Tongue chomper

I'm teaching Lyla how to make coffee in hopes that one day she learns to go downstairs and make coffee five minutes before I wake up.  I'll let you know if it ever works.

Julie got a call from daycare that Lyla crashed into a toy shelf and bit her tongue.  Her mouth filled with blood and she "really freaked out."  I went and got her, expecting her to need a doctor visit and eventual tongue transplant, but she bounded over cheerfully, told me of her plight, and informed me that once home she would require a popsicle, preferably a purple one.

"A grape one?"

"No, a pupple one."

More accurate, technically.

Back home, I failed to convince Lyla and Rowan to smile for a photo.

I think "synchronized pouting" should be added to the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Notice Lyla's purple popsicle.  And there on the green plate are the remains of Rowan's orange popsicle.  (Try telling a two-year-old that his sister bit off her tongue and gets a popsicle, but he doesn't.)

Not listening

Those flashcards led me to try to teach Lyla some highly complex mathematical concepts.  "Hey, do you know how to do a problem like five plus eight?"

"Mm."  She scowled at me.

"Think about the number 'eight,' and then start counting five more numbers." Then I counted on my fingers and continued: "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen.  Cool, huh?  See my five fingers?  And how we started with eight and arrived at thirteen?  Eight plus--"

"Hey Rowan!  Hey Mr. Buddy!  Are you going to race those cars?"

"Lyla, I feel like you're not listening to me."

She turned back to me.  "Well, because when you're talking so much, then the person you're talking to will stop listening.  Because you're talking so much."

Couldn't argue with her on that one.

Terrible twos and wonderful fours

Rowan's nemesis this evening was the slow boiling of a pot of water and then the slow cooking of pasta noodles.

"WAAAAAAAAAAH!  I WAN POT-STA!"

"It's not ready yet, Rowan.  Do you want to play with your cars while we wait for the pasta?"

"NOOOOO!  I WAN POT-STA!  WAAAAAAAAAH!"

Several hours later (in his estimation):

"No pot-sta.  I don wan pot-sta.  Daddy!  No pot-sta."

"You don't want pasta now?"

"I wan oh-dis."

"You want oranges."

"Daddy, Rowan wants oranges."

"Thank you, Lyla."

"You want oranges, little buddy?"

"Lyla--"

"OH-DIS!  WAAAAAAAAH!"

One orange later, Rowan was granted an early bedtime.

Back downstairs, we bribed Lyla with a piece of three-day-old Thomas the Train birthday cake to  pick up a Connect Four set that Rowan had dumped out on the floor.  At some point, she cracked her head on the underside of the dining room table, so I gave her a bag of frozen peas.

In that photo she's giggling because I'm calling her "pea head."

Hitting Mommy

Rowan's been throwing toys and hitting people the past couple days.  We respond with immediate timeouts and threats to make him drive a Schwinn to his senior prom.

Last night Rowan was sitting with Julie on the couch.  He was facing her and had a wooden toy car and was driving it up her arm and toward her head.  You see where this is going, and so did I.  "You're going to get hit," I told her.  "Julie, he's going to--"

Julie glanced over.  "No, he's not going to--"  BAM!  Right in the bridge of her nose.  Her hands flew up to her face, sending Rowan backwards off the couch, where he hit the blunt, rounded corner of the coffee table and then the floor.  That's why you buy a coffee table with blunt, rounded corners.

I picked up Rowan and examined him.  He was freaking out but otherwise fine. 

"Dan, is he okay?" Julie said from behind her hands, which were holding a now bleeding nose.

I am always a sensitive and calming influence during times of crisis.  "Rowan's fine!  Why doesn't anyone listen to me?  I told you he was going to hit you.  Whoa, you're bleeding!" 

At that moment, Rowan chose to chime in: "Mommy hut me!  Mommy hut me!"

I held him under the armpits at eye level with me.  "Dude!  Are you serious?  Mommy did not hurt you."  Then I said very slowly and menacingly, "You hurt Mommy.  You hit her in the nose with a car."

When is the Father of the Year ceremony?  I'll need to iron my cummerbund.

Rowan began to cry again.  "Nooooo!"

"Yes, you did!  You hit Mommy in the nose with a car.  Hitting hurts."

"I hut Mommy."

