The Musical Daddy

A Laughing Matter

2012-01-27T20:18:00.001-05:00

The Boy’s joke: “Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Boo!” “Boo who?” “Awww…. Why are you crying?” Roll on the ground in laughter. Another favorite joke: “What flower blooms between your nose and your chin?” “I give up. What flower blooms between your nose and your chin?” “Tulips! Get it, two lips?” Another favorite: “Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Apple.” “Apple who?” “Knock-knock.” (repeat three or four times) “Orange.” “Orange who?” “Orange you glad I didn’t say apple?”

Little Bear is trying like heck to tell the jokes, but he doesn’t quite get it yet. Toddlers are very, very literal creatures, and the vagaries of humor are past their understanding. Bless his heart, he’s trying. Here’s his attempt, which is hilarious on an entirely different level: “Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Apple.” “Apple who?” “Awww… why are you crying?” That is funny on an awful lot of levels, most of them unintentional. Probably, it is funniest because of the sincerity that he feels when he tells the joke!

The development of humor is absolutely fascinating to watch. The Boy is at a point where slapstick humor – people falling down, getting bonked on the head, etc. – is the absolute height of funny. Looney Tunes (the original Bugs Bunny stuff) is completely brilliant to him and will generally provoke a reaction up to, and including, literally rolling on the floor. I am absolutely dying to introduce him to the Three Stooges. That’s definitely a Daddy thing (pretty much, no American woman – with few exceptions – likes the Stooges), but he’s not quite there yet. He is thrown a bit by the black and white, and it does take a little while of story before they start whacking each other with hammers.

Thinking about it, I might want to wait a little while before introducing the Stooges. He does know where I keep my hammers.

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Riding Drrrty

2012-01-26T19:55:00.001-05:00

The boys did do some bike riding yesterday. Well, Little Bear rode on the tricycle. The Boy wasn’t in the mood for riding. The Boy would set up a pile of small boxes, and Little Bear would run into them on the tricycle. Both would fall over laughing. Rinse, lather, and repeat, and that was a solid half hour or so of fun time that The Wife had yesterday. It’s really nice that my in-laws have such a big garage, that the kids can play with their bikes!

YouTube Video

I had a nice daddy playtime yesterday. The Boy had pulled the cushions off of the couch, and we played on the cushions. It was a relatively simple game: he’d say, “Get me, Daddy!”, and I’d pick him up or drag him from wherever he was and throw him on the largest stack of pillows. Little Bear was really not feeling well, so he stayed out of the game for quite a while. He eventually joined us, wearing a t-shirt, no socks, and boots. Ah, the casual nudity of the toddler…

After that, the three of us played “Hide and Speak,” as The Boy calls it. He counted to 10, I hid, and he found me. I counted to 10, I’d start to look for him, and he’d jump out: “Here I am, Daddy!” When I tried to explain that that wasn’t how the game worked, he fell over laughing. Again, rinse, lather, and repeat. The end of the game came when I hid underneath a blanket, which started a game centered around building a fort.

It really is nice to see the boys playing together as much as they do. I’m still kind of tickled about the day in December when The Boy was home sick, and Little Bear’s teachers called us. He was wandering around the playground, looking for his brother, and was very, very sad that The Boy wasn’t there! It’s sad, for sure, but a little heartwarming that my boys love each other like they do. May it continue with The Baby, and may it continue through adulthood.

Little Bear starts swimming lessons next week. That’s his reward for a week’s worth of no poo accidents. I have a feeling that my children are going to be like fish next summer, something that I’m perfectly fine with. It certainly makes Sandcastle more fun!

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Weekend Update

2012-01-23T20:15:00.001-05:00

This past weekend, I went away to northern Ohio to attend a Sweet Adelines event, which went marvelously. I am so blessed, to have the friends and colleagues that I have; I wasn’t able to attend the Friday night sessions, but I had “substitutes” that were ready, willing, and able to step in and be me for a couple of hours. Best part of the weekend? The blissful 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep on Saturday night, which was richly needed after arriving in Ohio at 12:30AM the previous night and running 6 hours of rehearsals and such. Well, that and the whole “making new friends” thing, but I think the sleep trumped it all.

The Wife handled the children with her usual facility, and Aunt J was a welcome addition for the weekend. Because of all the snow, they didn’t really go anywhere; I did get a cute picture of the boys playing with sandbox shovels and buckets in the snow. When I got home on Sunday afternoon, I wound up underneath a pile of happy little boys. For a change, The Boy wanted to take a nap in his bedroom instead of mine, so I wound up falling asleep in his little bed.

When I awoke, The Boy had a friend coming over to play. I took Little Bear, and we went to the comic book store and to visit an ailing friend in the hospital. He was very, very cute, which I hoped helped her feel better. After that, we picked up pizza and wings for the football game. The Giants – my team – won their game, and The Wife allowed me (quite generously) to watch the game, putting the children to bed by herself. The Baby did seem to enjoy the bit of football that he watched.

My new work schedule will start next week or so. My definite hours are 9-2 Monday through Friday, with the option to work an additional 15 hours per week as I can, officially a part time job offer. We’ll see what’s going to happen with that. I’m not even sure exactly what I want to do, but it’ll probably be something along the lines of an 8:00-4:30 shift each day, with maybe a change on Tuesdays for chorus rehearsal.

Not much new to report, as I didn’t do much parenting this weekend. The Baby had his first two teeth break through the gum this weekend, and he reported to his 6-month doctor’s appointment at 28 inches and 20 pounds. He’s long and lean, just like his brothers. He still looks a lot like The Boy did at that age (may he have a better 10-month birthday than The Boy did), but he’s definitely developing “his own thing,” as The Wife stated.

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Travel Day

2012-01-20T19:15:00.001-05:00

The Baby had his 6-month well checkup today at the doctor’s office. He came in at 28 inches and 20 pounds. That’s pretty big. I don’t remember exactly what the other boys were at six months – and I’m too lazy to check – but I don’t think they were this big. He had potatoes at breakfast this morning, eating some off of my wife’s plate. He sits up pretty well right now, as long as you don’t leave him there for too long. Falling over – at least on a bed or couch – is really, really funny to him right now.

I had a good Daddy night last night. I got home from work at the normal time, around 5:15, and we hibernated for the evening because of a little bit of snow. We had several rousing games of “Gonna Get You!”, the highlight of which was me chasing The Boy with Little Bear on my back. Remarkably entertaining. We did a good job getting the kids to bed, as we converted any resistance to laughing and playing. Even The Boy went to sleep without a struggle, taking two stories and drowsing during “The Night Kitchen.”

It’s very cute when I get up, and he says, ”No, Daddy, don’t go! Turn the light out so I can sleep.”

I’m leaving immediately after work to go to a Sweet Adelines event in northern Ohio. It’ll be a late night tonight and a long day tomorrow, but it’ll be worth it – good fellowship, good fun, great music. Even more to look forward to: a night’s worth of sleep with no babies crying, no potty trips (except my own), no 4-year old feet in my kidneys…

Aunt J is coming over the house for the weekend, which is nice (Grandma and Grandpa are in Maryland visiting The Wife’s siblings), although The Wife did admit today that she was anticipating the challenge and fun of having the kids to herself for the weekend. I’m sure she could have handled it, although Aunt J is a welcome addition to the weekend’s plans.

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Bananas!

2012-01-19T18:59:00.001-05:00

The cool thing about the whole baby-lead weaning process is how the introduction of new foods is a complete sensory experience for The Baby. He has to get used to picking up a new piece of food and figuring out how to get it in his mouth, and that can be quite the experience. With cucumbers, green beans, and broccoli (the three foods he’d had prior to today), picking up the food was relatively easy, and none of them squish without some effort. Broccoli does smash on the table quite satisfactorily, as he evidenced by bashing the broccoli repeatedly on the table of his high chair.

This morning, we gave him bananas for the first time. Bananas are a bit more problematical than the other fruits: banana slices are kind of sticky, and they are not easy to get up off of the high chair tray table. When you finally pick up the slice, it’s very easy and rewarding to squish the slices in between your fingers instead of eating; it’s also easy to squish them when trying to bring it to your mouth. He had a bit of a struggle, but he finally managed to get some into his mouth and chew.

That’s actually the strongest part of Baby-Lead Weaning: the fact that the kids struggle and practice to get the food into their own mouth. At this point in the process, he’s not actually receiving significant nutrition from the food. He doesn’t need the food to survive. As he gets better at feeding himself, his nutritional needs have grown correspondingly. Plus, it keeps him busy and entertained while the rest of us eat breakfast, cleaning dishes, or bringing little boys to the potty.

I do admit to missing the “traditional” feed the baby with a spoon, at least a little bit. I think it’s more missing the idea of the intimacy of the feeding, rather than having to take the ten to fifteen minutes to actually do it at every meal. I still sneak a little bit of baby-feeding when I can, which my wife gracefully ignores. I’m also pretty darn happy that we haven’t had to make the expense of buying baby food, which is darn expensive. I think, still, that the only jar of baby food that we bought was during The Boy’s treatment, when we were away and needed some apple sauce to give his medicines.

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Good morning!

2012-01-18T18:34:00.001-05:00

Little Bear came downstairs this morning looking for me, once he was done with the potty. It’s very cute, incidentally, to see him dash from his room to the bathroom after each sleep period. He came running into the kitchen, saw me, and skidded to a halt. At two and a half, sudden stops never quite go as planned, and it took him a second to regain his bearings.
“Daddy, I have to show you a question!”

“Yes, Little Bear?”

“Ah-WOOOOOOOOO!” he said, howling like a wolf.

“I see. Thank you!”

“Daddy, I have to show you another question!”

“Yes, Little Bear?”

“Ah-WOOOOOOOOO!” he said again, grinning fiercely. That grin is a million-dollar smile, incidentally, and might be the best smile of any of the branches of my family.

“I see. Thank you!”

“Daddy, want breakfast! Want Rice Crispix!” That’s what he calls Crispix, which he has somewhat confused with Rice Krispies. He knows the difference between the cereals and can request either one, but he likes Crispix better. The Wife came down with The Baby, and she put him in his chair so she could do her morning thing.

The Boy came down a few minutes later and picked at a plate of food. In a couple of minutes, he got up and followed me around the downstairs while I gathered my things for work. Little Bear, meanwhile, powered through his bowl of cereal, climbed over to his brother’s chair, and finished his breakfast. The Boy saw Little Bear in his chair and flipped out; he wasn’t upset about the food (he wasn’t hungry), just about the fact that his little brother was sitting in his chair. I moved Little Bear and the plate of food, and all was right with the world.

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Sleepytime

2012-01-17T17:45:00.001-05:00

So, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Last month, we were having real issues with Little Bear and his sleep cycles. That is, he was up at 5:30AM as if he set an alarm. This is not ideal. Pretty much, no matter when we sent him to bed (earlier, later, normal times), he was up at the same time and ready to go, usually with a night diaper full of stuff. (In retrospect, maybe it was his eating times that were doing it… but, I digress.)

Over the past week or so, he’s been sleeping later and later, frequently to 7:30 or 8:00. We’ve been putting him to bed a little bit later, usually closer to 8:30, and I have to say that it’s been nice. It’s no fun to have him turn into a pumpkin at 7:00PM, particularly since I don’t get home from work until after 5. It’s been a bit harder getting him to bed at night. He’s frequently up once or twice between 8:30 and 10, acting like normal Little Bear: “Need to go potty!” That is significantly more acceptable than having to get up at 5:30 every single morning.

The Baby is starting to settle his schedule quite a bit. He’s taking a reliable morning nap, a reliable afternoon nap, and a reliable evening nap before bedtime. (What a life, huh?) He’s even gotten to the point where we can put him down in his crib or in bed or in the pack’n’play for big chunks of his nap! He still generally prefers to have people as a bed, but he’s getting better about it.

The Boy, on the other hand, is… well… The Boy. He needs his daddy time at night, including stories and snuggling. I’ve been trying to leave the room while he’s still awake so he gets used to it, but it has mixed results. 7 nights out of 10, he says, “Turn the light off, please,” and goes to sleep. This week has been the other three nights: hours of fits, crying, screaming, and complete inconsonability. (Is that a word?) Ironically, he’s been comfortable and relaxed if I’ve run on the elliptical machine next door to his room, and that’s calmed him down sometimes.

I know I’ll miss the intimacy of having bedtime with my boys when they’re older. I do eventually want grown-up time, though. That is a bit of an exaggeration, I guess; they’re pretty good, most of the time. It’s just nights like the last couple, when I’ve had a million things on my mind, it gets challenging.

I do understand that that’s why he’s acting up – when I’m distracted and paying attention to other things, that’s when he tries anything to gain my attention. He’s My Boy, and he saves all of his best fits for me. I get that, and I hope that, in later life, I’ve been patient enough.

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Solid Food and Review: Beauty and the Beast 3D

2012-01-16T17:26:00.001-05:00

It's The Baby's half birthday, which is a pretty big deal. Hard to believe that he's 6 months old already, although I admit that it's getting harder and harder to remember life before him. I think that's true with all of the children; your mind and emotions adjust to the new paradigm such that the old one is kind of relegated to a historical view of things: you remember it happening, but it's almost like it happened to somebody else.

Last night, we gave him broccoli for the first time - his first solid food. He handled it like a pro: picked it right up, put it right in him mouth, and commenced chewing. I other words, basically how he's handled everything else up to this point in his life. We know that he swallowed some, because there were little broccoli chunks in his poop this morning. Still, it was a promising beginning to the baby-lead weaning to which my wife subscribes and has used (with great success) with the other boys.

Before then, I took The Boy to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D at the local movie theater. That was a mixed success; he had a good time, but I'm not sure how much he actually enjoyed the movie itself. I forgot how much of the movie happens internally to the characters, how much is conveyed in a glance, a bitten lip, a smile. I had the feeling, most of the way through the movie, that The Boy was echoing the character Chip, who kept asking, "What's happening? What do you mean?" to the adult characters. The 3D glasses were a mixed success; he wore them through most of the first half of the movie, then just preferred to watch the blurry picture until the end. He did tell me about the end of the movie when he woke up this morning, so I know that a little bit took.

That movie, itself, is probably one of my top three favorite movies of any sort. The soundtrack is beyond sublime, providing an expressive element matched by few Broadway scores. The voice acting is superb, and the writing is fluid and seamless. The 3D was pretty good and entirely devoid of gimmicky cheap thrills, mostly consisting of layers that provided depth and contrast to the characters. I found the 3D to be comfortable and not at all distracting, which is rare for the post-effect 3D that I've seen.

The previous evening, we had a very nice dinner out with a school family of The Boy's. Their daughter (in his class) had a kidney transplant and a younger age, so we feel some amount of kinship to them. Brothers of the urinary tract, I guess. We stayed until the kids started to act whacky, close to bedtime. It is nice to have some friends that have few expectations for you; just a gathering for a nice, simple meal. I give my wife a lot of credit for making the social engagements that we've made; I've been so focused on my job and my chorus, lately, that I don't think I've had a spare moment to think about my friends.

Little Bear has been progressing nicely towards potty training, at a steeply accelerating learning curve. He's decided that he's interested in putting poo in the potty, so he's set his mind to it. We've now had three or four accident-free days. I think he's finally turn the corner, although a regression is not only possible but expected. We all miss occasionally, right? He's been working on his reading, trying to reconstruct stories like "Should I Share My Ice Cream?" from memory while looking at the pictures. It's very cute.

This weekend should be interesting. Grandma and Grandpa are going to be away, and I leave for a Sweet Adeline's event immediately after work on Friday and don't return until Sunday afternoon. That leaves The Wife home alone with 3 boys. I almost feel guilty about looking forward to Saturday night, when I can sleep in my own bed, with no little people, and lots of room, and no one to wake me.

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Some Fun Stuff

2012-01-12T22:21:00.003-05:00

The Boy likes coming up to me and saying, "Daddy, I want to tell you a question!" This is usually followed by something like, "The clock has letters on it that say The Boy!" or "I like orange!" I'm trying to get him to understand the difference between a question and a statement, but I'm not sure it's going to take.Little Bear has started greeting me like The Boy did at 2 and a half: "Daddydaddydaddydaddy, Hi, Daddy! Daddydaddydaddydaddydaddy, Hi, Daddy!" while he bounces up and down. It's very cute, and it's very awesome first thing in the door after a day of work.The Baby is going to start solid foods this weekend - most likely broccoli. I'm excited for that, even if it's a little scary that he's hitting 6 months old so quickly. He likes playing with the sippy cup of water at dinnertime, although he doesn't seem to want to drink from it. He just likes throwing it around, and he seems to have discovered the gravity game.We're going to try to take the kids to Chuck'E'Cheese this weekend. We have a coupon, $20 for a pizza, two drinks, and some tokens. That's pretty reasonable for a night out with some fun things. I haven't been to a Chuck'E'Cheese since I was about 12 or 13. I'll bet it hasn't changed that much. Little Bear in the ball pit? Yes, please.I might have some great employment news next week. I'm not going to count my chickens until they hatch, however., and spill beans here. It's been bad enough, getting out of the habit of posting on a daily basis; I don't want to jinx myself as well.The Boy really enjoys 1-piece footsie pajamas. I think they're really cute, but it's not much fun trying to get a night diaper on him in those pajamas, particularly when someone leaves his underpants on. A minor pitfall, to be sure, but it is possible to change him from underpants to night diaper without waking him.On Monday night, The Boy read the entire "Green Eggs and Ham" book. I mean, he actually read all of the words. When he made a word mistake, he was able to correct himself, correctly telling the difference between "would" and "could" and similar things like that. It's a little frightening to see; I was an early reader, but I don't think I was reading quite that early. I do enjoy having smart children.Little Bear is loving the iWriteWords app on iPad, which teaches how to spell words and draw letters the "correct" way. He's pretty good at it.

Day 7: The Voyage Home

2012-01-01T23:46:00.001-05:00

The adults woke up at around 6:00 in the morning, and the children blissfully slept later. This allowed us to load the car, finish the last-minute bag packing, and prepare a light breakfast for them before waking them up. The car was loaded successfully, and we went on the the airport. I dropped the family off at the departures window and went to drop the rental car off.

As with everything else on the trip, this nt smoothly and completely without incident. I dropped the car off, got the receipt, and met up with the family right around the time that they finished curbside checkin. We made our way through security (dumb note: can't bring a 20 ounce Mountain Dew onto an airplane from outside security), went to the gate, and waited. We grabbed some extra breakfast for the family. Our Make A Wish button got us onto the airplane first, and we took the front rows of the flight for the extra legroom.

The flight went smoothly. We took right off, landed and coasted to our gate quickly, and our luggage came promptly off of the plane. Grandpa got the car from long term parking, I loaded all of the luggage inside, and we got home around 1:30. A family nap followed after a light lunch.The next morning I returned to work. No problems!

In the time since, I've gone through the more than 600 pictures that we took, narrowing it down to only around 450 shots that are fairly decent. There's about 50 really, really nice pictures in there! That doesn't count, by the way, the photos taken by Disney (around 75, but 50 of them are stock shots of the park and characters) and those taken by Give Kids The World (probably another 75 or so, including a bunch of professional shots of the resort buildings). We bought Give Kids The World photo books and used Walgreens to print 25 pictures for each book. Little Bear tells us each day that he went up and down in an airplane and that he saw the castle. The Boy seems to remember quite a bit more, and he is looking forward to bringing his picture book into school.Some other notes we discovered:Little Bear snores when he sleeps.I'm pleasantly surprised at my kids' priorities when it comes to toys. Inevitably, they chose a toy that they wanted to actually use, instead of the biggest, shiniest toy. We bought them toys at every stop; in every case, they picked a smaller toy that they used quite a bit instead of the big, flashy toy. In some cases, I actually bought a bigger toy or multiples of the smaller toy for them, just on general principle.

The stroller is great to have for security reasons if no other. Having the children right in front of you is much better than dragging them along by the hand or, worse, carrying them.The resort is unbelievably amazing. If we had done nothing other than spend the day at the sort, we would have been happy and busy. I only wish we had more time there, so we could have spent more time exploring and playing!You don't get to do much at Disney with little kids. By the time you get to the park, get inside, walk to the first attraction, wait in line, go to the next... We wound up doing only three to four attractions on each stop, with a meal in the middle. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but we were happy that we were so close to the parks. Taking a midday rest as a necessity.

I could not imagine going to Disney with little kids and no magic Make A Wish pass. The shortest lines were around a half hour, and I couldn't imagine having one or more small children and having to entertain them for that long. I think our next trip will be sometime around when the smallest child is, like, ten and able to wait in lines without having to be entertained.Sleeping five in a room was not nearly the problem we expected. The trick as getting Little Bear some alone time so he could fall asleep; once he was asleep, he slept pretty soundly. The rest of us just went in and slept.Seeing the thousands and thousands of stars on the ceiling of the Castle of Miraclea was a sobering, difficult thought. Some of the kids, like The Boy, were on a Victory Trip. Some of the them were on a Final Trip. That could easily have been us. What if The Boy's surgery last January (2009) discovered another growth? We might have gone to Disney much, much earlier and under different circumstances.We were really lucky with the weather. Gorgeous, 70's, and only a little rain. Can't complain about that at all!

Day 6: Revolution!

2011-12-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

Everyone slept in on Tuesday morning, which was a nice change of pace for us. It's always a treat when the boys let us sleep past 7 o'clock! As a side note, it was a really nice surprise that sleeping 5 to a room was an uneventful and, for the most part, painless process. The only concession that we had to make was allowing Little Bear time by himself to fall asleep, and then doing The Boy's bedtime stuff outside in the living room. That wasn't so much of an issue, mostly because The Boy was dragged sleeping from the car to the bedroom on three occasions. But, I digress.

We did make a quick stop at the ice cream palace before breakfast, mostly on the general principle that we never have the opportunity to eat ice cream for breakfast at home. This was the third time in the week that we did that; I'm sure it played holy havoc with our digestive systems, but that was a price that I was willing to pay. I think I was intelligent enough to monitor portion sizes, so the kids only had a small scoop, but it was significantly more ice cream than they usually have.

After breakfast, The Boy had a moment of true revolution. We were planning on heading to Hollywood Studios, formerly known as MGM Studios, in DisneyWorld. He threw a legitimate fit at that point, saying, "Daddy, I don't want to go to DisneyWorld. I want to stay here and play!" We tried to convince him, to no avail. Now, in our defense, The Boy will frequently choose to do nothing and to stay home, if given the opportunity. He's very much a creature of momentum: if he's at rest, he'll stay at rest, and if he's in motion, he wants to stay in motion. There's a difference in a fit caused by the desire to maintain momentum; this wasn't it. He really, authentically was parked out and wanted to explore the resort and play.It was a good thing we did. Diego was at the resort for pictures right after breakfast, which was a treat. Diego was graceful enough to be happy and surprised that The Boy had Diego shoes on his feet, and The Boy was delighted with the interaction. The characters were all truly wonderful to see, and they were very, very patient with The Boy and Little Bear. They allowed him to be a small child and didn't rush him into a picture for the next child. That little bit of time allowed my small children to become comfortable with the large, oversize character figures. Mickey and Minnie on Monday were incredible, and the Mary Poppins lady actually talked with the kids and told little stories about Jane and Michael Banks. Diego on Tuesday was similarly wonderful. I suppose Dora might have been more enthusiastically received, but Diego is still pretty cool.

