Day 43--Boys

So Jen is off on this all-girls weekend retreat, leaving just us boys at home. I can handle this, right? I can handle anything.

Oh, did I mention she took our only car? Have I griped a few times about the shady volkswagen mechanic who is apparently perpetually 3 days away from fixing my car? I took the car in a week before Sabrina was born. This blog tells me she's more than 6 weeks old now. I may not be the world's greatest mechanic, but I could've taken both carburetors off, rebuilt them, and reinstalled them a long time ago. That's probably more extreme than it actually needs...

Okay, so, no car, no wife, no cell phone (okay, that one's a personal choice-- one I will gladly sermonize you on if you ask me)... Anyway, it seemed awfully like parenting without a net.

But the truth is, we had all we need. We have each other, and a healthy enough imagination to find things to do and ways to have fun.

So, Edgar woke up this morning after a long, peaceful night's sleep, and wanted to watch Spongebob. We cuddled in bed and watched a few episodes (thanks, netflix!). He seemed to really enjoy the time. "Daddy, go to sleep here!" (pointing to my pillow). I will admit to dozing a few times.

After a few episodes, it was time to start our day:

I took Edgar out in his bike trailer. This was our favorite activity last summer. However, it's been a while. He asked me "what's this?", pointing to the bike trailer. I think he remembers it, he just didn't have the words "bike trailer" in his vocabulary. He looks SO much bigger than I remember him being in the bike trailer. You may remember I bought Jen a two-seater bike trailer for her birthday. I was convinced there was some way to shoehorn another kid in this one, but after today, there's no way 2 kids would fit in that (see the above picture).

Last summer, I didn't consider myself in any sort of "shape", so I expected to be just as out of shape today. Boy, was I wrong.  Everything seemed much harder. Either that, or Edgar's much heavier. I know I am.

We rode off to the Gilbert House museum, as I felt we didn't get the full experience last time. We took my advice from last time and played on the empty playground first.

Continuing on yesterday's theme, here's a video of Edgar and I doing a xylophone duet on the playground:

Edgar loved this dinosaur chair. He returned to it a few times, and commanded me to sit in the other dinosaur chair next to it.

We went in the section of the museum dedicated to AC Gilbert himself. He was a true polymath and rennaisance man. Among other things, he was an olympic gold-medal pole vaulter, medical doctor, and inventor of the erector set. We need more people like him in the world. He also invented some other interesting stuff...

Also, those erector sets are cool. Now, I had some cool toys when I was a kid, but I'm not sure anything was as cool as a do-it-yourself robot or atomic energy kit.

Edgar thoroughly enjoyed his playtime today. We spent time at exhibits that weren't very crowded, so neither he nor I got sick of the people. He got a really good chance to explore some of the stuff in-depth.

We even visited the infamous bubble room, which we skipped last time. Our visit went something like this:

Edgar, timidly trying to see what all the other kids are doing in this room -> Edgar discovering a pan of soapy water and a hula hoop -> Edgar unsuccessfully trying to make a bubble with the hula hoop and getting a little frustrated -> Edgar successfully making a huge bubble with the hula hoop -> Edgar celebrating by splashing in the bubble fluid -> Total meltdown, as bubble fluid fills his eyes -> Daddy trying to comfort a screaming Edgar -> Edgar trying to wipe bubble fluid out of his eyes using his soapy hands -> Daddy dragging a screaming Edgar to the sink to wash his hands so at least that part will be soap-free -> Edgar crying on Daddy's lap, while Daddy grabs a bubble wand and makes a few bubbles -> Edgar wanting to make some bubbles, but not wanting to leave Daddy's lap -> Edgar finally getting the courage to stop crying and make some bubbles -> Edgar excitedly making bubbles -> Edgar jumping up and down, blowing bubbles everywhere, getting his arms, legs, and hair wet -> Edgar getting excited again, splashing soapy water into his eyes, and screaming in pain -> Daddy, repeating the wash and comfort cycle, and trying to convince Edgar his time in the bubble room is over

The star of our show, sometime between meltdowns.

The obligatory gilbert house Big Chair Picture. (shortly after bubbly meltdown)

With that, we crossed the wonderful Salem Pedestrian Bridge and grabbed some lunch. Did you know Dairy Queen sells milk in soft-drink-size portions?

Back across the bridge, I offered Edgar the chance of going back to the museum or heading home. He chose home. Good thing he did, too, because he was asleep by the time we passed Salem Hospital. I don't know how he does it, but this is a pretty common thing for Edgar to fall asleep in the bike trailer, going over bumps, with the top down...



Home after a long uphill ride, I trundled Edgar inside, with a fresh bottle, and put him in my bed. I've mentioned on here that he doesn't like to be interrupted/moved during his nap. I was lucky that he went back to sleep and we both got a sizable nap in my bed.

