A conversation with D-: You'll be sorry

Speaking of yesterday's post, here is yet another Conversation with D- from the other morning:

M-: Aiyyyeeeee!!! No, no, noooooo!!

Me: D-, what are you doing?

D-: I'm just tryin' to take the car from her!

Me: Did she have it first?

D-: Yeah, but I just want it.

Me: There are dozens of cars you could play with just on the couch right next to you. She only wants to play with one! You let her have it and stop being nasty!

D-: (lets go, then shoots me a resigned and very subtly mean look) Daddy, I don't want to play with any cars.

Me: (shrugs) Okay.

D- sits for several minutes in silence, as M- gets bored with the car and moves on to sit happily with her See N' Say for an unbelievable length of time. (For a 1-year-old, that is... actually, for anyone with a See N' Say, but those two separate facts just make it the perfect storm of contrast to D-'s attitude.)

He then donned an obviously unwillingly casual look, which I thought was just residual sour grapes as he very maturely tried to move past the scolding (which does happen sometimes).

D-: Daddy, when can I play with my horse trailer again? [He had gotten in trouble with it and lost it for a week.)

Me: Hmmm, well it's Tuesday, so it's been a week-- you can play with it now.

I've obviously fallen right into his astoundingly clever trap, easy prey for such a superior intellect. He answers quickly and somewhat smugly.

D-: I don't want to play with it.

I fire back just as quickly, with barely a reaction (I'm awesome that way).

Me: Okay, sounds good to me.

D- sets his face into a deeper pout and looks to regroup. It takes so long that he apparently forgets to actually regroup and just goes back to playing about 10 minutes later.

Fin.

A guest blogger: Advice for kids!

For any 3- or 4-year-olds out there who read this blog regularly, my son D- has a little tip to share with you.

If you really want to hurt your parents, I mean reeeeally, really hurt them, try the following:

When you're playing with toys, and you feel like getting a bit rough, or not sharing, or generally giving in to anti-social/inadvisable impulses, just go for it! If your parents dare to protest, simply put down the toys, fold your arms, work up a big pout, and then coldly declare, "I don't want to play with anything."

Your rejection of participation in normal society and renunciation of childish things will unnerve them and render them like Play-Doh in your powerfully petite hands. With your icy glare slicing through them like a righteous scimitar of justice, they will surely fall to your feet and beg, just beg you to take up the toys once again. They'll probably even promise you can do whatever you want with them.

You may have to sit around and wait a little bit, to show them you mean business, and they may even try such deceptions as shrugging and going back to what they were doing, in an effort to hide their fear and pray you won't make good on your threat. But you will, ohhh you will!

And then won't they be sorry.

Oh, that's an old bowling injury...

J- discovered, as did I many months ago, that with the advent of Wii Sports, it's possible to strain much more than just your thumb while playing videogames. Two hours of Wii Bowling may get you (J-) a lot closer to Professional status (a.k.a. Dan League), but it can also get you a sore shoulder and hamstring.

As a seasoned veteran, I know enough to recognize Wii Shoulder on the horizon and to switch to lefty in response, so I was in the clear the next day. There's nothing like watching someone lay on the couch after a long day of work only to hear her complaining about being sore from all the videogames she played on the weekend.

The sad thing is, you may have noticed we're on a bit of a Wii kick of late, and odds are good we'll both be right back at it today. She should probably let herself heal up before facing me again, but then she's just as competitive as me. Maybe I'll do some Wii boxing during naptime today, to keep it fair. With our luck, we'll both be stiff as zombies tomorrow.

Developments at our house, Vol. 4

These are some developments at our house in recent days:

1. J- discovered a forgotten Easter egg full of jelly beans in her coat pocket more than a week after the event, much to her giddy pleasure.

2. I determined the reason no one makes wine from oranges: because fermented orange juice is disgusting. Just check my fridge.

And my sink. And my shirt.

3. D- has amped up his habit of calling out made-up words and then asking me what they mean. I cannot explain this habit, and I can barely stand it, given his straight-faced insistence on getting an explanation. He's definitely my kid.

4. I found out how creepy it can be when your 1-year-old wakes up quietly and remembers she has a singing pig ("Five Little Piggies") in the corner of her crib. The disembodied adult voice inexplicably wafting in from the baby's room at nap time is extremely disconcerting.

5. I learned that when you tickle a baby while she's drinking, she will spit milk all over, just like a real person. I couldn't resist! It was worth it.