After Diego, we had a special treat: the football players from the Florida State and Notre Dame teams came to the resort and played with the kids. I'm pleased to report that the players were very patient, kind, and gentle with my children, and they all tried their best to engage the boys in fun activities all morning! The Boy played blocks with three of the men for about 20 minutes, and he culminated the activity by spelling (from a nearby poster) "Go Noles" for them!

They were really entertained by that, and The Boy became the momentary focus of positive attention by about fifteen or twenty of the players. The remainder of the morning was spent running around (literally) the resort, exploring the miniature golf course and palling around with the football players. We did swim for a little while, and returned to the villa for a nap.

The pool deserves some special mention. The resort brings handicapped accessibility to an entirely new level. The pool does not get deeper than 4 feet, and it has a large zero-entry section. The water starts at no depth and gradually increases to the aforementioned 4 feet. They actually have PVC wheelchairs available poolside, that the more involved students can use to swim! They also have a large spray park, although that was off on Tuesday.

After the nap, everyone was a little more rested and a little more ready to play. Grandma and Grandpa were again generous with their time and took care of The Baby, while The Wife and I took the boys to Hollywood Studios. We had a wonderful time, but it is interesting to remember that, with small children, you really don't get to do very much at parks like this. Between the crowds and the travel time, kids just get exhausted quickly. There's an awful lot of stimulation for them, and all of the walking around and standing in line and excitement wears them out quickly.

Tuesday night, we walked through Hollywood Studios to get to our focus for the night: Toy Story Mania! Waiting for this ride, you hang out in Andy's Room: a huge, huge child's room with lots of people-sized toys. You get to see Andy's room from the perspective of Buzz and Woody! The ride is a 3D ride, and you have a gun that you use to shoot darts at balloons, throw eggs at targets, that sort of thing. Little Bear enjoyed the ride, but was kind of indifferent about the game aspect. The Boy loved it, and he did a fairly decent job of shooting things!

After the ride, we walked over to the Sci-Fi Drive-In Theater Restaurant. It's a really cool restaurant that has tables shaped like cars, with decor like an outdoor theater and an oversized screen playing 1950's cartoons, advertisements, and trailers for drive-in movies.

We had normal kid's food, I had a pretty decent burger, and The Wife had a chicken dish. Afterwards, we went back to the Toy Story Mania ride, then packed the kids into the car and went home. They were done.

Special note: the Osbourne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights is unbelievable to see. Click the link. It is literally millions and millions of Christmas lights, covering every single inch of space of buildings on an entire city block. The boys liked it as much as we did.

We got home, put the boys to bed, and packed our bags. Our flight required us to leave the resort at around 7 AM. I'm the designated packer of the family, as a misspent youth playing too much Tetris as well as my years as a high school marching band director (learning how to compress lots of kids and instruments into small places and move them to other places) prepared me for that.

Day 5: Sea World

2011-12-28T20:49:00.001-05:00

When we got the package for Make A Wish, the Sea World seemed like a curious addition. It was one day, and it was mentioned quickly without much conversation. Kind of like the utility infielder thrown into a big baseball trade - a AA veteran that will never actually see playing time in the major leagues. That was the day that The Wife was thinking about skipping, staying home with the baby and letting me take boy or boys.

As it turned out, I think this was the best day of the entire trip. It was probably because we came into it with the least expectations, but, still.

The park was the closest of all of them - a quick 20 minutes, with preferred parking that meant a hundred yard walk from the car to the front gate. We went in, got another complementary stroller, and started exploring. The strollers, by the way, might have been the most useful thing that were provided to us. It wasn't so much that The Boy needed to be carried around; he is old enough and big enough to walk on his own. For me, it was the security of having both boys seated in front of me in the enormous crowds. I have nightmares of the boys wandering off into the tens of thousands of people and not being able to find us! We stopped at the stingray tank and looked at the rays. I touched one, Little Bear touched one, and The Wife touched one. The Boy wanted nothing to do with it. From there, we went to the dolphin tank and watched them play for a little while. The boys liked that well enough, but only for about five or six minutes. From there, we went towards the Shamuu Stadium, where the big whale show takes place. Along the way, we found a person sized snow globe, and we used our Make A Wish pass and took some pictures inside.

Along the way, we found Shamu's Happy Harbour, which was a Kiddieland inside of the park. It was awesome, and it made the day wonderful! They had a The Boy-sized roller coaster, slides, train ride, spinny thing, and an amazing hundred-feet high net climb! We did the little roller coaster and one of the spinny things before the whale show, and it was a chore to drag the children away.

The whale show is amazing, if you've never seen it. The animals are beautiful creatures, and they do amazing tricks. Check out the "Whale Done" books about teaching and child raising; it has many of the Love and Logic principles that I use daily, as well as tips and stories about training the whales. It makes sense; you're not going to force a dozen ton killer whale to do anything that he doesn't want to do. The boys were somewhat interested, for the first twenty minutes. We left slightly early, figuring discretion was the better part of valor. We went back to the Happy Harbour.The kids played there for another couple of hours, book ending lunchtime. Both boys climbed up to the very top of the net latter, which meant that Mom and Daddy did, also.

Worst part? Getting down, you have to climb to the stairs through an intricate series of plastic tubes. 37-year old knees are not meant to do these things. I made it (thankfully, I'm in pretty darn good shape), and the rest of playtime proceeded without incident.

On the way out of the park, we got caught in Disney traffic on the highway. It turned a 20 minute trip into. 50-minute trip, which was hairy because we were trying to keep the kids from falling asleep in the car and ruining nap time. No issues, there; we got back to the villa and napped as a family.

It wAs a pleasant surprise, all week, to be able to sleep with the five of us in the room. We were not concerned about The Boy and The Baby; neither one of them has any issues with sharing the bed. We were trifled about Little Bear, who only grudgingly shares a room. We needn't have worried. We were carefully with how we timed everything, so that he wasn't trying to fall asleep with other things happening in the room, but we didn't have an issue.

Little Bear snores.

The morning before the park, Mickey and Minnie came to the resort, along with Mary Poppins and Pluto. It was pretty cool. The boys actually got about ten minutes with them, to talk a little bit and to interact with the characters, which they never would have gotten in the park.

At night, we did our wishing star and got our wishing pillows. The star is really cute. You do a gold star, write the child's name on it or draw a picture or something like that, and you go over to the magic fairy box. You put the star in the box, call out the fairy's name, and the fairy flies from the tv screen, bumps her way up the box, and takes the star and flies away with it. By the next morning, the star is hanging on the ceiling along with the others. Every child who has stayed at the resort has done a star. It is a beautiful and heartbreaking thing, to see the thousands and thousands of stars hanging on the ceiling.

Political statement of the day: imagine if 1% of the money spent to bailout greedy and stupid banks and businesses, if 1% of the taxes that corporations do not pay, was put towards research on some of these diseases. Every one of those stars is a child whose family's life was disrupted or destroyed. Many, many of those children are no longer with us

The wishing pillows are also neat. There's an owl living inside of a tree inside the castle, and The Boy had to us the special knocker to wake him up. The owl asks a couple of questions, and then the child puts their hand on the tree's heart and thinks about the people they love best. ("I'm thinking about Daddy!" That's my buddy.) the tree shakes, and the pillows magically appear in a nearby stump. The Boy got a Lightning McQueen pillow, Little Bear got Spongebob, and The Baby got robots.

It was an early night after that. We did get more ice cream - yes, we had ice cream for breakfast and dinner. And, I did pick up some Starbucks on the way to Seaworld, which was frustrating because I was stuck behind a family of people from the Deep South who had to have the entire Starbucks menu explained to them. Sigh. Just let me get my venti Pike's with room and get out, thank you.

Day 4: Animal Kingdom

2011-12-26T22:11:00.001-05:00

We woke up nice and early on Day 3, as one would expect considering the relatively early bedtimes of the previous night. We had a quick breakfast at the Gingerbread House and left for Animal Kingdom around 9. Grandma and Grandpa again graciously agreed to take care of The Baby, so it was the four of us at Animal Kingdom. Best early part of Animal Kingdom: you don't have to take a team from your car to a monorail station to get to the park. Just the tram.

Animal Kingdom is nice! The rides are different than an amusement park's rides, which is a generalization of most of Disney. The rides at the various Disney parks are not like the rides at Kennywood or Six Flags. The rides aren't necessarily deigned to be "throw your body around until you feel ill," if you will. The rides are designed around the principle of advancing a Disney character or advancing a philosophical concept.

In Animal Kingdom's case, for instance, most of the rides are based around the concept of learning something about some of the animals and their environment.

The first ride we did was the Bug's Life show - a 3D show with little nozzles mounted into the seat near you that spray you with water and smoke and things like that as the show progresses, to give a full illusion of interactivity. It's marvelous!

We used our Make A Wish badge to ditch the line to see Pooh and Tigger and Eeyore, then we found a neat dinosaur carnival on the Dinosaur Island. It's a wonderful re-creation of a parking lot carnival centered arund dinosaurs. In true Disney fashion it has all of the details correct: the dinosaur themed games, the rickety-seeming rides, the "cracks" in the "pavement" complete with "tar" sealing them. The tar was actually rubber strips fit into carved cracks, which was really, really cool to see. They had a spinning ride where you could ride a triceratops and move him up or down or tilt it forwards or backwards.

The Maharaja Jungle trek is a walking zoo, with parts that represent different "lands" in Asia. From there, we walked around for a bit then ate lunch outside the Rainforest Cafe and went home to rest.

Only regret? They had a cool play area with slides and climbing things and such, and we did not go there. It would have been nice for the kids. It sounds like we didn't do much, and that is kind of correct. I didn't mention the neat dinosaur time travel ride that we went on, which was a little scary for The Boy but still fun. Animal Kingdom just had such great stuff to see and to play with, that we didn't really do that much in terms of rides. Environment and geography were important things in this park, for obvious reasons.

Back at the villa, Little Bear did not rest. He fell asleep in the car, was woken to use the potty when we got back, then woke himself up by pooping after he was put to bed. No dice. I walked around with him and played for a little while, then rested for a little bit before dinner. Little Bear played with the trains at the Amberville Train Station: they have an amazing train layout with little buttons that trigger some of the electronics, turning on lights or music or making things move. They also have a little train ride on which to ride, which we did. They were training some new volunteers on how to run the train, which was interesting for me to see. He and I also had ice cream.

The Wife and I took The Boy back to the Magic Kingdom, and we splurged for a fancy dinner for the three of us.

The Liberty Tree Tavern had great salad, a traditional Christmas dinner with turkey and mashed potatoes (we didn't get the pork for obvious reasons), and a delicious dessert cake and ice cream.

We only went on two rides: the Jungle Trek and the Haunted Mansion before we were done for the night. We were all exhausted. The dinner took a long time; it was a nice, leisurely meal that allowed us lots of time to talk and to be with each other, which is what I required for a Christmas dinner.

Back at the villa, The Boy went directly to bed. That's okay. The next day - today - was busy enough for all of us.

Day 3: Universal Studios and the resort

2011-12-24T22:31:00.000-05:00

This morning, we didn't all quite sleep as late as we did the previous morning, but it was late enough for The Boy and me. Upon rising, I went for a morning jog around the resort. It's nice to do some roadwork outside of the normal Pittsburgh crap weather. Granted, I've jogged outside about five times in the last year, so it's not like I'm trying to train like Rocky in Rocky IV. While I was jogging, The Wife took the boys to go for a pony ride next door to our villa. That didn't go over particularly well, as The Boy was terrified of the horses and managed to convince Little Bear that he was scared as well. So, we went to breakfast instead. Quick carousel ride after breakfast:After breakfast, The Boy, Grandpa, and I went to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. What I liked about it: from the car to the park was a quick, efficient ten minutes; the Seuss Landing Island was pretty amazing for The Boy; and it's always awesome to see a place dedicated to Marvel Comics Super Heroes, which I've been following since I was a small child; very, very helpful and friendly staff on the popular rides, helping us through the Make a Wish handicapped lines. What I didn't like: the 20 minute delay at the gate before anybody realized that the groups of tickets that we received were divided into Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure groups and exchanged our tickets; the general loudness of the piped-in music; the crassness of the over-commercialization; the lack of detail in crafting a perfect guest stay.We went to the super hero island first, and we wandered a bit. We went on the Spider Man ride, which was lots of fun. They took us right through the gate and up to be immediately seated. Only problem? They forgot to give us the 3D glasses, which meant a blurry visual experience all the way through. It was a neat ride still, with lots of fun Spider Man action. It was a little too much for The Boy, who was subdued for a bit while working through being scared after the ride. We poked around for a little bit, then we had lunch in the Fantastic Four Cafe. Since The Boy was wearing his new Buzz Lightyear shirt, I took his shirt off and he ate lunch without: After lunch, we went through the arcade and played for a little while. That's always fun for him and worth spending $2 on tokens. We took one of those computer pictures that put his head on Spider Man's body, and he enjoyed that. Super hero island was a bit old for him, so we went over to Dr. Seuss, which was a great idea.Dr. Seuss is perfect for his age. They had a Cat in the Hat ride, which we did twice. You sit in a rotating cart, and it takes you through the story of the book with animatronic figures and animation and funny sound effects and the like. Really, really neat! We did a carousel that had critters from multiple stories, and he didn't want to ride an up-and-down creature, so he sat on one of the carriages with Grandpa. We did a people mover ride around Seuss Landing, which culminated in passing through a candy store with cool chocolate marshmallows. They had a fun take on the round and round flying elephants: One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, which had little water jets that hit you from whatever altitude at various times.The highlight of the day was the "If I Ran The Zoo" exhibit, which was a playground with places to climb, Seussian machines to operate,some slides, bouncy things, and a spray park. We didn't do the spray park, except right at the end, when I dipped his lower half in the water for fun. Playgrounds like this are crack for my children, who will gleefully run around and climb and crawl and slide for hours if allowed. It was beautiful to see and exhausting to follow, because he expects me to do everything with him, except for the relatively rare occasions when he finds a new friend and runs around with them. I'm glad I'm in shape - a 37-year old man has no business crawling through tunnels meant for five year olds, much less going down those slides. I'm glad I'm immature. The Boy was also excited to meet the real, live Cat in the Hat:Down parts? Very little. The biggest differences between this place and Disney are the little things. For instance, nothing at Disney looked broken or run down. Three items in the Zoo exhibit didn't work. Not a big deal - particularly when you consider the thousands of people that have been through there - but still noteworthy. Also, I wasn't thrilled with the vast number of chain restaurants that you have to walk around to get to the park. I have nothing against chains - it is sometimes comforting to know exactly what you're eating when you travel - but it was excessive, and each restaurant was blaring music at a high volume as we were passing. Just annoying. It's not that Disney is quiet - far from it - but it never felt like the advertisements we interfering with your conversations.Minor quibbles, to be sure.We hit a couple of crap stores on our way out and bought some toys, cups, mugs, and t shirts. I never would buy that stuff normally, but I felt like we could get away with it on this trip! The biggest splurge of the day was on a new coffee mug for me, a Seuss cup and some little toys for The Boy, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 socks to go along with a "Mommy of All Things" t shirt for The Wife.We got home uneventfully (besides a quick trip back inside to ride the Cat in the Hat one more time) and napped for a couple of hours. After nap, we went to the gorgeous playground here in the resort, and we played for an hour before dinner. We had ice cream for an appetizer, chicken and Mac and cheese and corn for dinner, and cake for dessert. Nutritious, for sure! After dinner was the weekly surprise birthday party for Mayor Clayton. The kids ate the cake, decorated a My Little Piny with some markers (they are clean white ponies with no decoration specifically for coloring), ate some cotton candy, then began to throw fits.We came back to the villa and settled in for the night. Baths, tickle time, crazy baby time, and bed for one child after another. I'm next; I want to get to bed before 1am at some point! Tomorrow, we are going to spend Christmas Day at Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom.

Day 2: Magic Kingdom

2011-12-24T01:29:00.001-05:00

This is take two, because the Blogpress program - formerly my favorite blogging application - has swallowed yet another blog entry. Last night's went great - first time since they updated. Tonight? Crash city.

Anyway, we slept in this morning and went right to breakfast in the ginger bread house. It's a really nice little dining hall, set in college style, with several lines that have their own choices for eating. They even have a couple of stations set aside from those lines that have food more appropriate for the younger set, which we appreciate. Volunteers carry the trays to the table for you, which is a nice touch. Thinking about it, it would be required for some families.

After breakfast, we wandered around for a little while while Mom went to the orientation. We found the Castle of Miracles, which has a little gold star on the ceiling for every kid that's stayed in the resort - it's a little inspiring and terrifying to see the thousands upon thousands of the stars.

We were used into the room with the promise of, "Woody's inside!", only to discover that the staff member meant Woody Woodpecker and not the cowboy. Oh, well. The Boy was moderately disappointed, but still interested to find the toy tables and small playroom.

From there, we went to the other buildings nearby and found lots of things that the kids could ride. They have a carousel, and they are really generous and friendly about letting kids ride five, six, seven times in a row (I'm looking at you, Little Bear).

Yes, that's The Boy on his favorite animal, a pig. Go figure that the little Jewish kid loves the pig - guess it helps him keep kosher, not likely to eat what you play with. W also found several things that the kids could sit on and have a gentle toddler ride:

This was all fun and games until qthe inevitable poo accident happened, when we had to give the offending 2-year old a bath. Mom got back at the same time, and we cleaned up, sunscreened up, and went to the Magic Kingdom. Grandpa dropped us off so that he could use the car, and we rode the monorail to the Magic Kingdom. The foundation hooked us up with a complimentary stroller when we got inside, which was pretty cool. Easier to keep track of the kids when they're riding, as opposed to wandering about, you know?

We walk inside, marvel at thet castle, and almost immediately get run over by a parade. The kids were overjoyed - what a welcome!

We went immediately to Fantasyland, which is geared toward the younger set. We did the Philharmagic Ride first,which was The Boy's first 3D glasses experience. He did really well, Little Bear not so much. The Boy was even talking about that show at dinner, which was neat - it ended with Donald catapulting from the screen and "through the wall" in the back of the auditorium, which was funny as heck. It was a neat show that had the little blast of water during me f the 3d parts, which is a neat effect. From there, we did the grand carousel and the flying elephants ride, which are both big hits. My children are down with anything that involves flying elephants.

We had lunch at the Pinnochio Village Haus, which was little kid food. That's fine. After lunch was the longest wait, to see It's a Small World, which was around a half hour. Everything else was much shorter. The neat thing about the Make A Wish badge is that it gets us into the handicapped entrances, which cut the wait time down to next to nothing. Not quite nothing on most,but much, much quicker entry. I could not imagine what it would be like to have small children and have to wait an hour or more for all of the rides! At this point, the kids were pretty well cooked, so we made our way back towards the entrance. We saw the Dapper Dans at that point and watched the show.

They were pretty well amazing. The boys were happy to see the show for a few minutes, then attention wandered. Okay. I got a picture with them and had a nice time kidding with them about having directed the REAL Dapper Dans, which preceded that group by about fifteen years.

Back to the resort, trying to keep the children awake for the trip. No luck with Little Bear, who was more exhausted than I've ever seen. Three hour nap followed, waking up around 6 for dinner and ice cream. I took The Boy back to Magic Kingdom for the rest of the night, staying until the fireworks were almost over before he whispered that he wanted to go back home to the villa. He was so good! He wanted to see Buzz Lightyear, so we did Tomorrowland. We did the Buzz ride, which I got more than he did;

the Stitch ride, which kind of sucked; the people mover, which was fun; the Speedway, which was awesome because he got to drive (it was on tracks, thankfully),

and the tea cups on the way out.

On the monorail back, he charmed some people into giving us their seats so he could rest. Silly boy.Little Bear and The Baby had a fun time at a Pirates and Princesses party and swimming at the pool:

Tomorrow: Universal? We'll see.

Day 1: Travel Day

2011-12-23T00:25:00.001-05:00

This morning, we all wound up sleeping until around 8am. This is an extremely rare occurrence, not the least because this was the the first non-work day for me in quite some time. Anyway, we all got moving late, had a decent breakfast, and started the final preparations for leaving for Disney. Or flight was at 3:30, so we were planning on leaving around noon.I took Little Bear with me for some errands - running to the bank to deposit some checks, the post office to send some packages, and to the Apple Store to ask about an iTunes card issue. He was very good, especially when we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for some necessary coffee. When we got home, the boys ate lunch and I packed the car. We fit all seven of us (the five in the family and two grandparents) into the minivan for the airport, so some very careful Tetris-style luggage packing was necessary.We arrived at the airport at around 1, and we had an easy time checking in. We took very little luggage with us - didn't make much sense to pack a lot of stuff, considering that the villa has a washer and dryer in it. We met our guide - Make A Wish has people meet you at the airport to guide you back and forth to the various places, which is a nice touch. The fact that they know their way around the airport and get to know the various airline personnel helps to grease the wheels a little bit. We waited until about 2:30 at a little kids' play area then made our way to the gate.

We were about the fourth people on the plane - its amazing how much the Make A Wish button gets for you! People are a lot less irritated with you as a general rule. We co-opted the front of the plane. I sat on one side with Grandpa and The Boy. Grandma and Mum had Little Bear and The Baby. The plane ride itself was fairly uneventful, and the children behaved approximately as expected. The Boy slept for some, looked out the window for some, colored in a book and played a little bit of iPhone. Little Bear threw a couple of minor tantrums, mostly stay-in-your-seat related. The Baby was, well, a baby. In short, perfectly appropriate and mostly non-annoying behavior from my children.

We picked up a Grand Caravan from the car rental place, which was much easier to load than our car. No worries. Two toddler seats, four adults, and a baby with luggage. Daddy is good at packing.The only drama was caused because Little Bear didn't have a nap, so he was fully cooked by about 6. He slept in the car on the way to the resort. The resort itself was about forty minutes from the airport. It's beautiful, with lots of seasonal lights. (Best part of the trip? Two Mexican dudes in a t-top convertible, top down, both holding a Christmas tree on the roof that also had two pieces of twine "holding" it to the car. Hilarious!) The Boy got a Mickey doll when we checked in, and the first thing we did was order dinner and pizza brought to us, and Grandpa, The Boy, and I went to check out the ice cream parlor.

The villa itself is beautiful. It's got two bedrooms, which basically means that grandparents get one, and we sleep four to a bed in the king size bed. No worries about that. Little Bear gets his own rollout bed. Jacuzzi tub in one bathroom. Nice kitchenette, nice little driveway in which to park.

We stayed up too late, but we are all excited. Can't wait to meet Mickey tomorrow!- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Make A Wish

2011-12-22T13:10:00.001-05:00

Heading to DisneyWorld via Make A Wish. More to follow.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Airport Blvd,Coraopolis,United States

Good, Bad, Indifferent

2011-12-12T21:34:00.001-05:00

This was an interesting week for parenting for me. I had some good moments, some average moments, and some terrible moments through the course of the week and the weekend. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the whole thing, other than kind of relieved that I survived the experience.

