Baskets, etc.

Rowan's Easter got off to a rough start when he discovered he lacked the dexterity to open an egg.  The Bunny hid the eggs all over after filling each one with a single jelly bean.  Budget cuts, apparently.

Also, baskets:

Lyla fully grasped the significance of finding her basket.  Rowan, on the other hand, grabbed the first two things he saw in his basket and forgot about the rest.

Reminds me of Lyla's first experience trick-or-treating, when she was handed her first sucker and then concluded the activity was over.

As a four-year-old, she has unlearned the instinct to appreciate small treats.  Now she sets her sights higher.

Later, we tried to cajole the kids into looking simultaneously happy, well-tended, and at the camera.

Perhaps the 30-degree air hindered their ability to smile on command.  Inside was a bit better.

Eggs

Julie came home from errands at the same time Grandma Jackie arrived for an Easter visit.  While sprinting to the door, Rowan tripped and landed on his face.

Totally badass.

Not badass:

The spill occurred four seconds after Julie set down the bowl of blue dye, when Rowan grabbed the spoon and went to slurp it like Smurf soup.

Post-redirection:

Not a baby

I was trying to get him to put his pajamas on himself, but to no avail.  I think he'll be getting dressing assistance into early adolescence.  In the morning, it's "Rowan, put your shoes on."

"No!  I'na baby."

"You're not a baby."

Then Lyla chimes in, sounding like she's talking to a five-pound labradoodle: "Oh my little buddy, Mr. Buddy man."

Tonight at bedtime he asked for binkies, and I reminded him that he sent them all away.  Then I asked if he wanted water.

"No."

"Okay, well good--"

"I wan wa-da!"

Every time, the no and then the yes.  I'm half tempted to get him out of that crib and into a toddler bed.  Give him a little chair with a sippy cup on it.  Not a baby now, sir.  Your move.

But why would I rush?  Why does any parent rush anything?

Recovering binkaholic

The newly binkiless Rowan fussed off and on for a couple hours last night.  Julie and I entered his room several times and capitulated to his various requests:

"Wa-dah!"

"Gulp it down, dude."

"I don wan ma bay-uh."

"Let's put your bear on the floor."

"I wan ma bay-uh!"

"Here he is."

"I wan Pussy."  That's how he says "Percy," Thomas the Train's green friend.

"Here's Percy."

"I don wan Pussy!"

"You don't say."

"I wan a hud."

"Let's hug, then.  [Hug.]  Now lie down."

"Oh tay."

Eventually we told him we weren't going to come in again because we were going to bed.  He'd have to figure it out himself, like a big boy, etc.  And he slept the rest of the night like a champ.

This morning he discovered the "mailman" brought him some presents in appreciation for his binky donation.

The glue stick ruined his breakfast.  Pounding that thing on the paper, he was too excited to eat.

Shipping off the binkies

The last time we tried to cure Rowan of his binky-at-bedtime addiction, we were too weak-minded to follow through.  At his two-year checkup the pediatrician suggested we give it another go, so here we are again, two months later.  Perhaps a detox holding cell will get him through the trauma most effectively.

After the binky circumcision method failed (see that post link above for more ridiculous detail), we decided tonight to con Rowan into thinking all of his binkies needed to go to his three-month-old cousin Sienna.  Without his binkies, she would have no binkies, and so he must send them to her tonight.  That poor binkiless Sienna!  Nothing to suck on but her mother's--okay, that's weird.

Anyway, Rowan agreed that Sienna should get all his binkies and that the U.S. Postal Service would most efficiently deliver them to her.

But at bedtime, like a crack addict needing just one more hit, he wanted to renege on the whole deal.  Screw Sienna's binky shortage, he suggested.  She can just sit in anguish in her third-world, no-binky existence.  Julie and I held strong.  Interfering with the mail is a felony, we reminded him.

"I wan wa-da!"

"Here's some water."

"I wan ma bay-uh!"

"Here's your bear.  Lie down."

"Oh tay."  Defeated.

A while later, he started crying.  I went up there.

"Are you a little sad?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sad about the binkies?"

"Yeah."

"That's sad to give something away, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"But now you're a big boy who doesn't need binkies."

"No."

"Want some water?"

"Yeah."

Suck suck slurp suck slurp suck slurp slurp.

