Archive for category Homelife

The nearing-four-year-old boy was in the bath tonight, playing with his toys. Among them, a big blue shark and a few much smaller floating animal toys.

The plastic shark, predictably, went after the other animals in the bath — mainly the sea turtle and the dolphin — growling about how he was going to eat them. (Who’s raising this kid, anyway?)

He chased them all the way up the side of the bath, in fact, until they slipped into the soap-holder cavity in the wall just a moment before the sharp and angry jaws of made-in-China inanimate death closed upon them.

The shark paced in the air menacingly, watching the trapped victims.

My son then moved one hand to the turtle and joggled it a bit as he said, in a high and squeeky voice, “What do you want? Use your words.”

“I want to eat you,” said the shark.

“We just want to live in the ocean together,” said the turtle. “To swim and be happy.”

“Okay,” the shark replied. Then he retreated down to the bathwater where he was joined by his once-trapped foes.

“See?” The turtle said, “Now we’re friends.”

See how easy it is, folks? You see, Democrats and Republicans? Just use your words.

Just a quick gasp from end-of-term grading to note that the lass turned one today!

A recent image, just so folks know that we’re raising her right:

Elanor with lunch-time fruit as headgear.

She’s actually very excited in this picture. Very proud of herself for perching the pear upon her wee noggin’.

Another couple pictures, just because she’s so darn cute:

Elanor making her "scrunchy" face.

Elanor behind bars.

Adorable, ain’t she? This last one is particularly fascinating to me, since she appears so, well, grown-up somehow. Looking at her face I can “age” her in my mind into a teenager for some reason.

Wow. I suddenly have the urge to sharpen my axe. It’s never too early to plan for would-be boyfriends.

I thought I ought to post an update on my healing from Spring Break’s double tooth-yanking.

Happily, I can report that I had very little ill-effect. I didn’t swell up hardly at all, and I was pretty much done spitting blood by the next morning. I don’t know if these happy conditions were a result of the fact that I had only local anaesthesia, but I suspect that might be so. For one thing, I was able to consciously relax or tighten my muscles in accordance with what was being done to me. Perhaps even more importantly, since I was aware it’s possible the dentist was less brutal than he might otherwise have been.

Regardless, it’s pretty much beyond doubt that the dentist did a good job. Thanks, Dr. Probst!

Anyway, for one reason or another, the dentist did put stitches in the upper jaw wound, and he didn’t use the dissolving kind. I was scheduled to go in to have them removed this past Monday, and in the meantime wasn’t supposed to eat much of anything solid. Everything went without a hitch, except that the stitches actually came out a few days early on Saturday. They’d partially come loose, and the dangling thread was quite bothersome. So I pulled them out myself.

No worries, though. The dentist checked things on Monday just the same, and all is looking great.

Now I just need to hope the other two wisdom teeth stay good and buried!

The Young Master, who is fast approaching the age of four, has an increasingly varied vocabulary, the origin of some of which I cannot fathom.  He also has an increasingly active imagination. Both of these changes are quite a lot of fun.

At the same time, the Lad’s growing and exploring and the Lass’ beginnings of the same have forced us as Parents to establish an ever-growing set of Rules in the house. The Rules tend to consist of things I never thought I’d utter, much less pronounce in a loud, house-wide voice of Law: “New Rule! From now on, everybody keeps their fingers out of their butts, got it?”

This morning, for example, we were horsing around in the Young Master’s room. He was playing GeoTrax. I was cuddling with the Lass on his bed.  For some reason, I looked over to the wall beside his bed and noticed a few, um, dried brownish things on the wall. “Hey,” I said, calling my son over, “did you put boogers on your wall?”

The Lad glanced at them. “No.”

“It looks like there are boogers on the wall,” I said.

“They’re not boogers,” he said. He held up his hand in a sort of calm-down-and-take-it-easy gesture that he’s gotten from who-knows-where. “It’s just Mickey.”

