Mom was talking to Corwin this morning about Alice’s eye color. We still can’t tell if they’re going to be brown or blue. Corwin’s primary concern was why people can’t have red eyes (red being Corwin’s current favorite color). It’s probably for the best that doesn’t happen or Corwin would be permanently depressd over having brown ones.
Eventually Mom handed off Alice to me while she got ready to run some errands. Alice was a bit cranky as usual so I sat on the couch, bouncing her in the vain hope that she’d mellow out. Charles noticed this and it turned the little wheels in his head — “Alice is crying → Alice is unhappy → Alice needs something to make her happy → Alice needs a car”. Charles went off and returned with one of his toy cars and gave it to me with the explanation “for baby”. Sadly, the car did not suffice to cheer up Alice, so Charles went off to find a truck!
Corwin is becoming quite the shoe hound. He’s been bugging Mom for a couple of weeks about needing a new pair of shoes. He’s bugged us about new shoes before but he was more insistent this time.
So, this evening, due to some car issues I ended up taking the van in to pick up Mom and Alice at the office. Mom decided that it would be best to go out for pizza. As it turns out, our pizza place is right next to the children’s shoe store. Corwin actually remembered this before we got there and insisted that we take a look to see if they were open. As we pulled up, Corwin announced “the lights are on!” and yes, they were open.
In previous outings, Corwin has insisted on buying the first pair of shoes that fit. This time, however, he tried on five pair of shoes and went with the last pair. He certainly doesn’t get that kind of behaviour from me.
Even more oddly, Corwin picked shoes with laces. He’s avoided those for quite some time, but he confirmed multiple times that he was willing to learn how to tie his shoes. We’ll see how long he holds to that plan. On the other hand, Corwin has been much better about getting ready in the morning so we need something to take up the time.
Mom’s been dressing Alice in “Pretty Piggy” outfits, so of course we refer to her as “pretty piggy”. Even Charles has picked it up. It may end up being her nickname for a while, although I suspect that we may change it before she goes to kindergarten. Mom used to call her “Peanut” but that’s now faded in to history as well. Alice does look quite cute in her little Pretty Piggy outfits.
Actually, it still seems kind of odd to type “Alice” to refer to my daughter. Alice is a name Mom and I picked … well, more years ago than you need to know. We had it picked out as the name for our first daughter while we were still newlyweds (a second daughter would be “Elizabeth”). Mom feels it too - she remarked to me last week “doesn’t it seem strange to be holding a baby?”.
Alice is sounding much more human and less cat like than she has in the past. I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but newborns are really not very cute and in many ways not particularly human looking. I’ve found it fascinating to watch those lumps of ruddy flesh with mishapen heads turn in to little people. It’s astounding how different Alice looks now than she did when she was born. Her skeletally thin fingers have now filled out. She’s got cheeks and her legs are much less chicken like. If you want to see just how differently proportioned a baby is, try this experiment. Take your arm and place it over your head, so that your forearm is resting on the top of your head. Note how that looks and feels. Now try doing it to a baby. For Alice, her hand barely reaches the top of her head. Charles can almost get his elbow to the top of his head.
Alice is still improving in the alertness area. She kept Mom up for a couple of hours last night. She wasn’t fussy, but she was wide awake and wanting to interact with the environment. She’s already an attention hog. No matter how asleep she seems to be when I’m holding her, I can only rarely set her down in her crib or rocking chair. The way I look at it, it’s helping me build up my bicep and forearm. Holding 8 or 9 pounds for a couple of hours is good exercise.
Charles is now building with the Lincoln Logs. Previously he has just made me build stuff with them. But yesterday day he put together a small house all by himself, including the plastic roof. Unfortunately, he built it on the couch in the TV room, so I knocked it over when I got up. Charles was unhappy with me, especially since it took me a bit to figure out that “you boke how” was “you broke the house”. But, utilizing my incredible matter manipulation skills, I was able to re-assemble the house for Charles. Of course, about 10 minutes later Charles caused it to explode by smacking it with his hand while he giggled.
