'Sup, G?

Soen flashes his gang sign.

Wife's away for another training session. Luckily for me, my parents are in town, and Soen is very happy to have his "Papa" and "DeeDee" here.

Most memorable quote from last night: We were having dinner and Soen (naked) was standing on his chair, talking very excitedly about bugs or something and jumping up and down, which prompted my mom to say, "Soen don't put your penis in your dinner."

I'm just glad he didn't say, "Mommy and Daddy let me."

Gromit

Hello?

Not much to report. I just thought this was funny. Actually, she's been much better lately. She no longer meows at my window all day.

Just part of the day.

Bugs!

Soen displays his new pet cockroach, Eddie (R.I.P.).

This was a cockroach Soen found on our porch. It endured the love of my son for a good twenty minutes. Then we "let it go heal." Before moving here, I had imagined we'd be overrun by bugs. This was the South, after all, and I had heard stories. So, not being a bug fan, I mentally prepared myself for the onslaught. So far, though, (forgetting the termites) we've only found one cockroach in the house, and he was in my son's shoe. Of course, my son discovered that only after he put the shoe on and then I had to calm my wife down from calling the exterminators. (Me, of all people saying "don't call the expterminators!") The most annoying bugs we've come across are the no see-ums. They're like gnats except they also bite. ("Teeth with wings" is how one golfer described them to me.) Thankfully we seem to be moving past their peak season as I haven't been bitten in almost two weeks. Hopefully, this will be my last report on bugs. Mostly I just had this cool photo and wanted to write about it.

P.S. "Eddie" was a name I suggested to Soen because I'd thought it'd be funny for the blog. He said, "No, I call him cockroach." Later, though, he came around to Eddie, realizing the humor value, I'm sure.

The note from school

Oh Soen. Look how disappointed your sister is.

Soen came home with his first note from school. It said he doesn't listen to his teachers. Imagine our surprise. To think he made it a whole month! So we had a talkin' with him. Told him if he misbehaves again... NO TV! Today he was an angel.

One thing I like about his school: His teachers have them say "Yes ma'am" when they're being addressed. Although Soen says "Yes man," but that's close enough in my book. I've always liked how southerners say "ma'am" and "sir," so we're trying to encourage that behaviour.

Cheerios

Although she admired the texture and bouquet, she ultimately decided Cheerios were simply too gauche.

So my wife was just perusing the blog and she said, "Boy, there sure are a lot of pictures of Soen. Why don't you ever write about your daughter?" To which I replied, "Well Soen's the one who does all the interesting stuff." This, I now know--along with "You're having more ice cream?"-- is one of those things you don't say to your wife.

And contrary to my assertion that Sadie "does the same crap everyday," my daughter decided to try Cheerios for the first time. We'd tried to get her to try them before but for some reason, Cheerios always proved to be the one thing she wouldn't put in her mouth. Today, however, she decided to try them; and as is evinced by this action photo taken shortly thereafter... she was not that impressed. So much for trying new things.

In tomorrow's blog: Soen's gets into trouble at school!

Cool Dept.

Guess what Soen got in the mail from his Aunt Carol?

He couldn't wait to try them out in the bath tub. He was happy, although Mommy wasn't too thrilled about him holding his head underwater. I, however, was taken by the pleasing lack of noise. Thanks Aunt Carol!

Colletors alert! This is a rare photo of Soen wearing clothes. Est. value: $950.

Cute Warning

Spiderman senses danger!

I don't want this to be a cute forum but I thought this was funny enough to warrant telling.

So, my son and I have this daily wrestling routine, where we play different roles. Usually he is a dinosaur or Spiderman and I'm either a robot (if he wants to wrestle me) or a mommy dinosaur (if he wants to be snuggled like a baby).

Yesterday, he was Spiderman and I was a robot and we wrestled until he got tired of beating me up. Then he decided that he was still Spiderman but now I was Batman, which basically meant we would stand up, yell at an invisible bad guy, and then fall backwards on the bed as though we got knocked over.

Lately, he's started to be more generous with telling us he loves us. Well, towards Michaela, anyway. When I say, "What about me?" he tells me, "No, Daddy, you love Sadie."

