Memorial Day plus some bonus material

Sorry again for the delay but here’s the last blog post for Memorial Day weekend with some bonus material thrown in. 

Monday

Man, it’s the middle of the work week and I don’t feel too inspired anymore.  This will be a bit abbreviated methinks.

6:30am – Wake up

8:20am – Jennifer gets Trevor down for a nap.  Yay Jennifer!

8:30am – Jennifer takes Graham shopping.  Used to be Graham would always want to go out with us wherever we were going but not so much anymore.  He proclaims that he wants to stay and play with his trucks.  We explain to him that shopping with Mommy will be fun and great Graham-Mommy time.

8:31am – I start working on cleaning up the kitchen and doing laundry. 

9:45am – Still working on laundry and the kitchen.  There’s more work of both with kids in the house.  Wondering how old Graham will be before he is physically capable and can be compelled to help out, eh.

9:50am – Oh good, Jennifer and Graham are back, I can stop now.

10:00am – Trevor’s up.

10:15am – I take Graham, Trevor and Maisy for a brief walk.  It’s actually a momentous occasion because, for the first time, it will be done with a wagon.  My cousin Brian and his wife Crystal generously let us borrow their old double stroller (front-to-back, not side-to-side) for taking the kids on walks.  Graham will be sitting facing backward toward Trevor.  Jennifer puts a quilt down for Trevor’s feet.

10:16am – Graham takes the quilt and starts covering Trevor with it.

10:17am – I tell Graham that if he covers Trevor’s face again with the quilt we’re turning around and going back home.

10:25am – This is more difficult than pushing the stroller.  More on that in a minute.

10:40am – Meet some neighbors two streets over with a five year-old girl and a three year-old boy a month older than Graham.  One of my goals for these walks is to find other kids, particularly boys Graham and Trevor’s ages.  It’s always a bit of a dance when you walk by someone’s house, see kids outside and try to figure out whether the parents want to talk to you or not.  Many people feel the same way about meeting others with kids and some people are more private.  I always say ‘hi’ and then try to gauge by body language whether they’re interested in chatting.  I’ll err on continuing to walk but knowing that if I see them on a later walk I’ll throw caution to the wind and stop and chat.  Anyway, Maisy Insaisy solved this one as the girl asked if she could pet her.  Excellent work, Maisy.  And the mother is a stay-at-home mom to boot!

10:55am – Am back at the house.  Trevor did great and Graham genuinely enjoyed having him as a riding partner.  Let’s compare the wagon vs. the stroller though:

Ease of Movement –It’s much easier to push the stroller and use Maisy to help pull it by strategically placing the leash so that it is partially on top of the stroller than to have to pull the wagon and avoid being pulled off your feet by Maisy.  It’s like working out on one of those machines that you sit down in, raise your arms at a 90 degree angle and then bring them in and out laterally except that the right arm is moving at a different speed and with different weight with the left.  Advantage: Stroller. 

Child Enjoyment – Graham and Trevor can see each other and interact with each other in the wagon.  Not so in the stroller where Graham has to turn around painfully to see Trevor and Trevor can kick Graham.  Advantage: Wagon.

Maneuverability – Turning and keeping the stroller in a straight line with one hand is like trying to run a Greyhound Bus through the Indy 500.  The wagon can turn using all four wheels but is still a million times more controllable than the shopping carts at Ikea.  Advantage: Wagon.

Slumber Vehicle – The double stroller allows for both of its occupants to go to sleep; Trevor can even be placed in it almost totally on his back.  If they both fell asleep in the wagon I’d be worried about their necks big time, though at least they’re buckled in.  Advantage: Stroller.

Space for Accessories – Lately I’ve been taking binoculars, my bird identification book and the tube of sunscreen along.  The double stroller has a huge pouch underneath that is big enough to store a mini-fridge.  The wagon has four cup holders but not much else.  Advantage: Stroller.

Stylishness – The double stroller screams ergonomical and its dark blue color is fairly non-descript though at least not bugly.  The wagon, although made of plastic, is reminiscent of the old red metal Radio Flyer wagons we grew up in.  And it has a canopy that covers the whole thing.  Advantage: Wagon.

Off-Road Capability – Not sure on this.  There’s a route in the neighborhood that requires us to cross a field and go along a creek path for 50 yards but I haven’t tried it in a while.  The wagon would be easier to maneuver and presumably has a lower center of gravity but pulling it might take more muscle.  Pushing the double stroller would be even tougher and I’d figure would be more prone to tipping.  Advantage: Toss-up

Um, that makes it a 3-3 tie.  Well, too bad for the stroller because Graham is tall enough that his feet dangle over the footrest in it.  Plus the wagon is cuter.  Bring on the wagon!

11:05am – Start to work on lunch with the agreement that Jennifer watches the kiddos.  Lunch will be grilling hamburgers and hot dogs, the latter specifically requested by the Red-Haired One.  I used to smoke pork butts and the occasional brisket but with kids that takes wayyyy too much effort.  The time commitment is much greater since you have to marinade the meat the night before and then run a fire for 8-12 hours during the day.  And, because smoking is sometimes so touchy, your meat doesn’t always turn out tasting super duper awesome like it should (though, when you do everything right, it tastes out-of-this-world).  So grilling is much safer.  It takes an hour tops, even though I use wood, and almost always comes out tasting awesome.  So bring on the grill!

12:45pm – Lunch is finally on as the fire burned out too fast initially while I was watching Trevor for a bit.  Thus I had to throw more log pieces on, threw too many and had to wait 15 minutes for it to die down sufficiently to grill on without scorching the meat.  But it tastes awesome!  Graham even has two pieces of burger before I take it inside and asks for more.

12:50pm – Graham doesn’t touch his hamburger but eats half his hot dog.

1:30pm – We pumped up the new little inflatable pool for summer, adorned with Cars characters and it’s time to play in it.  Who does Graham want to join him?  Why me of course.  I strap on my Speedo (can’t find my regular swimsuit) and hop in.  Nothing quite like a grown man in a Speedo playing in a kiddie pool.  But man on a hot day sitting in the kiddie pool feels quite relaxing, even when your son is squirting you and the dog with a squirt gun.  And no, Maisy was not in the pool. 

 

OK, it’s Saturday night and I don’t remember too much else from Monday.  Yeah, sorry, this whole parenting thing means that when you put your three year-old down for bed by 8, clean the kitchen for 30 minutes, work in the yard for 30 minutes and then have some unwinding time before hitting the blog only to find that your eight-month old has woken up and won’t go back to sleep, well, the blog takes a backseat.  But hey, it’s Saturday night and what better time to write a blog post than Saturday night, right, at least after the kids have gone to bed.  Actually, that’s another story.  Jennifer and I went out to eat a dinner by ourselves for the FIRST TIME IN THREE YEARS!!!!!!  THREE…YEARS!!!!  I couldn’t believe it.  We had had people watch Graham or Graham and Trevor before while we did things like go to the movies, shop or eat lunch but it had been that long since someone had actually had our kid or kids and put them to bed.  Wow.  Not that people hadn’t offered or that we were afraid of asking; it’s just that it never really crossed our minds.  We’ve never really been movie-goers and we’re definitely not out-late types.  As far as eating dinner out, we’re happy to eat dinner with the kids and have downtime to ourselves after they go to bed.

