jacob chews

While Big Brother and I watched our movie, I recorded this for fun. Just the Jakester chewing on his hand-me-down chain-link letters. But you do get the full effect of the big blue eyes...

Down on the farm

Somewhere in the last six months, Isaac developed a memory. When we first got to town we hit this local orchard all the time -- it has a great farm store with fresh-picked produce, including some killer peaches and apples, but more importantly it has lots of entertainment for the kiddos, like playstructures, a sandbox, and a mini farm animal petting zoo. They closed down for the winter and opened up again about a month ago.

When we made our first trip of the year to the "farm", as Isaac calls it, it was like he had never been there before. I told him we were going to the orchard to see the goats, who were his very favorite last year, and he looked at me like he knew not of which I spoke. Now that I've jogged his memory, or perhaps created a new one for him, he talks about it every day. "Mommy, let's go to the farm and see the piggy." "Mommy, let's go to the farm and see the Daddy goat." I made the mistake of buying him this gigantor peach lollipop at the farm store that lasted us a week. Dada was horrified and vetoed lollipops for the time being, citing that they are horrific choking hazards. So of course the lollipop that he can no longer have is what he remembers the most: "Mommy, where's my peach wowwy-pop?"

Last Wednesday the weather people lied to us and suggested it would be cooler, so I thought it might be fun to meet at the farm with our buddy Ella, whom we hadn't seen in ages. We went to the farm a lot with Ella in the fall. How quickly things change -- now there is Jacob, now Ella can walk, now Isaac can run.

I will admit I was a little nervous about bringing Isaac to the farm with Ella. In recent months he has really gone out of his way to make sure her precious tush is on the ground more often than not. But his close study of those excellent preschool role models, AnthonyCarlos, has really paid off -- he didn't try to push her once. He even held her hand while we walked in the road. We had a great time before we all started melting from the insane humidity. We got there so early that a farmer recruited our little people to help him feed the goats some apples, which both of them thought was awesome. And of course I took pictures.

Here he is listening to Mommy and NOT entering the chicken yard (though the chickens are busy invading the "people yard"):



Isaac's second favorite farm animal, the gigantic stinking momma pig, who enjoys wallowing in her algae pit:



The farm has this elaborate catwalk for the goats, and some food cups attached to manually-operated conveyor belts along the way. Here is Isaac sending up some apple pieces for Daddy goat's enjoyment:



For the first time, Ella got to enjoy the farm's play structures, too. She was pretty stoked to have Isaac show her the ropes.





Why mommies have two legs:



Ella's mommy's account of our adventure can be found here.

Deja vu

Isaac at 5 months:

Jacob at 5 months

Jacob turned 5 months old this past Wednesday. Five months, people. He makes me feel like I'm living in some sort of time warp. Everybody always tells you how "it goes so fast". As always, Everybody is right.

There is no longer any vestige of blob-hood remaining in my Jacob. What we see before us know every day is a wiggling, giggling, baby version of Godzilla. In the last month he outgrew his infant car seat; now he has outgrown the Bjorn. I put him in it and we look like circus freaks because his feet stop just short of my knees. That, nor his girth, wouldn't stop me from carrying him around. What does give me pause is that his torso is so long that the Bjorn cuts off the circulation in his arms -- he's in it for maybe 5 minutes, kicking and gleeful as can be, when I look down and his little arm-sausages are decidedly purple.

This is causing a bit of a crisis. No more infant carrier car seat, no more Bjorn. The dude can't even crawl yet. We can put him in the stroller, but he dislikes it when it stops moving, and that also gives us nowhere for Isaac to sit should he tire. I thought about buying a double stroller, but all the ones I looked at were either too heavy, too big to fit through a door, or way too expensive for my taste. So I did what any hippie mom would do and bought a HotSling. It gets here sometime next week and if it doesn't solve all my problems, well, at least it will look, as the name suggests, Hot.

So when he's not being toted around in his Bjorn-tourniquet, Jacob is up to no good these days. He spends every waking moment practicing his grabbing.


What does he want to grab? Not his toys, no sir. Only things that will bring the mess and the pain. Mostly your coffee cup (especially if it's full), your fork, plate, salad greens, bowls full of chicken noodle soup, and especially Big Brother's toys. You can imagine the brother-on-brother smackdowns that ensue. "Don't hit your brother." "If you take a toy away from Jakey, you have to find him another one." Poor big brother. We are giving a lot of timeouts here.

