My lunchbreak

The sugar hits.

My son's class had an Easter Egg hunt today and at the last minute I thought I'd surprise him by showing up. It was a beautiful day, much like it has been almost everyday since we've been here: 75 and sunny. The egg hunt was held in a local park, filled with delicious pine trees. The set up was this: There was a field of eggs in front of about 50-60 kids, mostly in the 2-3 year-old range. At some point Miss Stephanie said, "Go!" and the kids flung themselves towards the eggs as fast as they could.

Soen seemed much more concerned that I was going to ditch him, however, so he held my hand and walked to the eggs. The episode was a fairly typical example of how we interact. Soen preferred to pick up one egg at a time and open it to see what was inside. Meanwhile, I'm looking around at the competition (who, frankly weren't all that): "Soen, why don't you grab as many eggs as you can and we can look at them later." "Daddy, what's this one?" "That's bubble gum." "I can eat it?" "Sure, buddy, but let's get some more eggs before they're all gone..." In the end, he got about a dozen eggs, which was perfect. Then it was on to the pizza, where all the mommies (and I) tried to get our kids to eat their pizza and not the candy. Not so surprisingly, the mommies were all entirely successful, whereas I--as you can see by this picture, taken moments after Soen popped the aforementioned gum into his mouth--was not. I did manage to keep him to one piece of gum. Well, and four gummy bunnies. But he did eat two pieces of pizza! Eh? Howbout an E for effort?

That would be the end of my story, except for this: After I left Soen to play with his friends, I was eating at this all-you-can-eat buffet. This place is awesome. Two kinds of BBQ--Western and Eastern Carolina, mac & cheese, collards, turnip greens, mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas, etc. Anyway, I looked up from my meal to see an older woman sitting on the front step of the restaurant with her shoes off, a cane by her side, and her husband standing over her. Moments earlier they were about to get into their car, but now here she was sitting down. Just as I was wondering if I should go out there to help, this older guy got out of his car and approached the husband in a familiar way. He then squatted down and started examining the woman's feet. I figured it was their doctor.

I got up, left a tip, and headed out of the restaurant. Once outside, saw that the woman was now standing up--without her cane (or shoes)--and saying, "Praise Jesus!" And her husband was shaking the older man's hand, saying, "Thank you, sir. Thank you."

Wow. All you can eat BBQ, a tall glass of sweet tea, and a healing for just $8.52. Pretty good deal if you ask me.

Life lesson #3

If you want something done right, do it your own damn self.

(Note Black Dog onesie for extra 'tude!)

This is my enormously beautiful daughter, vegging in front of the TV, holding her own bottle because Daddy wasn't doing it right. I started feeding her and she just grabbed the damn thing out of my hands.

Sadie's skill set so far: Control her amrs and legs (check), roll over (check, but not back again), hold her own bottle (check), chill out in an excersaucer for waayyy longer than Daddy should be letting her (check--don't tell Mommy!), pull Gromit's hair out (check!), and scream bloody murder at the drop of a hat (good God check. We're talking blood-curdling screams, people).

Next up: Hunting and killing her own dinner. Here kitty kitty!

That didn't take long

Zero to redneck in three weeks.

Seems like Soen is adjusting just fine. Here, he is showing off his muscle mass.

What's wrong with that boy?

Soen, in a completely unfaithful re-enactment of Monday night's drama.

After dinner Monday night I took Soen to an awesome playground in Hugh McRae Park. He ran around and had a great time. As we were walking back to the car, I was reflecting on how nice it was here. It was a warm night, the sun was setting, the pine trees smelled nice (although not as nice as the chicken that a Mexican family was grilling on the public grill), and my son was in a good mood, walking behind me. Then I heard an odd sound. I turned around and saw him a few paces behind me, looking worried. Then he opened his mouth and started to choke and wave his hands in ront of his face like he had just eaten something spicey. As there was no food around, I couldn't imagine what he had eaten. I asked him, but he was too scared to talk. he had already swallowed whatever it was, so all I could do was console him and take him to the fountain to drink some water, all the while asking him what he had eaten and wondering if I should be rushing him to the hospital. Then he picked up a piece of bark.

"You ate a piece of bark?" Bark? Who eats bark? It doesn't look even remotely yummy. I could understand if it was pink and blue and fluffy. Or if we had specifically told him, "You can eat anything you want, but whatever you do, never ever eat bark." At least then there would be mystery and temptation. But my son, who loves sushi and caviar but who I can't get to even try hot chocolate or macaroni and cheese, picked up a piece of bark and thought it looked delicious enough to eat. And then I remembered a little while ago when he went up to a tree and tried to take a bite out of it. But I just thought he was being silly or mimicking a movie or something. How was I supposed to know he really wanted to eat some bark?