Time has finally run out on Mom. It looks like that she will, for the first time in her life, have to buy a computer. She’s been free loading off me and her employers for decades now, but the good times have come to an end. Her latest cast off from my computational empire has died mysteriously (although I, TechnoMaster, managed to retrieve her data). I’ve cut back on my own purchases over the last few years, plus Charles got my last cast off (Corwin’s computer is one we bought specifically for him). I also just upgraded my computer so I wasn’t in the market for buying a new one again and letting Mom have my old one.
At least Mom will be able to shop confidently, knowing that I’m there to second guess her at every step. Because I care.
Last night was the Blue and Gold banquet for Corwin’s Tiger Cub pack. What I learned is that I should have taken Corwin without the rest of the family. There were only a few other younger siblings, as other people have apparently already figured this out. It was just impossible to keep Charles quiet during the quiet parts of the dinner. Mom and I resorted to taking turns escorting Charles around the rest of the building.
Corwin had the lead role in the skit for the banquet. This consisted of Corwin repeatedly asking “quack! quack! got any duck food?” and the den mother saying “no, no duck food!”. The other scouts alternated buying random items, until the den mother said “no duck food! If you ask again, I’m nailing your feathers to the wall”. The next scout then buys some nails (the last box) and Corwin comes back for the big finish:
Corwin: “Quack! Quack! Got any nails?”
D.M.: “No, just sold the last box.”
Corwin: “Got any duck food?”
He’s ready for Broadway.
On our shopping trip yesterday, we picked up a new driving wheel. The one on Charles’ computer had broken. The lockdown lever had snapped in half a while back, but now the accelerator peddle wasn’t active.
The selection in the store was limited so I got the Logitech Momo Force Feedback Wheel. I liked it in part because Mom’s Subaru WRX has a Momo steering wheel.
I originally put the wheel on Charles’ computer because it was his wheel that had broken. But Corwin tried it out and was enthralled. This presented a bit of a dilemma - I bought it for Charles but he wouldn’t really notice the difference between that and the old wheel (the same type as on Corwin’s computer). So, after some agonizing I decided to go ahead and let Corwin have the new wheel and put the old style wheel on Corwin’s computer on Charles’. I made Corwin clean the basement, though, before I let him play on it.
We went out for errands yesterday and it was a bit traumatic for Charles. He’s always liked riding in the shopping cart, but now Alice takes his spot. Mom tried to get Charles to walk along side (Corwin doesn’t walk along side, he bounces around nearby like a super ball on an invisible string) but Charles was having none of that. We eventually gave up and put him in the basket. Of course, Charles is also getting booted to his own bed because of Alice as well. He seems to like her anyway, though.
Alice is already looking noticeably bigger than when she was born. Her cheeks and fingers had clearly filled out but today she looked bigger overall. The first milestone for her will be when she doesn’t fit in to size one diapers anymore.
Alice is becoming more interactive and starting to notice the world. We’re still not sure what her eye color is going to be, although at this point I think that they’re tending to brown. She’s still waking up frequently during the night and keeping Mom up.
Charles has started saying “hi!” and “bye!” again. It was particularly cute when he put that together with “Daddy” to say “Hi, Daddy” to me the other evening. He hadn’t ever done that before and it was quite nice after a hard day at the office.
This morning I worked with Charles a bit on counting. He was reading a book about an Easter Egg hunt with flaps “hiding” the eggs. I asked him how many eggs in one picture and he got it wrong, so I counted with him. He was amused. He caught up with me a few minutes later, still clutching the book, and told me he wanted to do some more counting. He was able to count to three successfully most of the time.