"You hurt Mommy."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

I hauled him into the kitchen and got Julie some ice; when we returned to the living room, she was doubled over on the floor, sobbing.  The real pain hit her only when she realized Rowan wasn't hurt.  Have you ever gotten nailed in the nose with a wooden car?  I could tell her nose wasn't broken, but the edge of the car must've connected with the top part of the bridge of her nose and split the skin.  She took Advil, iced, and went upstairs to lie down.  I fed the kids dinner and watched them play awhile; at one point, Lyla and Rowan got into a dispute and Rowan chucked a toy across the room.  I put them both to bed early, and this morning they slept late.

Julie and Rowan have since made up.  Note the Band-Aid. 

Snippets

In no particular order...

Lyla preparing to eat her young cousin, Sienna:

Lyla recording herself singing "Jingle Bells" and Rowan pulling her hair:

A Saturday date night with Jason and Jen, me photo-bombing them because I'm soooo funny:

This afternoon, trying to convince Rowan of how fun it is to shovel snow; meanwhile, you can see a ferocious wolf stalking us:

This morning:

"Daddy weed buht!"

"Buddy, I need to sit and drink my coffee."

"Weed buht!"

"I'm not going to read you a book this instant.  Amuse yourself for five minutes."

"Ah sit hee-ah."

"Really, you have to sit here?"

"Yeah."

Mr. Breakfast

Julie told me to put blueberries on the grocery list.  Ever reasonable, I responded, "They're out of season."

Ever reasonable, she responded, "I don't care."

This morning the reason for the blueberries became apparent.  "Daddy!  I need blueberries.  I need two blueberries.  Daddy, do we have blueberries?  Did you buy blueberries?  Do we have blueberries?  I'm going to get some blueberries.  Two blueberries."

"Lyla, do you happen to need two blueberries?"

She repeated her first speech nearly verbatim.  I retrieved two blueberries and then followed her exact and passionate instructions in preparing peanut butter toast and an apple slice, at which point she created this:

Chutch

"Daddy, what is it called that shines down from the sky?"

"Uh, the sun?"

"No, what shines down from the sky?"

"Uh, the sun?"

"NO.  What shines down from the sky?"

"Uh, are you talking about God?"

"Is God the sun?"

Oh boy.  Here we go.  "Not exactly.  God made the sun."

"Did God make everything?"

"A lot of things.  People make cars, but God made trees."

"I think he used a lot of paper."

I chose not to address the origin of paper, lest her brain implode with the conundrum of paper coming from trees but trees coming from God-paper.

"Daddy, a long, long, long, long, long time ago, Mommy took me to chutch."

"Do you mean church?"

"Chutch."

"Very well.  You're right.  Mommy did take you to chutch.  What do you remember about it?"

"There was music, people danceded, and then they sat down."

I confirmed later with Julie that there was music and dancing during the service.  I can't believe Lyla remembered it; she was two years old.

Speaking of two years old, Rowan felt much better this morning, so he got a belated birthday celebration at daycare.

Here's a closeup of that one on top.

Just because it's nap time doesn't mean you stop being the birthday boy.

Archives

In case you're super bored and/or my mom:

My Wife Is Preggers

Changing Lyla

Chasing Lyla

Sharing Rowan

Every, every minute

I can't do it, which is to say I can't not do it.  I thought I could just stop writing, but I suppose it would be like if I said I was just going to stop reading.  Or speaking. 

I almost said "Or breathing," but that's B.S.  More like "Or brushing my teeth."

Here it is: I don't want one day to flow into the next.  I don't want to suddenly realize a year has passed, or a month, or a week, or a lifetime. "Time flies."  I hate that saying.  I don't want time to fly.  Writing slows down time some.  You bottle up some moments so they don't all disappear.

See, I'm afraid I'll get Alzheimer's and not remember any of it.  I'm afraid Lyla or Rowan will die.  I don't want to lose their future and have squandered the details of their past because, poor me, I needed a break from writing.  It's compulsive now. 

I'll loosen my rule about the daily photo and my rule about posting every single day.  I'll try it out.  If something happens that makes me laugh or makes me mad, I'll write it.  If there's nothing noteworthy, I won't write. 

But see, that's the thing: It's all noteworthy, isn't it?  I've been teaching the play Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, for five years now.  In Our Town, a young woman named Emily dies in childbirth and only in death realizes that we humans are tragically blind about how fleeting our own lives are.  We live as though we have all the time in the world, when in actuality each person's life is an hourglass where only the bottom half is visible.  How much sand remains in the top half?  We live as though it doesn't even matter. 

The newly dead Emily asks the omniscient Stage Manager, "Does anybody ever realize life while they live it?  Every, every minute?"

"No," he replies tersely, then adds, "Saints and poets maybe…they do some."

I'll never be a saint, but I can try to be a poet.  At least a shitty one.