Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Thursday, August 31, 2006 The Men Upstairs It was almost three years ago that we painted our upstairs bedroom. I told you about it at the time, but I never actually showed you what it looked like, with all of our stuff out of the room. Here it is from the top of the stairs, facing south:  I don't really understand why, but you can actually see the colors better in this view from the far end of the room, facing north:  It's three complementary shades of green, all picked from the same paint chip. The ceiling is the lightest, the side walls are medium, and the end walls are the darkest green. I'm not sure if that really comes through here. And it's actually a lot lighter than it looks here. I know, maybe you'll get a better feel for the actual colors if I show you what they look like when the walls have been converted to a pile of debris on my front yard:  See? Much less oppressive this way. Yes, Monday was day one of the remodeling project on our house. M. Small awoke to the marvelous spectacle of a "big truck" craning stacks of lumber onto our front lawn. He was so excited that we could barely get him into his feeding chair, but once he realized that he could sit there and watch the whole thing through the kitchen window while shoveling down fruit and Rice Krispies, I don't think he even realized how much he ate. Breakfast and a show. We all were all out of the house by eight o'clock, leaving the crew to do their thing. Here's our bedroom as of day one, facing north:  And the opposite view. Note the canvas draped over the stairwell at bottom left, and whatever the hell is all over the camera lens. I have no idea.  You can't really see the small army of stuffed Hefty bags where our bed used to be. I told Trash, "Damn, I could have done this." But then she correctly pointed out that it would have taken me the better part of a month and that I wouldn't have had access to the dumpster that's currently parked alongside our driveway. "But I've gotten, like, two-thirds of the insulation out of the garage in only three years or so," I reminded her. She didn't seem as impressed by this as I might have hoped. She also claims we would have been uncomfortable sleeping on the bags, but I don't think she's giving us enough credit. This was day one. It's now day four. I have more pictures from each day since that I simply haven't bothered to post yet. For now, I'll simply give you a short timeline of the project so far while running a little test of that adage about the word/picture exchange rate. Day one: Inner wall of the east side completely torn out. Day two: East half of the roof totally removed. Room where we've slept for the past thirteen years completely open to the elements except for a thin plastic sheet. Day three: Completely new east wall framed and paneled, complete with window-holes. Day four: New east half of roof framed, paneled, and shingled. This was supposed to take four to five weeks. This morning, Trash asked them what they plan to do for the last three weeks of the project. Every day when we get home from work, we go upstairs and marvel at what's been accomplished. Even M. Small is impressed. "Big house!" he remarks every time we come up the driveway. Anyway, I'll keep you posted on how it's going over the next several weeks. And if a mysterious container of lube appears on our bathroom vanity, you'll be the first to know. posted by M. Giant 8:45 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:Re: what is all over the camera lens? Well, there's a theory that little light circles on photos are ghosts caught unawares. Maybe you have some unseen friends, ha ha yeah right dear GOD I need coffee
By Wow - so what all are you doing, exactly?
By Re: what is all over the lens... If you're talking about the little circles everywhere, it's airborne dust and debris. We have the same circles in our renovation pictures. You don't see them, but when the flash goes off, they reflect the light back at the camera.
By Yeah, the stuff on the pics is dust in the air. We pulled down a celing with blown insulation and you can't see anything in the pictures from all the dust in the air. We were sneezing black for a week.