So the babysitters tonight were Jennifer’s parents, visiting from Dallas.  We left around 5:30 and had a nice dinner at Z Tejas which, at least to us, was surprisingly uncrowded.  But again, we’re early birds so perhaps it really doesn’t get jumping until later.  We were happy to have a booth to ourselves, order an appetizer and have a nice long dinner.  I don’t recall Jennifer checking her cell phone until perhaps after we’d left and were driving down to, guess where, Babies ‘R Us.  It brought to mind the time we left a two month-old Graham with Aunt Becky, Uncle Pat, Cousin Jill and my dad and stepmom while we ate out and went to Target to buy diapers.  We needed to get Graham a harness booster seat (I’m still not sure on the terminology) so we could give Trevor his carseat.  Once we’d finished, Jennifer sent a text to her parents asking for an update.  It was a bad sign that we hadn’t heard anything because by then at least Trevor should have been asleep.  While we were driving over to Whole Foods, she quickly got a return text.  Here’s how the conversation went:

Jennifer Text:

Father-in-Law Text:

Jennifer (to me): Uh oh.  Trevor’s still awake.  (begins texting back)

Me:  Just call them. 

Jennifer: Forget Whole Foods.  Let’s go.

After arriving home, Jennifer promptly got Trevor to go to sleep.  Separation anxiety?  Maybe but I’ve been able to put him to sleep plenty of times though only for naps.  At least Graham was asleep. 

So it figures our night out would be cut short.  Oh well.

Another note: Graham is now of the age where you can’t say things in front of him. 

Graham has been taught that whenever you do something bad, you’ve made a bad choice.  Well, even though (to our knowledge) he’s never seen the cartoon or had a book read to him, he is familiar with Spider-Man.  So one time he was describing a Spider-Man story to Jennifer.  It started like this:

Graham:  Mommy, there was the bad gu-…the guy who made bad choices.

…now that we think about it, Jennifer’s parents also babysat for us a year and a half ago so we could attend the company Christmas party though that still doesn’t count as a dinner by ourselves. 

And I think that’s it for now.  Thanks for reading!

 

 

.

Still working on it…

…sorry everybody, as the Sister Hazel song states, life got in the way.  I’m writing everything up tonight along with some bonus non-Memorial Day weekend material and will have it posted tomorrow.  I could do it tonight but Jennifer (my editor) has already gone to bed, ha!

 

Sunday

6:10am – Kids are up. 

7:00am – We have a calmer morning this morning as we don’t have to be on the road until 9.  Today is the day of my and Graham’s second annual Lockhart Barbecue Run, done during the spring so as to be able to drive country backroads and see the wildflowers too.  Last year he and I went solo, meeting up with an old friend but this year Jennifer and Trevi Trevs are coming along.  As you know, with Trevor’s sleep issues we may have some problems.  We’re willing to chance it.  The key thing is that, even if he cries, we agree not to get stressed out about it though we’ll do what we can to calm him.

9:00am – And for the second day in a row we leave on time!  Awesome!

9:25am – Trevor is asleep. 

9:35am – Drive past the Circuit of the Americas for the first time.  Man that place is big and out-of-place but still looks kind of classy.  We’re more excited to see the Elroy gas station right next to it that John Kelso wrote about a few years ago.  The money line (from the owner): “Guess I better clean the bathrooms.”

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/f1-in-elroy-what-were-the-odds-on-that/nRwfP/

9:50am – Graham is now asking if we’re in Jeddo yet.  Yep, we’re going to Jeddo, kind of as a joke for my dad.  Driving to my grandparents’ farm in Rockne from Houston so many times over the years, we’d always drive past the sign pointing the way to Jeddo but never going.  Realizing it wasn’t too far away from Lockhart and always in the mood for excuses to drive to out-of-the-way places in Texas, I had found my way of really making the drive special.  I haven’t broken it to Graham that there’s probably not much to Jeddo.

10:25am – Trevor’s up.  An hour for him in the car is pretty darn good so we’re happy.

10:30am – And we’re in Jeddo!  Well, the sign is there but we don’t see anything else.  Basically, if the official road sign for your town has no population on it, you’re pretty small.  Graham and I have Jennifer take our photo in front of the sign for proof.  We then visit the only three residents we can see, three cows in a field of yellow flowers.  Graham gets some cuts on his leg after taking a tumble running to see them and then starts crying because I wouldn’t let him get closer than 10 feet of the fence due to the large number of weeds (and the thought of him getting chiggers or worse). 

10:40am – Graham is still crying about those darn cows.  He’s not quite a drama king or anything but he does keep us on our toes from time-to-time. 

11:05am – And we’re at Smitty’s in Lockhart!  Last year Graham ate almost no meat and I expect this year to be no different.  No matter because I can eat all I want.  Actually, it’s funny how I’m not as much in favor of these joints from their lack of good options; you can get all the meat you want and it’s awesome but your other foods are cheap white bread, potato salad, coleslaw and beans.  I love Smitty’s sausage, brisket and atmosphere though so it’s the place to go for us (since Jennifer doesn’t care one way or the other). 

11:10am – Graham is scared of the fire that Smitty’s has right by the front entrance for feeding the smokers.  Maybe he’s going to grow up to be a Fire Marshal.  Jennifer takes Trevor and finds a seat for us inside.  I have to pay while holding Graham in my arms to make sure he doesn’t run after her.  He is content to let me hold him, thankfully not bothering to struggle. 

11:15am – We’re at the table and Graham is happy to gorge on his white bread.  Jennifer takes care of Trevor and we’re good.  The only thing is that Graham is staring at the little girl his age at the next table.  He has a thing for following little girls around sometimes which is sometimes funny and sometimes not.  I can’t see her reaction but it’s at least keeping him in his seat.

11:50am – Time to go.  A nice little lunch with plenty of leftovers. 

12:00pm – Trevor is awake but we expect Graham to go to sleep sometime soon.

12:20pm – No dice.  Graham is still wide awake and Mommy is in the back with both of them. 

1:00pm – Home again.  Maisy the Needy Pooch is overly happy to see us.  Love that dog.

1:05pm – Trevor gets a feeding and then goes down for a nap.

1:10pm – Nevermind, he’s still awake. 

1:12pm – Jennifer tries to put him down for a nap again.

1:20pm – Nope.

