[April 16, 2009—
The Lip]
Oliver's expanding repertoire of lippy comebacks:
—I am not your slave, Daddy, I am not, I am not.
—I heard you already, Mom, I have ears.
—I called and you didn't come and now my eye is BROKEN.
—Beats me.
[Comments 2 # ]
[March 29, 2009—
Reminder: Must Play Different Music in Car]
Oliver is awake in bed working his way through Serge Gainsbourg's "Couleur Cafe" album, at the top of his lungs.
[Comments 0 # ]
[March 26, 2009—
We All Scream]
K reports: Oliver was so good I took him to Cold Stone Creamery, where he picked out cotton candy ice cream, and asked for M&Ms on top. It was honestly the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen. The ice cream was BLUE. He spent the entire time happily sucking on this blue ice cream, ecstatically reading the huge billboard in the shop that listed all their other combinations. As we were leaving, he asked if he could live at Cold Stone Creamery and eat ice cream for breakfast and lunch and dinner. I asked him if he really wanted to live in an ice cream shop his whole life. he said yes, “because cold stone creamery doesn’t have ANY vegetables.”
[Comments 2 # ]
[January 22, 2009—
Vaccines, part II]
K writes: So this time, Oliver was prepared. We had a long discussion on the way to the doctor's about how he had to get a second flu shot, and that he needed to be brave, and not cry. He kept repeating over and over that "Stella will get a flu shot. Not Oliver." I explained to him that he needed to get it so that he would NOT get the flu, which would give him "a puke." He then went into a long inquiry as to whether daddy had had a flu shot, and whether he would get a puke, and whether mommy had had a flu shot and she would get a puke.
We arrive. The kids play in the play area. The nurse calls our names. Oliver stands in the play area, staring at the door, not willing to go there. I finally get him down the hall and he lingers outside the room, not willing to go in. The nurse comes in and asks him if he’d like his shot in his arm or his leg. Oliver responds: "nowhere?" She tells him that's not an option. He chooses his arm. I remind him he needs to be brave and not cry. And it was so sad. She stabbed in the arm and his face all crumpled up and big tears came out, but he did NOT yell. And then he put his big crumpled, teary face on my chest, and said in a big weepy voice, "was I brave? Did I not cry? Can I have cake?" (a promised reward if he was brave).
Stella performed in a way that is now becoming routine. The nurse stabbed her in the leg. Stella let out an angry grunt. Stella threw her shoe at Oliver, and beat me on the leg with both her hands in a total rage.
They were then told they could have stickers. Oliver runs to the sticker drawer in the main office, and is immediately stricken that he can’t find any Wall-e stickers. He quizzes the entire nursing staff about where they’ve hidden the Wall-e stickers, because they DID have wall-e stickers, don’t they remember, and finally after ten minutes of digging by half the office, he emerges with a M-O sticker. Stella is given a Spongebob sticker, and since she’s still pissed off, stuffs the entire thing in her mouth in an act of defiance, leans forward and growls (literally) at the nurses. This elicited a suitably freaked-out response from one of the nice ladies—who looked a little mortified that she was being physically threatened by a 15-month-old, and one clearly deranged enough to eat Spongebob—and this reaction mollified Stella somewhat, who lightened up, and by the end actually said "ta oo" (thank you).
On the way home, I am informed by Oliver that cake is not a good enough reward for getting a flu shot, and that a Kit Kat would be more like it. I stop at the little store and get them both one. I give them both their candy bars to hold, and start driving again. Stella wants to eat hers immediately, and when I glance back and tell her she had to wait until after lunch, she glares and throws it at the back of my head.
[Part one is here.]
[Comments 1 # ]
[December 31, 2008—
Seek and Ye Shall Hide]
Jessica (nanny, at the bottom of the stairs, yelling into the living room): OKAY. COME FIND ME!!!!!
Oliver (distantly, in the living room): Where are you?
Stella: blah blah blah blah
Jessica: That’s the point. You have to come find me.
Oliver: Why???
Stella: Giggle giggle giggle
Jessica: Come find me!!! it’s hide and seek!
Oliver: What?
Jessica: COME FIND ME!!!
Oliver (running, thumping, giggling, running into hallway): There I am!!
Jessica: No, “there you are.”
Oliver: I am here!
Jessica: Never mind.
Oliver (finally catching on, 10 minutes too late): Can we do it again!!!!???
Stella: Gurgle gurgle gurgle
Jessica: Okay, go in the living room and count to 10
Oliver (clearly standing right where he is, next to Jessica): One, two, three...
Jessica: No, you have to go in the living room, so I can hide.
Oliver: Can we stand by Jessica?
Stella: Yess!! (her new way of saying “Jess”)
[Comments 0 # ]
[December 18, 2008—
Stella: The Early Words]
Not many, but an effective assortment, which include: eat, more, book, cookie, cake, duck.
[Comments 3 # ]
[November 27, 2008—
That 70's Show]
At the London Science Museum, Oliver picks out a toy car from the gift shop, an early 70's era British Ford Escort, the sort my mother used to drive (canary yellow). I tried directing him toward the E-Type but to no avail.
True either to the era or British manufacturing, or both, the car instantly started to disintegrate. Bumper had gone by the time we returned home, followed by the (single) wing mirror and rear tail light. Now the chassis has sunk, sticking the back wheels, and the rear windscreen is poking out. Given the 70s-style gloom that's decended, it feels strangely comforting that Oliver has embraced it so enthusiastically.