Charles is also starting to refer to himself as “Tcha”, which I think is his rendering of “Charles”. He used to consider himself the “baby” or just “brother”. But over the last few weeks since he started referring to Alice as baby he’s had to change. This morning he said “milk!” and I replied “I should get milk for Daddy?”. Charles fired back with “nooo.…fah Tcha”.
Mom is basically recovered from having Alice. I can tell because Mom has been a bubbling hive of activity over the last week or so. She painted the boy’s room, converting the ceiling from pale orange to white and the walls from off white to solar yellow. She painted Alice’s room for good measure, getting in two coats there (it’s now solar yellow as well). She installed mini book racks next to the boy’s beds and a magazine rack on the wall at the head of their beds. She even made me take a pass at cleaning my office. (It’s kind of astounding that we took out like 10-12 boxes of stuff and there’s still things all over the floor).
Charles had a lot of fun at the dinner table tonight. Corwin let out a loud burp (which he tried to cover by saying “excuse me” afterwards, but it was clearly loud by design). Charles thought it was funny. We then discussed Corwin having a bath, which also amused Charles. He started saying “bath!” over and over, giggling to himself immediately after saying it (as if it were daring and rebellious to say). Eventually he started feeling his tongue because what seemed to amuse him most about “bath!” was the way his tongue stuck out at the end of the word. It’s a lot better than other words he will probably experiment later on.
After a bit, Corwin started trying other words to see if these would amuse Charles. He tried “crash” and “bash” and eventually words like “ravenous”. Charles found most of them quite funny. Eventually, as Corwin was starting his bath, Charles was standing nearby, literally bouncing up and down on his tippy-toes shouting out various words. It’s all so new and exciting at that age.
We took the new van (“the ghost”) over to a nearby town to visit a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. Not only did Corwin get to run himself ragged at the restaurant, but he was able to use the DVD in the van. This was very exciting for him. Why watching the same DVD he’s seen 10 or more times on a tiny screen was so a big thrill, but hey - it makes buying the van worthwhile!
I did enjoy the wireless headphones. It meant that Mom and I didn’t have to listen to the soundtrack for the DVD during the trip. Once Corwin had those on and the DVD running, he was in another world. A world of slack jawed, oblivious children. Mom, though, could listen to her radio while Corwin was in his video world.
Charles and Alice enjoyed the ride although they are not yet capable of appreciating the technological sophistication of modern automobile construction.
I think I’m making some progress with Charles on his sleeping arrangements. While he still insists on having me stay in his bed, he doesn’t cry until he goes to sleep because he’s not in our bed. He’s also become much easier to move to his bed after he falls asleep. Previously Charles would sense the instant I tried to move him, wake up and start crying. Lately, though, I haven’t had much problem with putting him in his own bed even when he wakes up a little. I’m keeping the hope alive that one day we’ll only be sharing our room with one child again.
Our old van finally reached the terminal stage of its life a couple weeks back. It was still running but needed a lot of repairs. After the engine incident over the summer, the repair bill was adding up to be more than new car payments per year. Mom and I had been thinking about getting a van for a while, but we had been waiting as long as the old van was still operational.
We looked at several vans and eventually I wore Mom down and we got the decked out Toyota Sienna. It had side windows that roll down! That’s cool. It also has a DVD player built in, which was a built of a drawback. Corwin was very excited by it, although we did get him to agree that he could only use it on “long” trips. As a result, when Mom asked him later if he wanted to attend a musical event, his first question was “how far away is it?”.
We bought the van on Monday. We had take it in a couple of times for various protection gimmicks the salesmen conned us in to. We’ll see if it makes a difference, although Corwin has already started leaving empty Diet Coke cans and empty cups of cappucino in it (it must be Corwin - Charles doesn’t have any money to buy such things).
Beyond the DVD, Corwin’s favorite feature has been the sun shades in the back. I don’t expect them to last too long. Mom and my favorite feature is that we don’t worry about some sort of catastrophic mechanical failure every time we drive. I also like the two side doors, which makes moving the poopers in and out much easier. Charles and Alice were indifferent about the whole thing.