1:25pm – I go in to try my hand at it.  I take a 4 oz bottle of formula to tank him up with in case he’s not going down because he’s hungry and my stash of G.I. Joe comic books from the 1980s.  I figure as long as I’m going to be sitting in there reading to a baby who doesn’t understand a word I’m saying, might as well get something out of it.  You can only take ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and ‘Maisy’s Fire Truck’ so many times.  And now that, in my adulthood, I am the proud owner of all G.I. Joe comic books from issues 1-144 and all the Special Missions, I have some important reading to catch up on.  Yo Joe! 

1:35pm – He’s extremely tired so after finishing issue #17 I stuffed him in bed.  I closed the door, he cried for 30 seconds and then was quiet.  Success! 

2:30pm – Graham wanted to watch a movie and, well, he wanted to watch with me.  He watches TV now and again including Elmo’s World, Wild Kratts and Martha the Talking Dog (all PBS shows as we don’t have cable and network TV doesn’t really show cartoons anymore).  We have stocked up on old VHS tapes from Half Price Books including many of the old Disney clamshell movies we grew up with but never owned.  We both came from families that taped movies off of network television.  Wow, those days sure are gone.

Anyway, Graham has a nice little library to pick from or, at least he would if he weren’t so easily scared.  He still hasn’t forgiven me for showing him My Neighbor Totoro over a year ago; the first viewing of the sleeping Totoro still bugs him.  Needless to say, we didn’t finish that movie.  In fact, the Totoro stuffed animal that I brought him back from Japan: now in my office! 

So what can we show him?  Cinderella for one though I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post that he cried when the mice were turned into horses.  There’s Gus, the 70s Disney movie with Don Knotts about the field goal-kicking mule and still the best sports movie I’ve ever watched.  I showed him The Sword and the Stone last weekend and somehow we made it through the wolf chasing Arthur, the pike fish scene and the wizard’s duel with between Merlin and Mad Madame Mim; I had to talk Graham through each one telling him that Arthur or Merlin would be ok.  There are plenty of other great movies that he’s totally not ready for though:

Robin Hood – Prince John’s castle catches fire at the end

Shrek – scary dragon and potentially scary ogre

Bambi – Bambi’s mom dies, duh

Finding Nemo – ditto

Aladdin – the Cave of Wonders and Jaffar would be way too much (NOTE: he watched the beginning of this in the church nursery today and didn’t even make it past the part where Aladdin is running from the guards.  “Daddy, the men had swords!”)

The Aristocats – neither of Jennifer nor I have ever seen it so we’re not sure

Pete’s Dragon – Elliot the dragon and the Gogans would be too scary 

What’s left?  Toy Story and Toy Story 2 at least.  Our VHS copy of the former skipped way too much so we went with the latter.  I was happy to watch it because I hadn’t seen it since it was in the theaters back in maybe 2000.  Graham was happy to watch the whole thing and, near as I could tell, wasn’t bothered once.  The only problem was that he started to fall asleep in my lap near the climax of the movie.  Not only would that have bugged me because he’d miss the end it would also throw off his sleep schedule.  Too bad Kid, time to stay awake!  He fought through it and really woke up at the end when Buzz and Woody save Jessie. 

4:10 – Trevor wakes up.  Great job kid for sleeping that long!

4:20 – Time to amuse Graham before dinner.  We go play in the backyard.  The new favorite game I lovingly refer to as Roofball.  You take two tennis balls, throw one of them on the roof on the left side of the house and the other on the right, not so far as to make them go over the house but far enough up they get some good speed while rolling back down.  Maisy takes the ball on the left and Graham, while running much more slowly but laughing, takes the ball on the right.  Maisy gives you her ball maybe half the time while Graham will throw his at you.  He’s not bad at throwing but unfortunately has a bad habit of throwing at you while you’re not looking at him.

5:10 – We have a dinner of chopped chipotle chicken taco salad.  Graham picks out the corn and beans and leaves most of the rest. 

6:10 – Jennifer reads Graham a Chick-Fil-A Cow Hero comic book.  It’s the one for Cold Cuts, the cow who can freeze the air with her breath.  I love the Chick-Fil-A cow comic books because of their emphasis on saving cows and encouraging everyone to instead eat chickens.  Why are they so ticked off at chickens?  Shouldn’t they be encouraging everyone to be vegetarians?  And why do fish, pigs and other animals get off scot-free?  Shouldn’t McDonald’s or Burger King or somebody put together a Chicken Avengers squad or something to get everyone to eat beef.  Chick-Fil-A, your powers of indoctrination are truly awe-inspiring, particularly about the ingredients you use in your food including MSG:

http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/04/25/food-babe-investigates-why-chick-fil-a/

7:00 – Jennifer gives Graham a shower in our bathroom.  Since our bathroom isn’t next to Trevor’s bedroom there’s a much smaller chance of him waking up.  And we…must…not…ever…wake…Trevor…up.  Poor Graham.  I think that may be the worst thing about being an older brother, having to be quiet all the time.  Particularly since we can’t very well explain to Trevor that he should reciprocate when Graham’s asleep. 

7:20 – Time for bed.  Ordinarily I’d read to Graham but Jennifer is taking care of that tonight so I can work on writing the blog posts.  It takes a while to write this stuff.

7:40 – Success, Jennifer leaves Graham’s room.  Well, I think he’s kicking the walls. 

10:30 – Time for bed.

Sorry!

I totally forgot to finish up the post on Sunday, instead getting caught up in mind-clearing yardwork!  I’ll get Sunday’s post up tomorrow evening (Wednesday) and will do Monday as well.  The bbq was good but Graham didn’t eat any of it!!!  Also, we graced Jeddo with our presence.  Again, sorry for the delay!

Saturday

 3:45am – Trevor wakes up.  Jennifer gets him back to sleep.  I sleep through it.

 5:00am – Trevor wakes up again.  Again, Jennifer takes care of it while I sleep.  Thanks Mommy!

 6:10am – Graham’s up. Trevor’s up.  We can’t sleep in past 6:30 at all these days.  That’s the price we pay for having our kids in bed by 8pm I guess.  Also, we’re early risers but man it’d be nice just to sleep in until 7.  Oh well.  We let them play around in bed a bit along with Maisy the Needy Dog and then start getting ready for the day.  We have until 8:30 to get ready so we have plenty of time.  Today we’re driving down to Hockley just on the far northwest side of Houston to ride the miniature trains with our old friends Erin and Tomás and their son Cinco.  We went down around this time last year and had a blast so we were excited to be going back.  The Houston Area Light Steamers have a mile or so of track laid out in a Harris County Park that they open to the public one day a month in an agreement with the county.  They’re actually in the midst of a ‘meet’ this weekend that is only for the group and friends; as friends, we get to attend and go on some rides.  It’s fun and of course the kids love it. 

 If you’re curious about HALS and the event, you can visit their website: http://www.hals.org/

 Usually for getting ready Jennifer takes care of all of the packing for the kids while I focus on getting Graham and Trevor dressed, fed and cleaned up (though Jennifer does quite a bit on that end as well).  For those of you who don’t have kids who hear parents talk about how long it takes to get ready, well, it’s true.  These kids don’t pack stuff themselves and they require more stuff than we do.  Still, with good planning and execution you can still leave on time.  This morning we were on and left the house right at about 8:30.