"Lie down, buddy."

"Oh tay."

Haven't heard from him since.

Tucked in

We bought Lyla a twin bed.  She's pretty psyched.

It will likely be the last bed we buy her, meaning that once she leaves for college, this bed might still be in her room.  Possibly she'll finish college and come back for the bed and move it into her first apartment.  Who knows?

I compulsively look forward, and tonight I'm typing this as the future me, peering back on today.  "Man, Julie, do you remember the day we bought her that bed?"

"And now she's--"  She's what?  She's off to law school?  She's moving back home indefinitely?  She's pregnant with her second out-of-wedlock child?  My mind goes places it would rather avoid.

Photographs capture the here and now.  They remind the mind of where it should remain.  Not 12 years from now when we wonder what she and her boyfriend are doing in there.  The tucked in here and now.

The Explorer way

Lyla is generally very reticent about eating anything she ever previously decided she didn't like. When she was one, she reacted negatively to a potato, so potato hatred is now an unalterable aspect of her personality. I'm Lyla: I'm a girl, I have blue eyes, and potatoes are the devil's food.

Occasionally, however, she'll move up a room at daycare, so for a week or so Julie and I tap into the imagined ethos of her new classmates to manipulate her into doing our food bidding.

"Lyla, kids in the Explorer Room always eat their tacos."

"Well, I think I will eat all of it," she responds importantly.

"Indeed, Lyla.  It's the Explorer way."

Pollock

Remember when you had your eight closest friends over for cake and ice cream on your birthday?  Perhaps your mom taped a plastic donkey to the wall and you all took turns with the blindfold and the tail?  There was that one year when you had the clown/magician/piñata, but most years the main activity involved playing tag in your backyard?

Lyla got invited to a Jackson Pollock birthday party.  Times have changed.

That's Lyla in the center, ponytail pointing left.  Here is her tag-along brother:

Julie stood with the other parents behind a set of tables where paint would not fly, and I gamely supervised Rowan.  He splatter painted a couple times but otherwise chose a more traditional approach.

Here we are after the carnage ended, the artist and the handler.

Can you guess which one is his?

Still cocky about the whole sleep thing

We babysat Sienna this afternoon while Jen and Jason attended a two-hour class on how to convince an infant to sleep like a normal person.  I told them they should go to the mall for two hours instead and I'd help them solve this first-world problem they anticipate they'll have.

Step one: Send Mom to a hotel, or have her sleep in the basement if you have one.

Step two: Purchase earplugs for Dad.

Step three: Starting at four months old, put the baby to bed fed and changed and awake.  Pat it on the head, leave, and let the baby cry its ass off for four minutes.  Time it in the kitchen.  Put in your earplugs and read an article from your favorite non-parenting magazine.  Mine is Esquire.

Step four: At the four minute mark, go comfort the child in the most boring way you can manage.  For the love of God, don't talk to it.

Step five: Four minutes later, go up there again.

During the night, if the baby wakes up and is not starving or marinating in its own feces, pat it on the head, leave, and then put earplugs in for four minutes, at which point you go pat it on the head again, etc.

The idea is to slowly teach the baby that at sleeping time, the most interesting and satisfying option they have is to sleep.  It's difficult to do because the baby will try to convince you that you're killing it.  What also makes it tricky is that babies look like this:

That's Sienna, by the way.  During her two hours here, Julie and I devoted every second to not pissing her off.  This "don't piss off the baby" instinct is exactly how parents accidentally train their babies to be terrible sleepers.  The only reason Julie and I were able to make great sleepers is because when I stayed home with Baby Lyla or Baby Rowan during the summer or a parenting leave, I put them through nap time boot camp starting at about four months, and the concepts naturally transferred to bedtime.  It was either their immediate happiness or my sanity, and I chose the latter.

Here are Rowan and Sienna chillin'.

Perhaps you recall a similar photo of Lyla and Rowan at about the same ages.


So anyway, when the kid is five months old, it now can cry in the crib for five minutes, and so on.  It worked for us. I'm still feeling pretty cocky about it, clearly.

Meal out

We took the kids out to eat this evening.  "Can I have my own menu?" said Lyla to the hostess immediately upon our arrival.  Here they are preparing to devour bread.

This next photo perfectly captures their respective moods.