By Monday, August 28, 2006 Assault of Battery A few months ago, the battery light on my dashboard started coming on. Foolishly thinking that this meant I would need a new battery soon, I went out and bought one. Then my battery light stopped coming on and I forgot all about the new power cell sitting in my garage. Until the week before last. During our camping trip, M. Small’s driver’s seat antics had drained so much juice out of my car that we had to borrow a pair of jumper cables from the family at the next site. We got home okay, but every time I started the car for the rest of the week, there was a little less cranking and a little more clicking. Two Mondays ago, when I was about to head off to work, there was nothing but clicks. Trash had already left to drop M. Small off at day care, so I called her on her cell phone. But not for rescue. “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I’ll swap in the new one and be out of here in ten minutes.” I tried not to be too offended at her obvious skepticism. After all, I had changed the battery on her previous car only a couple of years before. In the winter, no less. This was going to be so much easier. It wasn’t easier. First of all, in order to get access to the bracket that holds the battery in place, I had to take apart the air cleaner. Not helpful. Another issue is that my wrenches and sockets aren’t exactly all that well organized. And I’m not just saying that the 10-mm socket is in the slot where the 5/16 socket is supposed to be. I’m saying that the 10-mm socket is God-only-knows-where. Somewhere in this time zone, I’m sure, but I’d hesitate to get more specific. Even that wouldn’t have been too much of an obstacle. I happen to own the two must-have accessories for a disorganized workshop: an adjustable crescent wrench and a selection of pliers. Those would have been fine. Except that the bolt holding the black cable onto the black battery terminal had, over the past seven years, completely fused to the battery. Every time I started the car for however long, a tiny little spot-weld was being added, and no matter how hard I gripped those pliers, all I was doing was gouging hell out of the bolt head. About forty-five minutes into my ten-minute estimate, I decided that I was just going to have to hop a bus to work, be late, buy a new set of metric sockets while I was downtown, and finish the job that night. That evening, armed with my new, eight-dollar pocket metric set, I returned to the battle anew. I was also armed, if that’s the word, with M. Small, because Trash had a doctor’s appointment. I now know that I should have waited to attempt car repair until I didn’t have a toddler scampering around the driveway, the garage, and the yard. Hell, I knew that then. But it wasn’t like he was going to drain my battery any further, what with only one cable still being attached. My brand-new 8-mm socket and ratchet fit neatly over the fused bolt, and then slid right around it. New tool or no, it was going to be really easy for me to strip that bolt head into a smooth, shiny cylinder. Fortunately, I had talked to my dad that day, and he had suggested soaking the bolt in baking soda water. Which I did. I also poured part of a can of Trash’s mom’s Caffeine-Free Diet Coke on it, just because it’s not like that carbonated diarrhea is good for anything else now that mom-in-law has gone back home to Iowa. While I waited for it to work, M. Small helped. He’d discovered the wrenches and pliers I’d left in the bed of his toy dump truck that morning, and commenced carrying them over to me. “Tools,” he explained, carefully reaching up and dropping each one behind my car’s radiator. By the time I’d fished everything out, the nasty solution on my battery terminal had done its fizzy thing and the bolt came loose with an audible creak. It was all downhill from there, I figured. I was correct, but not in the way I thought. Lifting the old battery out was the work of only a minute or so. Detaching the nylon carrying strap on the new battery only took a minute more. Making the most of my momentum, I set the new battery in place, reconnected the cables (didn't electrocute myself once!), and went to retrieve the nut and bolt that held down the battery bracket, a seemingly unimportant strip of metal that does nothing more vital than preventing the battery from rocking out of its cradle and plummeting to the pavement while the car is in motion . I'd carefully set the nut and bolt aside that very morning, in the back of M. Small's toy dump truck. Uh-oh. They were both gone, of course. A cursory search of the garage floor (leafy!), the driveway (also leafy!) and the back yard (of course this happens the one year my grass actually survived until August!) turned up what I expected, which was exactly nothing. Even the space behind the radiator held no joy. There was nothing for it but to hit the neighborhood hardware store to find a replacement nut and bolt. Of course, I didn't know exactly what size I was looking for, but since I had the crescent wrench that I'd removed them with as a guide, it was only a matter of about fifteen minutes rummaging through those maddening little drawers before I was on my way home. Where it was only a matter of about two seconds to realize I'd gotten the wrong size. I'd forgotten that the bolt heads for the battery terminals and the pieces I'd lost were of different sizes. Trash suggested I wait to go back until M. Small had gone to bed, whereupon the local shop would be closed, but I could still hit Home Depot. Ah, Home Depot after dark. Before this trip, I had taken more precise measurements of the nut and blot I was looking to match. By which I mean that I had stabbed a fragment of corrugated cardboard over the protruding bolt with its missing nut, and then stuck the cardboard in my pocket to measure against the Home Depot stock. I was fully aware that this method left much to be desired in the area of precision. That's why, when I got there, I bought nuts and bolts in a selection of sizes, both larger and smaller than what I needed. Except, of course, for six-millimeter, of which they were temporarily out. Several minutes after I got home and had spent some time fruitlessly fiddling around under my hood with a camping lantern balanced on the radiator, I forced myself to look on the bright side. Which was that at least now I knew I was looking for six-millimeter hardware. The next day -- when, fortunately, Trash