 8:30am – Time to hit the road.  It would be a 2.5 hour or so drive down there and we were bracing for the worst.  Graham is and has pretty much always been a very good traveler, amusing himself quietly and taking long naps at the proper intervals.  One particularly noteworthy nap was the three hour marathon he took when he was maybe a year old on the way back from visiting the in-laws in Dallas; we couldn’t stop to get kolaches or drinks for fear of waking him up.  Remember that the more they sleep during the day the better they should sleep at night.  In being able to sleep anywhere, Graham takes after his mommy.

 Trevor, on the other hand, is his daddy’s son.  He has a terribly tough time falling asleep in the car and when he’s not asleep but is tired he’ll be extremely cranky.  Poor Jennifer often finds herself in the middle row of the Sienna sandwiched between Graham’s and Trevor’s carseats, making faces and singing to Trevor to keep him calm, which of course doesn’t help him fall asleep either.  We needed to be on the road by the time of his mid-morning nap, which would be around that time. 

 8:40am – Trevor’s asleep, yes!  Victory!

 9:25am – Crap, he’s awake.

 9:30am – And Jennifer’s now in the backseat.  That didn’t take long.

 9:50am – We stop in Brenham for a potty and feeding break.  Graham says he doesn’t need to go potty but we know better than to believe him.  Trevor needs a feeding so I find a secluded part of a bbq joint/gas station parking lot and park.  Graham and I have a successful potty visit and, as a bonus, get some kolaches for the road (and c’mon, if you use a place’s bathrooms you have to buy something!).  There are definitely more bbq and kolache options on the roads around Austin these days; I wonder what took them so long. 

 10:10am – Back on the road and realizing we’ll be a little late for the train shindig.  I keep forgetting to factor in stops into our trip planning.  Oh well.  I still refuse to drive faster than 70; that would be admitting we’re in a hurry, eh.

 11:10am – Arrive at Zube Park and hit the trains.  There are a lot of older people there and a few kids Graham’s age.  Sometimes Graham is quite socially gregarious and many other times he’s quite shy.  This was one of those days.  Three kids, including Cinco, were playing ‘Ring Around The Rosie’ while Graham stood quietly off to the side saying in a soft voice “My name is Graham” over and over.  Sometimes it stinks being a kid. 

 We got to ride on Tomás’s Texas-Mexico Railway train several times.  Graham was always intent on the riding and never overly enthusiastic.  You know he enjoyed it but he never raved about it or really talked about it much between rides.  Trevor was cool as a cucumber in the Baby Bjorn; Graham absolutely hated that thing when he was a baby but Trevor has no problem with it.  Thus he got to ride as well.  The only person who had an accident on the train was me, somehow managing to get my left shoe caught on something, dragging my left leg into the dirt and forcing the train to stop.  Skinned my knee in a couple of places but was otherwise ok; how embarrassing, eh.

 Thankfully it was an overcast day with a good breeze so even though it was humid it felt quite nice.  Graham misbehaved one time, running away and almost in front of an oncoming train.  Thus I had to give him a time-out in a field within view and hearing of everyone around.  You could consider it embarrassing or a good example but regardless, it had to be done.  He’s at the age of being willfully-bad sometimes so it’s necessary.  Other than that he behaved pretty well.

 2:30pm – Back on the road.  We had a good time, the kids are tired and we’re feeling good about going home.  Let’s do this.

 2:50pm – Jennifer’s in the middle row again to keep Trevor from crying.

 3:10pm – They’re both asleep!  Jennifer hops back up into the front seat. 

 4:05pm – Is this irony?  While driving through Elgin underneath the railroad overpass, a passing train blows its whistle and wakes up Trevor.  Trevor, upset at being in a car at all, starts crying which wakes up Graham.  Jennifer hops back into the backseat.

 4:10pm – Graham, who was extremely unhappy at being woken up and still very, very tired, goes back to sleep.  Trevor is laughing at Jennifer making faces and noises at him.

 4:15pm – Graham’s back up for good but at least he’s in a good mood.

 5:00pm – We were thinking about grabbing dinner to-go on the way home but with Trevor having crying fits we decide to go straight home for what we lovingly refer to as Scrounge Night.  Graham loves Scrounge Night, basically where we scrounge up whatever we can find in the fridge and freezer.  We keep a couple of key items in the freezer for scrounge night: tater tots and sweet potato fries.  Tonight we’ll skip those and go with a new entrant: cheese sticks!  That and a bunch of fruit and vegetables round out a healthy and easy-to-put-together dinner. 

 6:00pm – Time to watch the soccer scene from Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  I loved that movie as a kid and reconnected with the soccer scene as a college student (my memory may be faulty but I remember laughing uproariously at it with Steve Fontenot).  Anyway, we own the DVD and I knew, while the movie is way too long from Graham (and at 139 minutes, too long for some adults), the soccer scene would be perfect.  He loves watching it and we use it as a reward at times.  Anyway, tonight we watch it twice, the second time with me pausing it in strategic spots to extend the enjoyment.  Har har!

 7:00pm – I’m reading to Graham again tonight but am not going to read The Hobbit again.  We read a few much, much shorter books instead.

 7:30pm – Leave Graham’s room.  Maybe he’ll fall asleep.

 8:10pm – Jennifer and I finish the last 15 minutes of The Incredible Voyage of Mary Bryant, a movie we’d started maybe six days ago but couldn’t finish because Trevor kept waking up while we were watching it.  In a way he did us a favor because the movie is quite sad and makes me mad at one of the characters; by the time we get around to it tonight, my anger has cooled and I’ve accepted what happened in the movie.  Irrationally, I feel even better for one of the characters who gets killed after Jennifer finds out he’s one of the leads on Hawaii 5-0. 

 9:50pm – Crazy tired, time to go to bed.

Memorial Day Weekend Blog – Friday

Alright, I’m still having trouble sitting down and documenting the experiences of parenting the second time-around.  To force myself into it, let’s do a running diary of Memorial Day Weekend, shall we? 

Friday

5:15pm – Meet Jennifer and the kids for dinner at Tino’s Greek Cafe.  I had dropped off my car at the local tire shop in the same shopping center and thus was greeted to the treat of seeing them standing under the awning looking for me as I was walking over, then seeing Graham see me and start jumping up and down excitedly.  Jennifer had to hold him back to keep him from running into the parking lot to give me a hug.  That stuff never gets old and really, you know in the back of your mind that one day he won’t do that anymore.  By that time though Trevor will hopefully be doing it, ha!  And of course as they get older and stop doing certain things we love, they’ll pick up other things we do.  Like mowing the lawn.  A guy can hope.

5:20pm – Graham gets the usual attention from the cashier due to his red hair and then shy manner when he realizes she’s talking to him.  I’ll miss that stuff too. 

