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So Ryan dropped a deuce in the kiddie pot.

Wasn't that worth the long wait between posts?

Have a lot on my mind, almost too much to try and catch up on, but if there's one thing I learned last week -- you just need to get back up on that horse. Returned Friday from a whirlwind visit to Texas (and literally, in Abilene, with 40mph winds the standard) where we crammed three weeks of activities into two half days and three megafull ones. Wonderfully successful trip, with a highlight being getting to watch 800 airmen join the USAF after their graduation from Basic Military Training. Goosepimpling hearing the oath yelled back at you in one massive barbaric yawp.
I also enjoyed the flan.

Kids were almost as glad to see me as I was them, and we had a great weekend together, save the few hours Ainsley and I stole away to go see a High School production of "Guys & Dolls" (thanks to Grandparential sitting yet again).
Then this evening, the kerplop du resistance...Ryan runs into the living room holding his Rescue Heroes Police Car, saying "Mommy, mommy, save me!" So I'm thinking some 'bad guy is after him'. But no, it was just the only thing he could think of to get her attention that tonight was the night to practice what we've been preaching since 2005 -- get thee to a pottery! Or something.
One may remember a blog a while ago where Ryan accidentally...let's say..."Pollocked" into his receptacle, begetting premature calls to grandparents, aunts, the media, etc. But this was no paltry sum, no sir. Think the scene in "Jurassic Park" near the Triceratops. If you follow.
My boy.

Grandproxy

So I've been about useless all week, to the point that my wife's two-day fever had to be managed by:

1. My dad taking off a half-day to come to my house and play with the kids and eat peanut butter sandwiches;
2. My mother-in-law dropping everything and driving from West Virginia at 6:30 in the morning to play with the kids and eat peanut butter sandwiches and do seventeen loads of laundry and fluff pillows and iron the cats and replenish the hand soap and bathe our kids; and
3. Me opening a jar of Tylenol at 4 in the morning <-- my entire contribution

My job isn't the most important work in the history of the planet, but it's my only one currently, and this is a week where I have to be in, unless I want to be in until midnight and each day this weekend. But I still feel guilty. I'm just glad the grandparents were available and willing to bend over backwards.
Moving to Montana is just going to suck.

It's Training Men

I'm really starting to like the weekends. I love turning off the light next to my son's bed after reading about the never-ending dispute between the north-going Zax and the south-going Zax and telling Ryan I don't have to go to work in the morning.
"Yay!" he inevitably says. In a whisper. Since the sister's already asleep. Good boy.

It's nice he misses me. Thursday my dad came over for dinner and Ryan asked why he wasn't wearing a tie like per usual (he had been at a conference downtown and had gotten out early enough to go home first and change), and Dad said in a few months he wouldn't be wearing ties anymore, because he'd be retired.
"Do you know what retired means, Ryan?" asks Mommy.
"Yes."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know."
"It means that he won't have to go to work anymore ever!"

Ryan looks at me.
"Are you going to retire, too?"


It's tempting, after a week like this one -- getting awful super duper mega busy, but instead of staying at work late Thursday I printed out a bunch of stuff to take home...then promptly left it on my desk. Still, I was able to e-mail myself some material from my work blackberry, worked until 12:30, slept on the couch, and got up at 4 to drive to work and get stuff done when no one else was around and the phone wasn't ringing off the little gray triangle thing the phone rests on which is not hook shaped in the least bit.


Ainsley told me about a Boy Scout fund raiser at a local school in which a bunch of model train sets would be set up, so I took Ryan and Erin while she ran some errands. I thought it was going to be a bunch of kids with their small sets, but they were more gymnasium-sized dioramas spanning several model zip codes, being run by middle-aged men hovering over electrical boxes. Sadly, for whatever reason, in a bunch of rooms the trains weren't working yet, and most of the railscapes, though intricate and cool-looking, were set up on tables about 4 or 5 feet off the ground. So I got my workout with diaper bag on my back and a kid in each arm to show them the occasionally moving trains. One room did have some Legos and Thomas trainsets set up, so they appreciated those more. Except when I was taking a picture of Ryan and didn't notice Erin had grabbed a Lego dude and placed him down across the tracks to commit suicide for the oncoming train, which subsequently derailed.
Maybe that's why everything was 4 or 5 feet off the ground.
Hmm.