and I carpooled to work -- I made a few phone calls. I learned that that evening, I could either drive thirty minutes to the nearest Saturn dealership that had the exact proper nut and bolt, complete with part number; or I could do what I should have done in the first place, which was to drive ten minutes to the Napa store in Uptown and have them match it right there. And the only reason it took me ten minutes instead of eight was because I didn't want my battery to plummet to the pavement while I was getting there. Finally, I caught a break. Not only did I not have to wait in line, but a guy came out to the parking lot and screwed a brand-new nut right into place. There was still the matter of the bolt, but I'd reassembled the air cleaner before leaving home and he couldn't get to it. "I can take care of that when I get home," I offered. Sold! Except that he declined to charge me a cent. I got home, left all the car doors open, took apart the air cleaner, put the new bolt in, put the air cleaner back together, closed the hood, and unstrapped M. Small from his car seat in a matter of a couple of minutes. In that order. Original estimate: ten minutes, zero dollars. Final tally: two days, sixteen dollars. Twenty if you count bus fare. Maybe I should have been a mechanic after all. posted by M. Giant 7:29 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, August 23, 2006 Head Space Some people have A Horrible Moment That Changed Everything. A few months ago, I almost did. It was a weekend morning, and I got up to change, dress, feed, and hang with the munchkin while Trash slept in, for once. I'm not at my best at these times; usually at six-something on a Saturday I'm either still asleep or counting the hours until M. Small's nap -- and, by extension, mine. So he'd had his breakfast, and he was just wandering around from room to room, as he does, with me behind him. The house is pretty well child-proofed by now, so it's easy and safe to give him plenty of space. As long as you're in the same room with him, there's not much trouble he can get into. For instance, the bookcases in his room are not just bolted to the wall; they're anchored to it, with brackets big enough to hold fighter planes stationary on the pitching flight deck of an aircraft carrier. There's no way he's going to pull one of those suckers down on himself, ever. I doubt that even I could pull one down without doing a lot of damage to not only my back, but also the walls. Possibly even the foundation. Those bookcases hold a few other things besides books. The fourth shelf up holds some knickknacks, the baby monitor transmitters, a power strip in a childproof case, and this windchime thingy that has its own fan built in. Yes, it's kind of a tangle of cords, but he's not going to be able to reach any of them until he's old enough to know better. In theory, anyway. A week or two before, we'd been to Iowa, and brought a baby monitor with us. When I plugged it back in, I neglected to tuck the extension cord back into the narrow slot between bookcases, where M. Small can't get at it. So on this day, even though he wasn't supposed to be able to grab the cord, he did just that, and gave it a downward yank. And that windchime thingy -- four or five pounds of plastic, metal, and wood -- slid right off the edge of the shelf four feet above his head. I caught it, of course, and M. Small never knew anything was amiss. He was kind of grouchy when I stuffed the cord away where he couldn't get at it, but he had no idea what a close call he'd just had. And he never will, unless I tell him (doubtful) or unless he reads this one day (even more doubtful). It would have been a terrifying moment, had I had time to think about it before reacting. There was no way that thing would have missed his head, and there was no way it wouldn't have injured him. Possibly seriously, possibly permanently, possibly even fatally. But for no reason whatsoever, I just happened to be standing directly over him at that moment, as opposed to across the room. The thing came down, my hands went out, tragedy averted. I even had everything back where it belonged before my hands started shaking. I can't stand to think about what would have happened if I hadn't been close enough, fast enough, lucky enough. And yet there are times when I can't not think about it. Because if I hadn't been close enough, I would have been replaying that moment in my head for the rest of my life, whether I liked it or not. If I hadn't been fast enough, that moment would have been the first thing I thought of every day when I woke up and the last thing I thought of early every morning when I went to sleep. If I'd been in a different room, I would have been permanently hearing that sound in my head: a crash followed by screaming. Or, infinitely worse, a crash followed by silence. And God knows what I would have seen upon rushing into the room. And then I'd be doomed to forever relive that moment, as if by running it through my head enough times, I could make it come out okay. Yet never succeeding, and never forgiving myself for letting it happen. But I don't have to do that. It did come out okay. I have the luxury to have forgotten what day it was, for example, which is otherwise something that never would have slipped my mind. I'm not going to forget that actual moment, when M. Small's life was suddenly in my hands before I even realized it. Because more than being fast, more than being close, I was lucky. So lucky. I could have been stuck in that moment for the rest of my life, constantly imagining a different outcome. But since I'm not, it only seems fair that I should make myself visit it once in a while. And be grateful that I don't have to live there. And do a better job of keeping moments like that to a minimum in the first place. Because as grateful as I am that I can relive a moment like this knowing that it ended safely, I'm also grateful that it's the only one so far. posted by M. Giant 8:54 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:
Nearly thirty years later, my mother still feels guilty because my brother rolled of his changing table and broke his arm. He didn't even know it had happened until he recently said he'd never broken any bones and we filled him in.
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My mother turned away for a moment with my older sister on the changing table, turned back and found she'd rolled over and fallen on the floor.