6. I'm wondering if I'm manly enough all on my own to pull off wearing a Utilikilt. The answer, of course, is no. The next question is, do I care? They're just so convenient.

7. M- found out that as delicious as oyster crackers may be, and as fun as it is to share with everyone, Daddy does not find them yummy when they are shoved up his nostril while he is closing his eyes for just 5 seconds at 7 o'clock in the morning.

8. Expanding on this knowledge gained yesterday, this morning M- tried to stick a Cheerio into the Wii disc slot instead ('Cheerio' being the singular form of 'Cheerios', rather than a British greeting, which would be far less damaging to the hardware) . As a show of good faith, she then spent about 2 minutes afterwards cementing the new lesson by pointing at the slot and repeating, "No. No. No."

On further reflection, I can only hope this doesn't mean she had already shoved one in there undetected. I'll have to plug it in and eject the game to clear out any detritus.

9. I have found, after more occasions than even I would ordinarily have guessed, that nobody (so far) appreciates being compared to Jabba the Hutt in any way, even when it has nothing to do with his weight problem, and no matter how apt the comparison may be.

To each his own, I suppose.

Note: Here are the other volumes.

Wii will crush you

You know what's great?

Spending an evening repeatedly playing all of the wide-ranging games on Wii Play, as well as a (baseball) hitting contest and a Power Throws (bowling training) match in Wii Sports, with your impressively competitive wife, and completely dominating her across the board like the house against a compulsive gambler on a down day.

You know what's even better?

Knowing she's going to read this and immediately demand a rematch. Moohoohoohahahaaaaa!

Only now will I have a worthy competitor again.

P.S. She may make me cry a little bit after her hurricane of game-related pain has passed.

The peeing is the hardest part

D- has this inexplicable habit of either asking for permission before going to the bathroom or making an announcement requiring some kind of vocal acknowledgment before he will go.

Each time, the sarcasm demon that lives inside me tempts me to snidely say, "No, I'm afraid you can't go-- I'd much rather you stand right here till you pee on my floor. In fact, why not go sit on the couch?"

If only he wouldn't take me at my word, I just might.

To keep it all in perspective, though, I'm still over the moon about his being able to go to the bathroom by himself, so I try not to look a gift horse in the... mouth. Changing M-'s "tcinky, tcinky" diapers keeps me centered.

She better believe she's on deck for The Knowledge very soon. Hopefully her apparent desire to emulate everything D- does works to our advantage in this area. She could do much worse for a role model.

10 unanswerable questions

Here are 10 questions whose answers will likely elude us all in this lifetime:

1. Why is it when a toddler spasms awkwardly in the presence of music, it's considered cute, but when I do it, I'm told I shouldn't ever dance again?

2. Why are the little rafters over our porch considered the coolest place in town for birds to hang out (based on the number of white spots, to put it delicately, that accrue right outside our door each day), when there are millions of alternatives just within a block or so? I can't help but feel personally targeted.

3. Why does my daughter wake up before 8:00 in the morning just to whine and fall apart before nap time about an hour later? I know I'd whine a lot less right back at her if I could get that extra hour of sleep.

4. Why did my landlord build an office in the basement (which does flood a bit, occasionally) and then later decide to rent it out as an apartment to a lady who has something weird about her that I can't put my finger on? It's like having a troll secretly living under the building, a troll who doesn't have a mailbox or any other standard amenities.

5. Why does my daughter insist on doing everything by herself, her own way, except simple little things that she's actually capable of doing herself? And why does she always want us to do and undo each of those things over and over and over again for 15 minutes straight?

6. Why is it I spend my whole day exhausted and praying for bed, but when bed time comes, I'm wide awake and only thinking of all the things I now have the freedom to do? For example, last night J- went to bed at 8:30 (extra tired and having to get up at 5am as usual), while I stayed up till 11 watching the Daily Show/Colbert Report and Conan (both in double-speed on the DVR), and then playing Tanks and Shooting Gallery on Wii Play.

7. Why does my son feel compelled to ask me questions to which he knows the answer and then get indignant when I give him joke answers instead?

8. Why is it that when kids' tummies stick out a little, it's cute, but when mine sticks out a little, I need to lay off the pizza?

9. Why is a clean, fresh diaper the only diaper into which it's acceptable to vacate one's bowels? And furthermore, once one has done that, why does one insist on acting oblivious to this fact while hanging around me like iron filings on an electromagnet?