Just Say No to Tootsie Rolls

So Erin could just about eat her weight in mashed potatoes. And what the perfect food for someone just starting to be able to use a fork by herself. And doesn't mind a spud goatee.

Still no luck on the de-pull-up-ing of our son. He's getting too long for the changing table, we tell him. He's going to have to learn before he goes to college, we tell him. He can't play with the Big Ass Rescue Hero Jeep until he does, we tell him. He's even got me saying brilliant things like "Poop now, or forever hold your pee."

Speaking of brilliant things to tell your 3-year-old, the other day Ryan let himself out the front door while Ainsley and I were upstairs. We heard the door, so I ran down, toothbrush still in mouth, to call him back inside from the driveway. Started right in with one of the happy admonishment speeches, where you try to be forceful, but not angry, to make sure it sinks in. "Ryan," it begins, "please PLEASE don't walk out the front door if Mommy and Daddy aren't here. We'd be very sad if we couldn't find you. And someone could..."
(I didn't want to scare him at this point and say that someone could snatch him up, so I shifted, mid-sentence.)
"be out there that doesn't know you, and they could offer you candy, or you could fall down and get hurt and we wouldn't know, or you might get lost! We don't want you to get lost. So that's a big no-no, okay? No opening the door without Mommy and Daddy. Do you understand?"

*thinkthinkthink*

"Who wants to give me candy?"

Barack Lobster

Thanks to a military special and a separate coupon for free kid's admission, it was only $7 for the four of us to head up to DC to tour the bizarrely named National Aquarium. Yes, nation, these are your fish. The Congressional Kelp. The President's Pufferfish. Star-spangled sturgeons. Etc.
I had no idea we had an aquarium in downtown DC, since when I think 'aquarium' I think 'flooded coliseum', a multi-story, winding, escalatored building with waterfalls and tunnels where you walk through tanks from floor-to-thirty-foot ceiling, orcas sharing time with scuba gear-laden oceanographers learning what makes seahorse poop so sparkly, and I just couldn't think where something that monolithic would be among the other monolithic entities like the FBI building or Tower Records.
Instead, we were in the basement of some building (the Dept of Commerce, maybe), with tanks as big as...tanks, but mostly smaller, fiat-sized ones or even itty bitty ones you'd find in a dorm room, only with some rare blue-skinned frog in it as opposed to a beta fish your suite mates decided to feed beer to. One floor, maybe thirty exhibits, nary a shark feeding. I think we spent more time in the gift shop afterwards.
Still. You couldn't beat the price, the size was just about perfect for the kids, and we would have had some adorable pictures of Ryan in his turtle shirt nose-to-whatever the amphibial nose equivalent is with a swimming sea turtle if our camera's battery hadn't died taking cute pictures of Erin in her sunglasses during the Metro ride up. They also had a couple mini-alligators, a lobster the size of a medicine ball, a bunch of fish Ryan recognized from "Nemo", and some cool other stuff you don't see at PetSmart every day (eels, an octopus, piranhas).
A froot smoothie and walk down Constitution Avenue later on a gorgeous 70-degree day, we were back home for quick naps and then more outdoor time since every kid and his bicycle was out on Pocomoke Court. Ryan rassled over a big ball with Jonathan in the neighbor's yard (barely missing Tully poop) while I blew bubbles for Erin and thirteen of her new closest friends who inadvertently insulted her by saying she looked like me. Ryan then wanted to ride his tricycle, so now that Erin has gotten too big to pump on the handlebars, I put her in my bike trailer and pushed her up the street, using the bicycle attachment bar doohickey thing to push the back of Ryan's cycle when needed all the way up...then all the way down Pocomoke Court.
It's going to be an awesome summer.

