Foul Beast

Our filmmakers caught Sadie in her one cute moment of the weekend.

So, like clockwork, two days after starting day care, Sadie caught a bug of some kind. First it was her runny nose. Then... well before this weekend, if I had used the term "shit storm," in this blog, it would have been as a metaphor for an extended tantrum. But now I use it as a literal description of what hit our household this weekend.

On Saturday, wife was at work and I was feeling brave enough to take the kids to the aquarium. Long story short, we never got out of the door. I put Sadie in her neglect-o-saucer so I could get myself and the boy dressed. Then I went to get her dressed. I'll skip all the disgusting details, but let's just say that the neglect-o-saucer and my T-shirt are now in the trash. By the time I got her and her changing table clean I was too exhausted and disgusted to even think about taking her outside, lest someone think she belonged to me. Good thing, too because that wasn't her only "fexplosion." In fact, at one point today I changed her only to have her poop again the moment I got her dressed.

And then there's the river of snot, which wouldn't be so bad if she didn't scream bloody murder and punch me in the face anytime I tried to wipe her nose.

So it was nice to catch her on video when she wasn't being a vile creature and actually being cute. Here she is pushing yet another piece of furniture that's not her new walker, which you see at the end of the clip.

Sadie starts school

Sadie started day care today. We were a little anxious about her first day, because it's rough on kids to be left at a strange place. Sadie, however, forgot Mommy was there the second she saw all the other babies. She had a great day all day, and when I picked her up tonight she was about as happy as I've seen her. Gosh, I hope her nanny doesn't read this.

In other news, I just learned that I can upload videos to this thing. This was filmed a few weeks ago and has nothing to do with anything.

Camping!

Soen failing to understand the spookiness of flashlight face.

I'd been wanting to take Soen camping for about three years. Not sure why I all of a sudden decided to do it this weekend, but it had nothing to do with ditching Mommy, who has a sinus infection, and the teething baby who woke up several times last night. Actually, I did offer to not go, but wife, not knowing that Sadie would pull an all-nighter, told us to get lost.

Anyway, we wound up "camping" in a trailer park, which was a great way to ease the boy into the experience. After we set up our tent we decided to hit the pool. On our way to the pool I realized we had suddenly stumblrd upon "the south." This campground is literally 15 minutes from our house, just off a main beach road that we drive on all the time. But this place was nothing like our North Carolina. It was the North Carolina all my coworkers were teasing me about when I told them I was moving down here. It wasn't quite Deliverence country--after all everyone we met was incredibly friendly. But it was quite a shock. Their accents were quite thick. We were swimming in the pewel. One kid swam up to me and asked me if I could read because he couldn't. He was 15. But once I got over that, like I said, everyone was very friendly. One 10 year old I was talking to wanted to go in the pool with us. He said, "I'm gonna go tell my mama I met a nice man named Scott and that he'll watch me in the pool." Soen had a blast playing with all the kids.

Rather than trying to cook dinner over a campfire, we did the traditional dinner at a chinese restaurant and picked up some marshmallows, which Soen had been looking forward to for days. Back at the campsite we built a fire, roasted two marshmallows, and sat there watching the fire for all of ten minues when Soen was ready to go to bed. It was very cute. Earlier, when we were setting up the tent, Soen was all excited about it. "Daddy! We're going to go in the tent and talk and then sleep and it will be awesome!" So we get settled in the tent--"settled" means he got naked--when he realized he had to poop. So... back on with the clothes and that's when we heard a sound in the woods. Soen asked me what it was. I said I figured it was a cat since we had seen a bunch of them earlier. But when we got outside and shone our flashlight in the direction of the sound, it was a raccoon. This was the highlight of the trip. Actually, the highlight wasn't so much seeing the raccoon as it was that I had been wrong about what the animal was. As he retold the episode to me and everyone we met again and again, the story changed to how I was wrong about it being a cat and he was right about it being a fox. "Raccoon, Soen." "It wasn't a raccoon. It was a raccoon, Daddy?"