We had been using Mom’s WRX as the main family vehicle because it was just too annoying to use the old van. But we’ve switched over to the new van as the main family vehicle. Alice made a difference, because getting three kids in the back of the WRX was getting a bit crowded. Now Corwin gets the whole back seat to himself and he can sit anywhere on it he wants. That was tremendously exciting to him. Corwin likes the van so much that he hasn’t even complained that it’s not red.
It’s very odd what Charles and Corwin are scared of. Corwin has little or no fear of other people or new situations. But he is too scared to go in to the basement by himself. If I make growling sounds, he (in his words) “freaks out” even though he knows it’s me. Charles, on the other hand, thinks anything scary I do is funny. If I growl at him, or surprise him on the stairs, he jumps but laughs. On the other hand, Charles can’t bear to be parted from Mom and Dad.
On the other hand, both boys are scared of the vacuum cleaner, but it puts Alice to sleep. That’s probably a gender thing.
I think that Alice is going to grow up as a little princess. The boys have really warmed to her. As noted, Corwin has requested to hold Alice. Charles is starting to do that as well (if Corwin does it, it must be cool, right?). Mom let him hold Alice, although she had to help out by holding Alice’s head.
Charles is also fascinated about changing Alice’s diaper. He sometimes asks if her diaper needs changed, and follows Mom upstairs to the changing table so that he can throw away the soiled diaper. It’s typical Charles - odd and sweet at the same time.
Corwin and I went out sledding again today, as it’s been snowing on and off for the last week. However, the top of the hill had partially melted and then refrozen. It was amazingly slippery. At one point I had to literally crawl to make it up because even standing still I would slide back down the hill. I saw a couple of kids taken off the slope from injuries - one had fallen on his face and had a mouth full of blood from a split lip (hopefully it was that,and not a tooth knocked out). Corwin managed to fly off his sled and land on his head on his second run. He was going down a side slope that had a small jump on it and he got some bad air.
Because of the slickness, it wasn’t that hard to get a run that would go right out in to the street near the hill. I didn’t see any one actually do that, but I did see a couple of kids come very close. I talked with Corwin about it and told him that if he were about to go in to the street or hit a tree, he should just bail out of the sled. Corwin agreed:
Dad: It’s better to fall out of the sled than go in to the street.
Corwin: It’s better than being dead. Anything is better than being dead. Bumping your head is better than being dead. Getting a cold is better than being dead.
Dad: What about making smoochies with a girl?
Corwin: Uhhhhhhhh.…..
Mom tried to bring Charles and Alice, but Charles didn’t even finish the walk over from the parking lot before he stopped and just cried, refusing even a ride on the sled that I had brought over. Eventually we got it out of him that he wanted to go back home, althoug he did look cute in Corwin’s old snow suit, with the matching snow pants and jacket. Corwin also decided he’d had enough at that point.
Yesterday morning was the first day in turning Corwin in to a useful, productive member of the family. I took him downstairs in the morning to learn the mysteries of … making coffee. Oh yes, the brown water of life.
We use a bean grinder, which is actually easier for Corwin. It’s preset to grind enough beans for a full pot so one need only press a single button to grind the correct amount. Corwin’s primary problem is that a full pot of water is almost too heavy for him to carry. He did like putting in the filter and the ground coffee. He did well but I don’t think he’s ready for unsupervised coffee making. This afternoon, however, he did spontaneously ask if anyone wanted some coffee (as it turns out, Mom had already made some). I predict that we’ll get two or three days of coffee out of him before he gets bored with it. He’ll just have to hope that’s enough to justify paying for his college education.
Mom was at a baby shower yesterday for Godfather Blaine and his wife Sarah. She foolishly told me to show up with the Boys at the scheduled end of the festivities. Hahaha. We managed to keep them from actually breaking anything, although Charles almost took out a chandelier with some balloons a couple of times (by getting the balloons stuck in the lights and then pulling on the strings as hard as he could).