Unleash the Fury

Went to my first Washington Capitals hockey game last night, with 75 of my closest work friends and 18,725 others we were less familiar with but who were no less hoping for a romp of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Well O, Canada, if those tables weren't turned. A rather dull defensive struggle (0-0 after two periods) turned into a bit of a rout when the Blue Frozen Mounties scored twice in the third. It got a little exciting near the end, when the Caps scored with about 39 seconds left, but it was one little, too late.
It didn't help that their star player, Alex Ovechkin, had hurt himself with a puck off the ankle the day prior and was scratched from the lineup. So that was a disappointment. For those non-sports enthusiasts out there, it would have been like buying tickets to see Oprah and five months later when you finally get to the studio, it's Mindy Cohn from "Facts of Life."
Oh well. You take the good, you take the bad.
Hell, you take them both.
Still neat to see a professional game, with a much rowdier crowd than the game I saw in Denver 7 years ago. Little surprised to hear 18k people shout "RED" during the National Anthem's "rocket red glare" line ("Rock the Red", the Capitals logo reads), as well as yelling "O" (for "Ovechkin") during the "Say Can You See Where #8 Is Because I Sure As Hell Can't Dammit These Tickets Cost Fifty Bucks" line.
Got home around 11, mind racing, jazzed from the videotronics no doubt, couldn't sleep, which is fine because the boy wakes up crying at 12:40, and then the dogs need to go out at 3:30 and I shoosh them until 3:40 when I figure I may as well get 'em out seeing as Ainsley's up with the other kid (actually zonked out on the nursery chair, but still) and then she comes back to bed at 4:50 and then the alarm goes off at quarter to 6.
So I'm a mite spent. Plus I worked out four days in a row for the first time since I was like 2 or something, so I need to go rest the weary musks.

Talk to the Butt

Okay, the snow was delivered, a hearty enough dumpola to strain the ol' back against the shovel. Ryan helped. By eating whatever snow he could find and sticking snowballs up against the tree. Even Bailey got a rare respite from the electro-shock collar to come and romp around in the front yard like her youthful days of Minotian indiscretion.
We were on a two-hour delay, but it still felt like I was one of only seventeen people to make it into the Pentagon. Though my car does look like a glazed doughnut, from all the slushy spray off the highways.
Missed the last two nights with my kids due to work functions, though Ryan was awake enough to be kissed asleep when I checked on him. Also got the recap from the Missus, particularly over the continued potty issues. We're trying to provide him incentive to ride the little bus to poop town, but the opportunity never occurs to him, or he can't make it happen on demand. He really tried last night and got so frustrated he started to cry, asking for help that Mommy cannot give. "Talk to your bottom!" she tried, so he turned his head and shouted encouragement to the ol' butt cheeks.
A Poop Talk, if you will. Go, team, go!
Meanwhile, Erin progresses nicely, looking like a little person more and more every day. Cutest is how she twists her whole body to say "no", and does little mini-crunches to say "yes." I've attached a video to show how she's faring in these, the uber-padded years.

Oom Pa Pa Oom Grand Pa

It's probably a good thing that I have dogs, because those mornings that Ainsley lets me sleep in? I'd probably snooze until noon. Lunch in bed? Yes, please.
Wanted to get the kids out of the house and leave Ainsley to some home projects, so off we schlept to Grandad's house, where he was nice enough to pull out of some dusty corner his vintage, Eisenhower-era accordion and see what fell out of it, note-wise. Ryan and Erin were enamored, wanting to push all the keys and buttons, until we distracted Ryan with a wooden spoon he could use for conducting. Dad busted out "Mary Had a Little Lamb" right off the bat, and followed with two ad-lib requests for Ryan's favorite Christmas Carols. Two revelations:

1. I was in band for four years, and even took instrumentation classes in college. But I still don't know how the hell the buttons on the left side of the accordion work.
2. Apparently, my "Everybody Clean Up Time" song that I've known since my own pre-school (thank you, Ms. Storm) and taught to my children, is the exact same tune as "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Took me 34 years to figure that out.

We stayed only a short time, since Erin was getting fussy and needed to eat, so Dad took us to Taco Bell, for a family-style meal where the kids ate a little something off of everyone's plate, when they weren't enjoying their open-faced crunchy tacos (a tomato that fell of Dad's here, a ripped-off portion of my soft taco there).

Since Ainsley had experienced nearly 3 hours without the kids, she was jazzed at nap time and didn't feel like taking one herself, so she asked if I wanted to watch a movie.

! What's that like?

Only Erin woke up twenty minutes into it, so Ainsley had to go tend to her, getting her almost to sleep before Tucker pushed his way into the door Meowing in a loud conversational way, then it took another ten minutes, but she was up again in another half-hour and would not cotton me trying to put her back on her cotton sheets, so downstairs she came, and of course Ryan starts a coughing fit from his ongoing bad cold that wakes him up crying so I went up to comfort and lay down next to him, so...

We'll watch a movie some other year.

We're supposed to get anywhere from 5 to 12 inches of snow tonight.
I'm not buying it.