That's the sort of thing Jen thinks is fun-- snuggling with the kids. It's never held a huge attraction for me, but it was pretty fun today. Made me feel like a real daddy.

When Edgar woke up, he really wanted to snuggle some more. So, more episodes of Spongebob were in order. I could've gotten more things done (stuff put away from Kalaloch, dishes, etc. etc.) but snuggling with the kid was way too fun.

I mentioned in one of my first blog posts that I hoped that Edgar would do a little growing up (and detaching from Mom) over the course of this six weeks. I think he has. He's grown-up in all the good ways, and still a baby in all the ways that don't matter.

Here's a cute conversation:

E: "Daddy, what time is it?"

Me (taken aback) : "I don't know... uhh... I'm-just-starting-to-cook-dinner-time?"

E: "Change the diaper time!"

wow. That's easy.

Some other random cuteness from Edgar: He's taken up my habit of saying "Yes Sir" and "No Sir". It's kindof cute. The problem is, it's also ambigui-fied his answers:

I remember being in elementary school, first learning cursive, and finding that T and F were really close in cursive. From then on, for several years, I answered all my true-false tests and homework in cursive, with the hope that if I wasn't sure of something, I could make the letter ambiguous enough that the teacher would mark it right...

So, when you ask Edgar a yes/no question, he usually responds with something that sounds like "Nyeah" or "Yo" or "Noshyeah" or "Yeah-uh" or something else. They all look silly written down, but he honestly drives us nuts because we can't tell his nos from his yeses.

Another couple of cute stories: he loves he-man. Long before he discovered he-man, we discovered two old he-man toys at goodwill. One he recognizes as Cringer, although the toy cringer is quite a bit fiercer than the cartoon. The other one (Leech, evil master of power suction[!!]), he doesn't recognize as a he-man character, and calls it "the kissing monster".

Last week, Jen was nursing baby Sabrina. Edgar came in with Cringer held against his chest: "Edgar give Cringer some Nurning. A little bit. For just a minute." Apparently, this behavior is pretty normal.. it's just also hilarious.

We haven't told Edgar about my stash-- two apple boxes full of all my old he-man toys (and Castle Greyskull!) that my parents saved from when I was a kid. There are a ton in there, with armor, vehicles, weapons (whatever my nephew Gavin didn't manage to break). I figure he wouldn't appreciate it very much at this age, and would probably break them all. We can save them until he's 4 or 5.

Edgar went to bed easily again tonight. Jen comes back in the morning.

I spent way too much time tonight making another poster for an activity in primary tomorrow. Then, I realized that I should blog, too. It's 1:25 as I finish this. I really need to get some sleep before Edgar wakes up.

Day 31-- One Month Old

This beautiful little girl (the one on the left, silly!) is one month old today! Her big brother loves her very much. They even look like siblings.

When we last left our fearless adventurers, Sabrina was sleeping in the car seat, and was expected to wake up any minute, but surprisingly wasn't waking. Her parents finally got smart at 1:45 and went to sleep, fully expecting to be awakened by a hungry and fully awake daughter at any time.

At 7:30, we were awakened to cries. They were Edgar's. We spent a moment of panic wondering why there was no baby in our bed... then we realized that she was still asleep. Next to our bed. In her carseat. Where she had been sleeping since about 9 the previous evening. Wow. Finally, Jen woke her up and fed her.

Edgar and I chilled and watched some He-man. I blogged. We got dressed and went to music class together. It was still weird. I still can't put my finger on it why I felt uncomfortable. We listened to the Wiggles implore us to shake our sillies out. I wondered how they could manage to make a light australian accent sound so completely smarmy...

After music class, we went home to pick up Jen and Sabrina, and the four of us went to Monmouth to visit some of her old professors, etc. While it wasn't a riveting, exciting day, we had fun. Edgar and I ate at Yang's teriyaki, the best (and cheapest) teriyaki in the western hemisphere. Jen was supposed to join us, but she was stuck in the car feeding a hungry Sabrina and changing an epic diaper.

If you just asked, "Wait, Alex... What, exactly, is an epic diaper?", well, here is how they come about.

Sabrina had an epic night's sleep (roughly 10 hours-- approximately 13 times her big brother's typical night's sleep at this age). Following the epic sleep, she had an epic feeding. Following the epic feeding, well... you get the picture.

For a low-key post-lunch activity, we headed to Baskett Slough wildlife refuge. Baskett Slough is about 10 miles from Salem, and one of those places that we've driven past a million times, but never bothered to stop. I'm glad we stopped. While the kids dozed in the back seat, we drove a gravel road through the refuge, and saw ducks, hawks, a bald eagle, and more canada geese than my mind can comprehend. I didn't manage any good pictures, but I've never been much of a wildlife photographer. Since the kids fell asleep, we went home, and did the Jen-and-Sabrina nap inside, and Edgar-and-Alex nap in the car. We've discovered long ago that you can't move Edgar during a nap. If he falls asleep in the car and you try to take him inside, he wakes up cranky and doesn't go back to sleep. So, sleeping in the car.