Mickey. As in Mouse. He has an interest obsession with Mickey Mouse of late, something we’ve at least passively encouraged since we’ll be going to Disneyworld in about a month. We thought it would be good if he knew who Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and all the rest of the blokes were prior to arrival. He’s very excited about the trip, of course, and he’s taken to seeing Mickey in all sorts of things: put three plates on the table — one on the side and two on the ends — and he’s liable to laugh and point out that it’s “Mickey” and his two ears. This pretty much goes for any triangulation of roundish objects, which apparently remind him of the three circles that make up Walt’s most famous creation.

I looked back at the boogers. There were three of them. Two in a line, and then a third, slightly bigger, below and between them.

“It’s just Mickey,” the Lad repeated. Then he pointed down a bit on the wall, where I hadn’t looked. There was a second set of boogers there. ”And Minnie.”

What to do as a parent? Clearly, the placement of one’s boogers on the wall beside one’s bed is improper behavior. At the same time, the creation of two cartoon mice from such an abstract medium is, well, rather impressive. Not quite Picasso’s cubist period, but pretty amazing nonetheless.

“See?” The Lad said happily, pointing back to his bolder creation and wanting to be certain that I could see to the heart of his artistic vision. “It’s not boogers. It’s Mickey.”

“I see,” I said. “But you shouldn’t put boogers on the wall.”

“It’s not. It’s Mickey.”

“But, um, what did you make Mickey with?”

He thought. His fingers moved in reflexive memory toward his nose but stopped just short of diving in for some more wall-greasing finger-paint. ”Boogers,” he said.

I nodded, proud. But clearly this was not only a learning moment, but also a time for establishing a new precedent of Law. “Okay. New Rule: From now on, we don’t put boogers on the wall. Understand?”

The Young Master looked a bit crestfallen. The trials of the budding creative mind. The portrait of the artist as a young toddler. “I understand,” he said quietly.

“Good,” I said. And then, lifting the Lass up off the bed, I stood up and began to wonder if I ought to write these Rules down somewhere.

In stone, perhaps?

So two hours ago I got dropped off at the dentist to have two wisdom teeth yanked.  Am back at home now.  Can’t talk, but I can type (obviously).

It was an interesting experience. They offered me various levels of anesthetic, and I opted for the local stuff only. The plan had been to do an IV sedation drip so that I’d not remember any of the experience, but I’m not a big fan of, well, any medication in general. So when the dentist made clear that further sedation beyond the local anesthetic would only be for my personal “comfort” with what they were doing, I opted to go with the local stuff alone. No sense running risks unnecessarily, and the IV would have cost more.

I’m glad I went with the local only.  Sure, on one level it was disturbing to hear (and see) much of what they were doing, but it was also very interesting.  Quite medieval in its brutality. I found it strangely fascinating to see the sweat rolling down the dentist’s brow as he put what appeared to be needle-nosed pliers on my teeth, braced himself against my skull, and started yanking one way and then the other.

There was quite a bit of drilling on the bottom tooth, and it ultimately came out in shattered pieces (which sounded quite icky as they snapped into shards). But the top tooth came out much easier, and they let me keep it.

Yes, I have right here one of my wisdom teeth, in a wee little keepsake box.

I happen to think that’s totally outstanding.

We aren’t positive that norovirus has entered our household, but all signs, as they say, point to “yes.” Certainly the symptoms match up, and we know that there’s norovirus in the air hereabouts: A local-stationed cruise ship just underwent an extra-super-duper cleaning after its third successive outbreak of the virus.  Bringing it back to port and cleaning it meant bringing 100s of virus-exposed passengers into the community, in addition to the exposure of the cleaning crews going back and forth off the ship.

Happily, it’s a 24-hour to 48-hour horror.  Unhappily, it hit Sherry at 3am on her birthday. And now the young master has it.  The baby ‘belle has also probably been hit.  Indeed, I seem to be the only one holding out at this point … which can only mean that I have mere hours to go before I, too, am moaning in pain.

Don’t know why I was thinking about Douglas Adams the other day, but I was.  And so, on a lark, I looked up one of the best movie trailers of all time on YouTube.

For your Saturday happiness, here it is:

Brilliant!