Fart Jokes

As the girls enjoyed their bath tonight,* Julia let rip a rather impressive fart. Genevieve immediately started laughing uproariously, shrieking, “Dat funny! Dat wiwwy funny, Oo-ia!” When Julia protested – “it was an accident, not funny!” – Genevieve only laughed harder, genuinely amused, and then picked up a little bath toy, held it to her eye, and said, “I taka pic-shoora you! Dat so funny! I taka pic-shoora you!”

My daughter: future inventor of a camera to take pictures of farts.

* In keeping with my household’s musing over childhood passages, I fear that the shared bath will soon end, since the two girls hardly fit in the tub together.

Taking a Licking

The other night, the girls were playing “office,” which entailed “writing lists” on office paper, then folding the paper up and sticking it into two envelopes. Proclaiming that she was “busy, busy, busy!”, Vivi put her “list” – which was actually many, many rows of careful pink-ink wiggles – into her envelope, then shouted happily, “Time to yick it!” I turned to see if she actually knew how to lick an envelope flap, and then cracked up when I saw that she didn’t. Instead, she enthusiastically licked the all four edges of the envelope, then set the damp thing down on the table. “I all done!”

Tea Party

Wednesday night, I played “school” with the girls. As the teacher, I was able to choose each activity, so I combined snacktime with art class by having the girls sketch our tea party. (I was running a high-class school, you know.) Though Vivi was frustrated that she couldn’t draw our teapot, Julia was amazed and intrigued by the idea of drawing what she saw in front of her. (With few exceptions, all of her considerable drawing to date has been from imagination.) Here’s her take on our tea party. Note the steam from the cup and teapot, and the slanted top of the slice of chocolate cake. Rather than drawing the three of us, she drew just one girl. “She’s about five. Or seven.”
Tea Party

Upside of Swinter*

Friday, I biked to work on ice-and-snow-free roads for the first time since before Christmas. Today, I went absolutely nuts and rode home without first donning my waterproof/windproof nylon pants. The Fates missed a chance to get me good, failing to soak my clothes by forcing me to ride through a three-inch mud puddle and soaking. You suck, Fates! Now please send some snow. Any time now.

*”Swinter” was coined today (as far as I know) by a staffer at Carleton. It’s apt.

Winter? I Hardly Knew ‘Er

I’m sad to see all the snow vanish in one 36-hour span of warmth, wind, and rain. Monday morning, our backyard was almost covered in snow – to be sure, a thin layer, worn through in a few spots, but still more present than not. By dusk tonight, only a narrow strip of snow remained, and it’s likely to disappear tonight if this rain keeps up. Thus ends the ski season – or at least this part of it. I hope there’s a second winter coming, and soon, but the forecast doesn’t give me much hope.

February 10-14 Forecast
February 10-14 Forecast

Honestly, I’m not asking for much here: just some reasonable weather for February (and March!) in Minnesota – enough snow for a little more skiing, to make another snowman with the girls, maybe do a bit of sledding. Is that too much to ask?

Senior Year of High School

Another repurposed Facebook “meme.”

IN YOUR SENIOR YEAR DID YOU…
1. Did you date someone from your school?
Not really.

2. Did you marry someone from your high school?
No.

3. Did you car pool to school?
I walked to school.

4. What kind of car did you have?
When I needed a car, I borrowed by one from my parents – either a brown Ford Escort station wagon or a Ford Taurus.

5. What kind of car do you have now?
A silver Saturn VUE, but I ride my bike to work.

6. It’s Friday night…where are you?
At home, probably. If the stars were aligned just right, I worked out, then crashed with the laptop.

7. It’s Friday night…where were you then?
Driving around the Houghton-Hancock (MIchigan) metroplex, periodically stopping for burgers or pizza. We would have driven further and longer if we’d known about the power of coffee.

8. What kind of job did you have?
I worked at the local grocery store – bagging groceries, stocking shelves, running a register.