Eventually Mom had enough worrying about our liability situation and the boys and I were sent on our way. On the way home, Corwin announced that he had discovered the largest number he knew: 9,001,079. I asked him if he knew the number 9,001,080. He thought about that a bit and decided that Dad was trying to one up him. He said that he now knew the number 9,001,179. I responded with 9,002,081. I wish I could remember all of the numbers we used, but I found Corwin’s earnest efforts to come up with bigger numbers very amusing. However, Corwin worked out the bigger picture by the time we got home. Rather than just one up him every time (which I did for a while), I started jumping by thousands, then ten thousands and finally hundreds of thousands.I let Corwin top me at 9,608,581 and subsided. But as we were getting out of the car, Corwin had an idea for a new number - 10,000,000. I told him “wow, that’s big!”. Then he flung 11,000,000 and immediately afterwards 12,000,000 at me. I told him that was crazy talk, those numbers were way too big. As you might expect, this set him off to the tens of millions and the hundreds of millions before we got to the door from the garage to the house. He had to stop at a thousand million (although, if we were British, he would not have). I explained billions to him and he immediately went with “a million billion”, which I pointed out was a quadrillion. Satisfied with his dominance of the number system, he decided to declare victory and watch TV.
Yesterday was apparently “use up spare cotton ball day” at Corwin’s school. He made a sheep out of a toilet paper roll, four rolled up tubes of black tape and a lot of cotton balls. He also made a diorama of the four basic cloud types: cumulus, stratus, cirrus and cumulonimbus. When I got home, M0m mentioned it to me and Corwin explained what it was (sad to say, it wasn’t instantly obvious that it was a diorama of the four basic cloud types). Corwin was able to rattle off cumulus, cirrus and cumulonimbus but couldn’t remember stratus, which was that greatly concerned him. He kept muttering “I can’t remember the fourth type!” It was like a bad spy thriller when the good scientist can’t quite remember the secret ingredient that will make the fuel to power up the weapon to destroy the evil monster terrorizing the town.
Sadly, as parents we were unable to sustain the suspense and reminded Corwin about stratus clouds. He was grudgingly accepting of the information, as if we were just telling him something to make him stop worrying.
Last evening Mom went out with the boys to a “Mother and Son” gathering sponsored by the local park district (let her know if you’d like her to write that up). I was left home, alone, with Alice, which shows that my years of attempting to appear trustworthy and responsible are finally paying off.
And it was all worth it, as Mom was gone long enough for Alice to get hungry. I made her some formula and fed her a bit. Alice took to the bottle right away - she’s no slouch when it comes to sucking. It was kind of special, providing sustenance directly for a child. I can’t wait until Mom gets to experience that as well!
A little while ago I got Charles a Magna-Doodle which he originally didn’t think much of, but lately he’s been much fonder of it. It’s getting damaged because Charles’ primary drawing technique with all writing implements is to strike them as hard as possible against the drawing surface over and over. Occasionally he rests up by moving the drawing implement across the surface of the drawing area. But that’s clearly a secondary technique.
What Chares likes best for the Magna-Doodle is to have someone else draw a picture so that he can erase it. Charles really likes to erase pictures of trucks (Dad likes to do landscapes, but Charles will complain and insist on a truck). Charles will glance at the picture, erase it and then show it to the drawer so that he can exclaim “it’s gone!”. All I can say is that the first person to explain sand mandalas to Charles is dead meat.
I clearly spend too much time on this weblog. I now consider events “old” if they’ve fallen off the front page. That means that they’ve gone off to the dim mists of the archives. I just noticed that Alice’s birth has dropped off, which makes it “a while ago”. Of course, that’s a parameter I can change (it’s set at 21 days now) but I’ve gotten used to it by now. The monthly calenders mark off the days and it’s always a bit of a shock when they shift to the next month. Of course, looking at the list of Year archives can be a bit disconcerting as well. It’s all so graphic, there in my lovely color scheme. But for the sake of both of my readers, I’ll soldier on, despite the immense psychic toll.