Friday, I worked an earlier shift so that I could sing with my quartet at a local supermarket. This supermarket does all kinds of awesome promotions during the holiday season: lots of musical acts through prime customer times, lots of samples stations spread throughout the store. My quartet was commissioned to sing for a couple of hours, which was a huge amount of fun for us. Down part: wasn’t able to take the boys to school, and I got home after Little Bear was in bed. I actually didn’t see him at all on Friday, which made me sad.

Putting The Boy to bed on Friday was a challenge. He was very much overtired, and he flipped out majorly when I got up and left him in his room. I know that I had been staying in there a little bit too long at night, and I know that he wasn’t feeling 100%. He definitely associates being sick with sleeping with Daddy or Grandma, and Daddy getting up from bed caused a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions. Definitely not good. Good parenting moment: negotiating with him for some more snuggle time in exchange for going to sleep on his own. Bad parenting moment: allowing it to happen in the first place by not setting firm and reasonable bedtime standards. Incidentally, since the incident, things have been better – I’ve gotten up earlier in the process, and while he complains a little bit (nature of the beast), he usually responds with a simple, “Turn the light off, please, Daddy.”

Saturday, I worked from 9-3; my first weekend shift. Making things better: The Wife and The Baby were sick, making me in charge of the boys until I wasn’t. I got home from work and was able to catch 15 minutes of napping sleep, which wasn’t nearly enough to offset a 50 hour workweek (not counting drive time) with the lack of sleep from sick, sniffly boys and Mum. Everyone left a few hours later, with The Wife going to play a concert and the grandparents going out with friends. Disaster soon occurred.

I got Little Bear to bed without too much of an issue. The birdies on the crib distracted the baby long enough for me to do songs and stories until he said, “You go now, Daddy.” I took the baby out of the room as he started to fuss, and he proceeded to scream continuously for a little bit over an hour. These weren’t normal baby screams; these were full-body-tension, locked legs and arms, rip his throat apart screaming. He wasn’t hungry, had no air bubbles, and was dry. Looking back now, I should have given him some baby Tylenol; he probably had a massive headache from the screaming. The bad part of things? I did shout at the little guy when I got really, really, really frustrated after 45 minutes of screaming. That went as well as can be expected, redoubling his efforts and hurting his feelings.

Good part? I put the baby down and walked out of the room, and I sat down with The Boy. I said, “The Boy, I need something from you tonight. I need you to be a big, mature boy at bedtime. I need you to cooperate without complaining, and I need you to let Daddy go when The Baby starts screaming again. I promise I’ll come back in and give you hugs when I can, but I need to be with The Baby. Okay?” He agreed, and he was so good! He went right to sleep without any complaints, cooperated fully, and let me take care of The Baby. The Baby had fallen asleep in the intervening time, and I just crawled into bed and passed out around 9:30 on Saturday night. When he started to complain around 10:15, I pulled him onto my chest and fell back asleep. The Wife came home around 11, and I gave her the baby when he needed food at 11:30. Around 2, The Boy woke up and started crying – he had a nasty bad dream that he couldn’t describe. I crawled into bed with him and stayed there until The Wife and Little Bear woke us around 7 the next morning.

Bad part of Sunday? Dragging The Boy up the stairs when he threw a fit while getting dressed in the morning. Dragging him into the music section of Barnes & Noble when he wanted to be playing, although that turned into an entertaining chase game for both of us. Lots of dragging, so I’m noticing a bit of a trend. Also had no patience with Little Bear at a pajama party at their school on Saturday night. I sent him home after about 15 minutes, which probably wasn’t as patient as I should have been.

Good moments: turning several potty-related meltdowns into laughing and cooperation by playing the “Which end goes in the potty?” game. That’s where I pick up whichever boy, hold them upside down with their head over the potty, and ask, “Does this end go in the potty?” “Noooo!!!!” Hold their feet over the water, “Does this end go in the potty?” “Nooo!!!!” Drop the pants, sit them on the potty, “Does this end go in the potty?” “Yes!!!” The biggest good moment was turning the major, noisy meltdown Saturday night into an early bedtime for all of us. There was a 45 minute timespan where all three children were asleep in their own beds.

Bedtime Buddies

2011-12-03T08:26:00.001-05:00

Last night was an interesting bedtime night for all of us. I was home early from work, and The Wife had no nighttime obligations. So, for the first time in a week, we were able to sit down as a family and eat dinner. That’s especially fun nowadays, because The Baby can finally sit in his high chair and comment on the proceedings. Dinner went as expected, with the children alternating between sitting and eating and trying to wrestle under the table.

I really wonder what it must be like to worry about my children’s eating habits. None of my kids are especially shy about eating, and even The Boy – who is the pickiest eater – will pretty much eat anything you put in front of him, as long as it has pasta, red sauce of some kind, cheese, or meat. We hear from our teachers that our kids are some of the only ones that actually eat most or all of their lunch on any given day. That’s nice to hear. I don’t claim any special parenting ability, although I do think the “baby-led weaning” that The Wife subscribes helped the matter.

After dinner, the boys and I played for a little bit, running around the house and doing the normal daddy-roughhousing thing. Around 7:15, The Boy said, “Daddy, I’m tired. I want to rest with you upstairs.” Okay. I can do that. We went upstairs, watched an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and turned on an episode of Sholom Sesame (a collaboration between the Children’s Television Workshop from New York and Israel). The Boy was asleep around halfway through the show. I left him in bed until I had done my nightly business – in this case, running on the elliptical and cleaning the bathroom.

It’s interesting putting him to bed. I’ll usually sit with him for a few minutes after we do our stories, and he is really good at falling asleep quickly. When I get up, no matter how asleep he is, he opens his eyes and says, “Daddy, don’t go!” It’s very cute. I’ll tell him that I need to shower, or do medicines, or talk to Mom, and he’ll respond with, “Will you come back?” I always come back to check on him before I go to bed, so I tell him yes, and then he says, “Okay. Turn the light out, please.”

I won’t comment on the fact that, if either one of us is having a rough morning, I will still hop in bed with him. It keeps him settled and quiet for longer in the morning, and it lets me get an extra half hour of sleep. Mum is good at getting Little Bear in bed with her, watching an Elmo program for an extra bit of shuteye, and Little Bear will inevitable wander down and jump on top of us. He’s still easy to get to bed – read a story or two, sing a few songs, and he’s ready to go down. The Boy? Not so much, but he’s never been that easy. He just likes the individual attention, I guess.

What do your kids do?

Gender Roles

2011-11-29T22:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, The Wife was playing at a benefit concert for one of the local high schools, and The Boy and Grandma went with her and watched the performance. Grandma caught me on the way home from work, and I swung by and picked The Boy up, to take him home – it was already almost 8:30 at night, and The Boy had school in the morning. On the way home, he and I talked about our day.

“Daddy, today I dressed up like Batman, and then I dressed up like a princess.” “Oh?” “Yup! It was lots of fun. Daddy, we should dress up like Batman and then dress up like a princess.” Pause for thought. “Daddy, I don’t think the dresses would fit you. We’d need to find a BIG dress for you!” I agreed that that would be a lot of fun and that we should play dress up when we got home.

When we got home, Aunt Jeanne had just put Little Bear to bed, “for the third time!” Grandpa was taking care of The Baby, and he let me get settled and play a little bit with The Boy. We put on capes (towels tucked into the backs of our shirts) and flew around the house a few times, landing on the couch cushions and laughing. Then, The Boy wandered around the house for a few minutes, look for pretty dresses to wear as a princess. He wasn’t able to find one, so I took the baby from Grandpa and the three of us watched an episode of Batman: The Brave and The Bold.

It does bring up the interesting conversation about gender roles. What is appropriate for a boy his age? Personally, I don’t care if he wants to play princess, fairy, superhero, Daddy, Mum, fireman, whatever. Culturally, he’ll wind up adapting whatever he wants to adapt. Lord knows I’ve worn makeup often enough in my life, and I’ve worn a dress once or twice (as a costume. Calm down). I know that Little Bear loves putting on whatever shoes are nearby and walking around the house, and he doesn’t care if they’re Daddy’s shoes, Grandma’s shoes, The Boy’s shoes, or whatever. He’s just entertained by walking around in bigger shoes than he normally wears.

I do know quite a few fathers that freak out if their sons want to play fairies or elves or princesses or whatever. They’re so concerned with their gender identity that they respond to those explorations with hostility and anger. I kind of feel bad for fathers that respond like that; I view that exploration as a natural progression of a child’s imagination. How many stories do we read to our children that involve a princess who needs to be rescued? How often do our kids feel like that person in need of rescue, that is powerless to change their particular situation? (No, I don’t think kids can conceptualize that into words, but I am certain that they feel that at times.) Why wouldn’t our kids, boys and girls alike, occasionally fantasize to be both Shrek and Fiona? To be Batman, rescuing Superman from the kryptonite, and to be Superman, who needs to be rescued from the kryptonite? Why is a princess that much of a stretch?

I will only address the “I’m worried that my son will be gay if he plays princess!” with the following comment: do you really think you have any control, whatsoever, on who your child eventually decides to sleep with? I’m sure Dick Cheney thought that he did, and one of his children still turned out gay. Worrying about it is only going to project your neurosis onto the next generation.

We love playing superheroes at home, mostly because my kids are small enough that I can easily pick them up and “fly” them around the house. It’s also easy to tuck a towel into the back of their shirt to make a cape, although I have every intention of asking The Wife to come up with a Batman cape and cowl. As far as the other costumes go, I’m not entirely sure about wearing them, mostly because we don’t have them and choose to spend our money elsewhere. Although, it might not be a bad idea to bust out the Spiderman / Astronaut / Dragon costumes every once in a while. It is fun to dress up.

Miscommunication

2011-11-28T22:17:00.001-05:00

This morning was one of those interesting miscommunications that can only happen in a household with multiple children. The Wife was taking care of The Baby around 5:30AM, and she returned to bed around 6:00, carefully putting the baby back to sleep. A little after six, there was some stirring from the other children – what I noticed was The Boy had padded down thehall, opened our door, and was peeking in the doorway to see if he could come in. The Wife said, “Put him back to bed, please.” Considering that The Boy had retreated from our doorway and was wandering around the upstairs, I naturally thought she meant him. I corralled him, lead him back to his room, and climbed into bed with him so that he would stay in bed for a little while longer.

What I didn’t know was that The Wife actually meant for me to comfort Little Bear, who was stirring and unhappy. He’s had a cough for a few days, so he hasn’t been feeling really well when he’s woken up. I guess it’s overdue for me to get his humidifier running… Anyway, The Wife was awakened three times by Little Bear, until she finally came into The Boy’s room with a nice “Did you get enough sleep yet?” for me. Whoops. Didn’t even hear Little Bear moving around. Not a big deal, for sure, although it didn’t help that, fifteen minutes later, the coffee machine overfilled the filter drawer and poured coffee on her music book for Hebrew School. 0-2 for Musical Daddy on the morning.

So, I thought I’d tell you about one or two cute things happening around the house… The Baby is starting to assert his own wishes and needs more than he used to do. When I pick him up and hold him in a cuddle/cradle carry, the first thing he does is snuggle up to my chest and stick his thumb in his mouth. If he’s tired, he’ll stay there. If he wants to play or wants to be held vertically, he will take his thumb out of his mouth and stretch his neck out, looking around at anything else that he can see. We also put him in his high chair for the first time on Thanksgiving Day, and we did it again last night. He seems to enjoy being in the chair and being able to see what’s happening around him, although he doesn’t have much more of an attention span for dinner than his brothers do. We’ve put a sippy cup with water or milk on the table of the high chair, but he’s not really good at reaching for things yet. He was chewing on a rattle this morning, which is cute and funny.

The Boy discovered addition within the past week. He’s been doing simple addition problems, up to ten, counting on his fingers. It’s very cute, and it’s heartening to see how quickly he’s picking it up! The cute bit? Little Bear has been asking him addition problems. “The Boy, what’s 1 plus 1?” “Little Bear, it’s 2!” “What’s 4 plus 3?” “7!” We spent a trip to school this morning doing math problems. Little Bear kind of gets that 1 plus 1 is 2 and 1 plus 2 is three, but I’m not certain if he understands WHY yet. That’s fine. He’ll get it.

(Above: guess who picked my wardrobe for the day? Hint: he's under 4 feet tall and is very bossy.)

The Boy has also been putting together quite complex things using the Trio blocks he got for his birthday. He really loves them, and he will frequently chose building with them instead of watching television or playing with the iPad. This is a wonderful thing, except that his OCD toddler brother (as all toddlers have OCD) likes to collect ALL of the pieces of a particular color, stick them together, then leave them somewhere around the house.

Little Bear, in the meantime, has starting singing the echo harmony parts to “Everybody’s Song” from Sesame Street (the Diana Krall version). It’s really, really cute. It’s only a matter of time before we have that boy singing baritone! He also likes “playing” his violin, and he’s getting a pretty decent tone on the trumpet – almost two years earlier than his brother! Musical and intelligent… it’s somewhat disheartening to realize that the smartest person in the house is probably the two-year old, although Grandpa likely gives him a run for his money.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Entertainment Value

2011-11-26T23:05:00.001-05:00

Today, The Boy was running around the house. No particular reason motivated it; he had a balloon on a string, and he wanted to run around and pull it behind him. It's one of those really cute moments of little boyhood that I try to encourage and to enjoy through them, and I'm kind of proud that my sons seem to find those moments on a daily basis. For instance, The Boy was really excited, a couple of weeks ago, to get. A gift of several pairs of orange socks from Mum. One of his classmates said, "Socks? Who cares?" Well, The Boy cares, for one... and I'm happy that a simple little present like that can brighten his day. It is the thought and love that counts, not the price tag on the gift.

But, I digress.

I was watching the Michigan-Ohio State game at the time, and I kiddingly asked, "When you're running past, would you please get me a soda from the little fridge?" To my surprise, he came back in a few minutes with a Diet Mountain Dew for me.and, when I opened it, it wasn't shaken nearly as much as I expected.

I'm reminded of spring 2009, when we had gotten home, finally, after a particularly brutal stay in the hospital. This evening was a quick bright spot of joy in a difficult month. I was in our bedroom, cleaning and straightening and such, when The Boy came in the room carrying a diet Pepsi. He had opened the refrigerator by himself, taken the soda out, and carried it into the bedroom for me. I made quite a fuss over him for being so nice, which he appreciated. I then made the mistake of immediately opening the can of soda.

Do you know why they call them "toddlers?" It's because, when they walk, they rock violently back and forth from leg to leg. They haven't quite mastered the smooth shift of weight yet. As such, their bodies tend to move in a quick and jerky fashion while they walk. This subjects a soda can to a similar motion as those paint-mixing machines down at Home Depot. The soda responded with predictable result, exploding and creating more cleanup time.

The Boy was delighted at this, and proceeded to spend about an hour bringing every soda can in the house into the bedroom, then back into the fridge, then back into the bedroom. This is why we tend not to spend real money on toys; a $2.99 case of soda can provide as much, or more, entertainment value as a $50 toy.

And, running around the house with a mostly-deflated balloon is really quite fun.

Thanksgiving Traditions

2011-11-25T00:24:00.001-05:00

This year was the second consecutive year of celebrating Thanksgiving outside of a hospital. I think that we enjoy that aspect of the holiday, and I think we will try to continue to promote the absence of hospital time on Thanksgiving.

I'm not going to do any black Friday shopping this year. Part of the reason is that I'm working on Black Friday for the first time in my life. The rest of the reason is that we don't need anything. It's not like there's household stuff I need to get for us right now, considering that we don't have a house. It's just not worth going our and buying stuff, then having to store it for an unspecified length of time before we can use it.

Today was a nice day, no qualifications. There was a lot of work to do, between cooking the food, cleaning the house, watching the children, and cleaning up after dinner. The Wife did most of the cooking (Grandma did the rest), and Grandpa did the lion's share of cleaning. We had very, very nice guests, who were a real pleasure with which to spend the holiday. We even put The Baby in the high chair at the table for the first time!

The children were quite well behaved all day today. That's not to say they were perfect angels; but, on the whole, any transgressions were minor and were of the usual sorts: not sharing, not wanting to sit at the table during dinner time, a little bit of leaking instead of going to the potty, that sort of thing. Kid stuff. Highlight of the evening was holding our guest's 7 week old baby, and the mother being shocked that the baby was happy and content being with me for the ten minutes I held him. Silly mum - doesn't she know that Daddy is baby tranquilizer?

I'm not going to do an "I'm thankful for..." post. Y'all know what I'm thankful for.

My Night

2011-11-21T22:48:00.001-05:00

I walked in the door around 8:20 tonight, and I was met by The Boy. "Daddy, here's your cape. We're playing superheroes. Let's go fly!" I introduced myself to the babysitter, who was helping Grandpa with the boys. At that moment, Little Bear woke up and started shouting from upstairs. I went upstairs to kiss him goodnight, and he flipped out. He wanted to come and play! He cried when I put him back to bed, and a couple of songs soothed his nerves. The Boy took down the gate and joined us for a little while.

When Little Bear went to sleep, I went downstairs and said hello to my wife, who just got home at that moment. The Boy and I then played superheroes for a little while, and he started to tucker out. "I don't want to go to bed, Daddy!" I carried him upstairs, and he did potty and teeth. We negotiated the terms of bed - one story, one short video of "The Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak - and climbed into bed together. I read him a Tory from a Disney collection, "Shadow Games" starring Woody from Toy Story. Midway through, Little Bear woke up and freaked out, so The Baby joined us to listen to the rest of the story.

The Wife picked the baby up once Little Bear settled. The Boy and I watched Night Kitchen, and he fell asleep midway through. I snuggled for a little while - definitely didn't want him to wake up when I was on my way out. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Weekend Update

2011-11-20T23:16:00.001-05:00

This was one of those weekends that was non-stop action, to where returning to work on Monday morning allows you to sit back, take a deep breath, and relax a little bit. That's not a bad thing, mind you; just the sign of a busy weekend.

Saturday started off with the normal clarinet lesson for me, then was followed by my vision meeting with the assistant directors of my chorus. My first six month contract is up at the end of December, and there will be a vote to retain me at that point. I'm not worried about it - we've had a great six months - but it is important to have meetings every once in a while with my fellow leaders and make sure that everything is still heading in the correct manner.

The meeting went uneventfully, which is how these sorts of things should go. I've discovered, as I've been learning about leadership, that when you actively involve people, show interest and respect for their opinions, and try to help them develop their talents and interests, they tend to enjoy working with you and want to contribute to the cause. It helps when you surround yourself with motivated, intelligent, and talented individuals.

Following the meeting, we had a birthday party with some friends of ours, for their four year old son. They are really cool people who live in an awesome house, and their son is a nice kid. It was neat watching him and Little Bear play cars together; they had some really nice moments of sharing with each other. I love watching Little Bear play with other kids. He's a different person around other people than he is around his older brother, and I find that incredible to see. He really tries to be considerate and cooperative with the other kids, to an extent that he rarely shows around his brother. I know that's normal sibling rivalry, but it does remind me of watching my brothers and I interact with each other and with our friends. The party also had an amazing buffalo chicken chip-dip.

Afterwards, my wife's siblings, most of the significant others, and us went to Bucca Di Beppo to celebrate Grandma's birthday. That is the family-style serving restaurant, which was exactly what I wanted after eating great party food. Don't get me wrong; the food was pretty amazing, and I'm taking some of it for lunch for the next day or two. I just didn't want to stuff myself too full. It was a great time, though, and lots of great companionship and conversation flew around the table. The boys behaved themselves quite nicely, which is saying something extraordinary for a two hour dinner party. Bedtime followed immediately upon coming home.

Today, the boys were up for a nice 6am breakfast. Lucky us. We slummed around the house for much of the morning before heading to the JCC for the open gym time, as we have in four of the last five weeks. It's a lot of fun, with padded stuff on which to climb and lots of balls of different sizes with which to play. The Boy has been doing this cool dive onto a ramp right into a somersault thing, which his physical therapist will love to know! The kids do a nice job of playing with the other folks there.

Today, there was a dad with a five year old boy, whose older daughters were in swimming lessons. The Boy wanted to play with the big plastic ball that his son was using, and the older boy didn't want to share and was running away from The Boy. The Boy took it hard at first, but then decided that it was a game and spent time chasing after the older boy. This had the predictable result of The Boy getting knocked over by the ball, and I saw the father trying to figure out disciplinary action. The Boy and I laughed it off, and the two boys went off and continued their game.

It's interesting to see how parents deal with those sorts of issues, and I could tell that this dude was a little high strung. Since I'm definitely not high strung about that sort of thing (kids are kids, they bounce pretty well off of the ground, and they are going to be pains about sharing more often than not), I thought it was important to show the other parent that I didn't think it was a big deal. He visibly relaxed, and we had a nice "kids will be kids" discussion before going our separate ways.

The rest of the day highlights include taking the boys to an outdoor event where my chorus sung, except that it was indoors because of driving rain. Best part? Little Bear running up to me at their start of the last song, demanding to be held while my chorus sang. It was very cute and appropriate for a family event like that. Also, watching the ladies in my chorus pass The Baby around like a joint was pretty entertaining. Worst part? Too many people in too small of a space is never good for me, and we wound up splitting earlier than we had planned.

Miracles and Thanksgiving

2011-11-18T08:58:00.001-05:00

It's the everyday kind of miracles that I noticed these days, the ones that make you shake your head without quite realizing what it is you're noticing. It's the little things, that you never really quite see your children doing until they actually do them: sitting quietly together, watching a cute music video, or putting on a smock at school to paint a "Native American" headband for a Thanksgiving luncheon. There's probably a thousand of those every day that happen; more, if you're blessed enough to have multiple children.

The Boy really makes me wonder, sometimes, about the strength of a miracle and the strength of a family. When I think back to the things that he went through, and what we had to do to get to where we are... I will freely admit to wondering, sometimes, if we've sacrificed too much. This time of year it comes up, particularly as we approach our second anniversary of moving to Pittsburgh. I mean, look at what we sacrificed: our house; our careers (not much of a chance of breaking into the teaching and the music business out here); our friends; my family; our private teaching; the life momentum which we had built. Was it worth it?

Yup. A thousand times over. If I had to do it again, I would do the exact same thing, a hundred time over. The Boy.... there is just something about him. Every parent loves their children; those that have had to fight for their child's lives know something a little bit different.

Thanksgiving is going to be kind of light this year at Casa de Music. My siblings-in-law are going to their significant others' homes; my dad is traveling to California to be with my brother; and my work schedule won't allow me to travel to my other brother's home. So, it's likely that Thanksgiving itself will be just us and the Grandparents. I'm okay with that; it'll be the second consecutive thanksgiving that we are not in the hospital, which is more than a minor miracle.

The big miracles (health, victory over cancer) are beyond my comprehension and untangling. I just thank G-d every day they happen. The little miracles, though, those I watch, and appreciate, and walk away smiling and shaking my head in wonder.

Preplanning

2011-11-17T22:41:00.001-05:00

This morning, the boys and I were eating breakfast and watching Superfriends on the iPad. We don't watch tv together every morning, but sometimes it's nice to have a treat, and nothing says treat like 1970's super hero cartoons. Anyway, we were waiting for the boys' waffles to cook in the toaster, and Little Bear decided to appease his boredom by whaling on his brother. I picked him up and shooed him out of the room.

The little stinker goes into the living room, picks up a toy car, brings it back into the kitchen, and whacks his brother with it. Definitely pre planned and foreordained. It can be really humbling when your two year old outsmarts you.