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My three year old nephew fell backwards down a flight of stairs at Thanksgiving. I had no idea a pregnant woman (his mom) could run so fast. Luckily, she's a doctor.
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I will never forget, for as long as I live, the sight of my then-18-month old son tumbling head over heels down the entire flight of stairs while I, 81/2 months pregnant, and not possibly fast enough, watched. The thump as he hit the hardwood floor at the bottom of the stairs, the swish as he slid into the baseboard with a final, tiny "bump." And then the terrifying silence before the heartwrenching-and warming-scream. He survived with only a broken leg. (And what a pitiful pair we were for those last few weeks--me huge and low pushing him in the stroller with his little leg stuck straight out, or lugging 30+ pound of toddler and cast, balanced precariously where my hip used to be, up two full flights of stairs for his nap)
By Sunday, August 20, 2006 Not Movin' On Up. For the past few months Trash and I had been agonizing over whether we should move into a bigger house or expand the one we've got. On the side in favor of moving, we could end up with a bigger, cheaper house, and we wouldn't have to live in a hotel with a toddler for six to eight weeks while a construction crew expands our upper floor. On the side against moving, we really hate moving. We hate the boxing things up, the not knowing where anything is, all the chaos and dust and stress and work, all the organizing, all the heavy lifting. We hate it. Also, we hate it some more. Years ago, we thought we'd have a perfect plan in place for if we'd ever moved. For some reason, nearly everyone we knew moved in about a two-year period, and we built up so much moving karma that when our turn came, Trash and I could just watch our friends pack, schlep, and unpack our stuff. In between our naps, that is. But then all those people moved away, so that turned out to be a flaw in our plan. What really swung out decision in favor of remodeling was hearing about a contractor who could not only do what we want done in a month, but can also do it without us having to move completely out of our home in the process. We'll have to sleep downstairs for a while, of course, but it beats the hell out of moving entirely. The plan is to expand the space and add a new bedroom for M. Small, a second bathroom, and a new workspace for me. This is going to involve literally raising the back half of the roof to make room for everything. And yet we can still live here throughout the process. Basically all we have to do is move all of the stuff out of our upper floor, which is now one big bedroom. How hard can it be to clear out one bedroom? We started by bringing home a few boxes home from work every night. Over a month ago, I began boxing up the mysteries and SF books that we moved upstairs almost two years ago. Those boxes got stacked up behind the bar, meaning we now have no access to beer for the duration. Of course, we had to clean out the space behind the bar first, to make room. A bunch of other, largely weather- and mouse-proof stuff, got packed into large plastic bins that are currently taking up space in the garage, along with the upstairs bookcases. We had to clean out the garage first, to make room. A lot of the stuff on the finished side of our basement had to get moved over to the unfinished side. We had to clean out the unfinished side first, to make room. Once that was done, I could clean out the finished side of the basement. Some of the stuff went into the unfinished side, some behind the bar, and some into the garage, all of which needed a little more cleaning to make room. There's not much left in our bedroom now except our bed, Trash's computer workspace, and our clothes. Not even all of our clothes; many garments have already been boxed up and put into storage. When it comes time to relocate downstairs, all we'll have to do is wrestle our queen-sized bed into the basement, schlep Trash's computer desk into the garage, dismantle the computer and set it up on the bar, and put the remaining clothes into the suitcases and the rolling clothes rack from which we'll be living for the next several weeks. We're both so glad we're not moving. posted by M. Giant 9:20 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
With luck you will have something more secure than a tarp between you and the first frost. Also make sure you have a permit taped to your front window - even better, try to have someone you trust around during the inspector visits.
By My parents are finishing up adding a new master bed/bathroom, which involved everything out of their living room and garage (the bedroom was going over those two rooms, so the roof was going to be torn off). It was a pain and they were cramped for six weeks or so, but ultimately it's worth it in terms of not starting completely over in a new place. I think you made the right choice!
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I feel your pain buddy. We moved to a new place a month ago, which we had to buy at emergency speed because they were going to tear down our old appartment building. Now it turns out things won't move in such a hurry. But we've moved already.