[Comments 2 # ]
[October 23, 2008—
Dispatches from the Doctors]
From K: Oliver had no idea what was coming, despite my attempts to explain a flu shot to him. He sat still for about one second, then tried to escape from the nurse, and the needle ended up scratching his arm. He was bawling and bawling and bawling as if somebody had cut his arm off. Even a Wall-E sticker wouldn’t console him (crybaby!). About the time I got him settled down, I had to get stuck, which hurt. Then Stella got shot and let out a nasty grumpy yowl, and in a complete rage started beating on the nurse’s head with a Lego. Then we went out and when the receptionist lady tried to be nice to Stella (who was sitting in my arms with a vicious scowl on her face), Stella threw the whole Lego at her.
[Comments 4 # ]
[June 22, 2008—
Star-Mangled Banner]
[For our overseas listeners, a cheat sheet can be found here.]
[Comments 3 # ]
[May 09, 2008—
Venus]
From K: Oliver wants to live on Venus. I told him it was hot. He said he'd wear sunscreen.
[Comments 0 # ]
[April 02, 2008—
Incentives]
Report from K in re: potty training:
I'm not sure why we ever worried Oliver wasn't smart enough to get this. Oliver gets it, to the extent that we are now being snowed.
So this morning, he gets up, and we run to the potty, and he makes himself go. We get a star! We get M&Ms!! We sit at the table for about five minutes getting breakfast. Oliver polishes off the last of his reward M&Ms. He then informs me it is time to go to the potty again. We run to the potty. He concentrates, squeezes, shuffles around, squeezes more and makes a small dribble come out. Hurray! We get a star! We get M&Ms! Oliver runs back to the table. He is there about five minutes. He eats his last M&M...he informs me it is time to...go to the potty again. Do you see a pattern here? I did, after about the third time, and oliver's umpteenth M&M.
I wondering if this isn't a metaphor for the housing crisis. Government tells people it is good to buy houses. They incentivize the buying of houses through oodles of cheap credit and mortgage deductions. People buy houses and buy bigger houses and buy second houses and they can't afford to pay!. And then the economy falls apart. I'm not sure how this metaphor translates in the end, back to the potty. But right now we are going through a lot of M&Ms.
[Comments 6 # ]
[March 27, 2008—
Jimmy Cagney]
I confess I haven't done the calculations, but I wager that if you draw a straightish line between Buxton, Ore., and London, you might land in Queens, N.Y. At least, that's the accent Oliver has decided to synthesize based on his dual linguistic inheritance.
Dog=Dawg. Bird=Boid. Jupiter=Jew-pidour.
Who knows where this comes from. He was born in New York, but on the West Side. Maybe it was the chemical waft from Newark that did it and this is really a homage to the Sopranos. Also, K and I did watch and awful lot of Law & Order when we lived in Manhattan. Poor child. Add that to the faux south where he currently lives and he's going to develop an accent unrecognizable to modern anthropology.
Perhaps it won't matter, as long as the bird doesn't chase the dog around Jupiter.
[Comments 0 # ]
[February 28, 2008—
Siberia]
Last night, Oliver was doing something he ought not. K tells him that if he did it again he'd be sent to Siberia.
O: Siberia is in Russia.
K: Yes, Oliver
O: Russia has communists.
K: Yes, Oliver
O: Oliver go to Siberia with the Yeltsin and the Gorbachev and the Brezhynev and the Krushchev and the Lenin and the itty bitty tiny Marx.
K: Fine, Oliver. Go to Siberia and be with Marx. But it's cold in Siberia.
O: No Siberia?
(Translation: He's been playing with recently with K's Russian president matryoshka, which look a bit like this.)
[Comments 2 # ]
[December 17, 2007—
Windswept]
Now I actually own land and trees and the occasional wilting peony, I've developed a fond attachment for stuff that grows. Most recently, I have found myself, on summer afternoons, fighting a intellectual tussle as to the proper amount of attention one should lavish on a lawn. Too little, and it looks like a desert. Too much, and that's just not an appropriate way for an adult to spend his time.
In the middle of our property is a gnarled and aging apple tree that's probably twice as large as it should be. I don't think it had been pruned for years until this spring when I gave it a dramatic haircut. This year, not all the apples were mutant, but rather too many came out with unsightly bulges. Remaining solid were the four trunks growing out of the base, each heading toward its own compass point.
That was until last night. The 50 mph winds knocked out the power for 12 hours, sent limbs from the uselessly soft fir trees tumbling into the road and cleaved my poor apple tree in half. Two trunks are still standing. Two are lying forlornly across the lawn, barely joined at the base to their former cousins. It looks a bit rotten in there and no doubt it's only a matter of time before the rest of it falls down.
Neither it, nor its apples, had a story to tell as far as I was aware. Adam didn't partake of its lumpy fruit, which also didn't fall on the head of any budding physicists. No arrows were shot through them. No poisoned examples were given to proto-princesses. But it was my tree, to which I had lavished at least a small amount of care, and I am annoyed.
Minor consolation: It will replenish the firewood we ran through last night trying to prevent our children turning into popsicles. (Photos TK when I find a second to run outside during daylight.)
[Comments 1 # ]
[November 28, 2007—
Stella Update]
From the doctor's office: Aside from being jabbed with needles, which made her justifiably annoyed, she's all good. 11 pounds, four ounces, and 22.5 inches long.
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