Barring any toy infractions committed by either party, Jacob and Isaac do play well next to each other. We spend a lot of time on the floor in Isaac's room.


Note how Jacob is sitting up here. I put him that way, and he is pretty good at staying there by himself for at least a minute before his attention is called elsewhere by something that is clearly in need of a good coat of slobber. His favorite position now, though, is being on his belly. He is an excellent scooter and can rotate a full 360 degrees on his belly in under two minutes. From his belly today, I saw him get on all fours for the first time:


No signs that he's doing that with any intent to crawl yet, but I'm sure we're well on our way now.

I also gave him his first solid food today -- rice cereal with breast milk. I think he was ready. The lunging for the spoon really gave him away.



This was also the month wherein Dada became an interesting creature. No longer is there unstoppable whining when I must pass Jacob off to Dada. Whenever Dada enters the room (as caught on the video clip), he almost always gets a smile from Jacob. It is so lovely to see that both children are now receptive to their Dada. And that's not just because I can suddenly take a shower without a screaming baby in the room.

Practice

Dada is gearing up for a two-week long trip to the Cascades soon, wherein he will leave the boys and I all by our lonesomes. We'll be alone for a week, and then my parents are coming for the other week to help out and smother those grandboys with some smooches.

Before today the longest stretch I had gone by myself, looking after both Jacob and Isaac, was one full dawn-till-dusk day. I think Dada is trying to give me some practice runs before the big one. Last night he left for the beach just before bedtime and he won't be back until tomorrow afternoon. That makes over 40 solid hours of Claire vs. The Boys. Next week, he's leaving early Monday morning for the Delmarva barrier islands and may not be back until sometime Wednesday.

I make it sound long, but in many ways looking after the boys is even a little easier with Dada gone. I don't have to worry about making dinner. If chores get done around the house, it is purely a bonus. We can go where we want, when we want, and have carte blanche to spend all his hard-earned money for entertainment purposes because he gets reimbursed for what he spends. Also -- and I mean this in the least passive-aggressive way possible -- without Dada around, there is no confusion or mommy frustration about what Dada could be doing to help with the boys. There is no inner mommy voice wondering "why can't you change Isaac's diaper?" or "would it kill you to give ONE boy a bath?" There is only me. I have to do it all, and really, there is a great deal of accomplishment and satisfaction in that.

This is certainly not to say that we would be better off without Dada, no siree. We like our Dada, and we can't wait for him to come home. It is heaven on earth when we are all together. He helps a ton by playing with the boys so I can do dishes or read my online news, and he takes Isaac off my hands for an hour and a half each night so I can get some quality Jacob-only time. He watches them so much when he's home that I really expected doing it myself would be a hardship. I'm pleasantly surprised that it's not as hard as I thought it would be.

We also did what we could to make today pass quickly. We went to the movies this morning with Anthony, Carlos, and their mommy, where we saw Wallace and Grommit for free. Isaac, my future film school valedictorian, was in heaven. The look of sheer bliss that crossed his face upon entering a movie theater for the first time was almost indescribable. I was a little weirded out -- since Isaac was born, Dada and I have seen, oh, five movies at the theater. Here I was, at the theater (where I haven't been since Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), without Dada, but with my two children. It was a tad surreal -- "wait, you mean my boy is old enough to go to the movies? When did this happen? And when can we do it again?"

Anthony and Carlos's mommy then invited us back to their house for hot dogs, and the boys played together until almost 2, at which point Isaac didn't even argue with me when I suggested we should go home and take a nap. Isaac AND Jacob slept until almost 6. Even the mommy got in on some of that action.

For dinner? French toast, made from the homemade bread I created in my new bread machine, gifted to us from Dada's parents for our anniversary this Friday (thanks, guys!!). Have you ever had French toast made from fresh bread? Even Isaac, French toast fanatic, was particularly quick in gobbling his up.

So yeah, it wasn't too bad at all. It would have been nice to join Dada on the beach again, but with the insane heat and a forecast of thunderstorms, it wasn't meant to be. Oh well. I'm feeling pretty good about what we've accomplished here today.

A picnic in the park

Friday morning my good buddy, Anthony and Carlos's mommy, called to ask if we wanted to meet at the local state park for a little outdoor powwow and picnic lunch. I believe my response included the phrases "heck yeah" and "if it gets me away from this husband of mine with his infernal front-door sanding".