This afternoon, I got home from work late and was greeting enthusiastically by three little boys and one mum. The boys spent about an hour climbing all over me, using me as a ramp and a trampoline and a climbing post. It was really quite funny of them.the climbing only ended when I showed them a really neat new iPad app, iwritewords.

Side Effects

2011-11-13T23:53:00.001-05:00

Good stuff, first: when The Baby first saw me after being away for 24 hours, he got a really big smile and waved his arms in the air. That was intensely cute, and he smiled at me nonstop for about five minutes, which is an eternity in baby time. He's really quite a mellow child. When I pick him up in that special way, he wraps his right arm around my middle, sticks his thumb in his mouth, and snuggles into my shoulder. It tends not to last unless he's tired; he bucks out and wants to be upright. It's still nice to know that he likes snuggles.

The Boy and I had a good Saturday. A nice nap, followed by a birthday party at Build-A-Bear, pizza for dinner and then watching 101 Dalmations together, which he really enjoyed. He's a neat kid, and he gets steadily more interesting as time goes by. Today at the JCC open gym, he was doing this neat dive and somersault thing.

Little Bear is... well... two, with everything that entails. A two year old is a creature of joy and mischief and laughter and games, with all four happening in small increments of time. Perfect example: he went into the kitchen to open the refrigerator and take some food. Grandpa rerouted him into the living room, where The Boy was quietly playing with some Trio blocks. He goes over to The Boy and starts whacking him over the head, causing The Boy to run away with a handful of toys, yelling at Little Bear to leave him alone. Little Bear eventually got what he wanted - attention - when I picked him up and carried him over to my chair, where we did a puzzle, read a book, and played a coloring game on the iPad.

So, part of the fun off having asthmatic tendencies is that when I get really sick, an asthma episode typically follows. This manifests itself in a hacking, painful cough that moves nothing around in my chest, and the cough tends to last for around a month. I've learned the pattern of symptoms when these things start to occur, and I've learned how to put myself on and off oral steroids. I always make sure my pulmonologist is on board with this, but I won't wait until I go in for an appointment.

What I hadn't considered is that this was the first bad asthma incident that I'd really had since before The Boy was born. I mean, I had one in 2009, but it was not severe and exacerbated mostly by stress and a bad allergy autumn. So, my body was severely out of practice when it came to taking the same oral steroids that I'd used, on and off, since about age 5. I took a nice big dose Thursday night after the doctor's office, and I promptly wigged out.

It was bad. Shakes, dizziness, mood swings (already difficult to tell with me), severe concentration issues, fatigue, not able to sleep... combined with the fact that it takes a couple of days for the steroids to do their thing. I wound up staying home in bed when The Wife left for Michigan, and I stayed home in bed for a couple of days instead of going out to the wedding. Wish I had gone, really do; needed the time away with my wife.

Not a total loss for the weekend, however. I was able to take some of the load off of Grandma, who picked up whatever viral thing the kids and I had. Not a lot of the load; Grandpa went above and beyond the call of duty all weekend. But, between Grandma and me, we made almost one complete person while The Wife was away. She came back early to let us both hit the sack.

Here's some cute pictures of the boys.

Broken

2011-11-06T05:00:00.001-05:00

It's been an... interesting week, to say the least. Last Saturday, i wound up going to bed a little bit early, feeling somewhat drained from spending a day running around after the children. I woke in the middle of the night with a fever and chills, which kicked off two straight days in bed sick. Worst part of the whole thing? I had actually arranged a shift switch at work for Halloween, so that I could go trick or treating with the boys. Instead, I wound up asleep in bed for most of the week. Tuesday, I was back to work for a half day. Wednesday was my first real work day of the week, which was fortunate: no extracurricular activities beyond playing with children at night. Thursday was my dress rehearsal, and I started feeling kind of awful about fifteen minutes into rehearsal. When I got home, my temperature was over a hundred and rising.

What made things so much better for me and for us was that both of the older children were sick as well. I'm fairly certain that they didn't get it from me, as they've been sporting seasonally-appropriate runny noses for a week or so. I spent Thursday night in The Boy's bed to comfort him; we are fairly certain that we've reprogrammed his core into "sick means sleeping with Daddy or Grandma," and we were happy to oblige.

Side note, because I really enjoy pointing this out: his temperature hit 100.5 axillary.18 months ago, that would mean the following: I would take a quick shower, throw my hospital bag in the car, throw The Boy's hospital bag in the car, and get going. The Wife would call the doctors to get the isolation room ready for us and inform as to the symptoms, the start the email and telephone chain to get us whatever help we needed for the next day or two, then load The Boy into the car. We would prepare for a weeklong stay at La Casa de Hospital. Isn't it wonderful that a fever of 100.5 is not just annoying to all of us? But, I digress.

Friday morning, my wife left for work, leaving me with three boys in the morning until Grandma and Aunt J were ready to do their thing for the day. Bad move on my part for accepting even that little bit of responsibility: I was not up for even fifteen minutes of daddy duty. Grandma came downstairs to see what was going on, took one look at me, took the baby, and sent me back to bed. Next thing I knew, it was 2:30, I had been to the doctor's office, told I had (a cold similar to but not really) the flu, and sent back home. Not a great sign when you don't really remember driving yourself back and forth to the doctor's office. Pretty much, the day was an epic fail of illness.

I didn't regain sentience until Saturday morning, which was when I had to get up and get ready for my chorus's first annual show with me as director. The show went marvelously; I am really proud to be directing this chorus and so, so happy about the performance and everybody's involvement. The Boy came to the performance, with my father and my wife, and he seemed to have a really good time. Bonus: he was well behaved and cute at the afterglow. He made a friend for life with the baritone of Maxx Factor, our guest quartet and reigning Sweet Adelines champions: she took him up to get a piece of CAKE, which was demolished in short order.

After the show, The Wife went to the afterglow from my old chorus while I stayed home and rested. Good thing: my fever finally broke this morning, which seems to have had the ironic effect of waking me up for the day at 4:15am on fall back day. Sigh. At least I won't be alone for long; the children aren't aware of fall back, so they will be up momentarily, I am certain. Maybe not; Little Bear was sick all day, so he might sleep, and The Boy and The Baby can frequently be convinced to give us a little more sleep. Wish us luck.

Terrible Twos

2011-10-29T23:14:00.001-04:00

The other day, my wife and I were talking about the general trends of Little Bear's behavior. He's been seriously picking fights with his brother lately, to the point of escalating things beyond simple brotherly squabbles. In addition, he's been kind of difficult in regards to the whole potty thing at home. Nothing serious, but annoying beyond what we'd expect from such an intelligent, motivated young boy.

Grandma wound up with the best response on why we've had such a hard time: we've never had a two year old before, and Little Bear is very, very two. The Boy was chronologically two, true, but he was never really a "real" two year old. The first eight months of his "two-ness" was spent in treatment and surgery, which meant he was rarely the energetic, independent toddler that Little Bear is.

It's kind of a weird thing, realizing that a part of his childhood was so different from his brother's. I know that every single person has their own life and their own experiences, and The Boy will turn out to be his own self regardless of cancer treatments and things like that. I know that each of the three boys will have their own memories and interpolations of what happens, and - most likely - they'll be just as neurotic and screwed up and normal as the rest of us.

It is also a little humbling as a parent, to be reminded of exactly how little we know. I think that, as far as parents of an under-five family, we are pretty far ahead of the curve in terms of our abilities to deal with crisis. We know how to drop everything and deal with a Big Deal. What we don't necessarily know how to rectify are normal life, every day situations like an overly passionate 2-year old.

We will get there. Little Bear is a nice boy, even if he throws lots of fits and pulls his brother's hair and wakes up at 5:45 every morning and won't go back to sleep. This, too, shall pass, and in years to come, we will look back at his infancy and toddlerhood with nostalgia and affection.

Even if we do occasionally want to duct tape him to the couch cushions.

Technology Fail

2011-10-28T23:48:00.001-04:00

I love the new iOS that Apple has released, but I'm not loving some of the comparability issues that have risen up and interfered with some aspects of my life, such as my blogging. Neither my Blogpress app nor google's blogger interface are playing nicely with the new Safari right now, and that's meant that I have lost about two hours worth of writing to the ether. Kind of frustrating, really. Not that I have that much to say, certainly not of any real importance, but it's been a nice couple of weeks.

Aside from the colds, that is. Both older children have been sick for most of the week. They haven't been stay at home sick, but they've been a little out of sorts and drippy. I've had it for most of the week, and few things are better for a cold than a job that requires you to talk all day. It's a lot better than trying to expand your voice to fill an entire classroom, but it's still not very easy. I'm proud to say that my vocal studies have gotten me through the week unscathed, more or less.

The Baby has gotten through the week without a hitch. He's finding his left thumb on a regular basis. Few things are cuter than a little baby with his thumb. Only thing I've found is mirror image little boys with thumbs: The Baby with his left, The Boy with his right. The Baby has been really smiley and happy all week, fortunately. Pictures will follow, as soon as the blogging app is repaired.

No real progress on The Boy's anger issues. He's been really challenging with which to deal on momentum-changing (leaving the house, stopping to come home, etc.), but fairly agreeable in between major fits. He hasn't been starting fights with his brother, which is a relief, although Little Bear has started the unfortunate habit of pulling his brother's hair, in response to needing The Boy's attention. This has the effect of making The Boy run away crying, until he gets mad enough that he knocks Little Bear to the floor and jumps on him, swinging away.

I'm not I'm favor of violence, but if Little Bear is going to pull his bigger brother's hair just to make him mad, then he deserves to get his butt kicked a little bit.

Ironically enough, despite the constant squabbling between the two of them, and despite the frequent fits and resistance, both boys are model citizens at school: attentive, great at participating, nice to their friends, great at sharing. I guess that it's good that they're sharing their good halves at school and the rest at home, but, still.

Here's to hoping that the technology fixes itself.

Birthday Parties

2011-10-23T23:57:00.000-04:00

Today, we had dueling birthday parties for the first time. It was really kind of cool: I went with The Boy to the birthday party of one of his friends at noon, and The Wife went to a birthday party with Little Bear for one of his school friends. I'm pleased to say that both parties went extremely well, and it was pretty neat to see that both sets of parents had the right ideas about throwing a party.The Boy's party was held at the temple, based in their classroom. That's where the cake and arts and crafts were held. Out in the hallway, a small basketball net was set up, and some balls and cones and balloons were set up. There were some games and some different activities for the group, and there was lots of laughing. The snacks were tasteful: some veggies, cheese, goldfish crackers, chips, and Doritos. The Doritos were the killer; I could pass up cake, but not those chips.We've been pretty lucky about the whole preschool friends thing, really. We haven't shown up to any parties to find the most outrageous thing ever; just nice, simple, fun outings with the focus more on kids playing games and having fun rather than ostentatious displays of wealth. Granted, those types of people tend not to want to associate with people like us, but still. I hope that I'm intelligent and considerate enough to never want to try the keep-up-with-them game. I'm pleased to report that The Boy behaved beautifully at the party. He was gentle and generous with the other kids, and he shared quite well. He played with most of the kids there. They had a piñata at the party, which is not a favorite of mine. While I'm not a big believer in dignity, watching a group of children scrabbling on the ground for candy bits is not a favorite of mine. When the piñata burst, he was well behaved, taking only what he was planning on eating and not just shoveling stuff into his goodie bag.The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. We played outside and did some piggy back sorts of things, and both boys were in bed early tonight. We spent the rest of the night folding laundry and catching up on Doctor Who. Tomorrow, we've got a nice school day and a late work night for me. Should be lots of fun.

More Cool Stuff

2011-10-17T23:42:00.001-04:00

The Baby is now able to find his thumb at will, which is really nice. As a matter of fact, he has soothed himself to sleep on several occasions, and his napping time is starting to even out. The whole "settling" process is going along quite well, and even his sleep is starting to even out and become somewhat more predictable. We even set up the crib over the weekend, and he's sleeping in it on occasion.

The birdies in the mobile are the same ones from The Boy's crib. We love the birdies. Both boys are adjusting to the baby quite well, and they both are paying attention to him and playing with him. Even Little Bear is playing with the baby!

Little Bear actually took himself to the potty to make poo today! He's had a couple of potty-poops in the last few days, which is great progress towards goal. We are still in training pants at school, but... well, he's making steady progress.

The Boy is doing some nice things, also. This morning, Little Bear hitting him while at breakfast. He played a smacking game with Little Bear, then brought him into the den and said, "No, Little Bear, we hit pillows, now people!" It was excellently handled, and I was really impressed with him this morning.

We are reading "Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin," and he plays the part of Duck while I play Goose. We read the lines with excessively silly voices, and it's loads of fun. The Boy asks for it about six times in a night!

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Some Cool Stuff

2011-10-10T23:44:00.001-04:00

The Baby has decided that he really, really likes his left thumb. He's able to find it more-or-less at will, which is nice. He soothed himself to sleep a couple of times today. That's what we like, and one reason why we haven't been into the pacifier thing - can't loose your thumb white as easily as a pacifier. Sure, I know that there might be tooth issues later, but it might save our sanity now.

The Boy did a nice job riding his three wheeler down to the school playground and back. I helped him get over some of the rougher spots on the sidewalk and cross the street, but he did most of the work. I'm very proud of him. He's also doing a nice job with his letters at school, as you would expect. He still has that thing about needing to go first, but he's line leader this week, which makes him extremely happy. Ad, it motivates him to get moving - "Daddy's first, The Boy." "No! The Boy's first! Daddy has to wait!"

He's also discovering Daddy and Mum's first names and how to spell and write them. Kind of cool.

Little Bear knows the names of so many songs! He's asked for some old barbershop songs by name that we didn't know he knew. It's really cool to hear that, and it keeps us on our toes. That child has ears like a bat - he hears everything that happens, and he is a near-perfect parrot. Makes me watch my language more than I otherwise would. He went on a bike ride on the back of Mom's bicycle this afternoon, which was a lot of fun!

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Scripted Reality

2011-10-09T15:35:00.001-04:00

What's interesting about watching Little Bear develop is how tends to learn the "scripts" for the way life is supposed to go. This request gets this response, which triggers this response, and so forth. Classic behaviorist theory of stimulus - response, lived out as a real person.

Most of the time, the scripts are fairly benign. We walk into the restaurant, and he asks to go to the potty. He sees me at his door in the morning, and he starts the good morning talk: hi, Daddy, how are you doing? I slept well and had nice dreams. That sort of thing.

We're still dealing with the hitting issue, which is an obviously scripted response to a few different subjects: lack of attention, lack of stimulation, more unstructured time than he knows how to fill. The throwing thing is related - when Little Bear wants to play with something and he can't, if you make the mistake of suggesting something else, he will walk over, throw it, then say, "Daddy! The iPhone! I throwed it!" It's extremely predictable and consistent.

Basically, it comes down to attention. If we aren't giving him the attention that he requires, then he's going to find a way to get it. One of my friends, as a response to my last exploration of the hitting thing, suggest that a definite consequence to action was needed. The only problem with that is that it doesn't really match the "crime," if you will. Even though a two year old occasionally behaves like they should be put through the wall head first, that doesn't mean that the situation would improve by doing so.

When you look as severely misbehaving and criminal children, one thing becomes quite clear: the only attention they receive, and the only attention with which they can deal, is negative attention. That's what they get at home, that's what they get at school, and that's how they view themselves. Armchair psychological analysis of my own family members shows the same thing: when you're told that you're the least intelligent of your siblings, then that's how you're going to behave when they're around, even if that "fact" is nowhere close to being true.

I haven't been a believer in action-Immediate, defined consequence thing in quite a few years. To my viewpoint, each action needs to be examined in its own circumstances and appropriate response needs to be considered and discussed before implementation. Every situation is different. For instance, I was finishing up my lunch today when Little Bear came up, bored and looking for attention, and whacked me on my shoulder.

This was clearly a plea for attention and playing. It wasn't the right way to go about it, but for Little Bear, this action was the easiest to get the desired outcome: attention, regardless of the type. The script that he's learned said that he hits, and I pick him up, remove him from the situation, lecture him about hitting (as you could possibly do to a 2-year old), and try to redirect his energy somewhere else. As my wife puts it, when repeated attempts haven't gotten him over the hump, change the script.

I laughed at him and tapped him on the shoulder. He wasn't sure how to respond, so he did it again, and I repeated my action. He tried a third time, to which I tapped on the top of his head, then offered the top of my head for an easy whack. We did that to each other three or four times, he laugh Ed a lot, then he went inside and played quietly with a toy. Incidentally, he didn't hit as hard as he is capable of - it was a play fight sort of thing, an obvious bid for attention from me. Having provided the little bit of attention and interaction he required, he moved on to something fun and creative in the living room.

Is this a long term response? No, it isn't. I don't want him thinking that it's okay to come up to me for any reason and hit. However, it worked, there was no negative reinforcement or overresponse, and his needs were momentarily met.

On the cute side of things, he's started asking, "Daddy, what's your favorite color?" He believes that my favorite color is green, which is as good a choice as any. He will respond for The Boy's favorite color (orange), Mom's favorite (purple, the royal color for my Queen), Grandma's favorite (blue), and he's decided that The Baby's favorite is yellow. His favorite, incidentally, is blue. At least, for the moment...

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Simple Moments

2011-10-09T00:09:00.001-04:00

Today, we took the boys to the park in the morning. We went to Blue Slide Park, which is our favorite place to go. When we go to the park, it never ceases to amaze me at how much fun our kids have. It is one of the wonderful things about having young children: simple things and simple pleasures. Like I said yesterday, little boys, little problems, simple pleasures.

There is nothing more beautiful than watching my son run, just for the sake of running. He wants me to chase him or to be chased by him; there is no real rules or order to the game, just a daddy and his boy running together in the park. Watching him running and laughing with delight...

A little while later, we sat in the dirt and drew words in the sand with sticks. That was lots of fun. Best part? We played "plants," which meant using those same sticks to dig little holes, put in a "seed" (usually a small leaf or rock), and cover the hole. "Don't forget to water the plants!" (he said after each time.) A couple other kids wandered over and played with us and it was pretty cool.

Little Bear is not so much into the chasing games and the digging games. He enjoys running as much as his brother, but he's still in the independent playing stage. He loves the swings, although he will go from one swing to the next to the next. It's cute, even if you'd rather be walking around and enjoying the park. He is a little afraid of the public toilets in the park, though, which can be a tad frustrating. The Wife tried to get him to pee behind some bushes, but he wound up peeing on his pants. Right process, wrong results. Sigh.

The boys can be so much fun, and they seem to enjoy wonderful, fun, simple things. Today was a good day for that.

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Musings

2011-10-07T23:29:00.001-04:00

By all measures, I should be asleep by now. Allergies have been absolutely killing me all week, and my general schedule - work, chase children, put them to bed, accomplish all the chorus/singing stuff, spend time with my wife, take a little necessary me-time, then to bed for five or six hours of sleep - has been taking its toll on me. I'm not as young as I used to be, and there's been a lot of mileage on Musical Daddy in the last several years.

However, everybody else in the house is asleep. That means, I can watch tv, or listen to music, and read a book, or a comic book, or whatever I feel like doing, for a little while. That kind of time, you know, is worth its wait in gold. When it was only The Boy in the house, I used to treasure those Sunday mornings, before he and The Wife awoke. I'd take the time to make a pot of coffee, and I'd just sit in my chair and read the newspaper and enjoy the silence and temporary, utter lack of momentum for a little while.

I understand that this craziness is somewhat temporary and definitely transitory. The babies will grow into boys and into teenagers and into young men, and I will look back with fondness at the times when they wanted nothing more than to wrestle with Daddy and snuggle up and read a story together. Little boys have little problems: fighting over an iPad, potty problems, and negotiating over an extra song or story at night. Big boys have big problems, and I am definitely not looking forward to those.

Don't get me wrong; I get It. I understand the general point involved: it's not the destination, it's the journey. It's not the man at the end, but the thousands of bum wipes and nose wipes and stories and songs and fights and arguments and "spoiling" with treats and sleepless nights and 3am snuggles and late night fevers and noodles for breakfast and pancakes for dinner that happen along the way. Every time I see my children is a treat, and I do my best, on a daily basis, to make sure that I've given each of my sons (and my wife) and overabundance of hugs, kisses, and "I Love You"s.

Eleven years (and three days) ago, I went on a date with a girl that I knew from college - we had worked together at a summer program, and I was intrigued. We met at a jazz club later on, and we spent the night talking, then made a date. Who knew that that date, three and a half years later, would end in marriage and a lifetime? Or, more precisely, three new lifetimes?

Three years ago, The Wife noticed a bump on a sleeping baby's belly. Who knew that that "tip of the iceberg" tumor would result in a new residence, a new career for me, two more children, and a relocation to Pittsburgh?

Wow, that got morbid in a hurry. I think that might be the allergy medicine kicking in. I certainly didn't mean for this to be quite so melancholy. I was intending on writing a small dissertation on how Little Bear follows certain scripts of behavior, which tends to confirm quite a bit about behaviorist psychology. I guess that will wait.

The bottom line seems to be that I'm not as young as I used to be, and I'm not happy about that. I'm not surprised; one can only function for 18 hour days with six hours of sleep for so long before your body starts to revolt. Sitting at a desk in a cubicle is not exactly the best way to keep one's self in peak condition; it wears on you, in a different manner than physical labor and teaching do. I know I'll adjust; it's just going to take time. Until then, it'll be a bit challenging.

And, while we are all adjusting to the new paradigm, I will take advantage of this wonderful, momentary, beautiful moment of stillness.

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Mirror Images?

2011-10-04T23:25:00.001-04:00

It's amazing how much the boys look like each other at their respective ages. I mean, they are individuals, but... wow.

The Baby:

The Boy:

Uncanny, no? You'd think that they had the same genetic pool or something.

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Two Forward, One Back

2011-10-03T23:37:00.001-04:00

So, we got a letter today, from Little Bear's preschool, wanting some kind of action on his escalating number of potty accidents during the school day. Today, for instance, he had three accidents. This is frustrating for all, because he's not giving any indications that he has to go, and he's just standing there and playing with soiled pants, without a care in the world.

Sound familiar? I remember how frustrated we were about The Boy at a similar stage of potty training, albeit a chronological year later in his life. The toughest pill to swallow wasn't the inability of The Boy to control his potty impulses. It was the fact that he just didn't seem to care. While he is on the other side of that, he will still hold his pee until the front of his jockey shorts are damp before he'll run to the bathroom.

Little Bear hasn't reached that period yet. Granted, it's early. He's still very young, and only one other kid in his school class actually uses the potty on a regular basis. It seems like he has no impulse to be a pioneer in this particular skill! The frustrating thing for his teachers is, like his brother, his seeming indifference.

I guess we aren't surprised. We expected and have been seeking the reversion that inevitably happens when a major life change happens to a child - and a new baby brother, new work hours for Daddy, and new school schedule certainly fit that bill. The potty is the least of the issues. It's joust the smelliest.

I, for one, will be happier when our sons' first recourse is to NOT hit. It is frustrating to get smacked by a two year old who doesn't want to put a toy away or stay at the dinner table one minute longer than he feels he should. I've been successful, recently, at turning it into a game that gets the kids doing what we want: dodging, saying "You missed!" and laughing about it has seemed to be successful and funny for all involved. The hitting and anger turns into reasonable and jolly compliance, albeit temporarily.