Edgar and I woke up fairly soon in the car and went inside and had some chill time. Watched some Signing Time and most of Sword in the Stone while I got dishes done and some cleaning up. Jen and Sabrina slept on. Finally, we had run out of milk, and were feeling kind of restive, so Edgar and I went to the store. We got ambitious and went to the record store, too. Edgar brought along his He-man sword. He was very good in the record store, and let me browse through all sorts of records. This was an unusual trip, as I came out empty-handed. I couldn't find what I was looking for, and the dollar bin didn't hold any amazing surprises for me like it usually does. Oh well..

Came home to a well-napped wife, and made dinner for Edgar, and got him trundled into bed. I played a bit of Super Mario Wii, although my heart wasn't in it.

Jen picked up Taco Bell (a favorite) and a Redbox. Knight and Day, starring Tom Cruise and the mom from the Brady Bunch.

[disclaimer: Jen and I love, love stupid action movies. I know I should be all arty and watch only french neu wave and stuff like that, but, seriously? Explosions and hanging off helicopter landing gear.]

Knight and Day looked like an okay movie (other than the fact that Tom Cruise is a creep in real life), except for one little HUGE thing: the title.

Seriously, the title. Sounds like the worst 70's buddy-cop TV show ever.

It reminds me of the sitcom Friends, where Joey gets a job acting in a stupid, stupid cop show called Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E. I mean, come on!

Okay, so we watched the movie. It was pretty fun, escapist, low-grade action with hokey shootouts and lots of fake looking digital effects. Just what you'd expect from a movie with Tom Cruise in it. But, the title? We find out 3/4 of the way through the movie that Tom Cruise's character's real name is "Knight", but it's irrelevant to the plot. ...And "Day"? NOTHING! No significance. Now we have the stupidest title in the world for entirely no reason.

Our movie was quite interrupted with a fussy Sabrina. Much of it was spent with one spouse watching and eating Taco Bell, and one spouse standing and bouncing the baby.

Then, it's off to bed and to fill this blog with words. I was going to go skiing tomorrow, but I think we're going to do something different instead.

------------------------

Here are the promised pictures of the air museum visit.

  

Edgar and his favorite plane.

Sabrina and I relaxing in first class (no coach seats recline like that), and Edgar climbing in the cockpit.

Edgar ready to blast off.

In the kiddie area of the museum was this apparently real personal helicopter. I tried to find out stuff about it on the internet just now, but couldn't find anything. I want one. The brand is Rainbow. It's got a little volkswagen-sized engine behind the seat, minimal joystick and foot controls, and it seats one (maybe one and a baby) comfortably. Looks like the view would be fantastic.

Finally, Grandma and Grandpa with their grandkids:



Day 29-- Air Museum

Last night was another tough night with the baby. She was awake, hungry, and a bit fussy (watching Red Sonja with us) until about 1 AM, when Jen let me know that the baby was mine and she was now going to sleep.

I tried to watch some Beavis and Butthead with the baby, to give her some high art and culture.

I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought...

It wasn't the crudity of the jokes, although I'm not 14 anymore, I can still laugh at a good butt joke when called upon. I think it was the pacing: The originally 15-minute episodes were presented blitzkrieg-fashion, without commercials, and more importantly, without the music video interludes, resulting in bizarre 4-minute stories. Originally, Beavis and Butthead was a show on MTV, which at the time, still mostly showed music videos. Beavis and Butthead would spend half of their 2-episodes-to-30-minutes lampooning music videos of the day, to great effect. Those segments were generally funnier than the episodes, and made me laugh so hard that anything those guys did afterwards was comedy gold.

Since the netflix version is without video segments, here are one or two good replacements. (and yes, I spent about a half hour this evening watching youtube) that are more fun than watching episodes of B and B.

Sabrina ended up crying at me for a good several hours while I unsuccessfully tried to calm her down, play video games, and read a book. Eventually, she would only fall asleep on my chest (not on her back), so I slept for a while in the recliner with her on top of me.

I was completely oblivious to Edgar waking up, or Jen getting him, or him coming into our room and yelling "WAKE UP DADDY".

Finally, we got up and got out about 10:30, grabbed an early brunch on our way out of town, and hit the air museum in McMinnville. This time, we paid the money and went inside (a first for me). It was impressive. Lots of airplanes. One especially big airplane. I'm not the world's greatest airplane buff, but I'm into fascinating history, so it kept my interest. It kept Edgar's interest for a while, too, and Sabrina dozed in the baby bjorn.