5:21pm – Take Graham to go wash his hands.  The milestone now is that he’s tall enough to sometimes reach over into the sink and put his hands under the faucet as opposed to needing me to pick him up.  Bonus points for any restaurant that has a little stool he can stand on.  Just as we prefer restaurants with playgrounds, I’d go for any restaurant that offered that little recognition of parents with little kids.  Just like those of you who want to have a better chance of having a quiet dinner without kids around should avoid restaurants with playgrounds.  There are plenty of restaurants with TVs on all the walls (which we don’t care for) but there are very few with playgrounds.

5:25pm – Graham, as usual, isn’t interested in eating the chicken on his plate.  He’s just not that much into meat with the exceptions of breaded fish, which he’ll wolf down like there’s no tomorrow, and hot dogs.  I’m still proud that whenever he does eat something real fast he’ll state that he ‘plowed through it.’

 

5:45pm – Separation time as the Fam drops me off at the tire place.  Graham wants to go with me, which is also cool, but I’m not about to switch his seat into my car and deal with him as I’m checking out.  Sorry kid.

6:05pm – Back at home.  Time to play around with Graham and keep an eye on Trevor before the bedtime routine starts up.

6:30pm – Time to say goodnight to the Trevi Trevs as Jennifer shuffles him off to bed.  Babies look oh so cute in pajamas.  Never gets old.  Let’s hope he sleeps well tonight though.  He’s been riding the whole ‘my teeth are oh so close to penetrating my gums’ thing for maybe a month and a half now, being tough to get to sleep and stay there.  He wakes up at least twice a night which is particularly grating after we had him sleeping through the entire night, 6:30-6:00, two months ago. 

6:45pm – Time to get Graham on the goodnight routine.  That means a shower or bath, brushing of teeth and then reading of books.  He prefers a bath but since the guest bathroom adjoins Trevor’s bedroom we put him in our shower on alternating nights or so.  Graham protests at first but then usually goes along with it, loving just standing there under the showerhead letting the water flow over him.  He also loves the steam.  Meanwhile, I try to find something productive to do that is quiet lest I wake up Trevor.  We have a tough time keeping the kitchen cleaned up since we try not to be in there while Trevor is sleeping for the night or napping.  I’m particularly bad about letting plates slam together.  Heck, I even make my frappuccinos, or as Graham calls them, choca mochas, out in the garage though to be fair that thing is pretty loud when it’s grinding up the ice.

7:00pm – Jennifer gets Graham to take a shower and brush his teeth without incident so it’s time for me to take over and read him some books.  That kid has had so many books read to him it’s crazy.  I read him at least three at bedtime alone so let’s do some quick math: he’s three years old and three months.  Let’s say we’ve read him four books a day since he turned three months.  That’s 4*365: 1460 books.  And that’s definitely a low-ball estimate.  Some are fun, some are annoying, some are weird and some are so dumb you can’t help but thinking ‘I can write something better than that’ (though we never do).  We have a library of maybe 250 books, most from childhood and Jennifer’s library as a kindergarten teacher; that plus frequent visits to the local library give us a lot of variety.  And in this day and age of the internet, we can go online and easily buy used versions of some our favorites.  Here’s my all-time favorite one, both because the story is cute and because of its down-homey setting:

http://www.amazon.com/Auction-Reading-Together-Tres-Seymour/dp/0763612421/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369614141&sr=1-1&keywords=auction+seymour

Right now his favorite book is The Hobbit.  Yes, that The Hobbit.  I found a semi-illustrated version at Half Price Books that contains all the text and some pictures from both the Rankin/Bass animated version and the version that I used to listen to on vinyl when I was a little kid.  How do I read it to him, you ask?  By abbreviating it, of course.  I still have a good memory of much of the dialogue from the record and have learned how to get through the sections of the book without going into too much detail.  It still takes 25 minutes to get through.  Oh, and I have to gloss over ALL of the violence, not an easy feat mind you.  Usually whenever somebody fights I tell Graham that ____ got mad at ____.  For example, the goblins got mad at the dwarves in the Lonely Mountain and took them prisoner to decide what to do with them.  Then Gandalf got mad at the Goblin King, who got scared and released everybody.  You get the idea.  Unfortunately I related during the first reading that the trolls got turned to stone (because they spent such a long time arguing with the dwarves about whether the dwarves could share their campfire) and that’s confused Graham mightily.

 Graham: Daddy, why did the trolls turn to stone?

Me: Because they were out when the sun came up?

Graham: Why?

Me: Because they can’t be out when the sun is up.

Graham: Why?

Me: So next they visited Elrond’s house…

I should have seen the ‘Smaug giving him nightmares’ thing coming.  He would be scared that Smaug was outside his window, so badly that one night he made Maisy the dog sleep in his room (like she’d be good against a dragon, ha!).  I figured out how to fix it: during every reading, I tell him that Bard told Smaug to fly back to his home in the mountains of the north where he got married, had kids and became a very nice dragon.  Occasionally Graham will tell Jennifer that Smaug knows how to cook and clean.  Yes!

I’ve probably read the book 15 times to him now.  We actually had to take a break from it due to something he was being punished for on Tuesday; I don’t remember his transgression but not having The Hobbit read to him for a few days we a pretty good punishment in my book.  I love the story and love that he likes it but it’s a little tough on the mind to read it since you’re abbreviating it as you go along.

I also bought the old Rankin/Bass animated movie of it on VHS but can’t show it to him until maybe he’s six or seven lest it give him nightmares.  Maybe one day he’ll read the whole book; I have to make sure though I don’t project onto him that I really want him to do it.  We’ll see.

7:30pm – Well, that was easy.  Let’s see if he actually goes to sleep.  He’s taken lately to playing in his room with the light from his closet on and not going to sleep for an hour or more.  You can’t force him of course which makes them difficult.  He’s figured out he can get one of us to come if he opens and shuts his door.  Of course we take it seriously because we don’t want him to wake up Trevor.  Whether Graham knows that’s our prime motivation or not, we’re not sure.  Regardless, he knows it works so he repeats it.

7:45pm – I don’t stick around to see if Graham really goes to sleep or not as it’s time to go grocery shopping at H-E-B!  For the longest time Jennifer did all the grocery shopping since she was a stay-at-home mom with just one kid.  Well, after she became too pregnant to really pick Graham up well, I took over.  I’d usually go with Graham on Saturday mornings after hitting the Farmer’s Market but a few months ago I switched it to Friday night.  Why?  Well, I felt it would give me more of a Saturday to do other things with Graham like taking walks, playing or potentially working on projects.  Plus he’s becoming more difficult to take to the grocery store as he doesn’t want to stay in the cart the whole time but when he’s out of it likes to either paw all the merchandise or run off.  In addition, there are few people in our H-E-B at 8:30 on a Friday night.  There are two groups: working age adults, occasionally with a kid in tow, and pairs of people, 2/3 of them in their teens or early 20s, getting party supplies like beer or ice cream.  The only trick is to make sure you hit the deli counter before they close at 9; they always play like they’re already closed by having the lights off, not looking at you when you stand there and just continuing to clean the equipment.  But I’m a regular, I know they close at 9!  Poor guys, I know they just want to get out of there. 