I know this is just a stage that we are traveling. I know it'll be better. Hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, though.

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The Tricky Bit

2011-10-02T08:50:00.001-04:00

The tricky bit with newborns is realizing that, even if you are doing everything correctly, even if all of their needs seem to be met, and even if there is no reason in the world, they are still going to cry.

It's what they do.

And, they'll occasionally cry more, just because they love you and are comforted by you. Just because.

Yesterday, some friends came by for lunch, and they had a baby who was around six months old. I took the baby so that her mom could get her jacket off, and the baby snuggled right into my chest and relaxed. Babies, in general, love me. It's nice to be reminded of that.

And, it is so important to remember that babies cry, and that that is okay.

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Some Observations

2011-10-02T00:10:00.000-04:00

Little Bear, over the last several days, has decided to backtrack his potty training. He's been having between three and five pee accidents every day, which is really odd. He probably would go two to four days between pee accidents before, mostly because he enjoyed going to the potty and getting a chance to flush the toilet and play with the water while he washed his hands. We're pretty sure that it's an attention thing, because it was the same way when The Boy was younger.

Granted, The Boy's potty issues were more frustrating, for two reasons. First, he was older than Little Bear when we did the potty thing with him, which means that he was a little more aware than his younger brother. Second, because of the radiation on his stomach, he had liquid poo several times per day. At least Little Bear only poops once or twice a day, and it's normal poo, at that. The potty problems seem more frustrating at the moment because we don't really remember The Boy's issues so clearly.Our children might have some issues with authority. In that, they take after their parents. Lord help them.In other ways, they've been relatively normal this week. The Wife is finding herself in the role as "husband gone for ten hours to work" wife. She's really, really good at handling the three children by herself. Personally, I've only had to handle the three kids for a period of a couple of hours, and I'm usually in a cold sweat by the end of it. I don't know how she does it like she does. I know it'll get easier, in some ways, when they're a little older and The Baby is a little more settled. It's just really, really hard right now. The Boy had a "Back to School" cough this week, which kept him home from school for a day. They've both had the typical-for-this-time-of-year runny noses, Little Bear moreso than The Boy.I've made one minor change over the past couple of nights, when putting The Boy to bed: no more iPad. We had settled into the routine with one or two stories, then we'd watch "In the Night Kitchen" or "Where the Wild Things Are" movies from Scholastic Video. It's really cute and well done, particularly considering they both had Maurice Sendak himself narrating. We've slowly evolved that routine into watching stuff without reading books, and that makes me uncomfortable. So, no more iPad.The iPad itself has become, at times, more trouble than it's worth. It is guaranteed to start fights between the older boys; no matter how many iDevices are floating around the house, they will fight over whichever iPad is around. We could be having Family Laptop Time, with each boy on an iPad, and they'll get in a fight over each other's machine. It's kind of frustrating. The only entertaining thing about it is that The Boy has been in love with an Elmo Alphabet game, which is far, far below his skill level. Weird.I'm looking forward to a nice, boring week and a nice, boring weekend next weekend, Yom Kippur excepted. It looks like I have no meetings, singing jobs, extra rehearsals, or obligations this week. Just work, home, work, home, work, and home. I kind of like that.

One of Those Weekends

2011-09-26T00:05:00.001-04:00

Back when I was in college, one of Those Weekends usually resulted in several days' worth of hangovers. You know, a weekend that has some chunks of time that a missing or hazy, and a weekend that usually had some interesting stories and entertaining pictures resultant. Now that I'm a reasonably responsible adult, it means something entirely different - usually a weekend with less family time than I'd prefer, when the family time isn't exactly the quality time that you'd prefer.

Before The Wife, I was in a long distance relationship. Before it soured, I learned a bunch of lessons about the distance thing, specifically about visits. Visits when you only see each other once a month or every other month are really, really hard; there's a lot of pressure to make every second memorable, and you don't have the time to make up for a misspoken word, a careless gesture, or a thoughtless moment. To some extent, my family time is like that long distance relationship.

I know it's not the same comparison. Even on my busiest days, I still get to see them a little bit - breakfast together in the morning, or stories at bedtime. Something like that. Most days, I have several hours of time in which to spend with them. Before my job started, I was around them around 20 hours per day, every day. When you've spent a couple of years being around your kids for the entire day, it feels awkward and weird and stressful to only be around them for a couple of hours.

I am aware that that is the usually situation and has been the usual situation for most of human history. That's not the point.

Today was a great example of that. The boys and Grandpa and I had a brilliant time at the park, after Mom left to teach Hebrew School. We went to the park, and The Boy made some friends and played a silly variation of Red Light Green Light that involved no actual rules but much tackling and chasing. We had a nice lunch, where I snuggled a baby back to sleep while Grandma fed the boys, and I had a wonderful 30-minute nap with my favorite napping partner. I then left for five hours to teach. I got home in time to help mend a major meltdown by The Boy, and then we went to Chinese food for dinner.

At the restaurant, our kids were Those Kids - you know, the ones you point to and question their parents' abilities to do anything. Thankfully, they fed us quickly, and we were on our way. A minor meltdown or two later, the older boys were in bed.

But, this was a weird day. Having it end like that makes the whole weekend taste funny. The tough thing is that I don't see them much tomorrow until bedtime, so I leave them feeling decidedly undecided about the weekend. Sigh.

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Working Girl

2011-09-22T00:10:00.001-04:00

So, we are starting to adjust to life in the non-educational working world, and man, it's different. I know that we are now living, basically, the same schedule as 90% of the free world, but it I s quite the radical change from what we are used to living.

As a teacher, your schedule is very predictable. Even the school band directors, who arguably have the busiest schedules, have a very predictable rhythm of life. You have meetings the same days, rehearsals the same days, tutoring the same days, the same busy periods every year, that sort of thing. Give me a week in the calendar year, and I can tell you how many hours per week I'll be at school and what I'll be doing.

I guess the business world is like that, also. If it is, I haven't figured it out in my first four weeks of working. (Ironic emphasis on four weeks, as compared with ten years working and seven years of college beforehand.) We can't make those predictions yet, and scheduling things like lessons and rehearsals and time playing with children is difficult.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining. I'm thankful that I have the opportunity that I have, and I intend to work my fanny off at my new job. I'm just noticing that all of us - kids included - are finding it difficult to adjust. My wife is a trooper, and she handles the three children much better than I ever could, but I wish that I could be around to help her more often.

Little Bear might be the hardest hit of all. Having one less adult around, and having a brother who is a newborn, means that he gets far leas attention than he deserves and needs. Grandma does an amazing job of helping out and caring for the children, for sure; but, he's been acting out quite a bit lately because of the lack of attention.

Good daddy moment: we are figuring out how to deal with these mini-tantrums pretty decently. Tonight, on the way home from the comic book store, I strapped Little Bear into his seat. He wasn't happy about this, said, "I'm going to hit you, Daddy," and did. I briefly thought about acting angry or hurt or annoyed or just ignoring him, and I decided against all of those. All he was seeking was attention; all he wanted was some individual acknowledgment. Instead, I pretended to fall over on top of him, which made the bigger boys laugh. He "pushed" me again, and I pretended to fall over even more dramatically.

Thus, his need for attention was sated, and his behavior was redirected from hurting to playing. I'm pretty proud of myself. Little Bear is such a big, friendly, intelligent kid that we frequently forget that he's only 2 years old. Side note: it's actually a concern in education, that kids who are more physically and/or mentally mature than their colleagues are not necessarily more emotionally mature and can't handle being treated like an older child or an adult. This is fairly detrimental to development, as you'd imagine.

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Long Weekend

2011-09-19T00:33:00.001-04:00

Friday, I came home for a brief meal and playmate with my children before leaving for Toledo, Ohio, and the Region 17 Harmony Weekend with my chorus. This is the first time in a while that I've been away from them for this long; I've spent a night away here or there, most recently last month when I drove Aunt P to Connecticut, but I haven't spent two nights away since... April, I think, and the barbershop contest.

This was the first time, however, that The Boy really understood that I was leaving and that he wouldn't see me for a while. He was not happy about it, as I outlined last week, but he dealt with it reasonably well. I did keep my promise and web chatted with him on Saturday afternoon, which was really nice for all of us. Little Bear was more interested than The Boy in talking, as he was quite proud of drawing a J on Grandma's iPad.

The trip was great - successful performance, lots of new knowledge, and some new friends. Kind of exhausting, though - as a leader, one is always "on" during situations like these. One little thoughtless remark, an offhand comment overheard by a passerby, and suddenly, the new director (particularly being a male director of a women's group) is a jerk. So, it's a couple of days of paying attention to everything I do and say.

That's not a bad thing, mind you. I truly want to be that sort of person, a positive leader that is known for being uplifting and supportive of the people around him. I don't want to be known as an arrogant, egotistical tyrant or a whiny, complaining little thing. "Forcing" myself to act like that is great practice for trying to be that person all of the time.

I got home today around 4:30, and they got home from their party soon after. One of Grandma's colleagues has a little girl turning two, and the boys went to her birthday party. Cutest thing, when I met them in the garage: three sleeping boys in the backseat of the car!

I took the older two boys upstairs, and they both briefly napped on my lap. Is there any better way to be welcomed home, than by fifteen minutes of snuggles? I think not. The Boy actually stayed asleep until nearly seven pm, which was just dandy. Little Bear and I got some nice playing time outside. He loves that chalk, which he calls "colors." "Give me colors, Daddy!"

Little Bear went to bed early because he missed his nap besides the short nap in the car and on my lap, and The Boy woke up and was remarkably pleasant company for the remainder of the evening. We put a new car seat in the car for him, which we bought by trading in the old jumparoo - when we gave it to a family a year or so ago, never expecting to need it again. When they gave it back, it had lots of pet hair on it. Considering our volatile allergies, we traded it in to Babies R Us and got a new convertible car/booster seat instead. We watched some television, and he played with Mum while I knocked a half dozen items off of my to do list (or at least moved them to the next step towards completion.

The Boy went to bed around 11:30, which was twenty minutes after Mum. That's fine. He might be a joy tomorrow, though. We shall see.

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Played

2011-09-16T00:33:00.001-04:00

So, at breakfast this morning, The Boy says, "Daddy, I want to play hide and speak with you!" That's what he calls hide and seek. He told me to go hide and he would find me. I went into the living room while he counted to ten. I hid and waited.

He took the iPad from the seat next to him, hit the Netflix app, and returned to eating his breakfast. Yes, folks, I got played quite soundly by my four year old son.

Kind of fitting, because he was pretty well cheesed off at me. He's still angry about me leaving for work, and he's even angrier because he didn't see me on Monday and Tuesday because of the Ballgame and my chorus rehearsal. When they came to pick me up after work, he sat in his seat with his eyes closed and said, "I'm hiding. You're not happy to see me, you're sad." Basically, he's mad because he hasn't seen me much this week.

It'll get even better when I leave for the weekend for my chorus weekend. Sigh.

I know this is a normal problem. Kids have had parents leave to spend all day at work for a long, long time. That's something that he's going to have to deal with.

Little Bear seems to be handling it better. He's sad when I leave for work, but not intolerably so. I know that this, too, will pass. Next blog from Toledo,
Ohio!

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Missing You

2011-09-14T23:27:00.001-04:00

I wonder how far back The Boy's memory goes? Does he remember things - at least, as well as any toddler does - as actual events, or does he just remember flashes of emotion?

I know that I only have little flashes of being four and five years old, but that was around 32 years ago or so. Life is trying to fit a gallon of daily information into a shot glass sized brain, which means that some stuff gets lost in the translation.

I guess what I'm really wondering is, how much does he remember that awful three week period in December 2009, when I was back in New Jersey finishing up house preparations while the rest of my family was adjusting to treatment at Children's here in Pittsburgh? Over the last day or so, he's been really upset about the amount of time I've spent out of the house, and it's concerning.

Last night, he flipped out at 3:00 in the morning because he wanted to come into our bed. That concept is not unusual, but the manner of the fit was concerning and solved with snuggles until keep came. My schedule at work has changed a bit, allowing me to drive the kids to school, which helped this morning. The Wife told me that he's spent much of the last several days looking for me around the house.

Tonight, he flipped out about being away from me for more than a minute or two. It was kind of hurtful to me, because I know that I'll be away from him during work and this weekend, when I have a chorus event in Toledo. What's he going to do this weekend, when I'm away from Friday morning for work, go to Toledo from work, and head home next on Sunday afternoon?

I hate being away from them for any length of time. It's painful for me, because I've been so involved with their lives for so long. I know that normal families have one parent at least, who works 60 hours a week; why should we be any different? I know that I'm motivated to get work done because of the stakes (full time job means I can care for my family).

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Gallimaufry

2011-09-13T00:22:00.001-04:00

Little Bear's thing, right now, is to visit the potty in every single building we visit. Partially, he likes marking his territory like puppies do. Mostly, he likes seeing what different potties look like, and he's excited at the little differences in all of them. He also is fascinated by the whole flushing process. It's very cute, except for the need to visit the potty every five minutes during a meal.
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The Boy handled Little Bear's hitting spell at dinner tonight much better than we did. He ignored it, responded by falling to the ground in a silly manner, then laughing. Little Bear changed from hostile to amused to laughing. it's classic redirection, I know, but still amazing to see from a four year old. Anyone who underestimates the intelligence of children (mine in particular) is kidding themselves.
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Favorite books of the moment: "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Superman" (the Ralph Cosentino picture book) for Little Bear, and "The Giving Tree" and "Wonder Woman" for The Boy. The Boy has rediscovered Hap Palmer's "Baby Songs," while Little Bear is still not a big television watcher.
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The Baby is very much a Momma's and Grandma's boy right now. He tolerates Daddy. He is adjusting to the bottle quite well - much better than Little Bear ever did. The secret is the milk temperature and the nipple type. All three boys like the brown, shaped nipples instead of the clear ones - something about the texture and shape. Different bottle, cold temperature means difficult feeding.
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The Boy sang his dinner request tonight. It was cute. So, we made dinner into Opera Time, at least until the boys got bored with it. The By is discovering his voice and doing a pretty decent job of finding and keeping a tonal center.
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Little Bear had an amazing time at Kennywood yesterday. He was terrified on a bunch of the rides last time, but this time found them fun and engaging. He rode the "Phantom, Jr." mini roller coaster around ten times, where he threw a major fit last time because he was scared. The boys also helped me demolish an order of cheese fries, and we had to literally drag The Boy out of Kennywood, kicking and screaming.
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Little Bear is now full time in a big bed. We put the toddler bed away late last week, and he doesn't seem to miss it. Interesting thing: trying to get The Baby adjusted to a new crib in another room. First guess: lots more cosleeping. The Boy was sleeping for a while without lights, but something spooked him a week or so ago, and he's back to sleeping with lights on.

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Anger

2011-09-09T00:13:00.001-04:00

Early this morning, The Boy woke up, got himself dressed, and came into the room to find me. It was quite cute, with him in his Blues' Clues Stece shirt and shorts. He snuggled up and fell asleep. When I got up, he followed me into the bathroom and hung out while I dressed for work. We had a nice breakfast together, talking about his day yesterday. Afterwords, we went into the living room and he snuggled up onto my lap.

"Don't go, Daddy, I don't want you to go to work. Stay here with me."

Ultimately, he was quite upset with me for going to work. To make matters better, when The Wife came down with the boys to switch cars with me while she taught, he had just fallen asleep before getting into the car. This meant that he took his grumpy out on me until he woke up.

I've been pretty lucky over the last couple of years, because I've been able to spend a lot of time around the children. Sure, it's been hard being unemployed and planning for a career change, but it's had the great side effect of being a full time Dad for a long time. The unfortunate result is that going back to work has been a difficult adjustment for all of us.

We haven't found our groove yet, for sure. I know that I'm exhausted after the work day - I'm really concentrating for long stretches of time at work, and I'm working hard to learn the skills I need. When I get home, I'm exhausted! I haven't been able to be fully participatory with the boys. It hasn't helped that I have had several nighttime activities that have kept me out of the house through bedtime.

I'm hoping that he will start to deal with it better as time passes. I know that kids since time immemorial have had one or more working parents, but this has been kind of a special case. I miss him, and his brothers and mother, quite a bit! It is a difficult adjustment, to go from all day to a couple of hours with them.

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Time

2011-09-07T23:32:00.001-04:00

Tuesdays are very difficult days for us. I leave for work around 7:05 or 7:10, and I leave for chorus rehearsal immediately after work. This means that I'm out of the house from 7:00 until a little before 11 at night. It's hard on everybody, for sure - The Wife has the kids all day by herself, and I don't get to see the kids while they're awake.

So, this morning, I wake up at my usual 6:15 and start doing my normal routine. The Boy walks into the room at around 6:30 and uses the potty. He came out, and we started to talk. That's a nice change, in and of itself; he's at that age where he can actually carry on a decent conversation about his life. I finally said, "Okay, The Boy, go in and snuggle Mum, I've got to go downstairs.

He looked at me with that particular look that sons get when dealing with their fathers: the look that says, "Are you crazy?"

He said to me, "No, Daddy, I want to go sit with you!"

He knew that I was leaving for work in a few minutes. He just wanted to come downstairs and have breakfast with me before I left. How amazing are our children, that - after all is said and done - they merely want some time, attention, and conversation with their dad?

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What a Week!

2011-09-05T23:41:00.001-04:00

This week, I started my new job working for a local bank. It was a pretty amazing week, with a lot of information flowing through my brain. I've met a lot of great people, and I'm thrilled with my trainers and the rest of my training class. May this be the beginning of a long, profitable arrangement for all of us!

Along with the difficulty of my working full-time for the first time in a few months, The Wife had all three children by herself for the entire day all week. It was a mixed bag, with some awful days, some good days, and some regular days. On Wednesday and Thursday nights, I had the kids while The Wife taught lessons; The Baby went with Mom on Wednesday, but I had all three on Thursday. The kids absolutely ate me alive on Thursday, to the point that I actually called my wife and asked her to come home and skip a lesson. Not my best Daddy moment.

My father arrived in town on Friday night, and he brought my brother for a quick visit. Brother P was picking up a large gift he had purchased and was in town until the next morning! It was the first time I had seen him in months, which was cool. I met the two of them for a nice sit down chat that night, and we all got together for breakfast the next morning. The only interesting thing that happened on the rest of Saturday was The Boy coming down with croup. This was extraordinary only in that he had his birthday party scheduled for 36 hours later.

That night was a pretty rough night. He was unhappy about being in his night diaper and really unhappy about being in his room and by himself. Once I had finished my stuff for the night, I took him into the spare bedroom and we spent the night. It was awful. Summing up, I got peed on twice, kicked repeatedly and thoroughly, and received very little sleep. The next morning, we skipped a birthday party that he was supposed to attend, and I took my father and Little Bear to my chorus's picnic instead of the entire family.

It was really, really nice to spend some time with Little Bear by his self, instead of with the other boys. He was very sociable and very well behaved, charming the socks off of the ladies in my chorus. He even sat with C on the hay ride, after meeting her for about ten seconds beforehand. That's rare for him and awesome to see! He faded around seven, and we went home early. That night was easier than the previous one, although we did still spend the night together in the spare room. I got more sleep and less urine, but I could do without the kicking by The Boy.

Today was a marvelous day, with a nice breakfast with my father, a morning spent preparing, and a brilliant birthday party for The Boy. He had a bunch of his school friends with him, and we did some crafts around the house and ate some fruit, cookies, crackers, and such. Everyone had fun and was really well behaved, parents included! More on this later.

Long week this week - long month, to be honest. Full calendar, with lots of performances and work days and such. Should be interesting to see! Wish me luck.

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Better Than Me

2011-08-27T12:48:00.001-04:00

The Boy loves singing the theme song from the Wonder Pets television show:

YouTube Video

This is pretty cool for a number of reasons, most involving the fact that he's willingly singing. He has been doing a lot of very nice singing lately; although his diction (age appropriate) is somewhat unclear, he's getting the overall shape of the melody. That's important; getting a kid to know when notes go up or down is an important first step.

Little Bear enjoys trying to sing along, but he doesn't quite understand how to make different pitches yet. He's kind of a monotone, as are many two year old singers! He recognizes melodies and asks for particular tunes, and he really is trying to sing. He'll get it soon enough. He, more than The Boy, loves to listen to my quartet rehearsals. It's pretty darn cool.

Both boys sat in on several moments of rehearsal today, And they asked to hear their current favorite live song: "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." I love the fact that my kids hear barbershop standards every day around the house. May they know all of the old songs before they know that the old songs are old songs.

The Baby loves listening to singing, and you can sometimes interrupt a fit by singing at him. Not often, mind you but occasionally. With luck, that will continue.

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Ch-ch-ch-changes

2011-08-26T23:26:00.001-04:00

Probably the best thing about having multiple children is watching them develop and change as time passes. You can be reasonably certain that they're going to turn out as adults who use the potty by themselves, sleep outside of our bed, put themselves to bed at night in a timely manner, and so forth.

The Boy had been in our bed at night, for at least part of the night, for his entire life. In rereading my blog, we've tried to get him in his bed at quite a few times, with varying degrees of success. For the past two weeks or so, he has been sleeping the entire night in his room AND has been getting himself dressed in the morning!

It's such a change. He even takes himself to the potty once or twice in the night, only calling if he needs help. It's a weird thing to see, because I did not think that he would make that change as abruptly as he did.

The baby sleeps with us far more often than he does in the bassinet. I'm really okay with that, because I miss the snuggles. He does prefer Mum still, but I have many more nice moments with him than I did with Little Bear at an equivalent age.

Little Bear is still Little Bear, although he started a low cry during his nap today. I snuck in and climbed into bed with him, as he had switched from the toddler bed to the trundle bed. He had had a bad dream, and he was upset. He snuggled right into me and fell back asleep, and we napped like that for an hour or so. It was awesome - particularly since he hadn't slept with his daddy in well over a year. I don't often see him sleep, and I see him wake up even more infrequently. What a sweet little boy!

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Patience

2011-08-25T23:46:00.001-04:00

On Monday I will be beginning another chapter of my professional life, starting a temp position that could be a work to hire kind of thing. At the very least, this is the sort of position that can get me some of the opportunities I want, even though it isn't in the teaching fields. The sudden pressure to fill every last moment of every day before I start working brings into sudden contrast the largest issue we've faced this month: the lack of any kind of routine and consistency. I honestly think that this is driving all of us a little batty right now, and I am greatly looking forward to heading back to work and getting the kids in school at Rodef.

I am a creature of habit. There is no doubt about that; I have been this way for my entire life. I like a routine, I like steadiness and consistency, and I like to plan things over the course of months and years. I am very comfortable when I have some predictability in my life. Not necessarily every day is the same predictability, but some semblance with which I can plan. The lack of that does weird things to me; I'm grumpy and out of sorts, I'm irritable and impatient, and I'm tending to take it out on the children.