I was impressed with the museum. There are some cool planes there. I was a bit disappointed that with $20 apiece museum entry, they still want to charge you for extra stuff (like seeing the inside of one of the planes). Had a good time, though. Edgar was tired ,and Sabrina was hungry, so we visited my sister Laura in McMinnville. She cooed and cuddled with the baby, Ed played with her toys, Jen fed the baby, and I tuned up Laura's skis.

We started with grand plans of returning to the museum and getting our $20 worth, but we eventually packed a past-tired Edgar in the car, and headed home. Edgar and I slept in the car, and Jen left it running (with the heat on way too high) and Jen and Sabrina went inside to nap.

After naps, dinner and playing swords with Edgar ("Hold sword up. Say 'Power of Grayskull. Kssssh,' Daddy"), Sabrina was napping, Edgar was happy, so we had the first Kalaloch practice in a very very long time. Now, of all the things I love in this world (and there are many), creating music with the love of my life has to be my favorite(right up there with doing rad things with my kids). It's tough for Jen to play (or think about music) when she's dealing with babies, and it's been tough to do real (electric) Kalaloch practice for a very long time because Edgar has been fascinated with unplugging our equipment, and playing the instrument we are currently playing.

For the most part, it went really well. Sabrina stayed asleep. We gave Edgar an acoustic guitar which he wasn't too interested in. He tried to mess with unplugging and changing our pedals, but backed off when we asked him nicely. We played through several songs, including a new jam (which probably won't be revisited). I did one of our new songs where I switch between guitar and organ. At that point, Edgar really wanted to play the organ. We let him, but it was frustrated that he couldn't hear it over our playing. He also has to stand on my guitar pedals to play the organ, so it generated some really interesting sounds. Eventually, he was more interested in playing with pedals than playing an instrument (he's my boy, after all), so at that point, things broke down. All in all, it was wonderful to play again.

Chilled with an episode of Jackie Chan Adventures, read scriptures and then it was bedtime for Edgar. Jen and I switch off bedtime routine for Edgar, but it always involves singing him lullabies. Jen favors kid songs, and I favor pop songs. It's a good thing he's got parents who like to sing. As I was closing his door, he very sweetly asked me "More crow and eagle." The Crow and The Eagle is a Kalaloch song we've had for a while but never recorded. It's turned into one of Edgar's favorite lullabies (although it's not much of a lullaby). I can't describe how cool it is to have something you wrote be an important thing in someone else's life. Jen knows. She has a lullaby for Edgar, too.

After Edgar went to sleep, I did some youtube beavis and butthead and blogging, and some playing Super Mario Wii (searching for all the star coins so we can play the bonus levels!)

I have pictures from today, but Jen insists the camera's in the car, and I didn't see it at first glance, so I'll share them tomorrow.

Day 28-- Museum Fun

I can't believe Sabrina is 4 weeks old today. She's still a newborn, although she's getting bigger (about half a pound a week), and she's holding her head up more. She even smiled at us today.

We beat bowser on Super Mario last night. I feel like I've accomplished a major goal in my life.

Having had enough of being stuck in the house with two kids, Edgar and I went to the Gilbert House this morning. For those who have never been, it's a children's museum, science museum, playground, and quite simply the best thing to do with kids in Salem.

Here's a tip for you locals: hit the playground first. We showed up at 10 AM, which is when the museum opens (this was a coincidence. 10 AM was just the earliest Edgar and I could stumble out the door). The weather looked like it was threatening rain, so Edgar and I skipped the museum section and went straight to the outdoor playground, in order to make hay while the sun shines (so to speak). We had the whole playground to ourselves. Apparently, all the other parents insist on their kids experiencing something cultural or stimulating before allowing them free rein of the playground.

Edgar and I had fun running around, finding slides, playing the wooden and metal xylo-marimba-glocken-whatevers, and yelling "Power of Grayskull!" into the echo tube.

After the playground, we went inside to absorb some culture.

Edgar and I both designed a quilt on this touch-screen quilt maker. I helped my mom make a few quilts when I was a kid. This is definitely more fun.
 

Feeding carrots to a cow.

After lunch in the car, and more exhibits, Edgar and I again braved the (now-packed) playground,

 

In a truck, driving to mommy's house.

We came home and both of us crashed. I had been feeling a bit of a cold coming on, but after a 3-hour nap, I had that cold zapped. Naps are the best medicine. Naps solve everything.

Edgar woke up before I did, and Ed and Mom made a castle with a tower:

When I woke up, it was time for Mom's nap (see how this works?).  Edgar and I cooked dinner together. Hard boiled eggs.  

Edgar loved it. I have proof. He ate a whole egg.

 Edgar even helped me with the dishes. Mom woke up just in time for Ed's bedtime.

Spent a relaxing evening holding a fussy Sabrina and watching the end of a Jackie Chan movie and the beginning of Red Sonja. Brigitte Nielsen + Ahhnold + Mullets = XXtreme Awesomeness