9:20pm – Am back home.  Tell Jennifer to go to sleep; I’ll unload the groceries without waking up Trevor Wevor Fwesh and Fwevor.  And I don’t!

Mop-Up Post Because I Don’t Feel Like Doing Days 7-10

OK, I’m not going to make it through this whole 10 day blogging thing so I’m stopping with Day 6.  This post will be my last one with a bunch of random thoughts about parenting with Graham and Trevor at their respective ages. 

 

Let’s start with Trevor’s vocabulary.  Because of the extra time it takes to take care of Graham, I haven’t been reading to Trevor like I read to Graham.  By the time Graham was rolling over, I’d read him The Hobbit, Ella Enchanted and Holes and was working on The Wind And The Willows (which I never finished reading to him, partially because the story got crazy and partially because he wouldn’t sit still anymore).  I’d tried reading another book by Gail Carson Levine but it wasn’t interesting to me so I couldn’t keep with it.  I think though that Trevor is getting to hear tons of vocabulary just from having Jennifer and Graham around.  From me, he’s getting, well, the intros to two songs:

 

Bawitdaba by Kid Rock (lyrics start at 0:30)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSz95zceQfQ

 

Rapper’s Delight by The Sugar Hill Gang (lyrics start at 0:35)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKTUAESacQM

 

Why?  Because they’re fun to repeat over and over and over.  And I’ll repeat anything that makes my baby son smile. 

 

What did I sing to Graham, you might ask?  This cute-sounding but kind of violent song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyhiqq-FzDU

 

As I’d written before, Graham is now into the movie Cars.  You know how when you buy a new car you all of a sudden start noticing all of the cars on the road that are that make and model.  Well, the same holds true for the movie Cars.  All of a sudden you notice all of the merchandise that ties in with the movie.  We already had Cars diapers because you can’t buy name brand name diapers without characters on them.  But we went into Lowe’s (Lowe’s!) and saw a Cars book with a little playset and a nightlight that projects an image of Lightning McQueen and Mater on the wall.  We bought Graham the DVD at Half Price Books.  He’s watched it twice and asks everyday to watch it again.  Not only that, he constantly requests for us to “tell me the story when (insert a certain scene in the movie)”.  His favorite is when Lightning McQueen rolled out of the back of Mac the eighteen wheeler.  Actually, I prefer telling stories about the movie Cars because I don’t have to make anything up (as opposed to my stories about Booger the Pumpkin and Ooh Mao Mao Ooh Mao Mao the Cactus). 

 

A game Graham just loves to play is ‘You Took My Teeth!’  I’m not sure how it started but at random times, usually when I’m sitting down on the couch, Graham will walk up to me and declare “Daddy, I’m going to take your teeth!”  He then proceeds to reach up to my mouth, close his hand as if he is grabbing the teeth from my mouth, pulls his hand back, makes a throwing motion and announces where my teeth have gone (the roof, Maisy’s tummy, outside, etc.).  I oblige by pulling my gums up over my teeth and attempting to say “You took my teeth!”  After about ten seconds, I pretend like I have found my teeth, pop them back in and then Graham walks over to repeat the process.  It never gets old for him but I can only take about five or six times before I declare that he can’t take my teeth anymore.

 

For Christmas, I received a frappé maker, thus depriving the local coffee shops (mainly Starbucks since there’s not much else around anymore) of my money for frappuccinos and their equivalents.  Since it includes a blender, it can be pretty loud.  We don’t like to have either of the kids near it (Graham is definitely bothered by loud machinery).  We also fear it waking one or the other up from sleep.  Therefore, when I make a frappé in the morning before going to work, I mix it in the kitchen but then transport the maker and its contents to the garage for the process to commence.  In fact, there are a lot of activities you can’t do for a substantial portion of the day due to sleeping kids.  Now that I think about it, I guess that won’t end for a while for the post-8pm hour though at some point we won’t have to worry about naps. 

 

One thing we did while my mom was visiting the week before last was to take a day trip out to Pedernales Falls State Park out between Dripping Springs and Johnson City.  This was Graham’s first big ‘hiking’ trip.  See, I’m a big hiker though I don’t go much anymore.  It actually feels like I’m taking a break from the monthly or bimonthly hikes when I was in college and in my early 20s.  But I figure that once Graham gets old enough to do some serious walking, I’ll start revisiting all the old stomping grounds like Pedernales Falls, Enchanted Rock, Lost Maples, Colorado Bend and others.  Not that I want to force him but based on his enthusiasm for doing everything I want to do so far, I’d be surprised if he didn’t jump at it. 

 

The first place I’d love to take him would be Enchanted Rock but since that’s more of a finite distance hike with a big change in elevation, it’s probably too early (and I didn’t relish the thought of carrying his 35 pound frame part of the way up).  Pedernales Falls, with its ¼ mile trail down to the falls and huge area to wander and climb around in, would work much better.  And Graham did have a good old time, walking most of the way himself and taking things at his own pace.  One of his highlights was me putting him up on top of what must have been a seven foot tall rock and sitting in a little depression I called his ‘seat’. 

 

The trick with him on day outings is to do them in the morning and be in the car and on the way home around naptime, usually around 12:30.  This means day trips end around 2 or 3, whenever we return home.  Previous day trips have included a visit to Lockhart for a visit to their city park and a bbq lunch at Smitty’s, a visit to the Austin Zoo and Natural Gardener in south Austin, a visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the Natural Gardener again and the Austin Children’s Museum.  I pushed it a little bit on the Pedernales trip as we tried to hike down to the river at another spot right after lunch, only to have Graham be too tired to walk down and then trip on the way back up, giving himself some nice scrapes on the tops of his wrists (I still can’t quite figure out how that happened).  Of course, within five minutes of being in the carseat and being on the road, he was out.  The only problem with him sleeping in the car these days is instead of sleeping for up to three hours, he never makes it past 45 minutes.  Oh well. 

 

Oh, one last thing.  Whenever I start reading Graham a book, which I read at least three to him before putting him to bed, I always say the title and then say “By…”, expecting him to fill in the blank.  For whatever reason, maybe a year ago he would know many of the authors’ names.  At one point though he gave up and started answering with made-up names.  My favorite by far was Holza Bolza.  So now I usually don’t ask him unless it’s an author for whom we have tons of books like Jan Brett or Richard Scarry.  Instead, I just use one of three fake names, the last two of which I made up: Holza Bolza, Hobart Rodriguez and Farley Finkelstein.  Now, for maybe every other book, Graham declares that “Daddy, (insert fake author’s name here) writes a lot of books!”  I’ll be sad when I can’t do that with him anymore but I guess that’s what Trevor’s for, eh.