Once we got back in the tent he was wired, wanting to jump up and shine the flashlight on every noise we heard. But aside from being excited and talking for at least an hour, he was the perfect little camper. He finally fell asleep around midnight and slept straght through til 6:30. I, unfortunately wokeup at some point and couldn't get back to sleep for about two hours.

The next morning we went to a diner, then to a playground, and then to the beach. Everytime we got back into the car, Soen wanted to hold onto his bag of marshmallows. Today, after his nap, I roasted him another one (using the toaster oven), and you can see the aftermath of that. All told, camping was a big hit and he can't wait for Sadie to get older so we can all go together and he can see another raccoon.

Conquering fear

I successfully fought the urge to say "Be careful" long enough to take this photo.

Just got back from vacation. I'll share stories about that later, but I thought I'd talk about this photo, which was taken Saturday night, after we got back from our trip. One of the things I've notice about children--or at least Soen--is that they won't do anything until they're damn ready to. I don't know how many times I've tried to get Soen to try something new and had him flatly refuse it, only to try it later on his own terms and find the new experience thrilling. And saying, "See? I told you it would be cool. I've been trying to tell you how cool this is for months now. For the love of god will you ever listen to me?" doesn't really help the cause.

But when he's ready, he's ready and he'll launch himself at it all the way. The past few weeks have been especially adventurous for him. He started swimming without his life preserver (or "boat coat") and then he put his head underwater for the first time. Then he started swimming underwater--first holding his nose, then not--and then jumping into the deep end and swimming to me (at my prompting, not on his own, so relax yourselves). During vacation he actually let me carry him into the ocean, past the crashing waves, out to where he could float (with his boat coat) and rolling in the waves. This was something I'd tried to get him to do literally for months now. All of this and more in just two weeks.

The flip side of this is me having to conquer my own fears of having a suddenly fearless son, who likes to try new things. I find myself saying "be careful" so often I sound like Rain Man. Check out Exhibit A, this photo, taken as my son decided that he could climb to the very top of our community jungle gym. It's hard to tell from the photo, but he's standing on this ledge at the top of a round pole about eight feet off the ground. The ledge was clearly designed by someone who wanted kids to have just enough room to stand on but not enough room for their parents to like it. I was watching Soen climb this thing while I was on the phone with my dad, which was good because it gave me a break from saying "be careful." But soon, Soen was going higher than I was comfortable with, so I told my father as calmly as I could that I had to go "pay attention to Soen." What I wanted to say was, "My son is about to plummet to his death. Do you know of any good excuses I can use to explain this to my wife?"

Anyway, I was rather proud of myself for not only resisting the urge to say "be careful" but for encouraging him to pose for this photo. (He's showing off his muscles.) Luckily, his desire to see the photo I took got him down faster than if I had asked him to. So now I know what to do next time he's off doing something scary: Whip out the camera.

Latest and Greatest

Miss Priss is currently teething and Master Soen had a 20 minute crying session at bedtime, so..like any good Mommy I sat down with the pictures and a glass of wine to remind myself why I love the little monsters. Enjoy.

Sadie's favorite game

When in doubt, give her a bag of poker chips.

Sadie loves taking things out of other things. When wife puts her purse on the floor, Sadie's there three seconds later, emptying it of its contents. It's kind of like when we used to have indoor cats... you put a plate of food down, turn your back for an instant (like if you have to sneeze), and when you turn back to your food it's disappearing down Gromit's gullet.

Luckily, after having learned from my son, I now know to use Sadie's desires to my advantage. So, if the nanny has to leave early and I still have half an hour of work to do (not that that's ever happened), I simply throw a bag of poker chips on the floor. Sadie comes trucking over, takes them out one by one, and moves on to the next thing to destroy, which is uslly my computer. So I jump up, refill the poker bag, and... just like hitting a reset button, Sadie returns to empty it.

Yes, I give my daughter a plastic bag to play with, filled with small, choke-able items.
Oh, like you're perfect.

New Camera

The new camera may be so good you can see the beads of sweat rolling off the children's cheeks. It's hot here in NC. Thank goodness for the beach...and the pool...and air conditioning.