It doesn't help that, because they are half of my genetic code, they are wired similarly. The Boy values that structure. Little Bear perhaps moreso, because of his strong need for constant motion. They love their toys, they love the outside of Grandma and Grandpa's home, and they love us. They've just been getting bored out of their minds very quickly. When they get bored, they start picking fights with each other and with us. Those with siblings know those fights: both children are contentedly playing with toys. One kid looks over at the other, walks over, and takes the toy away and bops their sibling on the dome. Little Bear doesn't even need toys. Particularly at the kitchen table, he'll walk up to The Boy and just start giving him open-handed slaps to the noggin.

After the fiftieth recurrence in a given day (this would be around 10:30am), I've just about had it with those two children. I haven't been as nice as I've wanted to be, and I've been more likely to forcibly remove them from a room or unilaterally take toys away or remove privileges such as stories or iPad use. We've had a short fuse when it's come to The Boy and going places, and we've left him home (with an adult) a couple of time in the last week. That's not how I want to deal with my sons: do what I say or you'll be punished. There's a better way.

I know that I've be overreacting about the whole "Me first! It's my turn to be first!" thing that The Boy does, which is SO not a big deal. Annoying, yes, but only actively bad when he tries to push past Little Bear on a stairwell. If you ignore it, it will go away. Same thing with the throwing of toys to keep them away from the sibling, or the "outside voice" shouting indoors. It's annoying, but it is hardly worth a punishment or losing ones temper.

I know that getting back on the work and school routine is going to help. We will all be a little happier to see each other and to be home, and going places with each other will return to being a special treat. I will see much less of my family, which stinks, but I know that I'll be happier building my life towards a new career path. I want to get back to proactive parenting and setting my children up for success, not the reactive parenting I've been doing.

On an unrelated note, someone vandalized the blue slide at the blue slide park. It's this neat concrete slide built into the hillside, and when you get a piece of cardboard or something similar on the slide, you really build up a nice head of steam. The kids love it, and going to that park is their favorite activity. Someone painted it red, and badly. I'm very depressed about that.

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Left Turn Planning

2011-08-24T22:42:00.001-04:00

We woke up today planning on taking the boys to Kennywood again. Grandma found some half price tickets, which means that we only had to buy tickets for The Boy. The Baby had a doctors appointment (Spoiler: 12 pounds, 4 ounces, and 23 inches long), and we would leave directly from the doctor's office to go to the park. First hitch: double meltdown at 9:30 when we were about to leave.

So, I calmed the boys down, with Grandma doing much of the heavy lifting. Mom took the baby to the appointment. They got back at around eleven, and we debated what to do. We didn't want to bring Little Bear to the park, only to have him fall asleep in the car on the way home and not get a decent nap. We decided to take two cars: The Boy and me in one, everyone else in the other. Second hitch: today was the first day that the park was closed for the season. Much disappointment was felt.

We went to the science center instead, and it was pretty cool. The Boy had a very nice time, although the museum proper was a little old for him and the young kids area was a little too young. The Sportsworks addition next door was a little old for him, although he did as much as he could. It was worth the $2 it cost us for admission (thank you, public assistance card). He stood at a urinal to go, twice.

It is still weird to look at him and see an otherwise normal kid. You know?

The rest of the day was uneventful. We got Rita's, and the boys were in bed a little early. Little Bear was picking fights with his brother for much of the afternoon, and The Baby was cute. The Boy did figure out how to fake sleeping in the car, as he fooled Grandma and me both in separate trips.

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Interesting Day

2011-08-22T23:25:00.001-04:00

Last night, I hit the proverbial wall around 7:30pm. I have been struggling with some breathing issues over the past few weeks, and that, combined with a lack of sleep (shocker!), knocked me out just a bit after 9:45. The Wife let me sleep through a couple of nighttime wake ups, and we all finally awoke at 6:30. Since The Boy had an ultrasound scheduled for 2:00, he had to be NPO by 8:00. That means, no food except clear liquids for six hours before the test.

So, we went to IHOP for breakfast. After breakfast, the boys started to push Mum's very last nerve, so we went outside to play for an hour. Mum left to teach a lesson at that point, and Little Bear played with Grandma while I occupied the other two children. All went upstairs for naps around the time that The Boy and I left for Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

We arrived around 12:45 for a 1:30 appointment, picked up some drugs at the pharmacy, went back to the car to get The Boy's pee sample (which he had graciously donated around 11:45), then up to audiology to collect batteries for his hearing aids. Insurance actually pays for a dozen hearing aid batteries for him, which is really cool. Thank you, public assistance!

We got up to oncology around 1:10, checked in, and asked for someone from child life. Grandma buys lots of arts and craft supplies for the playroom in 9B, which is the young children's oncology ward. Child life picked up the supplies and thanked The Boy, and we were called in to get weighed. This was now around 1:25. Keep in mind that we hadn't eaten since before 8am, although I cheated with a Diet Pepsi and a granola bar. We were weighed and measured, and The Boy was really irritated that he didn't get a lollypop like he usually does.

We went to the lab to get the blood draw common to these visits. The Wife was told, this morning, that nephrology would have orders in the computer so that the lab tests for nephrology and for oncology at the same time. They couldn't find those orders in the computer. We went to our examination room, and the nurse came in to say hello. It was nice to see her, as we hadn't seen her since The Boy was on treatment. She was pregnant then, and she didn't even know that The Baby was due! Anyway, she couldn't find the orders, either, so they had to contact nephrology, find out what was needed, then have Dr. G draw up a new set of orders. The new resident came in the room to take medical history and give a brief examination. After, the nurse came back in to let us know that the orders would be done for the day, and Dr. G came on for our visit and exam.

The visit was nice, and the examination came up clean. We gave the nurse the pee sample, and after the doctors left, we went down to the lab and got the blood drawn. The Boy was so cooperative through this whole process, and he didn't make a peep during the blood stick! I would have cried like a baby, but he was calm and relaxed. We finished in the lab at 2:45, and headed down to ultrasound, 45 minutes after our appointment.

We checked in to radiology, and we were told that we would get the next available opening. At around 3:30pm, the technician came and got us. The Boy was really cooperative and not nearly as grumpy as he should have been. He hadn't eaten for almost 8 hours, and we were both not too pleased. Still, he was pleasant and happy and did everything that he was asked to do. As a matter of fact, he was so calm and placid that he fell asleep on the ultrasound bed! It was very cute. After the ultrasound, I carried him down to the cafeteria, and we had his victory cheese sandwich.

Usually, we do the ultrasound before the doctor visit, but scheduling worked out opposite today. While we could possibly expedite the results, we will wait until the end of the week. If they really need to find us for an emergency, I'm sure we will hear something.

Still, it was a great visit and a wonderful bonding moment with The Boy. He also peed standing up, into a urinal! That was pretty cool to see. Every once in a while, a plan works the way we want it to work!

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Great Fatherly Pride

2011-08-22T12:57:00.001-04:00

The Boy just stood at a urinal and peed, for the first time! I'm so proud...

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Location:Penn Ave,Pittsburgh,United States

While I Was Gone

2011-08-21T00:00:00.001-04:00

So, I go away for a couple of days, and things continue uneventfully at home. As a matter of fact, even bedtimes went smoothly and without any drama or issues! Granted, I wouldn't want to wish the three children on one parent for any length of time on a regular basis, but The Wife handled it with aplomb and relative ease.

That is, except for the head wounds.

Yes, I'm being ironic - while both boys had nice whacks to the dome while I was away, it was entirely unavoidable and something that would have (and will) happened while I was watching them. Little Bear was climbing in and out of our bed when he fell and opened up his chin on the rim of the bedside. No stitches necessary, although he will probably have a nice little scar of his chin. The trick was trying to get the bleeding to stop and keep some kind of bandage of the wound. We got a butterfly bandage on it around bedtime, and it stayed on until the morning, so that's fine.

The Boy was jumping on his bed when he fell off and bumped his noggin on the way down. This echoes the "8 Silly Monkeys" book and song, and The Boy was asked, "8 silly monkeys jumping on the bed one fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said..."

"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" he said. Sigh. The funny bit was he remembered the next bit: "...but noone said anything about jumping on the couch!" If you have little boys, you understand: they get hurt a lot. My dad calls them boy bruises - the cuts, scrapes, bruises, boo-boos, and other assorted weird things that are caused by normal human boy craziness.

Today, we made a return trip to Sandcastle, which is the waterside park associated with Kennywood. We bought season passes for next year, which will be a great decision, as we had an amazing time today. What a difference a year makes!

The Boy, last year, wandered around the edges of the pools and had an amazing time watching kids go down the little slides and have fun. Little Bear followed him around a little bit but was mostly a spectator. This year, The Boy went down all of the little water slides in the two kiddie areas about two dozen times each. He sprinted back up the ladders to go again and again, having an amazing time playing in the water. Little Bear did last year's boy impression, wandering from place to place and watching everyone do their thing.

It's pretty exciting to see! I can't wait to see what's going to happen next.

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I'm a Bad Person

2011-08-19T07:44:00.001-04:00

This might make me a bad person, but I thoroughly enjoyed having eight hours of basically uninterrupted sleep last night. I woke up once at 5:45, got scared for a quick second ("Uh-oh! The Boy didn't come down the hall! Where is he?"), realized he was 350 miles away, then went back to sleep.

Granted, now I have to drive those 350 miles and work tonight before I see them, but one night of quality sleep does wonders for one's outlook.

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Location:West Caldwell, NJ

On the Road Again

2011-08-18T21:28:00.001-04:00

Tonight, I'm at my father's house in New Jersey. I drove The Wife's aunt from Pittsburgh to western Connecticut, and I'm crashing here tonight. It's been a nice trip, and I had a great dinner with my dad and Uncle B.

I just told my father that I'm pretty sure that this is the first baseball game I've watched without kid interruptions in a really long time - like, world series in 2009, when The Boy was in the hospital and slept through the game. Of course, I'm being more than a little sarcastic, but it is really weird not to have the kids around.

It doesn't help that baseball games happen right in the middle of bedtime, which means that there's a break between the 5th through 8th innings (more or less) when I'm reading stories and doing baths and such. I'd really rather play with the boys and do that wonderful, intimate bedtime stuff; the game can always be watched later if anything really exciting happens.

But, it's nice to be able to yell at the television and not worry about waking anybody up. Plus, if I call a ballplayer an a$$h013, I don't have to worry about a Little Bear overhearing and repeating it.

Tomorrow, I'm driving to north of Pittsburgh for a chorus coaching session, so I won't actually see wakeful non-infants (I hope) until Saturday morning. Sigh. I miss my children already.

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Frustration? Kind of.

2011-08-16T09:37:00.001-04:00

One of my friends had their first child in March, and I spoke with them a few weeks after their bris to find out how things were going. They had gotten into an argument because of exhaustion and a difference of opinion as to what "sleeping through the night" meant an how it impacted the rest of their life.

Bottom line, my opinion, one needs to sleep when the baby does. If he is sleeping his five hour stretch from 9-2, regularly, then you need to adjust your bedtime. It sucks, to be sure, but when you have an infant, sacrifices must be made. Nobody likes it, but it doesn't last forever.

It sure seems like it while it's happening, though. It feels like life stops completely and will never restart. Number two feels like that and then some. Ironically, number three doesn't feel like that at all.

The Baby has been fine. Loud, occasionally grumpy, very needy of Mum, but generally good-natured, sweet, and cuddly. The areas that have us frustrated and angry all revolve around the other two children.

I'm guessing, at this point, that the lack of regular, uninterrupted sleep is playing havoc with our patience and our abilities to keep calm, rational heads as our children are losing theirs. Ultimately, that's the problem: behaviors that used to roll off of our backs and either be avoided (by some careful forethought) or gently changed have become frustrating, anger-inducing, and negative-behavior producing.

We want to be positive, patient parents who participate in the day to day lives of our kids. We want to show them positive examples of how to treat each other, and we want them to be responsible young men.

I know that some things are pipe dreams. Kids learn how to clean up after themselves by example and repetition, and it takes time and energy and effort to establish that. It's not going to happen by itself, and some backtracking is expected with the arrival of the baby.

It's not like they've been total angels since the baby came home, but our reactions to their behavior are our problem and our issue. Yes, The Boy has been bossy, and he's started this silly little "No, I've got to be first!" thing that got old after the first time he did it. He's also started violently opposing bedtime by hitting me, throwing things, and running away unless restrained - again, another thing that doesn't really fit in my personal view of parenting. He and Little Bear have started physically fighting more often, which I understand is more human nature than anything else, but still outside how we want them to behave. That one, at least, might have to be conceded to basic sibling rivalry and just managed instead of corrected. We'll see.

On the funnier side, The Boy has been waking up and dressing himself in the mornings. He usually picks fairly decent combinations of clothing. The other day, he woke up at 2am, got changed into daytime clothing, and went downstairs to hunt for us. He finally stood at the bottom of the stairs and yelled, "Daddy! Daddy, where are you? I want Kix for breakfast!" Sigh.

Bottom line, it is interesting how new-baby-freakout manifests itself. With The Boy, it was normal new parent stuff. With Little Bear, it was a significant sense of overwhelm-ed-ness, if I can make that into a word. With The Baby, it's difficult managing our behavior towards the rest of the family. I keep reminding myself that it, too, shall pass, and our worst day nowadays is still better than an average day during The Boy's treatment.

Above: The Boy drew my picture on the concrete.

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First Solo Outing

2011-08-15T11:56:00.001-04:00

(Above: The Boy "talking" on a wood chip cell phone to Grandma, then Harriet and Abagail.)

Right now, I'm standing in a small local playground watching The Boy and Little Bear go nuts. The Baby is in the front carrier, sleeping cutely. I do love those little infant snuffles. This is my first solo outing with all three boys! I've been in the house with them, but not out by myself.

It's not hard, but it does take some amount of vigilance. The Boy likes to wander off randomly, mostly when he decides he's done with whatever activity we are currently pursuing. That's annoying, because he does it silently. Little Bear wanders, also, bit usually in search of something specific that he's yelling about.

Like now, where he made a beeline for the back of the park, yelling, "The swing! The swing!" Plus, his pants are falling down in the back, showing his little white bum to the world. While he has more of a butt than his brothers, it is still not much of a butt.

The Wife gets home from teaching in a half hour or so. We'll have lunch, and I will hopefully get a rest. It's been a tough few nights for The Boy and me, which I'll discuss later.

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Review: Dora Live!: Dora's Pirate Adventure

2011-08-12T16:51:00.001-04:00

Last week, we tried to get tickets for Dora's Pirate Adventure at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum and failed. The shows - at 2:30 and 4:30 - were completely sold out. I bought tickets for the next week's show. Finally, Friday came around, and we went to the show today.

The boys had haircuts today, and The Boy fell asleep in the car on the way home from the haircut. I grabbed him from the car and brought him inside, and he slept in my lap until a little before 1:30. Side note: it is so nice to have a little boy curled up on your lap!!! We woke up, ran to Starbucks for a cup of coffee and a treat, then drove to the museum for the show. We parked and ran inside, getting in line for the show at a little bit after 2:00 for the 2:3 performance.

The Boy didn't want to sit and wait; I think he used that skill up yesterday at the amusement park. He wanted to go into the next room and play with all of the cool stuff, and I wouldn't let him - not at $20 a ticket, you know? He and a bunch of the other children ran around the place like chickens with no heads for a while, then he sat with me as the show began.

He was not too happy to be awake and had a difficult time conceptualizing the show, which meant that he wasn't behaving as well as he could have behaved. I think I was more excited to see the show than he was! During the show, he participated somewhat, waving the "pirate flag" (some ribbons tied together) and shouting somewhat at the characters when prompted. Mostly, he sat on my lap or next to me, sucking his thumb and getting his allotment of daddy belly.

The show itself was glorious: the acting was cute and enthusiastic, the singing was decent (albeit mostly canned, but I'm pretty sure that the actors - mostly college kids by the looks of them - were singing along), and the costumes were recognizable and fun. The dancing was neat as well, and the scenery - though sparse - was used to nice effect. I think I enjoyed it every bit as much as The Boy did. The sound system itself was atrocious, consisting of two marching band-outdoor quality speakers and a bunch of nice headsets. That's why I'm not sure how much of the singing was canned, because the speakers were preventing balance from coming out.

Grandma gave The Boy some money for souvenirs, which we used to buy the video of the cartoon episode and the storybook that goes along with it. The outing was an unconditional success, without a doubt. This particular branch of the show runs Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2:30 and 4:30 through September 4. Tickets are $20, and buy them in advance.

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Pleasant Success

2011-08-11T23:16:00.001-04:00

Today, we took the boys to Kennywood, a local amusement park located about twenty minutes (in moderate traffic) from our home. This was the first time we had brought the boys to an amusement park since about this time last summer, so we were fascinated to see what things would be like. We picked up our discount tickets at Giant Eagle on the way out, paid for parking (got a spot about twenty-five feet from the entrance), met an old school friend of The Wife's, and proceeded into the park.

The Boy and I immediately went on a small roller coaster called the Jackrabbit, which we had gone on last summer. He patiently waited in line, and then we climbed into the car. We had an amazing ride! The scariest bit of the day came immediately afterwards, when he followed a group of boys away from me. I lost track of him for a very scary couple of minutes, until one of the nearby parents pointed him out to me. I had a picture of him from the park entranceway, so I wasn't too scared, but he's little and quick. Crisis averted, we went to find the rest of the family in Kiddieland.

The boys had a wonderful time in Kiddieland. The rides are cute and the waits are very, very short - the longest wait time in Kiddieland all day was about two minutes, for the enclosed ferris wheel ride. Little Bear started to melt down after around an hour, so we had lunch and sent the two younger ones home with Mum while I stayed with The Boy.

Here is where I was pleasantly surprised: he was utterly ideal and perfect for the three hours we were alone! We went on about a dozen rides or so, mostly adult rides like the log flume, spinning pods, and the pirate ship. The lines were long, but not unreasonably so, and my first suspicion was that he was going to flip out while we were waiting. What surprised me was that he didn't flip out, he waited quite patiently and well, and he actually asked to go on a whole bunch of rides despite long lines! Kennywood has a large selection of rides that a 40-inch high child can ride with an adult, which gave us a lot of options on the day.

Eventually the rest of the family returned to the park. One of the biggest benefits of living so close is that we can send people home to nap and to rest and bring them back in more than enough time to enjoy the evening! Little Bear was still overtired and overstimulted, so he was having a hard time with the concept of waiting. He's also still quite young, even though he's huge compared to other children. He wasn't able to handle waiting the fifteen minutes waiting for a bigger ride, so he and I and The Baby went to Kiddieland to wait for The Boy and Mum. Any wait of more than ten seconds was really, really difficult for him. He flipped out when the exit gate was left open while kids were exiting, and he wasn't allowed to enter at that moment.

Still, we had a nice time, and he really loved the elephants ride. The plane and the helicopter rides were also really cool to him, but the Phantom, jr., roller coaster was a little too scary. We left soon after, stopped at Eat N Park for dinner, and put two overtired boys to bed early tonight. This was an amazing day an an awful lot of fun for everybody. I can't wait to go back, and I'm so looking forward to bringing the boys when they love going on all of the rides!

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Growing, Growing!

2011-08-10T23:10:00.001-04:00

We took the boys to the spray park this afternoon. The spray park, if you've never been, is this really neat addition to a playground that involves lots of devices that shoot water into the air. The Boy absolutely loves the spray park; Little Bear is kind of indifferent to it. He spent most of the time on the swings. It was still really neat to see all of the kids playing in the park and seeing how the boys fit into the spectrum of children.

My kids are big - like, really big. Little Bear is something like the size of a three-plus year old. Still moves like a toddler, still is cautious like a toddler, but the size of an older boy. The Baby was there, and The aside was speaking with another mom who had a six week old baby, who was a solid three or four inches shorter and a couple of pounds lighter. The Boy is kind of normal sized, but he's grown quite a bit over the last month or so.

He has thickened out quite a bit. He's actually quite difficult to lift right now! He's gotten stronger and bigger, and he has certainly grown more adventurous. We went to the indoor play place - My Little Outback - yesterday in the rain, and I was pleasantly surprised to see him doing lots of climbing and jumping and crawling through stuff that he hadn't done before. It's really quite extraordinary. I blame Rodef Shalom's preschool for teaching him to try new things and play with new people.

Little Bear, despite his size, is really very, very careful in his activities. He is not eager to try new activities, and he has discovered the phrase, "That was scary!" Playing in the water part of the spray park, or going into the kiddie pool at the Family Park, is very scary to him right now. I know that he'll grow out of it, but it's weird to see my kamikaze kid being a... well, a fearful toddler. Little Bear has always been fearless and adventurous, ready to tilt at windmills with no provocation.

The Baby isn't doing anything too cool right now, although he has seemed to take a bottle fairly well over the past couple of days. Granted, it was freshly pumped breast milk, but it was still pretty cool to see. The secret is just like with his brothers: the milk needs to be warmed to body temperature, and the right nipple needs to be on the bottle. He's smiling when he sleeps, which is neat to see, and his head is moving quite nicely.

The rest of the day went quite uneventfully. We had dinner out as a family, which involved a big heap of French fries and some grilled cheeses, and The Boy and I had a nice play session outside with the hose and the small pool. I also had a nice walk with the three boys and Aunt Jeanne, and The Boy and I watched Star Wars together. Tomorrow, we are going to Kennywood for the day with the boys, which should be pretty darn awesome. I cannot wait to see Little Bear on those rides! I think he's going to go nuts.

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Review: Wonder Pets (2006)

2011-08-09T15:42:00.002-04:00

Wonder Pets is a Nickelodeon animated series starring Ming-Ming Duckling, Linny the Guinea Pig, and Tuck the Turtle. Every day, after pre-school ends, their "action phone" rings and tells them of a baby animal who's in trouble and needs to be rescued. They assemble their flying boat, get into their costumes, and head out to solve the problem and save the baby animal. Their theme song lyrics: "We're not too big, we're not too tough, but when we get together, we've got the right stuff!" sums up the message behind the show: when you work with your team, you can accomplish anything.

Slight philosophical aside, for those of Generation X and prior: like it or not, this is what they're teaching in schools these days. Collaboration, teamwork, group efforts are the important things being taught. Most lessons tend to be student-directed from small groups. In our generation and backwards, things were taught primarily from an individual perspective. Not any more; the kids are graduating school knowing how to work in a team. It tends to have the problem that they don't really want to do anything solo, but that's a different story entirely.

Anyway, we heard about the Wonder Pets from our friends back in Scotch Plains, NJ, who have girls that are 2 and 4 years older than our older boys. The Boy discovered them on Netflix, and he's been working his way through some of the episodes during the rainy patch this week.

The show itself is pretty good. It's repetitive to the extreme, which is always a flaw in children's programming from my perspective. They shouldn't always have the exact same formula going through, bu I guess they're sticking with what they do best. The show is mostly sung; probably 75% of the dialogue is sung in a vague operatic-recitative style, which is really kind of neat to hear. I approve of the music, for sure. The characters themselves are kind of bland but moderately entertaining, with their primary virtue being cuteness. The duckling has a speech impediment that causes them to pronounce her "r" like a "w," similar to a young, young child. It's getting annoying and is not likely to be remediated.

(Funny: each episode is titled something like "Save the duckling / Save the kitten" and "Save the tree! / Save the elephant!" The Wife said that she's waiting for the episode "Save the cheerleader! / Save the world!" Heh.)