By Thursday, August 17, 2006 Finder of Lost Loveys If you've ever spent any time around a small child, you're probably familiar with the concept of a "lovey." If not, it's generally some object that the tot likes to have close at hand for security and snuggling and what not. It's usually a stuffed animal or blanket or something similarly cuddly. M. Small's first lovey was a plastic school bus. It makes a certain kind of twisted sense, even above and beyond his well-documented love of anything with wheels. Before he went to day care every weekday, and whenever he stays home sick, one of the highlights of his afternoon was when all the buses came to the school across the street. He would watch raptly, his nose glued to the window, until they were all gone for the day. So when he spotted a miniature one on a clearance shelf in the grocery store one day, it only made sense that it would not only get snatched into his hands, but become his favorite object. But it turns out our boy is a little bit fickle on the lovey front. A few weeks later, Trash's mom came up for a visit. She brought a gift from Trash's grandma, a sleek green toy sports car with springloaded rear wheels that slingshot the car forward if you roll it back a few inches, as well as some pimpin' lighting and sound effects. It played two different beats, and M. Small had a different changing-table dance for each one. I'm pretty sure it was a 3 Fast 3 Furious: Tokyo Drift tie-in product of some sort, but I lost interest in checking it out. M. Small also lost interest in the car when the battery started dying and the hip-hop stopped coming out of it. And also when his new lovey arrived, courtesy of a rare McDonald's Happy Meal. It came with a cute little sky-blue faux-Porsche, also with springloaded wheels and an eyeballs decal on the windshield. Yes, it was Sally Carrera from the movie Cars. None of us have actually seen the film yet, but it figures that Trash and I would end up having a third Bonnie Hunt fan in the house. We knew that M. Small's new lovey -- "Boo Car!" as he affectionately referred to it -- was going to get lost sooner or later. We made several more trips to McDonald's over the next few weeks, eating Happy Meals ourselves to make sure we'd have a "Boo Car" in reserve. We ended up with a brown pickup truck, an aquamarine 50s monstrosity with tail fins, and two yellow faux-Beetles (with two different facial expressions, if you can believe that) instead. M. Small liked them all fine, but none of them -- not even the $200 Lightning McQueen replica big enough for him to drive that we saw at Costco one day -- were as cool as "Boo Car." Which, naturally, vanished one day. We hoped that, failing its reappearance, M. Small was still young enough to forget about it and find a new lovey, just as he had before. Our hopes were in vain. "Boo Car," he would call plaintively at bedtime, and when he woke up in the mornings, and at nap time, and at his midnight wakenings. Weeks of this. I made another trip to McDonald's that very first week, but it was already too late. "Pirates of the Caribbean II" was out by now, and I had a Big Mac for lunch instead. I ruminated bitterly on the folly of doing a tie-in between food aimed at kids under seven and a PG-13 movie. This would have bothered me even before I was a parent, because inept marketing has always gotten on my nerves, but somehow it's worse when it affects me directly. I tried to make myself feel better by winning a Volvo in their little contest, but even that pathetic sop to my damaged emotions proved a nonstarter. I didn't even win a damn pie. There was one brief ray of hope when M. Small's birth mother came over one day with a new Cars car she'd found in a cereal box just that morning. I immediately hightailed it to our neighborhood grocery and picked up a couple of big boxes (which sit on top of our oven, barely dented, to this day), but when I got home, I learned that those fuckers in Battle Creek were also phasing out M. Small's lovey, and we ended up with a pale, Matchbox-sized imitation of the beloved Boo Car. M. Small has plenty of cars. He even has plenty of cars that are boo. Yet he knew the difference. Damn him. Trash and I were at a loss. Then one day, she was on one of her adoption message boards and a desperate post popped up: "Does anyone have one of those brown Happy Meal pickup trucks?" The rest is e-mail negotiations and a glorious bubble-wrapped package that a few days later. "BOO CAR!" M. Small cried when presented with his replacement lovey. Of course, we immediately took it away from him and locked it in a safe deposit box at the bank so we'd always know where it is. No, not really. We let him play with it, reunited at last with what he assumed was his long-lost lovey. He didn't seem to care that its windshield decal had grown back despite having gotten soaked away in one too many baths before its disappearance. And it's not like he could compare it side-by-side with the original. Because that didn't turn up in one of his diaper bags until almost two days later. Yes, M. Giant's Law strikes again. Leave my kid alone, you stupid law. Of course, now he's got a more conventional lovey: a small, soft blanket knitted from pale green chenille. I know where it came from in case it disappears next, but what I really want to know is where I can find a bedspread of the same material that I can cut up into sections and stash in various secure locations around the country. posted by M. Giant 9:48 PM 15 comments 15 Comments:reading this, despite having a difficult pregnancy, makes me happy to be pregnant. thanks.
By My son Jesse, (now 24) had Mr.Bear. He got left behind at Target one day when Jesse was about 5 yrs old,they had been together since Jesse was 18 months.After a very stressful day Mr.Bear and Jesse were reunited.Be very grateful M.Small is willing to accept more than one lovey.