So, there we were playing as Batman and Spiderman for a few minutes and all of a sudden he turns to me and says, "I love you, Batman." And, although I couldn't help but think of the Ambiguously Gay Duo on Saturday Night Live, I figured I'd take what I can get. "Right back at ya, Spiderman." And then we fought some more until he banged his nose on my head and cried.

Naked boy

You leave the boy alone with the relatives for one minute...

So, wife's Aunt Janet and Uncle Matt came for a very pleasant visit with their two kids (Victoria and Jackson) and their chiuaua, Lola. Soen was in seventh heaven and he followed Jackson (who's 8) around and around and around until poor Jackson (who's 8) had had enough. Luckily, Lola was available to amuse the boy. This photo was taken during Soen's third bath of the day. Which brings me to the tale of my son, the naked boy.

Anyone watch Arrested Development? (If not, rent it today!) Anyway, there's this character who calls him self a never-nude, because he never wants to be naked. Well, my son doesn't have that problem. In fact, we can't keep clothes on him. This doesn't really bother us so much until we have people come to the house. Not family, because family is family. But people like my homophobic termite guy, who refers to Soen as "the streaker." Or the pizza delivery guy. Or the cable guy. Or the nanny. Frankly it doesn't really bother me, but it's always this awkward moment and it's kind of funny to see how various people react. Because Soen's only three, people usually laugh. But sometimes, like with the pizza guy, they look away and you can tell they're just counting the seconds until they can run away.

I can't imagine what my neighbors think, because he runs around our back yard, naked, all day long, chasing after bugs and geckos. Sometime, he runs around our front yard naked. One of the first nights we were here, he was so excited about the house and his enormous room, he ran--naked--out of our garage, and around and around our driveway, squealing with delight. It was about the cutest thing I'd ever seen. And then I looked around to see if anyone was watching.

Totally unrelated: I found out those geckos aren't really geckos. They're Carolina Anoles. So, no deal on my car insurance, but they do change colors (dark brown to bright green), just like a chameleon.

Termites! (part deux)

Come on dad, get back to the blog.

Sorry it's been a week since my last post. I figure you've all given up on me. But in case you haven't, here's our update. The house is still standing. The termite guys came out last Friday and sprayed and pumped 125 gallons of pesticide all over the house. Not really a pleasant thought, especially when you have two kids, one of whom runs naked all over the yard (which I'll talk about next time). But the main termite guy told me that unless they took the Nestea Plunge in the chemicals, they'd be fine. All the same, we avoided going outside for a few days. I won't bore you with all the details but this house has an unusual construction confounding the traditional termite treatment, and causing the termite guys to go to the State Inspectors to figure out how to best deal with it. Great.

As a side note, I bumped into one of the termite guys at that park where Soen ate the bark. We were talking about this and that. I mentioned what a great park this was and he agreed. Then he said, "Just don't go over there," pointing over yonder. "That's where all the homos go."

For some reason, I was reminded of this great ad for the Village Voice that pictured these two old ladies talking to each other, and in the bubble over the one lady's head it said, "Isn't it nice the Jews and Homosexuals have a newspaper just for them?" And I almost said, "How nice that they have a place of their own," but knowing this guy still had work to do on my house, I refrained.

Termites!

Lovely, ain't it?

Wife spotted hundreds of these guys pouring out from the foundation of our house into our screened-in porch. Actually, they were the ones with wings (the "swarmers"), which are even more gross. Understandably, she freaked out and started to sweep them off the porch. Meanwhile Soen, who thought the bugs were cool, was trying to get her to stop: "No Mommy! They're just bugs!"

So now we're getting the house treated, which is actually quite a pain in the arse, since they have to drill into our patio and elsewhere. Hopefully the treatment won't cause too much damage to the house. The joys of home-ownership, right?

Why we moved to NC, part one

Reason #1: Going to the beach in March.
This post is really just to brag to you Yanks that we went to the beach last weekend. The water was a little too chilly for me (62 degrees), but Sadie liked it. That's all.