9. What kind of job do you do now?
I’m a grantwriter at a small liberal arts college.

10. Were you a party animal?
The opposite.

11. Were you considered a flirt?
Girls frightened me.

12. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
None of them.

13. Were you a nerd?
I suppose so, but I didn’t like math or science and we didn’t have a decent computer lab, so it was pretty much quiz bowl. Upper Peninsula champions, 1991!

14. Did you get suspended or expelled?
No.

15. Can you sing the fight song?
I don’t even know if my high school had a fight song.

16. Who was/were your favorite teacher(s)?
My favorite was my current events teacher, who took a lot of time to help me become a better writer. I also like my biology and French teachers a lot. The most important “teacher” I had, though, was the coach of my cross-country and track teams, who probably did more to reshape my life than any adult except my parents and, later, my wife.

17. Where did you sit during lunch?
In a chair, I suppose. I don’t really remember. We did go to McDonalds a lot for lunch, if someone had a car.

18. What was your school’s full name?
Hancock Central High School.

19. When did you graduate?
1991

20. What was your school mascot?
A bulldog.

21. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
Not unless I was being paid a ridiculously large sum of American dollars. Eight figures at least.

22. Did you have fun at prom?
I didn’t go to prom.

23. Do you still talk to the person you went to prom with?

24. Are you planning on going to your next reunion?
Probably not. My hometown is far away, literally and figuratively.

25. Do you still talk to people from school?
A few, though not enough.

26. School Colors?
red and yellow

27. What celebrities came from your high school?
None, as far as I know. The photographer Edward Steichen was from my hometown, but never attended my high school.

28. Do you have any regrets from High School?
Sure. I wish, paradoxically, that I’d been more serious (taking some hard science and math, just to see if I could have succeeded) and that I’d been much less serious (getting less wrapped up in the drama). Then again, there’s a reason it’s called “growing up.”

Happy Birthday!

Today is Shannon’s 3xth birthday. Happy birthday, babe! I hope her day was as good as she looked.

True to the personality that’s developed over the previous three-plus decades, Shannon staged her own brunch party, making a frittata, scones, and muffins and doing all the considerable setup. The only thing I had to do was run to the store for a few miscellaneous items, including the all-important chocolate cake, which the girls painstakingly chose from the fridge at Cub.

My “presents” to the birthday girl were a dress she already bought at Target and taking care of the girls while she went out with friends to a movie yesterday. I don’t wear that “Big $pender” tshirt around for nothing.

Come to think of it, I also supervised the girls’ fabrication of birthday cards, a task which they dispatched with great excitement and aplomb yesterday evening. This morning, after Shannon opened the cards from our brunch guests, I was struck by the girls’ flawless sense of style: clearly, pink and brown are the fashionable card colors this season.
Shannon's Birthday Cards

Here’s the outside of the card Julia made:
Shannon's Birthday Card from Julia (exterior)

and here’s the inside, including a drawing of a birthday party (orange table, blue frosted cake, balloons) and some taped-down confetti:
Shannon's Birthday Card from Julia (interior)

Here’s how Vivi decorated her card. Click here for explanatory notes.
Shannon's Birthday Card from Genevieve

I dunno about you, but I’ll say my birthday was a success if it’s half a heartfelt as this one.

Rolling Up the Sleeves

Remember the silly kerfuffle a few days ago when Andy Card, W’s chief of staff, insinuated, on the basis of the already-famous photo of a jacketless Obama working at the Oval Office desk, that our president probably didn’t have the right amount of respect for the presidency?

It was stupid for Card to say in the first place, but it’s all the more stupid now, when one can see – thanks to some research by our friends at the Huffington Post – several other jacketless presidents at the same damn desk, including

St. Ronald

Jacketless Reagan
Jacketless Reagan

And the Worst President Ever, right after his first inauguration, chilling with Harriet Miers.