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My 3 year old has her Blankie, which she sleeps with, and drags around everywhere, including in the sandbox. Whenever we manage to wrest it from her to wash it, she cries the entire time it's in the wash. I am working on convincing her to leave it at home when she starts preschool in a few weeks, but so far it's not looking good.
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Our son's lovey is a cloth diaper, or has he calls it, his "tow-ba" (towel). He was such a spitter as a baby, no one ever dared to hold him without one close at hand and he got very used to having one by his face while he napped.
By I once bought a Burger King toy on eBay because my 3-yr-old daughter had lost her original. Taking care of our kids' loveys--that's true love.
By If you know where his new blankie came from, go there now and buy all of them, because when (not if) it gets lost, they'll be discontinued and you won't be able to find any. Don't wait. Do it today.
By M. Giant's Law? We call that the "hairbrush rule" in my family. When I and my three brothers were growing up, that situation happened to each of us at least twice--always with hairbrushes.
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I used to work at a bookstore, and so many kids left their stuffed animals there. We always displayed them behind the counter in hopes that they would come back, but they never did. Which always struck me as both weird and sad.
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I still have my childhood Wabbit (owned since my birth), my Big Baba (doll, approximate size of a 6-month-old child), and my blankie.
By The yellow faux bug is in fact a Fiat, and I know a six-year-old car buff who'd be able to tell you the precise model and year.
By My twin sister and I were given blankets for our baptisms by our grandmother. I never showed much interest in mine, but she still has hers 17 years later. You can see through it-but not because of holes. The fabric is so thin that it's translucent. Gotta love loveys
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My wife bought an exact copy of our 16-month-old son's favourite blanket so we could actually wash it without inducing trauma, but we made the mistake of letting him realize they both exist. Now, he always wants the one he doesn't have. He'll drop the one in his hands and stand beside his crib or under the clotheline saying "bankit? bankit?" until we give him the other one.
By Hey--my toddler loves that "aquamarine mostrosity"! It's not her lovey, but it's one of the current favorite toys.
By My 18-month-old's lovey is a fleece blanket with satin trim. Thank goodness she's not very particular, so we have 4 of them in all (so far). If we forget to bring one in the car, we quickly hear about it from the back seat. My only "rule" is that one has to stay in the crib to remain dog-hair free. Of course, that's the one she always wants. So she stands at the crib, touching it through the slats and sucking her fingers with the other hand. Like she's visiting her lover in prison.
By I don't have children, but it seems I have a knack for giving loveys. One friend called to request a back-up lovey, known as Teddy. It seems the only way to keep the original clean was to allow her daughter to fall asleep with Teddy, then sneak him into the washer and dryer before they went to sleep for the night, so that Teddy would be back in her daughter's arms by the morning. A year ago I gave my sister an Ookie (Google it if you don't know what it is) when her son was born. At about 12 months, he finally took a liking to it. I'm told that he will notify his parents that bedtime has arrived by going to the crib, grabbing Ookie, and then crawling into one of their laps for snuggling. A replacement was dutifully delivered two weeks ago. My sister opened the box, handed it to him, and he dropped it like a hot potato. He marched into his room and found the "real" Ookie. He's no dummy!