The animation is very stylistic - photos that are loosely animated to make a cartoon, similar in style as South Park. South Park is obviously more cartoony, and this uses real pictures to make the backgrounds and animals. South Park is not for children, and this is designed for young children specifically. I'm just speaking of the animation style.

I recommend this in small doses. The young kids will enjoy it; it does tend to grate on parental nerves. I kind of think it's cute; The Wife dislikes it.

Difficulty With Smart Children

2011-08-08T21:30:00.001-04:00

The Boy was playing a letter game on the iPad, which involves bouncing acorns with letters in them into slots, which turn into a picture that begins with that letter. He was on letter I, and it was 9:20 and bedtime. Bedtime wasn't urgent, because he had a long, late nap.

"Would you like to go to bed after letter J or letter L?" He stopped and thought about it for a minute. "How about after letter Z?" Grandma, sitting behind him on the bed, literally rolled over with silent laughter. That was darn fast processing speed, and it was a darn impressive logic leap. "Okay, The Boy, how about to letter O?" "How about... to letter Z?"

We settled on a compromise of going to letter Z and having only one story before bed, as opposed to starting bedtime when I suggested and having three stories. That's fair. He's doing an educational activity, kind of, so I'm okay with that. If it was Playstation games or something similar, then we would have a different negotiation.

Last night was a rough night for all of us - The Boy suddenly threw a major fit at his bedtime for absolutely no reason. This made bedtime from a pleasant half hour to an excruciating hour and a half. On the positive side, he took himself to the bathroom, took off his own night diaper, did his business, washed his hands (or at least moved the soap and towel around the counter), put his pants (but not diaper) back on, and remained dry until he woke up at almost 7:30 this morning. The Wife and I did not wake for any of that.

The boys have started an interesting morning routine: The Boy finds Little Bear standing behind his door gate, and he opens Little Bear's gate by yanking on it from behind. The two of them play trains and talk with each other. It's really quite cute. Then, they want to watch Superfriends with breakfast.

Had a job interview at a large local bank to work in the loan processing department. Should be interesting. I'll hear back at the end of the week.

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Differences in Children

2011-08-08T09:37:00.001-04:00

Same genetic code, different daily outcomes, same long-term outcomes.

In the process of researching for my cancer journey book, I've been fascinated by the different processes that we have undertaken with The Boy and Little Bear, to get them from point A to point B. For instance, I've been reading about the journey to potty training with The Boy throughout 2010 and comparing it with Little Bear's journey over the past two months.

The Boy was a little bit older when we started to effort the potty training thing. His treatment made it more difficult to do potty training, as a miss at the wrong time could have serious health issues for the rest of the family. Chemo pee could be deadly, you know? Plus, the surgeries and the radiation did really weird things to his insides which made holding his poo quite difficult. Little Bear, thankfully, has no such issues, so we've been able to start potty training, in earnest, quite a bit earlier.

One of the other major differences is that, throughout his toddlerhood, The Boy would occasionally make a little bit of pee and poo in the potty, even stretching back to pre-treatment days (though that was more luck than anything else). Little Bear has been indifferent to the potty, and he is almost 100% pee trained. That is, he will even frequently ask to use the potty! He will not, however, poo in the potty under any circumstances. He'll get there, for sure, but it's been a much different day to day journey.

Bedtime has been similarly chronicled here, and the difference is interesting to us. Little Bear might have had a rough adjustment to his toddler bed, but after that week, he's resumed his normal ease of going to bed. The Boy is still a daily struggle, although many more nights are smooth and easy. It's still too early to say what The Baby will do, although he seems to be a sleeps-on-people stinker like The Boy.

Little Bear has taken more of an interest in The

Baby than The Boy did in him, but I think he's just following his brother's example as opposed to actually generating the interest internally. We shall see, I suppose. Little Bear is also doing more singing than The Boy did and paying more attention to music, and he asks for more specific and varied songs. His favorite song, right now, is "Let Me Call You Sweetheart!”

Gonna take the younger two for a walk. Back later.

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Stinker No. 3

2011-08-04T23:31:00.001-04:00

He's only three weeks old, but he takes up the whole bed!

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Baby Kisses

2011-08-04T17:26:00.001-04:00

The little baby is rapidly getting not-so-litte. It seems like he's a little bit bigger after each nap that he takes, and he is certainly eating enough for two babies. It helps that he's very strong: he's doing a great job of lifting his head up and moving it around, which feels a bit faster than either of the two other children. Like Little Bear, he's been turning himself from his back to his side really quickly. He very strongly prefers his mother to anyone else, as he usually starts screaming within thirty seconds of anyone else picking him up.

What's really cute: when he's on my shoulder, he starts rooting around and bouncing his mouth off of my cheek. It looks like he's giving me kisses! Very cute. Then, he usually tries to latch onto my nose and eat. I keep telling him that that's not the meal he wants, but he doesn't listen yet.

The Boy has suddenly gotten bigger. About two weeks ago, he suddenly gained, like, a bunch of weight - he just feels more solid than he did before then! He's eating really well lately, and he's been doing a lot more running around and climbing. It's beautiful to see, even though he's rapidly hitting the point where nobody in the house besides me can pick him up!

He and I are going to the Pirates game tonight. Tickets were on Groupon last week, and Grandpa is meeting us at the park. Should be lots of fun!

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Is He A Good Baby?

2011-08-03T00:10:00.001-04:00

So, I got the question again today: is The Baby a good baby? I gave my usual flip answer: "No, he's a bad baby. He's stabbed his brother, he tries to sneak out every night, and I'm pretty sure he took twenty bucks out of my wallet yesterday." That usually gets some nervous laughs, before I change the subject and say nice things about my little boy.

No, I will not (again) get into the philosophical discussion of what a good vs bad baby is and whether or not good and bad/evil can or should be attributed to a person who's life is so new that, if they were a library book, they would rack up no late charges. My point is not to poke fun at the questioner, but instead to examine the life of my newborn son.

He seems to be... well... a baby. A newborn baby, at that. He's very, very small, compared to his brothers, and he's very, very squishy. His legs are till froggy-shaped and haven't really straightened out like they will. His hands and arms flail about randomly, because he can't see well enough to aim them (and lacks the muscular control to intentionally grab yet). He pees and poops a lot - he's the only kid in diapers right now, and we have a lot of cloth diapers, and we are running diaper laundry every day or day and a half. Last night, for example, he wound up going through four diapers in a 30 minute time period!

Not as gross as it seems, though. Newborn poop doesn't smell and, consistency and color, resembles spicy brown mustard more than poop. Newborn pee is harmless as well. Diapers are just utterly unable to keep newborn excretions, no matter how the diapers are sized and shaped, so you just deal with it. Whatever.

The boys are adjusting quite well to the baby, I think. There's still the attention issue that we still need to work through, which isn't much of an issue when both parents are still at home, unemployed. The Boy comes downstairs in the morning, or home from an outing, saying, "Where's Mum and The Baby? I want to see the tiny little baby named The Baby!" The Boy will frequently pause his running about and playing to give his baby brother a kiss, or to beep his little nose, or to tickle his belly a little bit. Little Bear is starting to emulate that, although he's still too little to really understand what's happening.

The good news is that the nighttime stuff is starting to work itself through, although The Boy does get up two or three time to go potty. We don't have a nighttime diaper solution for him that he can take on and off by himself, so a parent still needs to be there to supervise. That would be me, because I can't do what The Wife does for the newborn. The only other issue is that when The Boy joins us, it's later in the morning, when he's ready to be awake. This means he spends the snuggle time kicking me, poking me, and otherwise preventing me from getting some wonderfully needed 6:15-6:45am sleep. The good news: he's staying in his room, willingly enough, until it's daylight. The bad news: daylight is really, really early this time of year.

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Winnie the Pooh (2011)

2011-07-30T21:46:00.001-04:00

Today, we took the boys (all three of them, and yes, it still feels weird to type that) to the movies to see the new "Winnie the Pooh" movie. It was quite an exciting day, considering that it was Little Bear's first movie. It was The Baby's first movie, too, but it doesn't really count because he wasn't really watching anything.

The movie itself was quite good. It was preceded by a short film about how Nessie (the Loch Ness monster) came to be in Loch Ness, which was normal, cute Disney stuff. The Winnie the Pooh movie took several stories from the original book and mashed them together in an entertaining whole: the search for Eeyore's tail (spoiler: it was Owl's new bell pull), trapping the monster in the pit (when everybody falls in), and hunting for Christopher Robin when he had to leave for the day.

I liked that this movie stayed pretty close to the books and the spirits of the characters in the books; the recent Winnie the Pooh stuff (with the girl Chris Robin) has been so sanitized that it's almost unwatchable. The characters in the original book were all flawed an imperfect; the more modern stuff has iron out those flaws and, essentially, made every character the same. This movie allows the characters to breathe and to be imperfect: Owl is self-important and loves to lecture, Rabbit is bossy and shrewish, Tigger is self-absorbed and arrogant, etc. The characters are not quite as extreme as in the original stories, but it is quite pleasant to see them with their own personalities intact.

The slapstick humor in this, although not really from the stories, was appreciated. The boys enjoyed seeing people fall down or have things fall on them. There was no moral lesson, which was also appreciated; it was just stories without the self-important preaching. This is suitable for even the smallest audiences, although the scene when the backson (the monster) is described is a little bit more intense than the rest of the movie.

The boys were so good! The Baby slept through the movie entirely. The Boy sat through the movie, ate lots of popcorn, laughed at all the appropriate spots, and was very, very good. Little Bear flipped out when we sat down and the advertisements started playing; they really do play those way, way too loud. He doesn't hear stuff that loudly often! He settled down in my lap through the short film, and he stayed between my lap and the end of the aisle. He did some wandering, but stayed close and watched the movie. Halfway through, he lost interest and started wandering around the theater, occasionally returning to our seats and watching some more of the movie. He was good, though; he wasn't bothering other people and stayed quiet. The theater was a tiny theater that was mostly full, so there was some space for him to move around.

It was quite a good experience today! The boys had fun, and we chalk this outing as a "win." I don't think that I'd take Little Bear for a movie that was longer than an hour, but this was a great length and subject. The Boy, on the other hand, would be great regardless.

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Parental Damages

2011-07-29T15:54:00.001-04:00

I wonder what kind of damage I'm doing to my sons, that they pick fruit over chips and candy as a snack.

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Middle Child

2011-07-28T22:58:00.001-04:00

Contrary to our expectations, Little Bear has been having a really difficult time adjusting to the new paradigm. We had kind of thought (hoped) that he would continue his independent means, living his life with his usual aplomb and utter lack of... or rather, his usual Little Bear-ness. Unfortunately, he's been having a hard time.

It's hard to kind of quantify exactly what he's feeling. He's used to having the full attention of his mother and usually his grandfather. The division of labor usually has The Boy with me or Grandma and Little Bear with Mum or Grandpa. Because the newborn is, well, a newborn, he is 95% Mum's responsibility. Little Bear is off-balance and unsure of how to handle himself. He's acting out: hitting for no reason, throwing things for non-playing reasons, pestering his brother more often.

To make matters a little more difficult, he spent the early part of the week sick with a high fever, which he has now passed around to various family members.

We have decided to respond by trying to make sure he has a lot more single attention than he was receiving earlier. He's normally a sweet, loving boy, and getting your brains scrambled by a fever and dealing with a new baby brother is enough to rock anyone's world.

The rest of us seem to be adjusting to the new baby fairly well. The Boy has been having a great time with his baby brother. He's been telling everyone about "Mum and the little bitty baby!", and he talks about the baby a lot. He loves playing with his brother and giving kisses. He sings songs to him, which is funny and cute!

The sleeping situation has been challenging, to say the least, but not for the reason one would suspect. The Baby has been sleeping like a newborn; he does wake up every couple of hours or so, but he usually feeds and goes right back to sleep. Last night, he was awake for a half hour or so at 4am, but he wasn't screaming or uncomfortable: just awake and in need of attention.

The most difficult part of the last week has been dealing with the other two boys, who have been sleeping poorly. Last night, The Boy was up at 12:15, 2:30, 5:30, and 6:00. Little Bear was up at 3:00, 5:50, and 6:10. The Baby was up at 1, 4-4:30, 6, and 7. The rest of the week has been similar. Considering that naps have been more difficult because of the third addition, it's been a hard week. I know it'll be better.

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Feverish

2011-07-26T08:05:00.001-04:00

Little Bear started coming down with a fever late yesterday morning. It's maxed out at 102, so far. We knew he was feeling rotten when we got home from The Wife's interview and he was still in bed with Grandma. He spent most of the day in bed or near one, truly an odd event for him.

The problem with having more children than parents is that it's hard to comfort one and take care of the others. Little Bear really needed someone with whom to snuggle, yet The Baby and The Boy needed their own time as well. Don't get me wrong - the other two children were actually in fairly decent moods. The Boy had a great day at school, and The Baby was in a good mood for most of the day.

Naps were a problem during the day, as they weren't tired. This let us get the kids to bed early, although I was doing work until late. The night went smoothly, with baby wake ups at 2 and 4. The boys were not awake all night until 5:30, when Little Bear woke up for good.

I love my children; maybe not quite so much at 5:30 in the morning. Now that it's 8am, I love them again.

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Sleeping Like a Newborn

2011-07-25T12:17:00.001-04:00

The first several nights of The Baby's at-home life have really been fairly decent: he's had at least one stretch of uninterrupted 2 to 3 hour's sleep. That's exceptional for a little, little person ("He's an itty-bitty baby!" The Boy says). Since I am of limited use at this point, the stress of dealing with The Baby has fallen on The Wife. I can - and do - assist in the changing process, but I can't help feed him and he hasn't been that interested in playing in the middle of the night yet.

The worst culprits of my current lack-of-sleep have been the two older boys, and, yes, that is still weird to type. Then again, I just put 2010 on a check last week, so it can take me time to adjust to things. But, I digress.

Last night was relatively typical: Little Bear was asleep around 8:15, 8:30. I brought The Boy into his room, watched a storybook, read three stories, watched another short storybook, then he went to sleep around 9:10. I had a snack, ran for a half hour, then did some miscellaneous housework and music studying. I was in bed around 11, watched a television show, and fell asleep before midnight.

The Baby's feeding was 12:30.

The Boy was up at 2:30 to go to the bathroom.

Little Bear was up and stirring around his room at 3, although he never opened his door and went back to sleep relatively quickly.

The Boy was up at 3:45 to go to the potty and was shuffled back in bed with orders to not emerge until daylight.

The Baby was fed and changed at 4:00. He woke briefly at 5:30 for a quick snack and snuggle.

Little Bear was up for good at 6:30, and The Boy joined us ten minutes later.

Total sleep for Musical Daddy? Right around four hours, broken into six chunks. I'm getting too old for this.

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Start of Phase Two

2011-07-24T23:46:00.001-04:00

So, now we are into the next phase of the rest of our life. The bris is over, our third child is now our responsibility for 18 years or so, and we now resume our steady march towards employment. It all begins tomorrow morning, when I drive The Wife to a job interview at a nearby district, where she will interview for a position that she never applied. We aren't complaining, mind you; just pleasantly surprised. What makes it somewhat more interesting is that I have to drive her, because she's still on doctor's orders and not able to drive. We'll see what happens.

The whole weekend was really, really nice. The bris went off quite smoothly, with no fights and arguments breaking out between anybody save for some disagreements over toys. This moyel - different from the one we used in New Jersey - didn't use a clamp during the procedure, so it was a little rougher to watch. Considering some of the medical things that I had to view and to do to my oldest son, it wasn't that big of a deal, but nobody wants to see their infant's blood. Once the snippy-snippy was done, it was a nice party, with special thanks to my friend Guru for fixing a cabinet door that came loose.

Once the party was done, we all crashed pretty hard and napped until late. I took The Boy out to a local Barnes and Noble, where we hung out with my father for a couple of hours. The Boy was quite cute and endearing, particularly when we went over to Panera Bread for a snack. He's just a nice kid, and he was showing off his words and his playing for his Grandpa. Of particularly entertainment earlier in the day was, "Wow! I have two grandpas sitting right here! That's SOOOO many Grandpas!" Tonight, The Boy was even helpful cleaning up the bath toys and the toys in his room, singing the Barney cleanup song while he worked. His pitch is getting much better. His range is limited because he's little, but he's doing a nice job keeping intervals and pitches in his range. His voice tends to match the lower harmony parts; The Wife thinks that it's because of his hearing issues, that his ears are naturally going where they are stronger.

Little Bear has been a bit of a concern over the last couple of days. He's been throwing a higher number of more intense fits, which is not unexpected considering the major upheaval in our lives with the introduction of The Baby. He threw a massive Mega-Fit at the outdoor concert this morning, meaning that our stay was approximately ten minutes. He hasn't been sleeping well, either; most of the week, he's been in bed at normal times (around 8, 8:30) and up before 6am, with a normal nap during the day. He felt a little warm to me this morning before we left, but it might have been y imagination. We'll see. Still, he's been doing a pretty amazing job with puzzles - he isn't matching up the pictures on adjacent pieces very well, but when given the next piece, he finds a way to make it fit. He's also insanely good at shape identification games and at fruit matching games on the iPad - it has the whole fruit and cut pieces, and you match them together.

The Baby has been... well, a newborn. Newborns aren't difficult for which to care, but they're not easy, either. They just require work and attention. I haven't been much help thus far, as Grandma and Mum have had the baby most of the last couple of days. I've done some pretty decent calming of the baby, and I've done some nice snuggles at night with him. He's come through the bris easily, and he's starting to fill out white nicely. He should be a pleasantly chubby baby pretty soon - he has a second chin, sometimes, and his legs are getting some meat on them. He will be a little bruiser, just like his brothers.

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Bris, Redux

2011-07-23T23:55:00.001-04:00

Today was The Baby's bris, which is the ritual circumcision done on the 8th day of the boy's life. The bris is not my favorite part of the whole newborn experience, because anything that involves surgery and my son's junk makes me nervous. The whole thing went off without a hitch, all thanks to an incredibly large cast of characters starting with Grandma, The Wife, and Aunt M. We had a huge crowd, around 50-something people, in the house for the ceremony and the feeding afterwards. We ran out of bagels pretty quickly, and the Mac and cheese was a big hit.

The boys had a nice time, evidenced by The Boy chasing C around the house for about forty-five minutes straight. Little Bear was extremely over-stimulated by the end of the day, and he didn't respond well to the end of his nap. He didn't even want to go on a walk after his nap, so instead I took The Baby. He had his first experience at Dunkin Donuts.

At night, I took The Boy and met my father at Barnes and Noble. The By played with trains and some other toys while we hung out and caught up on life. We went to Panera Bread for a late dinner, and The Boy exhibited his cuteness for the world to see.

I intend to do a catch-up on the boys' milestones and quirks, s soon as I catch my breath. It's been a heck of a busy week, and theext couple of dys aren't any better - The Wife has an interview on Monday, and we also have an appointment to get The Boy's new ear molds for his hearing aids.

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A Day In Pictures

2011-07-20T16:41:00.001-04:00

The boys playing in the pool given by Aunt J:

The Boy gets the hose, and then he goes after his giggling brother:

Karmic revenge: "What happens when I look at it and pull the handle?"

About twenty seconds before he takes his life in his hands:

The Baby placidly rests and helps with diaper laundry:

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First Night

2011-07-19T07:12:00.001-04:00

The Wife and The Baby got home yesterday morning, around 10 o'clock. The Boy was at camp, and Aunt J was around to help take care of Little Bear while Grandma did the whole work thing. Mum and baby went upstairs to rest, while I cleaned and Little Bear played with Aunt J. No worries.

The rest of the day went quite smoothly, as both boys were relieved and excited to see Mum and intrigued about the baby. The best hitch came late afternoon, during one of Pittsburgh's gentle thundershowers (meaning raining like animals were coming along in pairs), when there was a huge snap and the lights and power shut down. One of the high tension wires across the street snapped due to the storm, and it scared the crap out of my children.

Long story short, we didn't get power back until around 3am. The Boy was absolutely flipping out about sleeping in his own room, considering that he's a bit nervous in the dark by himself. It was also stiflingly hot upstairs without the air conditioning, which didn't help anyone's mood. So, once the boys went to bed, Mum and I did, also. I think we were both asleep between 9:30 and 10:00, at the same time as The Baby fell asleep.

We woke at 2! That's an awesome stretch of sleep for a newborn. We were up for a couple of hours, because the work trucks were outside and not subtle. The Baby was a little fussy because he was hungry, then wet, then hungry, then wet, then sleepy, but he settled down until 6:30.

So, not an awful night. I won't get used to it, I promise.

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First Day

2011-07-16T19:47:00.001-04:00

Things have gone quite well during the first day of The Baby's life. Grandma, Grandpa, and the boys came by around noon, and it was amazing. The boys were so cute and so attentive and so good! The Boy sang The Baby some songs and marvelled at the little tiny toes and ears and fingers. Little Bear was somewhat interested, but not as much as his brother.

Once we spent enough time, Grandma volunteered to stay with The Wife and The Baby. I went home with Grandpa and the boys, and the three of us napped for quite some time. Once we got up and had a snack and some potty time, the grandparents took the boys to dinner and I came back to the hospital to hang out.

The evening has been nice. I've hung out here and held the baby and watched movies on the iPad. I'm going home in an hour to put the boys to bed and get ready for my rehearsal tomorrow.

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Location:Boulevard of the Allies,Pittsburgh,United States

Funny Thought...

2011-07-16T07:27:00.001-04:00

My youngest son has only ever lived in a world where the Pittsburgh Pirates are in first place. Bizarro World?

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Announcing:

2011-07-16T07:07:00.001-04:00

Andrew Evan May, born 5:47am, 8 pounds, 12 ounces, 22 and a half inches long.

Funny and entertaining how the whole thing worked out: The Wife was in the beginning stages of labor for a couple of days, starting roughly Wednesday afternoon (the official due day). Labor only started getting interesting around midnight tonight (it's Saturday), and she tried to get some sleep around 2am. Little Bear was up at 2:30 for some snuggles and hugs, and The Boy was up around 3:15 for some of the same. Around 3:44, things started getting a little more intense, and I got an hour's sleep while she contacted the doctor. At 4:45, she woke me up and told me, "We gotta go. Like, now."

Threw our stuff in the car, got dressed (not in that order), and left around 5. We were in the triage room around 5:25, which was when I checked us in via Facebook. The triage doctor checked for dilation, said, "She's fully open. She's going." The nurses threw together the labor and delivery room, I helped them move her onto the l&d bed, and the baby was already crowning. One push, he was out, born at 5:47. This kid was not messing around!

I still haven't stopped cackling over it. Sure, labor sucks, but this sucked way less than the others. My only complaint: the coffee machine in the lounge dispenses about a shot's worth of coffee flavored drink. If I'm paying a machine 50 cents for coffee, I should get more than a shot.

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Nothing New

2011-07-15T10:00:00.001-04:00

Nothing new to report. We stopped for pancakes on the way home from the hospital - if we couldn't come home with a baby, pancakes are an acceptable consolation prize. We arrived home around 3:15, 3:30-ish. The boys actually let us sleep in until around 7:30, and they've been playing hard ever since. Fortunately, they are very cute, and fortunately, I have a lot of coffee. We shall see.

The Wife is still active, and the labor is kind of working its way through its paces. She's not comfortable, but she is also not uncomfortable. I think we are going to go outside to play, then maybe for a very nice walk down the block for lunch or playing. Walking is good for her labor process, you know.