 

Well, that’s it for a while.  If there’s something you’d like hearing about or you just want to provide me with some extra incentive to write more stuff, let me know.  Thanks!

Day 6

The Thursday after Christmas was going to feature us dropping Graham and Trevor off at my cousin and his wife’s house for a few hours while we had some free time.  This is a rare event in that we’ve had few people babysit for us.  Not that people haven’t offered or we’re too cheap to pay a neighborhood kid, it’s just that we’re not really going-out-for-the-evening-type people.  When you only go to the movies twice a year and you’re content having dinner at fast-casual places like Panera, you don’t have a need to be away I guess.  And of course we do have mini breaks from the kids, whether it’s me being away at work during the week or Jennifer getting breaks while Graham is in his twice a week school or when I take him, Trevor and the dog on a two hour walk.  So when someone babysits for us, it’s a rare event.

 

Actually, not only is it a rare event but it’s one that requires more effort than you think.  The thought would be that all we do is pack ‘em up, drop ‘em off, go relax and then pick ‘em up again.  It’s a bit more than that.  First of all, you have to pack them and all their gear for all of their needs to be met for a few hours.  For Graham, that’s not so bad, just some diapers and wipes (since my cousin, his wife and their kids would take care of food).  For Trevor, first, Jennifer had to make sure she had pumped enough milk for him to be taken care of when he got hungry.  Then there were the bottles, the burp cloths, the diapers, the wipes, the carseat, the bouncer for him to sit and chill out in when (and if) they got tired of holding him and lastly the bottle warmer (yes, there is a machine called a bottle warmer and it works pretty well).  Out of town trips will be crazy once he gets big enough and controls his body enough where he can use the exersaucer; that thing is huge!

 

Graham was super happy to see his cousins, ages 6 and 8, as they were ecstatic to play with him.  It’s funny how Graham is always just behind those guys in development.  He’s always the little kid playing with the big kids.  First it was back when he could walk and talk a little bit but was more of a playtoy for them.  Now he can be highly interactive though again he’s not even three so running after people and yelling incoherent things at them still qualifies as a major part of his group play.  Whereas they can read, use a computer, use the bathroom by themselves, feed themselves and go to sleep by themselves.  It’ll be interesting to see the gaps in development as they all get older.

 

After about ten minutes of visiting, we took off.  Where did we go to celebrate being by ourselves for about four hours?  Lunch, then shopping!  Yes, we actually got to go shopping without having to haul kids around.  We will always fondly remember the first time that we had babysitters for Graham.  My dad, stepmom and an aunt, uncle and cousin came to watch him while Jennifer and I went to a local Italian restaurant and then out to Target to get diapers!  Yes, diapers.  This day we went to an Italian restaurant up the road in Georgetown, shopped in the Wolf Ranch shopping center there and then went down to the outlet mall.  No need to worry about pushing a baby in a stroller or a restless two-year old who wants to walk but randomly tries to run away!

 

Of course, we were a little concerned about how Trevor would react to a bottle.  He’d had bottles a couple of times before with only minor problems but what if he wouldn’t eat?  Visions of a bawling Trevor clouded our shopping experience a little bit.  Plus shopping when you’re on a timetable is a bit different than shopping specifically to get certain things.  The idea was more of ‘well, we’ll just wander around and see if there’s stuff we need to get’.  Actually, this is the second year in a row we’ve shopped at an outlet mall right after Christmas; last year Jennifer’s parents watched Graham and we hit the San Marcos outlet mall.

 

We didn’t receive any frantic phone calls so we got to my cousin’s house at 2:30 as scheduled.  Trevor had done well, either sleeping, eating or just chilling in someone’s arms.  Graham, who was having the time of his life apparently, did not want to leave.  That brings us to the hidden cost of having someone babysit: Graham is amped up for the rest of the day.  He never settles down, wanting to run around and do random things like bite the dog. 

 

Oh, I don’t think I’ve talked about how Graham and Maisy get along.  They make good playmates together at times, mainly in the backyard.  Graham can now throw balls and Maisy is fairly decent at bringing them back.  He particularly loves taking something that Maisy wants, like a stick, and trying to hold onto it and keep it away from her.  Inside, however, is sometimes a different story as Maisy likes stealing anything Graham is throwing, particularly his foam basketballs.  Graham retaliates sometimes by head-butting her, grabbing her fur or, in some rare cases, biting her.  He gets a timeout for the last one when it happens (one minute per year of age, sitting in my lap facing the left corner of the front door).

 

Day 5: The Day After Christmas

Day 5 – The Day After Christmas

 

 There wasn’t a whole lot notable about the day after Christmas.  My in-laws stayed through lunch and then headed out.  They left late enough that we had to put Graham down for a nap first.  It always feels kind of weird when you put the kid down for a nap when he knows that when he wakes up the visitors will be gone.  I guess we’ve trained him well though because he said his goodbyes and then marched off to his room to be read to by me and then go to sleep.

 

He naps a bit like a teenager now.  He doesn’t want to go to sleep half the time, climbing out of bed and trying to peek under the door after I leave.  Actually, the normal naptime/bedtime routine, at least when I put him down (Jennifer and I now rotate a bit so I can spend more time with Trevor) goes like this:

–          Matt reads two to three books to Graham, preferably medium-length ones.  Short books like Maisy’s Fire Engine and The Little Red Caboose are bad because he can, with justification, make you read them multiple times.  Long ones, mainly anything by Richard Scarry, necessitate you to surreptitiously skip pages so as to be able to get out of his room at a reasonable hour (I’m waiting for the day he catches me in the act…maybe he already knows but is tactful enough not to say anything?).

–          Books are finished.  Graham asks Matt to lay down for a couple of minutes on the floor.  Matt, who is usually happy to get a few minutes’ uninterrupted rest, complies.

–          Five minutes later, Matt announces to Graham that it’s time for bed.  Graham climbs into bed and puts his head on the pillow.

–          Matt tucks Graham in.

–          Matt either hugs Graham or gives him a kiss.  Sometimes Graham requests a ‘leg hug’, meaning he lies on his back, lifts his legs up like a dancer and attempts to wrap them around my head like a pro wrestler. 

–          Matt turns off the light by pulling the cord on the ceiling fan.  Since Graham now can turn lights on and off at the switch, this step is required. 

–          Graham asks for the light to be turned back on.  Matt asks why and Graham just smiles his goofy smile.  Matt turns light back on.

–          Matt counts down from 5 or 10 and then turns the light off.

–          Graham requests the light to be turned back on.

–          Matt opens the door, blows two kisses and then, assuming Graham isn’t crying, closes the door.

–          At that point there’s a 50% chance Graham goes to sleep in the bed.  The other half of the time though he either goes to the door and starts talking (Daddy?  Mommy?) or lies on his bed and kicks the wall.  We almost never go back in while he’s awake though as he always eventually falls asleep.  Usually an hour or two later I’ll sneak in to see if he fell asleep on the floor or not.  If he did, I’ll lift him up and put him in bed.