Rowan held his own just barely.  He didn't like his grilled cheese sandwich, insisted a dinner of cookies made more sense, and so I briefly removed him from the table for a man-to-man.

"You need to eat your sandwich, dude."

"No."

"If you eat your sandwich, then you get a cookie."

"I wan tuh-tee."

"Eat one of your sandwiches first."

"No."

Time for a bluff.  "Should we just go home, then?  Leave Mommy and Lyla here?"

"Yeah!"

Shit.

We returned to the table, and he sat on my lap and ate my risotto.

Closing

Lyla's excited to be moving to the Explorer Room at daycare in two days.  In the Explorer Room, the kids do multi-variable calculus and also date each other.  We think Lyla's tendency to put her cardigan on inside-out will aid her in the first but not the second.

Here's a letter--

"It's a postcard, Daddy."

--a postcard she wrote to her teacher.

She said the words she wanted to write, and I told her how to spell them.  In case you're struggling to read it, it says: "TO AMY NEXT WEEK I WILL BE AN EXPLORER LOVE."

It used to say "Love, Lyla," but she tore off the "Lyla" part.

"I wanted it to say 'Love Amy.'"

"It should say 'Love, Lyla,' because you're the one sending the letter."

"No, Daddy!  It's a--"

"Postcard.  You sign a postcard by saying 'Love' or 'From' and then your name."

"But I don't love Lyla.  I love Amy."

"Ah.  But when you--"  How on earth do you explain the concept of closing a letter to a stubborn four-year-old?  "Hey Lyla, I think dinner's ready."

"Yesss!"

That's how.

Gremlin

A panicked and slightly work-obsessed Julie called me at school as my period one students filed in. 

"Rowan just barfed over everything.  We were practically out the door.  I have several meetings this morning devoted to synergizing efficiency models and building bridges toward maximizing more synergy.  I made a PowerPoint and everything.  You must desert America's youth and return home to your barfing son.  Synergy, Dan!"

Okay, that was a liberal paraphrase.

I ended up staying for my morning classes and getting coverage for my afternoon classes.  Once I returned home and the barfing child woke up from a three-hour nap, he demanded water and food.  Figuring I had nothing to lose, I gave him a cracker.

Then he ate several more crackers, some apple sauce, and some toast.

Later:

That might be the worst photo of him ever taken.

No, wait a second:


That's the worst photo of him ever taken.  Rather, of any baby ever taken.

Anyway, he didn't puke again, but he definitely had the mood and energy level of that gremlin Lyla's hugging.  I'm staying home with him tomorrow under the assumption that he'll wake up a hot mess. 

Beaners

Lyla:

"Daddy, I don't like any kind of beans."

"Good, then the Easter Bunny will know not to bring you any jellybeans."

"I do like jellybeans.  I like any kind of candy."

"Noted."

Meanwhile, Rowan:

"I nike bonzo beans!"

Garbanzo beans.  Right out of the can.

Banner night

"Yummy in my tummy!"

"Not yummy in your tummy, Rowan.  Yummy in my eyeball!"
 
Then:

"I am Eh-ee-oh, Daddy."

"You are Ariel?"

"Yeah.  You are No White."

"So, we are princesses?"

"Yeah!"

And finally:

"Daddy!  The Packers' colors!"

Wow, kids.  Keep up the...uh...good work.

St. Patrick's Day

Julie took Lyla to see Irish dancing this afternoon.  She was riveted, and the outing's only hitch came when Julie had to break it to Lyla that she would not, in fact, get to go on stage herself and Irish dance.  I have a feeling it'll happen one day, though.

Face painting and lunch made everything better, as it usually does.

And three seconds into the return trip, she lost consciousness.

Meanwhile, I stayed at home with Rowan, who took a two-hour nap.  Unconscious toddlers: the true gold at the end of the rainbow.

Flowers rule

Here's Lyla at lunch after going to the library.  That book is a collection of several critter books.  One of the other books she initially chose was a single-volume version of the first critter book in that collection.  It took me several minutes to explain to her that the single-volume version would not be necessary to check out.

"But I'll just check it out."

"But that book is right here in this book.  See?  The pages are the same."

"But I want this book."

"But you have that book in this book."

"I want to check it out."

"Let's page through it.  See how these pages are exactly the same?  See how the next pages are exactly the same, too?"