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Temporary Pause

2011-07-15T02:40:00.001-04:00

Not quite false alarm, but we are headed back home. Don't fill up the party balloons quite yet.

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Update: Heading In To Hospital

2011-07-14T22:47:00.002-04:00

So, we're about to leave for the hospital. The Wife's contractions are getting closer together and just about at that magical 5-minute mark. They are definitely uncomfortable and all-encompassing. She says they shifted to "real" contractions a few hours ago. Still had time for a saxophone lesson and for a conference call board meeting for one of my choruses, and a nice run, and some chase-The-Boy-around-the-house time.

Gonna be a long night. Stay tuned for more updates.

Losing Your Hippy Card

2011-07-13T18:26:00.001-04:00

I think Mum is temporarily forfeiting her hippy card, as she uttered this phrase to Little Bear tonight: "No more fruit for you. You need to save room for your cake!"

Other items of interest: The Boy found a rainbow on the wall because of the light refracting off of a Mylar balloon, and he liked having the rainbow reflect onto people's hands.

Happy birthday, darling!

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Logical Progression

2011-07-13T14:56:00.001-04:00

No news on the baby front, although The Wife thinks that there's some motion towards goal. No pain yet, no discomfort; just some moving around. I can certainly understand and appreciate her annoyance with the whole "is the baby here yet?" questions, as I'm rapidly growing tired answering the same questions. Price of life, however, and I do consider myself lucky that so many people care enough about us to ask.

Last night was a wonderful Little Bear moment for me. Around 11:15, right in the middle of watching the season premiere of Eureka, he woke up and flipped out. I mean, a five-alarm wig out, for sure. Since the wife is as gravid as she is, I went upstairs to see what I could do. He was sitting in his bed, screaming his head off.

There was no body pain, watching him move around. He's not normally afraid of the dark, so I guessed that he had a scary dream. I picked him up, and he snuggled his head right into my shoulder and began to calm himself. It was really quite nice, as he has been doing a really good job of snuggling with Daddy lately. He calmed down and wanted to get back into bed, so I tucked him in and asked, "Do you want Daddy to stay or to go?" Usually, he picks the second option of any choice that you give him. He thought about it for about a minute and a half, then he whispered in his cute, tiny voice, "Daddy stay."

Unlike almost every other time, he fell asleep after a few minutes. Quite cute, quite engaging, and moving beyond belief.

This morning, he was playing with Mum but kept asking, "Where's Daddy?" He would then come and find me, give me a hug, and resume playing. I guess his bad dream had something to do with me last night.

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Early Morning Consequences

2011-07-10T19:54:00.001-04:00

The largest unintended, unanticipated consequence of potty training Little Bear has been the earlier morning starts around the house. Before potty training, he would play in his room for a long time, sometimes making his way back to bed and back to sleep until the preferred wakeup time of 7:30am. Now that he is starting to understand the whole going-to-the-potty thing, he's starting to find some of the loopholes in the system. Now, at 6:15am for the past week, he's opened his door and said, "Need go potty!" repeatedly until someone goes to get him and take him to the potty. At that point, he's awake.

Unlike his brother, he won't snuggle with us in bed and watch a show except for rare occurrences, so this set of activities usually means all or most of the family is awake. Most of the mornings, The Wife has let me sleep an extra half hour or so, which is quite nice of her.

Mind you, he's still not quite getting the poo thing, which can be kind of annoying and gross, but it's not the worst thing in the world. He's doing a much, much better job of asking to go to the potty than The Boy did for the first six months of his own potty training.

I know that we need to get used to the whole early morning wakeup thing for when the new baby arrives, but that isn't the point. I'm just starting to wonder if there is a problem with Little Bear waking up so early and not going back to sleep, or if the problem is with us and our refusal to adjust our schedule to something a little more young-child-friendly.

Still, this whole lack of snuggling thing is starting to get old. With the older one, he will sit on your lap and let you catnap while he watches a show. Little Bear? Not so much, and it's annoying. If your catnap is less than five minutes, then he's good. Again, this is area that starts to look vaguely like something that is our problem and not his problem.

I think we are trying to keep him awake a little longer at night so that he sleeps later in the morning, but I'm not certain that that is going to work. We shall see.

As far as the new baby goes, no motion on that front. The Wife is starting to get really sick of the whole baby thing, mostly in regards to the whole talking-about-it area. She's tired of telling people that nothing is happening despite the due date being three days in the future, and she's tired of the constant observances by others that she's very, very pregnant-large. Yes, she knows. She's tired of hearing it. I certainly understand this; I just reread my post from 2009 about how tiresome it was to have to relate The Boy's whole treatment schedule to people when I spoke with them.

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Messages

2011-07-07T11:56:00.001-04:00

The Boy, as I've outlined before, absolutely loves letters and loves words and reading. His usable vocabulary of reading words is really quite large for a not-quite-four year old; I'm fairly certain that it's in the 150-200 range. He can usually pick out words out of context and tell me what they are. Thinking about it, he might be closer to 100 than 200, but not by much. He's quite a bit ahead of his grade level, so to speak.

One thing that he likes to do is take the iPhone, swipe over to the search screen (the screen to the left of the home screen), and type words into the keyboard that pops up. It's fun for him, and he will type sentences into the machine to see what happens. He usually separates words with periods, so he might type "go.dog.go.play," or something similar.

On several occasions, I've been text messaging my father while watching a baseball game or, in last night's fun, the barbershop contest. The Boy got ahold of my phone while I was distracted and started to type his sentences into the machine and pressing the bright blue button that cleared the line for him. Of course, that sends my father a text message. The first couple of times that he got texts saying "TheBoy," or "play," or "ball," he was understandably confused. Now, he rolls with it and will actually play along and send back text messages with words that The Boy knows. It's cute.

Last night, I got The Boy to text, "love.grandpa," which won him some points. Dad texted back, "love The Boy," which was appreciated.

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Any Minute Now? Almost.

2011-07-06T23:09:00.001-04:00

This morning, The Wife and I dropped The Boy off at camp and went to her normally scheduled checkup at the obstetrician's office. There's no unusual movement yet, just the normal stuff. We are officially at 39 weeks, with the due date next Wednesday, so we are officially on any minute now notice. We aren't expecting anything to happen soon (in the next day or so), particularly considering our history. The Boy, as you'll remember, was born ten days late. The Wife went into labor with Little Bear on the due date, giving birth the next day.

From there, we went to a northern suburb. This is a similar commute to my second New Jersey job, where there was no way to get there from home. It's about an hour's trip. The interesting thing? They had two jobs, and the principal (who seemed like a cool guy) interviewed us both at the same time. It was an interesting experience, working with my wife in that regards, because we play off of each other nicely. I think we make a really good team, and if we ever had the chance to work together... watch out!

The interview went well, then, although due to the vagaries of vacations, administrative furloughs, and Board meetings, we won't hear anything for a few weeks.

From the interview, we went and picked The Boy up at school. Grandma generously provided for him to stay at school in an afternoon session, which was called "cooking class." They cooked banana flavored mini muffins, then spent a long time playing outside. When we got there, The Boy was tired, hot, sweaty, and happy. He didn't like the muffin that he made, but he was happy to share it. He got quite upset when we left, even more so when we realized that we left his yellow construction hat at school. Nap time, indeed.

Little Bear, meanwhile, stayed home with Grandma and Aunt J. He made his first ever poo on the potty, which was a huge deal. When we got home, he even went to the potty twice for me, which he hadn't done before. The second time, he didn't even complain! Again, a huge victory for my wife. We aren't over the hill in the potty training thing, but we have at least started the way up and caught sight of the crest.

Barbershop convention and competition is live this week from Kansas City. Should be fun to hear!

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Birthday

2011-07-05T15:45:00.001-04:00

Two years ago, we welcomed Little Bear into our lives amidst a flurry of crap: The Boy being admitted for another staph infection AND a port replacement surgery; Little Bear being brutally yanked from our arms and put underneath the ultraviolet lights; a family conflict that rapidly spun out of control and has had significant impact to this day; and, because of St. Barnabas's open hostility and resentment towards him and us, necessitated an emergency drop-all-and-move to Pittsburgh.

Now, he's a big dude: as tall as his brother, almost, and working his way up the hill towards potty trained. He is somewhat verbal and definitely opinionated, and he is Grandpa D's best buddy. He loves swings and Super Why, and he loves shapes like The Boy loves letters. He's even started asking us to draw shapes for him on any available surface! The fact that a two year old will ask us to draw a trapezoid still boggles the mind, and he gets mad if we draw a hexagon instead of an octagon. Today, when it was time for his nap, he told Mum, "I too old!"

Oh, boy. Something tells me that when he's almost four, like his brother, he won't be snuggling up nicely for a rest with Mum or Daddy.

He went to school for the first time without diapers, and he did a nice job. No accidents, although he created some dampness in front when he didn't quite make it in time. (That doesn't really count. We all have days like that.) I'm very proud of him. Mum even made cupcakes for all of the kids, which was a nice touch. They went over quite well.

He's even doing quite well with his puzzles. He does a hand-shaped puzzle quite easily now, particularly since he figured out that the numbers on the fingers correspond to the order in which they occur. He loves the Melissa and Doug wooden puzzles, which made shopping for his birthday quite easy. One wooden puzzle, and one wooden train from the craft fair where my new chorus performed last weekend.

I'm going to miss his birthday dinner tonight, because I have a saxophone lesson to teach followed by chorus rehearsal, but that's okay. He's awake from his nap - time for duty!

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Catching Up

2011-07-04T16:04:00.001-04:00

I think this might be the longest I've ever gone in between blog posts, particularly since I have no good reason for neglecting my writing. There's been no hospital visits, other than well checkups for The Wife's pregnancy; there's been no excitement around the house, other than Little Bear's birthday party last weekend; and there's just been no drama around us. None of that is a bad thing, and other than the utter lack of movement in the employment front, things are good.

The biggest news is that Mum has decided to start the potty training process with Little Bear. He's ready, physically, in the sense that he has shown the ability to wake up from a nap dry and to go an hour or two in a diaper without dirtying it up. So, on Friday, she started the difficult and labor-intensive process of potty training a preverbal toddler. Basically, she ran him to the potty every 20 minutes and when he started squirming or grabbing at himself. The first day, much more miss than hit; second day was better; third day, yesterday, had no pee accidents at all. He's reticent about pooping on the potty, as are many children. Not too much of a big deal; it's not like we've got to deal with explosive chemo-poo or antibiotic-poo like we did with The Boy. Her general feelings on the matter were that she would rather deal with an infant and a potty-training toddler than try to train him when the new baby is mobile and curious. We had to wait with The Boy, for treatment-related reasons: chemo-pee during Diaper Hell time (that 24 hour period post-chemo when his body was peeing out the medication) could have seriously injured all of us.

I'm easy, I guess. I don't really have his signals matched up very well yet, and he's not really comfortable enough to use the potty for me, but give it time. It'll get there, particularly the longer he's doing it with me as a host. It's a little frightening how quickly he's taking to it. Put one in the win column for my wife, who again surprises and delights me with her ideas and work ethic. I married above my head, for sure.

Our anniversary went past, last week, the day after Little Bear's birthday party. We went out to dinner and discussed baby names. Not sure what we are going to call the little man yet. Hey, You! is definitely an option that is on the table. Seven years of marriage have passed; the first four in a flash, the last three in a slow, laborious process - not because of us, because of cancer.

The other excitement was that Grandpa and Mum took the boys to an outdoor concert, and The Boy escaped from custody and went wandering (the Wandering Jew strikes again). After interrupting the concert for help, they discovered that about 50 people at the show knew who he was, so a massive boy hunt happened. They found him splashing and swimming the fountain at the park. Good front? He had taken his shoes and socks off before he went swimming. Bad front? Still had his hearing aids on. Sigh. Now it is funny; not so much at the time.

Well, The Boy and I are going to Point State Park for fireworks tonight. Grandpa might or might not come. It will be fun, for sure.

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Anniversary

2011-06-25T22:46:00.001-04:00

Three years ago, today, we ran through a complete battery of tests which culminated in a diagnosis of bilateral Wilms tumor. This diagnosis changed our life utterly and complete and permanently: our residence, our careers, our lives, our friendships, our families were all irrevocably altered.

At this point, I'm doing my best to keep looking at the positive things. Yes, the move was hard, but we a living in a much saner environment with lots of help and love for our little ones. The Boy has received excellent medical care here in Pittsburgh, and he is happier and healthier than we have any right to expect. Little Bear is so happy, healthy, and smart, as well.

I miss my chorus and my church friends, but I've got two new choruses out here and am making new friends. My career is not progressing as we would like, but I know that things will turn eventually.

I'm still working on compiling the blog entries, and I'm at the start of The Boy's worst time in treatment. It is sobering to relive those events but also somewhat cathartic: it shows how far we fell and how far we have subsequently risen. Thank G-d for the experiences we have had, because it brings us forward into our brighter future.

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Boys!

2011-06-25T13:21:00.001-04:00

Pictures from our photo session at Olin Mills on Friday.

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Bedtimes

2011-06-23T22:10:00.001-04:00

Bedtime is starting to get a little bit easier. The boys are adjusting into their schedules, and they are mostly putting forth token resistance instead of the determined defensive front that we faced in earlier times.

Little Bear is starting to go back to crib-type sleeping days. When it's bedtime, we might watch a little bit of Goodnight Moon or Winnie the Pooh to calm down, then we go into his room for a story or two. He likes the "Sleep Tight, Elmo" pillow book and Tubby the Tuba. He might want a song or two, then hugs and kisses and leave the room. He might cry for a minute or two, but he usually settles down pretty quickly. We close his door and put the gate in front of the door.

The Boy is still a little more complex, but even he is starting to settle down. At bedtime, we do potty and teeth, then put on his night diaper and pajamas. We will usually do between one and three stories; we've been doing only one or two lately because he has been gaming the system and picking the longer stories. Afterwards, we kiss him goodnight and leave the room. He complains, but he usually settles down quickly,

The tricky bit is the potty visits, of which there are many. Last night, for instance, he was up for potty visits at midnight, one, three, five, and six. While it's nice to prepare ourselves for having a newborn, it is a little bit frustrating. I might be a little less frustrated if he could get his night diapers on and off without help, but he can't quite handle it yet. We've tried a cotton night diaper that he could get on easily enough, but it swelled with liquid during the night and became too difficult.

A friend suggested to wake him up around midnight to use the potty, but we aren't quite there yet. He doesn't go back to sleep easily enough. That is an option, however, and might be done once the baby comes next month. We will have to see.

Little Bear's birthday party is Sunday afternoon, which will be fun. We have begun the cleaning and straightening process around the house and on the yard, and I'll finish the yard tomorrow after I finish my temp marketing job at 10 or 11. Wish us luck.

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There and Back Again

2011-06-21T22:57:00.001-04:00

We got back about two hours ago from a quick trip out to New Jersey. Uncle B was moving into a new apartment, and I wanted to be there for moral support. I took The Boy along with me, mostly to get some pre-baby alone time with him and also to see if I could travel with one of the children.

I'm happy to report that the weekend was an absolute and unconditional success! We left on Friday and stopped at Lockhaven, PA, to visit with my niece, who is attending school there. It was a really sweet visit, where we had a nice lunch at a local family place and had a nice walk around the neighborhood. Lockhaven is almost exactly halfway between Pittsburgh and my father's house. After a couple hours' visit, we left for NJ. The Boy slept a little more than an hour during each three hour-log jaunt, which made the trip easy for him. At my father's house, we had a nice evening of playing.

The moving was a nice experience, as well. The Boy helped quite a bit, by carrying some pillows and blankets and video games and such inside the house. He played very nicely with B's nephew, who is a few years older. We went back to Grandpa's house for a nap, then went to Uncle P's house for dinner. It was quite nice; The Boy swam for about an hour, floating on some rafts and playing with a super-soaker toy quite well. My father put him to bed as I saw Green Lantern with Uncle B.

Today might have been an even nicer day. We had a nice father's day breakfast with Grandpa, and then spent lunchtime with Uncle B playing video games. The Boy slept most of the way to Harrisburg, and we had a brilliant dinner with Aunt M and the family: a great barbecue. He slept halfway home, which made the trip easier for him.

All weekend, he was cute, endearing, and engaging. He was well-behaved and fun, even when tired, and he was clearly vocal about expressing his opinions, which made him much easier to deal with. He was almost perfect on the potty, with the one exception being a Uncle P's where he didn't quite make it to the potty quickly enough. He took himself, but he took himself a little bit too late. No biggie. He was even perfect during the long car rides - we didn't stop more than once per hour and a half, which was a nice pace.

Best part? He greeted all of the principal players on the trip (Cousin J, Grandpa, Uncle B, Uncle P and his family, Aunt M) with enthusiasm and love. Nothing is better than an excited greeting from a near-four year old like that, and he was generous with the hugs this weekend.

Truly, a successful trip and one of the best weekends of the year, if not THE best weekend of the year.

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First Day

2011-06-14T22:52:00.001-04:00

Little Bear started school today, and early indications are good. He is in the "little" classroom, so called because of the extra small size of furniture and not the size of the room itself. It also has fewer little potties and more room for diaper changes. The workers - one teacher and a couple of teenagers who are assistants - had no problems with using the cloth diapers, which was nice. We dropped him off and gave him hugs and kisses, which he didn't notice because he was too busy playing with the toys in the room.

It's interesting to see and a pleasure to note that our children don't seem to have any separation anxiety. I'm choosing to interpret that as confirmation that our efforts to raise confident, secure children are successful to date. Little Bear was quite happy to see us at the end of the day, which was nice. He asked up for hugs from me and leapt into Mom's arms and snuggled deep into her neck to say hello. Granted, thirty seconds later, he was back on the floor and playing, but that's just Little Bear.

The Boy is in a different room during the school day, but they eat lunch in the same room. Lunch for Little Bear is not "standard," but we paid for the lunch in school so that we didn't have to pick one child up at 11:30 and the other one up at 12:30 - doable, considering that we live a couple of miles from the temple, but incredibly annoying, particularly on days when no one is home to watch Little Bear and we have to drag him back into the car to pick up his brother. So, we avoided that and have him eating lunch at school. The boys sat together today at the table, which they seemed to enjoy. We've been told that they are both good eaters, and they seem more concerned with eating their lunch than with figuring out what everybody else is eating.

What did he do today? Well, he made a painting for father's day that I haven't seen yet. He played lots of games, played outside, and played with lots of toys. He did a nice job, apparently, of playing with the other kids and with the teachers.

Early success is nice. He is almost two, so I'm expecting some difficult days, but it is nice to see that he is having fun in the early going.

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Big Day Tomorrow

2011-06-13T23:02:00.001-04:00

Little Bear starts preschool tomorrow! I'm absolutely fascinated by the whole thing: this is the first time that he's been away from the two of us (or Grandma) for that long of a time. Not to mention, it's difficult to imagine my free-spirited son as part of a classroom environment. He's a real wanderer, and it'll be interesting to see him as part of a class.

I know that he'll be fine as he grows accustomed to the process. He's very, very smart, and he enjoys being around other kids (for the most part). He's also pretty good about being gentle and sharing, which can be very much unlike his behavior with his brother (very rough and tumble). Today, we went to the JCC to play in the playroom for an hour or so, and there were two other children there. One was about two months younger than Little Bear (albeit two thirds his size), and the other was a year younger. The little one decided that he really liked Little Bear, and he followed LB around the room and wanted to play with the toys that Little Bear liked. Little Bear was very, very cautious around the little baby and very generous with his toys. He was also smart - after a little while, he started distracting the baby by giving him other toys and books. It was cute. The Boy does that all the time with LB, and I guess he figured that out from dealing with his brother.

Still, it's a big adjustment. Thanks to Grandma for footing the bill for preschool for him. It'll be a neat experience, I'm certain.

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Meltdown.

2011-06-13T09:41:00.004-04:00

This morning, we met Grandpa at the diner for breakfast before taking The Boy to "camp" for the first time. Camp is at the same place that he's been going to preschool, and it's being taught by the same people. It's essentially preschool, but during the summer and with the occasional pool splashing. We're happy that The Boy still has Harriet as his teacher, as they love each other so much!

So, last night, the boys got to bed without much fanfare or drama. The Boy, because he took a late afternoon nap, did not get to sleep before 10 or 10:30, but he went to sleep quietly after getting his three stories and a few hugs. Little Bear woke suddenly at 12:30 and wouldn't quiet down until I brought him in bed with us. Maybe he's suffering from some separation anxiety? That would be a first, and kind of in line with the start of his terrible-twos behavior.

This morning, Little Bear woke at his accustomed 6:30, except he had Mum, Daddy, and The Boy upon which to bounce (The Boy having joined us at 5AM after a potty visit). We temporarily distracted him with an episode of Super Why, and we did our normal morning ablutions while The Boy slept and his brother vegetated. Little Bear dressed with minimal fanfare, and at 7:25 I started dressing The Boy. He fought getting dressed, fought getting his teeth brushed, fought the potty visit, and whined while we put on his shoes and threw him into the car. We were really looking forward to having a whiny, screamy 3-year old at Ritter's Diner.

Except, once we got to the diner, the cooperative and placid Little Bear began to melt down. He wouldn't stay at the table. He wouldn't stay near Mum or Daddy. He wanted to throw his toys (and my phone) instead of playing. He was loud, screaming, and crying, so I took him outside to calm down. When we got outside, things took a dramatic turn for the worse, and he wigged out like I've never seen him wig out.

At that point, I was faced with a couple of choices: call The Wife, tag out, and let her take care of it; let him cry until the food came, then bring him in and hope that pancakes would calm him down; or throw him in the car and drive around until they were done. I chose #3. We drove around the block a few times until the rest of the family was done with breakfast, then dropped The Boy off at school and took him home to eat and to calm down.

Separation anxiety, resistance to sleeping, major freakout in public places... looks like we're in his terrible twos. I was wondering what this was going to look like. Sigh.

Life. Nothing more than that.

2011-06-12T18:04:00.001-04:00

I'm happy to report that this weekend, while my father has visited, has been an entirely boring and utterly normal weekend. The most extraordinary thing that happened was a little accident while we were outside at a big library summer reading kickoff, which is not an extraordinary thing. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The whole leaving The Boy alone at bedtime thing is working pretty well. Friday night, The Boy didn't go to sleep until after midnight, but he spent the time in his room alone from 9 o'clock onwards. He came out to use the potty a couple of times, but he stayed without much complaint. He stayed up later than I did, actually. He was so happy to see Grandpa on Friday night! On Saturday night, he fell asleep about thirty seconds after I left his room, so the experiment has been a success so far.

And, as for wakings: Saturday morning, he spent the whole morning in his own room and his own bed. Sunday morning, he joined us after 6am. A qualified success, so far.

The boys have been very good to Grandpa all weekend, and they've been on decent behavior towards us as well. We went to breakfast, then the park, then the pool for lunch, then home for naps. We barbecued steaks and chicken for dinner, then we went for ice cream. It was an utterly normal, boring kind of day.

It was perfect. No hospitals, no illnesses, no drama, no nothing. 18 months ago, this was a weekend that would have been beyond extraordinary - it would have been inconceivable. Now? Easy.

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