Bush: No Jacket Required
Bush: No Jacket Required

(Link to the source via the great Apsies microblog.)

Nigh-Nigh Beasts

When I put Vivi to bed tonight, she assured me that she would go to sleep “wif no cry-cry! Nigh-nigh, Daddee! Nigh-nigh!” I went out to check my email and wait for the semi-inevitable cry-crys, and sure enough, a few minutes later, I heard some noises that did not suggest sleep. I went over to listen at the door, but she wasn’t yelling – only singing a song that went, “Something something something Ohhhhh-bama! Obama! Obama! Something somethiiiiiiing OBAMA!”

I went back to the computer, hoping for this was some sort of weird lullaby. Inevitably, the singing soon turned to calling. “Daddy! Come IN! Daddy!” I went in right away, hoping to arrest a slide into full-on screaming and crying. “What’s wrong, honey?”

She half-sat up and said, “Daddy? What’s that? I see a ghost! On Oo-lia’s bed!’ I looked over at Julia’s empty bed, and sure enough, the turned-back white comforter did look a little bit scary. “Oh, no, honey, that’s just Julia’s blankets. Here, I’ll straighten them out.”

As I pulled them back flat, Vivi asked in a low, trepidatious voice, “Daddy, a monster coming?”

“No, honey, there are no monsters coming. Monsters don’t exist.”

“Beasts?”

“No, there’s no such thing as beasts, either. They’re just pretend, in stories. Like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Just make believe.”

She sat up higher and looked right at me. “But I YIKE Snow White. And Seeping Beauty! I yike them!”

“Oh, I know, honey. I like them, too. But they’re just in stories, like the Beast or a ghost. Not real.”

“Not re-ah?”

“No, they’re not real. We like them, but they’re not real. No ghosts or beasts.”

She laid back down. “O-hay. No beasts. Nigh-nigh, Daddee. Nigh-nigh.”

It’s kinda sad when kids are scared of things like “beasts,” but on the other hand, it’s awfully cute, too.

Skipping CD

Singing in the tub just now, Julia asked me to change her channel to a different kind of music. I click-clicked her nose over to the Christmas music channel, but instead of singing a carol straight through, she sang, “Angels we haaaaaave …  …  …  … heard on highhhhhhhh.” I asked, “Why are you singing like that?” She looked up at me: “The CD is skipping.”

Good Will

I’m reminded right now that the girls are basically, and thoroughly, good kids. For example, most evenings (the exceptions being the evenings when they’re anti-good), they get a little treat for dessert – Julia gets a gumdrop and Vivi gets two gummy fruit “snacks.” I realized tonight that the girls never take more than their allotments, even though I hand them their respective bags, making it easy to scarf up a few extras.

And tonight, both girls have been especially solicitous of each other. Vivi groaned horribly when I put some cream on her diaper rash, and instantly Julia ran over, knelt down to kiss her on the head, and said, “It’s okay, sister. It’ll feel better soon. Don’t worry.” A few minutes later, Julia stumbled over a stray toy and fell down. Vivi immediately ran over and asked, “Oo-eah? Oo-eah is okay?” Kisses and hugs all around.

Whiplash

My late afternoon:
4:07 – shut down my PC at work
4:10 – climbed into my biking clothes for the ride home (sunny, but 4°F/-1°F with the wind)
4:17 – nearly forced to ride into some scary ice ruts when a minivan didn’t give me enough space on the only uphill stretch of my ride
4:20 – parked bike in the garage, back home
4:22 – took off my cycling clothes, unpleasantly feeling both chilly and sweaty
4:24 – went upstairs to see what the girls were doing
4:25 – stared at Vivi as she screamed, “No! No! Go back to work! I don’t yike you! I don’t yike you! Go back to work!”
4:29 – read a kid’s magazine with Julia on my lap while Vivi calmed down in the other room

I know they sell medicine for this kind of parenting whiplash, but sadly, we’re outta beer.