I love, Love, LOVE it when Isaac plays with Anthony (4-1/2) and Carlos (2-1/2), otherwise collectively referred to as "AnthonyCarlos" or "CarlosAnthony". They are older. They are bigger. Hence, Isaac the Pusher Man takes a backseat to Isaac the Fantastically Behaved Doll Boy. Anthony and Carlos are so sweet to him, taking his hand to show him stuff; Isaac is so interested in them because they are bigger and thus he feels should be taking notes on everything they do.

For example: we went for a "hike in the woods" (read: walk along a trail that skims 5 feet away from a manicured expanse of grass, a trail so smooth I could drive Jacob in his stroller on it). There were bugs. Isaac has learned from those stupid Little Einsteins, and a personal and unfriendly encounter with a dying queen hornet, to be mortally afraid of bugs and spiders. Anthony and Carlos love bugs. They pull Isaac over to look at bugs, squatting around and poking gently in their little-boy way. What does Isaac do? He squats alongside them and asks questions of them and pokes in turn, as if he were looking at cupcakes and lollipops and not big shiny beetles or daddy-long-legs. It's like night and day. And it is just delicious to watch.

After our "hike" we played together on the playground. Barefoot, because that's how AnthonyCarlos hang.



That's Anthony disappearing into the tunnel:



Isaac loves the bridges:



Carlos after a slide:



The other great thing about Anthony and Carlos is that Anthony and Carlos's mommy is not only cool, but knows all the cool things going on around town. She let us in on a little Newarkian secret -- there's a movie theater that, once a week, before they open their doors to show real movies, shows a kid movie...for FREE. We are so there this week, and of course we're meeting AnthonyCarlos.

Dada's front door

Was it last week or the week before that he started? I don't remember anymore. It was The DIY Project That Would Never End, and it was almost the end of Dada. If I had to hear "I think I'll go sand the door for another hour", I may have kicked his butt.

The paint on the decorative woodwork around the front door was peeling, and Dada said it had to be stripped and repainted or the wood would not do well through this winter. Instead of going out and buying new trim, Dada insisted on keeping the original and sanded and stripped and sanded again and power-washed and stripped and sanded and goodness, boy, will you just paint it already? Apparently the previous owners had painted over the original paint with some really crappy stuff that wouldn't come off, except in peeling form or whathaveyou, and they had also gotten some of their stupid paint on the brick.



Now it is all off, and Dada's super-deluxe outdoor blinding whiteness is on. It is so bright it looks like plastic.



Another mini-project within this project is the new porch facade. Dada tiled over the blase concrete with sandstone, which is a little hard to see from this angle, but it looks so gussied up and sexy. He plans to similarly tile the sidewalk next, because he is a crazy person.

Outside! Outside!

We have a low patch of ground in our backyard that is permanently wet and it is a serious mosquito breeding ground right now. Isaac was eaten alive in the sandbox the other night. Apparently his blood is like mosquito ambrosia. No bites for Jacob or myself, but tons for Isaac, all over his arms, legs, even behind his ear, poor guy.


We picked up some 1% hydrocortisone the other day for his poison ivy (!), and that seems to be working for him quite nicely. I must say this "summer" business out here really sucks compared to Seattle. Did you know there is no poison anything that grows there? Or that there are NO bugs? Oh, the life. Well, they do have a bit of a hippie problem, but you gotta take the good with the bad.

For a little bit this morning it was not sweltering, and Dada suggested we take advantage of the weather to reprise our sandbox adventures. Our backyard is nice and shady in the mornings, which the bugs didn't seem to like as much. I think we all survived an hour outside without a single new bite. Score! And I borrowed Dada's digital SLR when he wasn't looking to take some droolingly awesome pictures.







The many jowls faces of Jacob:









We had a pretty fun day today. Dada took it easy on the home-improvement trip, so we got to spend a bunch of time together. After we made pancakes for lunch, we all went for a stroll on Main St. to grab some Starbucks and check out this toy store disguised as a homeschooler's supply depot. Back at home, Isaac easily fell asleep and Jacob and I eventually joined him for a long, tasty nap. Then Dada insisted on Applebee's for dinner, and we braved our very first experience dining out since we moved on from Jacob's infant carrier/car seat. It was a bit of eating with a bit of wrasslin' thrown in, you know, in case anyone got bored. Then I took the boys to the park and we met another family with a boy 6 days younger than Isaac (but a little bigger, so there was no pushing!) and they shared their toys like pros and chased each other all over the park until they were both exhausted and sweaty.

I know some people may disagree, but to me, when you're able to truly say that you spent the majority of the day outside ... now THAT is a good day.