By Sunday, August 13, 2006 Happy Camper II: The Campening In between preparing for M. Small's baptism last week, Trash and I were also preparing for something else. Namely, M. Small's second camping trip. You may recall that M. Small's first camping trip was only eleven months ago, when he was eleven months old. It must seem to him like that was half a lifetime ago. We went to not only the same campground, but the same camp site. We used to be much more adventurous than this in our travel arrangements, as in, "Oh, we'll just find a hotel when we get to the Gobi Desert." But when you have a toddler whose daily routine is going to be cataclysmically disrupted, you keep the other variables to a minimum. We spent a lot of Saturday packing up the cars, which M. Small loved. He adores being outside. Specifically, he's recently picked up a new hobby, which is climbing out of my car and into Trash's car, and then out of Trash's car and into my car, while pushing every lever, button, and knob he could reach. We couldn't wait to get out of the city with him and into nature, where, we were fully aware, he would spend his time climbing out of my car and into Trash's car, out of Trash's car and into my car, while pushing every lever, button, and knob he could reach. There were breaks in the car-manipulating, of course. M. Small appointed himself a sort of freelance Smoky the Bear the moment we entered the campground. "FIRE!" he hollered, pointing out the danger. The "danger" consisted of cold, empty fire pit without so much as a wisp of smoke rising from it, but it's important to be vigilant. We were also glad we didn't have to keep chasing him away from our own campfire once Trash got it going. If anything, it was the other way around. One of us would stoke it or bank it or suspend some water or food over it, and M. Small would quickly warn us, "HOT!" He had to yell it, of course, because he was either steering clear of the pit himself, or some distance away in one of our cars. Last time we went camping, he was just learning to walk. This time, he's big enough to walk all over the campground. Which he did. We didn't bother with the bambino gazebo this time around, because we knew he'd never go into it. What we had instead was a 4' X 5' tent that we basically used to store his toys. He was happy to go into it when we first set it up, but after that he was much more interested in the main tent, a 13' X 13' nylon mansion with three separate rooms that he took to calling "bigger one." And he would do this several times a day. At first, I wondered if he thought, upon seeing Mom, Dad, and Grandma drive all this way and start busily unpacking and setting things up, that this is just where we lived now. If so, he seemed cool with it. But a little guy needs time to adjust, and when that happens, you're glad the "bigger one" is there. M. Small would periodically press himself against the zipped-up door and ask, "Bigger one, bigger one." Once inside, he would ask for his pacifier. We've mostly got him off of that these days, except at bedtime and nap time. But when he started asking for it the second day and getting unusually upset when he didn't get it, we decided that maybe it would be a good idea to help him adjust to this major change in his life circumstances. I mean, yesterday he was living in his own room, sleeping in his own crib, in a nice, solid house in a friendly neighborhood in a busy city. Now he was in the middle of nowhere with FIRE! all around, with no shelter but an overgrown backpack. Is it so much to ask to let a guy suck on a piece of rubber for a few minutes with all of that going on? Because that's really all he needed. He'd suck on his paci, lie on his sleeping bag with the air mattress built in for a few minutes, and snuggle with his blankie. And then he'd be done, and he'd hand over the paci to the nearest adult without being asked, and start trying to get out of the tent so he could go back to draining our car batteries. I don't know how he would have reacted if we'd stayed a whole week. I do know that on the last morning, when we started packing up, he was ready to go home. "Home," he would say in a tone of voice that indicated that he knew that wasn't where he was. "Home." A few hours later, we were back in our own driveway, here in Minneapolis. But M. Small didn't want to go into the house. He wanted to stay in the car and climb the steering wheel. I guess when it comes down to it, his home is where he hangs from the turn signal lever. posted by M. Giant 8:15 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:Which, come to think of it, is entirely appropriate for a "gearhead" such as him!
By Friday, August 11, 2006 I'm Gonna Wash Those Sins Right out of My Hair M. Small got Hell-proofed last weekend. Our church prefers to call it "baptism," though. It's something Trash and I had been meaning to do for a while. But between one thing and another, it just took us some time to get around to it. First there was his premature birth, and then the chaos of coming home from the hospital, and then the fact that his immune system wasn't up to being around large groups of people, and then there was the issue of Trash and I not actually belonging to a church or knowing how to go about getting it done. We still don't, officially, but now our kid does. Being baptized and all. Which I guess means he can get us in even on busy Sundays. The deacon working the rope line might be all, "Sorry, all full up," but then M. Small will flash his little membership card and we go straight to the VIP lounge where the communal wine runs $800 a bottle. No, actually, that won't happen. Our church is pretty informal, which I like. It's also close, which I like even better. The chapel isn't air-conditioned, so services are often held in the much more casual parish hall. This was one of those Sundays. We'd also decided to have M. Small baptized at the 8:30 service instead of the 10:00, because some people had other places to be afterward (including us, but I'll get to that in the next entry). The thing is that M. Small is quite an active and talkative almost-two-year-old, even for an almost-two-year-old, so our plan was to drop him off at the church day care for the first part of the service, then go down and get him when his big moment was nigh. This plan sort of fell apart when we remembered that the 8:30 service doesn't have day care. Yet another reason for us to not move very quickly most Sunday mornings, but it wasn't going to help us today. "Noisy kids don't really bother anyone but their own parents," the priest assured us the day before. "You haven't been in church with our kid," we told her. Surprisingly, though, he was better-behaved than he ever has been in church. I wondered what powerfully maturing experience had befallen him in the two weeks since our last attempt to bring him into the service (in which his repeated screams of FAN! demonstrated his mastery of certain nouns if not his piety), but then realized that this was the first time we'd sat with him in the front row so he could see what was going on. Remarkably, all the people doing stuff at the front of the room seemed to hold his attention better than the backs of people's heads, which is what he's used to seeing in front of him. He found it even more interesting than turning around to look at the FAN!. After the sermon -- and our priest's sermons are so interesting and well-delivered that I often catch myself paying attention -- it was time for the big moment. Trash and I carried M. Small up to the front, where a salad bowl full of holy water had been set up for the procedure. Another kid -- a decently-aged seven-month-old -- was also getting baptized at the same service, and his moms had brought the bowl to use. Trash's brother, his wife, and my sister DeBitch the elder were on hand as godparents, as well as Trash's sister from some campground via cell phone. We went through the thing, and everyone did great. The priest had warned us that most kids, especially older kids, don't like being tipped upside-down backwards for the baptism. I didn't tell her that M. Small is used to being placed in the bathtub hair-first. So M. Small got baptized, and then the other kid did. There was the usual solemn moment, and then the other kid's three-year-old brother crowed, "Yay, baby!" I think that was my favorite part. So now that M. Small is baptized, Trash and I should really probably keep going to church with some frequency. We tried to convince the godparents that it's their job to come get him and take him to church on Sundays so we can sleep in, but none of them were buying. It's up to us now. Which is fine. I just wish we didn't have to sit in the front row. posted by M. Giant 7:44 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:Congratulations!