After Corwin’s initial success at getting his story published on the internet, he has been working on a story at school. He finished it earlier this week and it was turned in for some sort of contest (since Mom outlawed use of the Questioning Chair, it’s been hard to get complete information out of Corwin about his school activities). Six finalists were chosen and Corwin was one of them. I suspect that while his grammar and handwriting may be subpar, his imaginative content is probably over the top. If I ever get a copy of it, I’ll post it here.
It’s been somewhat slow around here. I”ve been busier than usual at work and Mom’s been spending a lot of time with Alice. However, not all of her time. She’s started a home improvement project in the basement. We’ve had some iron and blackboard paint for a while. The iron paint is supposed to make the wall suitable for magnets. It is put down like a primer and then overcoated with normal paint, except now magents will stick to the wall.
The blackboard paint turns a wall in to a blackboard. We had some in the previous house and it worked OK. I suspect that the problem were due to not putting it down thick enough. But it still worked well, although it was just a two foot section of wall. Mom has now painted a section about 10 feet long and 4 feet high, so it should be a nice play to draw for the tykes.
I gave Corwin his allowance today (he’s actually quite forgetful about it - I suspect that he only gets it about half the time because Mom and Dad generally forget as well).
Corwin: “Wow! Money!”
Dad: “Are you rich now?”
Corwin: “Five hundred fifty four”
Dad: “You need to have $554 to be rich?”
Corwin: “No”
Dad: “How much then?”
Corwin: “$1160”
There you go, the key bit of economic information you’ve been waiting for.
For those who can’t get enough vital stastitics about Alice, she went to the doctor today. She’s gained a whole pound and is now 7 lb. 13 oz. I put up a new picture of her (and Charles) on the sidebar yesterday, in case you hadn’t noticed.
It’s been cold with a little snow this last week, but it warmed up a bit today. Mom was going a bit stir crazy so she sent me out with the boys to do some sledding. Corwin had a great time. This was the first year where he basically just did his own sledding while I hung out with Charles.
Charles didn’t want ot sled at all at the start, until I grabbed him and forced him to take a ride with Corwin and me. He was shouting “wheeee!” before we got to the end and after that I had spent the rest of the time doing runs with Charles. Dad’s a bit tuckered out now because Charles spent the whole time in the sled, sledding down the hill and being hauled back up by Dad. As a result, though, while Dad was sweating up a storm Charles got very chilled. He was shivering severely after a while so we took off back for home. Mom put Charles in some new (dry) pants, wrapped him in a blanket and made him hot chocolate. After this intensive care he made a full recovery.
Here’s some short video clips of a run with Charles and Corwin making a high speed run. This is my first attempt at video on the weblog, let me know how it works.
Alice is still doing well. She’s a very hungry child. Mom and I both think that she’s putting on some weight. Her fingers look thicker and she has some serious sized cheeks. She doesn’t sleep much at night but she naps most of the day. Otherwise she’s been doing fine.
Mom bought a nice new swing for Alice. She had looked around for the swing we’d used for Charles and Corwin but couldn’t find it. The gang at the office had contributed to get Mom a gift certificate at Toys ‘R Us so she used it to get the swing. Of course, just a couple of days later one of the office guys told me that he had found our old swing and wanted to give it back but it was too late!.
We had a lazy afternoon yesterday. At one point Corwin decided that he needed to see Rugrats in Paris for the tenth time or so. He enjoyed the first part of it and Charles started watching as well. About two thirds of the way in Corwin decided he wanted to down to the basement. He asked me to pause the movie while he was down there. I pointed out that Charles was watching, so we should just let it run. Corwin looked at me, near tears, and said “But I don’t want to miss it!”.