She finally agreed, but I still think she thought I was trying to put something over on her.

Then after lunch we went to the grocery store, and Lyla suggested we buy flowers.

"For Mommy?  That's a great idea, kiddo."

"No.  For me."

"You're going to share them with Mommy?"

"No."

"Are you going to let Mommy look at them?"

"She can come into my room and look at them if she wants."

"I see.  Is there a particular color you had in mind?"

"Um, red.  Red tulips."

So I bought Lyla red tulips, and now they're in a vase in her room.  What other option is there?  If a dad and daughter are out and pass flowers and the daughter requests flowers, the dad must comply.  You can't get around it; it's a rule.

Finish line

Our friends Joe and Stephanie came over for dinner.  We coached Lyla beforehand on the importance of saying hello and other general pleasantries.  Instead of hello, she said, "This is my Madeline book.  She's a girl who..." and so on.  I'm pretty sure she saw Stephanie as a new best friend that Mommy and Daddy had brought home specifically for her. 

After Stephanie defeated Lyla at Candyland, Lyla informed her that in this game there are two winners, so Stephanie sat politely while Lyla continued to pick the colored cards and painstakingly advance her own piece to the finish line.

Then bedtime went smoothly because Lyla had a doll in her room that was sleeping, so we had to be very quiet in there and not turn on any lights.  I read her a book by the glow of her nightlight, and then I told her a made-up story about Rapunzel.

"And then she came down from her tower and--"

"No, she ran through the woods," she corrected me.

"Yes, she ran through the woods and found her friends."

"No."

"What was Rapunzel doing running through the woods?"

"A bad person was going to kill her."

What do they do at daycare, watch the news all day?

I continued: "So Rapunzel jumped in the lake and swam away to safety, and the bad person couldn't get her because he couldn't swim.  And then she went home and ate marshmallows.  Pink ones, red ones--"

"And purple ones!"  Phew.  Back to the world of being four years old.

Bringing it

That's a misleading photo.  Lyla was a seething, rabid, snarling ogre this evening.  If she wasn't like two-and-a-half feet tall, she would be very intimidating.

"NO!  I don't WANNA go to BED!"

"Lyla, you're reinforcing stereotypes of toddlers again."

Actually, tonight it went on so long that eventually I matched her volume and emotional intensity in my response.  "LYLA!  You will NOT speak to your PARENTS--" and so on.  Not a good strategy.  But it came out and as it was coming out, I was thinking, "This is a poor technique."

"--and aNOTHER thing!  You WILL--"

"NO, DADDY!"

Toddler behaving like a toddler versus parent behaving like a toddler: Toddler wins.

I understand why people spank their kids.  I don't like it and I've never done it, nor do I plan to start, but sometimes you have moments where your disciplinary bag of tricks is empty at the same moment your toddler becomes an ogre.  The toddler needs to be taught a lesson or else everything will snowball into a life of thievery and crack-smoking, but due to your own exhaustion or whatever, you're not up to the challenge of navigating the toddler's nonsensical and fickle logic in order to cleverly impose your will.  Smack on the butt would do the trick, though, and it's easy. 

I won't debate whether spanking is violent or damaging; who really knows?  But it's a solution completely devoid of creativity and therefore a terrible solution.  So is yelling. 

Tomorrow at bedtime, I'm bringing my A-game.

Spirit

Rowan remains stubbornly full of Christmas spirit.  He's pretty sure Santa's going to come give him more toys any day now.

Meanwhile:

"They're my princesses and my strawberry friends."

Like you couldn't tell.

Torture

I went to the dentist today and it was horrible.  No cavities, just tartar buildup, which I know is a fun topic to read about.  Scrape scrape scrape scrape for 45 minutes.  It was like I was a captured spy and the enemy was trying to motivate me to give information.  I would've spilled the secrets if I had any. 

"Have you thought about a Sonicare toothbrush?  Do you floss?  What about Listerine?"

"Fuh you!" is what it would've sounded like with my mouth full of her torture devices, but instead I said nothing.  I use all that crap.  She described my entire regimen.  Later I told her, and she tilted her head and said, "Ohhh," like I was an adorable puppy.

I will lie to my children.  "Hey kids, I went to the dentist today, and it was super fun!  The nice lady tickled Daddy's teeth!  And she counted all of them!"