By Yay(notBaby)MSmall! - Libby
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M. Small got Hell-proofed last weekend
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By Wednesday, August 02, 2006 Gearhead When I was growing up, my dad could identify the year, make and model of just about any American-made car on sight from two hundred yards. For years, I assumed that this was an ability that would come to me as I approached adulthood. It didn't. Don't get me wrong. I can identify all sorts of cars if I'm close enough to read the nameplate (although I thought for at least a year that it was pronounced "Pry-us"). Sometimes I can even tell the year. But generally, it has to be the same year, make and model as a car that was in my or my parents' garage for at least a year, so it's far from a savant-like ability I have. Not like my dad. Or his grandson. I don't know how he does it. For months, he's known how to go back and forth in the driveway, touching the red station wagon and saying "Daddy car," and then the gray Ion and saying "Mommy car." Of course, that's a no-brainer, considering who drives which one. But earlier this spring, we were wondering why he would always say "Nana" whenever he spotted the green sedan parked in front of our neighbor's house. If we'd been thinking, we would have realized that he thought it was Trash's mom's car, which is roughly the same color but a different model. I think it took us so long, just because we didn't think he'd make the connection. Once we realized the truth, we wondered how he was not getting a complex over the fact that his grandma was driving all the way up from Iowa, parking in front of our house, and never coming inside to see him. He's stopped doing that, probably because the last time Trash's mom came up, he saw both cars together and noticed the subtle differences in design. He's still not infallible, though. For instance, when Linda comes over, she parks her maroon car in the same spot across the street that Bitter parks her maroon car in when she comes over. So there's been at least one occasion when M. Small stands on the sofa looking out the window, wondering why Bitter hasn't come in to see him. But that, too, doesn't happen often. And his eye is growing more discerning. The neighbors a couple of houses up from us own a Saturn station wagon that is identical to mine, except that it's green. Every time M. Small would see it on one of our walks around the block, he'd point out, "Daddy car." Now he's able to spot the distinction, or at least pronounce more colors. "Daddy car, green," he observes. And it's getting more precise. Walking back from the park one evening he spotted a maroon Buick that looks like my mom's and said, "Nana!" I agreed that it did look like Nana's car, and called my mom at home both to share the adorable story and to make sure her car hadn't been stolen. Both M. Small's birth mom and Trash's coworker Reenie drive white sedans that are all but identical to me, but M. Small can identify them both at a glance and announce the correct owner's name. Trash's sister drives a silver Saturn VUE (and probably will forever), and when M. Small saw a black one on the street, he pointed and said his auntie's name. Boy knows his cars, is what I'm saying. I'm looking forward to when he's old enough to go to car shows with my dad. Funny how some things skip a generation. posted by M. Giant 8:37 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:My friend was a nanny for a toddler who moved from being able to differentiate between "car" and "truck" to actually pinpointing details, like M. Small. "Issa Audi!" or "Issa B M Dabayoo!" And our favorite, "Issa Subawoo!"
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I once was taking a two-year-old for a walk and passed some construction. "Look, Zack, a truck!" I said.
By The family that lives on the corner has a son who at the age of 2 could correctly identify a car, both make and model, driving down the street from about a hundred yards away. His grandfather used to take him on walks to the church parking lot across the street and tell him about all the cars parked there. It was pretty amazing to watch.
By Wait, so how is it pronounced?
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