The really funny thing is that for some reason now he sleeps late.  He’ll sleep three hours for naps.  He sleeps past 6:15am, sometimes as late as 7:00, which we love.  And if you ever have to wake him up early, it’s exactly like waking up a sleeping teenager.  He’ll roll over and ignore you and, once you do get him up, he walks around in a daze for about ten minutes.

He woke up around 3:30 or so and, to give Jennifer a break and the dog some excercise, I took Graham, Trevor and Maisy the pooch for a walk.  How do I handle two kids and a dog?  Simple, a double-stroller like this one:

http://pregnancy.about.com/od/pregnancy/tp/aa020103a.htm

Graham sits up front where he can see what’s going on.  Trevor lies down in the back and, after staring up at the sky and tree branches for 10-15 minutes, falls asleep.  And Maisy does her usual ‘pull-your-arm-out-of-its-socket’ routine whenever she gets near a dog that likes to bark back at her.  It’s actually quite a workout.  The stroller weighs, with its occupants, at least 60 pounds and usually requires me to push and steer it with one hand.  The dog tries to pull me off my feet for half the walk, digging her legs into the street or grass in a posture Graham and I lovingly refer to as ‘Maisy Warthog’.  Still, I love being outdoors, especially in winter, and our neighborhood is quite good for taking long walks.  I made this one a bit shorter than most due to the fifty degree temperatures and returned to the house after about an hour.  By the time I made it back, Graham was falling asleep in the front.

All in all, a good day.

Day 4: Christmas

So here I am watching the Texans-Colts football game.  My mom drove home this morning so our week-long relative blitz, while enjoyable and great family time, is now over.  It was a great time but amazingly tiring despite the fact that we didn’t have to travel anywhere.  Anyway, I now have some time on my hands with Trevor snoozing away in his carseat on the floor and Jennifer reading books to Graham to set him up for his naptime.  Ahhh…

 

OK, so I think I left off on December 24.  I woke up at 4:30am on December 25 not to help take care of an awake kid but instead to start smoking a Christmas turkey.  This would make it the second year in a row I would smoke a turkey for Christmas, making it –drumroll please- a Tradition!!!  This is actually the fourth straight year we’ve had Christmas at home because, well, once we had Graham traveling became much more of a challenge.  It was then like the center of the universe shifted from our parents’ houses in Dallas and Houston to Austin, like a planet with its own gravitational pull.  Did I just refer to the grandparents as moons orbiting us?  Yeah, I guess I did.  Must be all this vacation I have. 

 

I was interrupted from my quiet smoking solace (sitting in an adirondack chair on the deck in peace and quiet and relative darkness) by the master bathroom window slowly being cranked open.  I walked over to see what was going on and saw Graham’s goofy smile looking out at me.  Jennifer popped up behind him and explained that I should come inside to hang with him for a bit so she could make sure everything was prepped for him to go out into the rest of the house for Christmas morning.  I snuck back inside to find my in-laws already stirring.  After a few minutes of playing with Graham in the bedroom, he was ready to go out.

 

Christmas is a series of stages at our house.  The first stage is for Graham to open the Santa presents laid out in front of the fireplace.  The second stage is breakfast.  The third and final stage is opening the presents from family under the tree.  I’m always amazed that he doesn’t try to skip stage 2 and go right to the presents under the tree.  Then again, I’m still learning all about two year-old boys’ mindsets.  And I guess it makes sense that with all of the cool new toys in front of him he’d rather concentrate on those (and show them off to his grandparents) than move on to the ones under the tree.

 

Stage 3 always takes a long time, ending seemingly around lunchtime.  This year was fun because we had to give Trevor presents too.  What were his presents?  Hand-me-down toys and clothes from Graham, ha!  Jennifer had done all the packaging (putting presents into bags) for those and thus already knew but it was a surprise for me.  I mean, I’d forgotten all about a bunch of that stuff like the little stand-up foam mirror that baby Trevor could look at while doing tummy time (lying on the ground on his tummy practicing lifting his head and rolling over).  Graham of course didn’t recognize any of it since he used it when he was a baby.  I must admit I was a little disappointed that he didn’t have any “Wow Trevor, what’s THAT?!” reactions.  Oh well. 

 

We spent a lot of time on Christmas Day hanging around and playing with Graham.  Oh, the turkey came out well from the smoker if you were wondering though I think I’m going to start smoking briskets next year instead (not as holiday festive but tastier, cheaper and more Texas-centric).  It is always fun watching Graham play toys with adults as he loves explaining what the vehicles are named and what is actually happening. 

 

Graham did get some board games to play as well.  It’s been a mental exercise waiting to see when he can handle an actual board game requiring the following of rules.  So far, I’ve only tried him with Connect Four, though of course that was only because I knew he’d get a kick out of putting his pieces in the frame.  There’s a bit of training I’m trying to do though as I haven’t found someone to play Connect Four against since my days as a Boy Scout whiling away the hours at summer camp (I wasn’t much of a poker player and hated whittling).  Anyway, he knows Connect Four well enough to tell me which color he has so perhaps he’s good enough to play some new board games.  Well, he is.  The two games we played were Memory and a doozy called Hi Ho Cherry-O.  He played on a team in Memory but was quite good at remembering where the different animals were, although he did get a bit overzealous in overturning cards when it was his turn.  Hi Ho Cherry-O was a simple game just requiring flicking a spinner and doing one of six actions with regard to the number of fruit on your tree.  Very simple for him to follow and, with help, he played well.  Here’s a sample:

 

Mother-in-law: OK Graham, you spin!

Graham:  OK!  (flicks spinner which travels about 1/8 of a revolution)

Mother-in-law: Good job!  Looks like we get three apples!  Can you get them?

Graham: (reaching into the apple supply)  1! 9! 7! 13! 2!

Mother-in-law: Good job!  (removes two apples from his bucket)

 

The highlight of the day of course was watching the movie Cars again.  Graham was totally engrossed the whole time which was awesome to see as it gives us the potential to finally show him other movies and expect him to be able to sit through them.  His movie history so far (and I’m NOT counting Elmo Goes To The Potty):

 

–          My Neighbor Totoro: Turned off about a half hour into it as he got scared by the big totoro’s snores.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096283/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

–          Gus (the awesome 70s Disney movie about a field goal-kicking mule): Got fidgety during the last fifteen minutes so we thought he didn’t like it.  Were pleasantly surprised the next day when he asked where Gus was.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074599/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2

–          Cinderella:  Sat through the whole thing (only about 90 minutes I think) but got extremely agitated when the fairy godmother turned the mice into horses.  It ruined the whole rest of the movie as he wasn’t even placated when they were turned back into mice.  Totally hilarious though.

The only other movie I really want to show him is Porco Rosso but since it features planes shooting at each other and fistfights, I think we’ll wait (though Porco is voiced by Michael Keaton, the same person who voices Graham’s favorite Cars character, Chick Hicks).