10. Why did I feel an inexorable pull to round this list out to ten items? I know there are many, many more questions I could add, but I also knew how hard it would be to think of enough of them in time to publish this and get off the computer before noon. The answer has something to do with obsessions and compulsions, but as to why they are my slave masters, the world may never know.

Aww, you're no fun anymore

One of the problems with being a dad trying to teach children not to lie is that you can't pull any fun pranks on April Fools' Day. D- had tremendous moral conflicts with the mere concept of "tricks" on Halloween, so I knew April Fools' pranks were just Right Out.

Quoth he, quite righteously, on that Hallowed eve, "It's not nice to trick people!" And this was just when I was trying to vaguely explain the concept of the alternative to treating, not after he was the victim of some cruel hoax. The ultimate hoax, of course, would have been to tell him that we had all made up the concept of Halloween, and who was he to think he could just walk up to strangers' houses and get free candy? I can't help but wonder what kind of face that brand of betrayal would create.

He must have gotten over his misgivings by now, however, because he pulled a belated April Fools' trick on me this morning: as M- was trying to stand up on the tiny cardboard box from our cordless phone (she seems to be obsessed with climbing on things for a better view, possibly due to a shortness complex), he of course warned her that she shouldn't do this, because she could get hurt. When the box inevitably tumbled sideways from her fidgeting, she fell to the floor (still on her feet), and he said as sternly as it sounds, "See, that's what happens!"

I almost choked on the irony of her receiving such a message from this particular messenger.

I don't like blue eggs and pain

Or, How do you like your eggs: scrambled, fried, or on your forehead?

It seems we have an epidemic at our house of late-- our kids have each developed swollen black and blue bumps on their foreheads. I can only guess that the cause is either some kind of viral infection or their shared habit of bombing around our house with reckless abandon until their faces hit something solid.

It's gruesome to watch these little skin balloons swell up like eggs before your eyes, and painful to see them healing so slowly, with each day bringing a totally different-looking bruise than the day before. The one common denominator for each day's bruise, however, is that it looks like you've thoroughly beaten your kids.

The reality is, of course, that the closest they get to (exasperated) beatings is only after they illegally run through the house for the 400,000th time and finally smash themselves badly enough to have your logic possibly start to sink in, when literally 5 minutes later they take off on their 400,001st run.

As bad as it is to have to comfort an injured child as if they hadn't just deliberately disobeyed you to obtain that injury, you quickly realize that beatings would have no effect anyway, given their willingness to head right back out to do the exact same thing that just caused them horrific pain.

Given their appearances at the time, I was reluctant to bring D- and M- to storytime at the library Monday, but I decided that I can't be the only person who's been in such a situation, and since I have nothing to hide, I took them anyway...

I think any of the moms who might have been thinking about actually talking to me changed their minds that day. Oh well.

The Stinkpire Strikes Back

Posting about my neighbors' cooking habits in January seems to have kept the dogs of stench at bay for much of the last couple months. Unfortunately, I seem to have either done something to stockpile some bad karma, or the neighbors have company coming over...

They've been cooking up a storm all morning, such that I couldn't even concentrate to post about it until things cleared up some now. It was truly a debilitating funk, a stronger version of the one I'd almost forgotten after becoming so familiar with it through the fall.

I can only imagine it's similar to broccoli with its awful smell/delightful taste (with cheese) ratio. Otherwise, it is clear the neighbors must not only hate me, but themselves as well... unless, and this thought just occurred to me, their cooking-odor bomb is like a hurricane, in which the eye is quite pleasant, and in fact the only safe place to be, assuming you can move with the storm.

Regardless of their motivations or personal experience, this morning they took it to 11 by burning some or all of the meal, and let me tell you, tear gas has nothing on what was flowing into every open orifice of our apartment. I'm gagging at the mere memory, which even the aforementioned dog food factory can't quite muster at this point, even though it sees the cooking smell's recency and raises it with pervasiveness and familiarity.

Anyway, I'm just counting my blessings that the burning caused an overload even for them, and they apparently stopped the presses and aired out their apartment-- it is the silver lining to the vicious, stinky storm cloud the kids and I wrestled with this morning. I'm hoping my deliberately positive outlook, combined with posting about the subject again, will buy us another stench-bullet cease-fire for a couple of months.