"You ate a piece of bark?" He said, "yes" in that crying way kids have of admitting to doing something naughty, like breaking a vase or something. He then clung to me and started to whine that it was hurting him. I looked at the bark and tried to figure out if--aside from it being painful to swallow--there was any real problem with eating bark. The piece I was looking at had some small bit of fungus or mold on it. That's probably not good, right? Was it worth going to the hospital? Who ever heard of pine bark poinsoning? It's probably packed with fiber at least, right? Finally, I just decided everything was going to be OK and got him to swallow several gulps of water. After a while he calmed down and I thought this would be a good time to bring up the lesson of the day, "Never eat anything unless you ask Mommy and Daddy first." Although on the ride home, when I asked him what we learned from this experience, he just made a funny face, so I doubt the message got through.

We got home and the first thing he said to Mommy was, "Mommy I ate bark," and then he got all upset again. This of course brought up the inevitable question, "You let my son eat bark?" to which there really is no good answer.

As you can see from this photo, taken today, when I asked him to make the face he made when he ate the bark, the epiode left almost no impression on him and I wonder how long before he decides to eat something else, like concrete. In that case, I might go to the hospital.

Working from home, part one.

The view from my office.

This is Gromit. Note that her mouth is agape. What you're seeing is the "ow" of one of the 47 meows she uttered while I was writing my last post. This is where she hangs out all day, every day, clawing at my window, uttering plantive meow after plaintive meow. This cat has complete freedom to explore the entire Cape Fear region, with all its birds to kill and geckos to chase. But she would rather stay here and whine in the hope that I'll open the window so she can come in and sit on my hands while I type.

Anyone care for a cat?

Mommy's home!

Mommy's been away so long, the kids don't recognize her.

So, the kids survived three days with Daddy. Actually, if you don't count the two days with the nanny, then they really only survived one day with Daddy. But the point is THEY'RE ALIVE! And the house is still standing, too.

(This picture, by the way, is actually the classic "McCormick TV face." My daughter seems to be better at it than Soen. If you look closely you can see drool on her chin.)

Meet Sadie!

The overwhelming response to my "We're moving to NC!" email was, "You had a second kid?"

Guess I kind of dropped the ball on that one. Anyway, this is Sadie, born October 7, 2006. She is currently my favorite child because she slept 13 hours in a row last night. She obviously knew I needed an easy night since Mommy was away. I, however, kept thinking something must be wrong, so I got up four or five times to check on her. She was fine. And she was all smiles this morning and went down for her morning nap with no problems. My other child is currently screaming his head off for the nanny. Sadie: 2, Soen: 0.

Mommy leaves!

Michaela left detailed instructions on how to keep the kids alive and a bottle of medicine for me.

Today was the day I'd been dreading since before the move. Michaela left to spend three days in Winston-Salem to train for her new job, leaving me alone with the kids. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

By "alone" I of course mean alone from 5pm until bedtime (6 for Sadie, 8 for Soen), since the Katherine the nanny is here during work hours. So really, I just had to feed Sadie and put her to bed. And I just put Soen to bed after going over the ground rules for the thousandth time.

Rule #1: You can get out of bed ONCE to pee.

Rule #2: You cannot get out of bed to tell me you're scared because we both know you're not.

Rule #3: No, seriously.

So far, he's obeying the rules, but we'll see.

I expect Sadie to wake up three times tonight, which is normally unusual for her since she been sleeping through the night. But she's begun teething, so that's fun.

We'll see how things are tomorrow. Meanwhile, Sam Smith's Nut Brown Ale is calling to me. After all, it was almost a rough three hours.

The Gecko

Soen wasn't so sure about the whole move until Mommy found a gecko in our backyard.

Before moving down here, I had been trying to build up the place, so he could get excited. "Soen, in North Carolina they have geckos all over the place." I didn't know if this was true, but I had seen two at one of the 22 houses my dad and I visited on our whirlwind house-finding trip in January, so, I gambled that they were everywhere.
"I can bring them home?"
"Well, not inside the house, but you can play with them outside."
"I can touch the geckos?"
"Geckos, yes. Alligators, no."

Since we were moving on March 1st, I didn't know if it would be too cold for geckos. However, Michaela found this one when she was cleaning our porch on the day the movers were arriving with our stuff. Since then we've only seen two geckos in the two weeks we've been here, so we were very lucky to find him. After all, Soen had just put up with a 12-hour car ride, spent two nights in a motel, and had to bide his time while his parents went to closing. So he was feeling a little uneasy about this whole move thing. It wasn't quite what Daddy had promised. So, as I said, we were lucky to find the gecko.

As for the gecko, he atually made it out of his Soen encounter alive, only losing the very tip of his tail. I then convinced Soen to let him go to heal. I'm actually not even sure this is a gecko. Can anyone shed some light? Feel free to comment.

As for this blog: I was going to start at the beginning and do a chronological tale for whoever cares to read it, but I think it'll be better if I just write things as they happen or as I remember them. I promise to keep them short.