Comic time. . .

War of the Skippy's. . .

Skippy Jr. and I got into an argument last week. He was playing with a cup from our bathroom (something we normally let him play with), but it was time to go so I asked him for the cup. He wouldn't hand it over so I grabbed it and tried to take it. He grunted and babbled something. I pulled harder and started to raise my voice, "give it to me!" He started yelling back in his gibberish "wha do ba to mah wag me no!" (obvioisuly meaning "no, it's my cup, I found it, get your paws off me you damned Dirty daddy!"). So I picked him up and took it away.

I like being bigger.

With that story in mind you can understand why I'm worried about today. My wife has a snow day today, and when I left the house our darling son was already yelling at (in his jibberish language) her for cramping his style. I think it was because he wanted to bang on the computer and she told him "no." I half expect to come home to one of them packing their bags to run away from home and join the circus.

Are you talkin' to me? . . .

In addition to lots of meaningless jabbering and his couple signs, Skippy Jr. has picked up a few words lately. . .

Baw=Ball
Ah-oh="I just dropped that on purpose, pick it up, bitch!"
Cook-cook="Cookie" (both the snack and the monster)
Bi-Buh=Big Bird and a variation of bye-bye
Bah-bah=Bye bye (normally said after the person is completely out of ear shot)
Woah=Doesn't this thing I'm doing look dangerous and cool?
Wat!?=What!?

This morning, after breakfast, he grabbed the TV remote and was pointing it at the TV playing with it. After a few minutes he pointed it at me and said "cook-cook." It took me a couple times but I finally understood. I told him, "just for a minute" (we were running late already). I turned on a TiVOed episode of Sesame Street and fast-forwarded to a segment with Cookie Monster. He smiled and yelled cook-cook.

Then he pooped.

It's a sign. . .

When Skippy Jr. turned six months old we started signing to him. It's the new cool cliche thing for parents to do. We started, as the definitive book on baby signing says to, with eat and more. Every feeding, four time a day we signed eat and more. After a couple months the signing solicited crying when we did them. . . I guess that was his way of saying "of course I want to eat" and "yes more!" but that was it.

After he hit 10-11 months our enthusiasm waned and we mostly gave up on signing. Then a couple weeks ago The little rat started signing "more" when he wanted more food one meal. We of course obliged. It was like training a dog from there. The only trick was make sure that as soon as he put his hands together another piece of whatever it is he was eating was in front of him.

So this morning?. . . he signed eat. I woke him up and dressed him and we were playing around with him standing on his changing pad and he put his hand up to his mouth with his hand in the pose for eat. I asked if he wanted to eat and signed back and he grunted and signed eat again.

And after months of not really doing it. . . I guess he could be giving me the finger.

Victory!. . .

Stewart has been vanquished! The saline and sucker helped, but ultimately it was me and a tissue that ended the battle.

No more Monkeys Jumping on the bed. . .

I'm sad to report that it looks like Jumping Monkey's isn't returning. On the last episode Megan announced a hiatus until after the holidays. They said they'd be coming back in early 2009. Then this week on another podcast Leo announced that Jumping Monkeys won't be coming back at all. I check the TWIT wiki and sure enough, it uses past tense when discussing the show. There are still 70 episodes online, all are full of great advice for parents of kids in the digital age.

With her last blog post Megan raised an interesting thought. . .

“I hope to carve out some time to write here, but I am finding that the closer my kids get to learning how to read, the less likely I am to continue writing about them in such a public forum.”

This raises the same question for me. How will my son react when he reads the story of his mother and I picking his nose? This leads me to one easy decision. . . he won't know about it. Not for a long time. Granted, by the time he can read, blogging may be a dead medium for conveying information.

This leads me to two conclusions. 1) I need to archive this blog before google decides to drop blogger (like they just did to a bunch of their other online creations). 2) I was right to have refrained from using proper names recently and for removing them from the majority of my archives.

Pick a winner. . .

For the past few days our little man has had two bats in the cave. . . well caves. Two ginormous boogers almost completely obstructing this nostrils. Just sitting there, staring us in the face, right there, but just too far back to get to.

Yes, we've been trying to evacuate them. It's awful. First, holding him down to even be able to look at the situation is a fight. Second, finding a way to get them out is difficult. I don't have fingernails at my disposal so my lovely wide has been assigned with the actual plucking. And they are embedded in there good.

Late yesterday Patrick (that's what we named the smaller living in his left nostril), moved out (my wife is amazing), but Stewart is still lodged in there. We have sprayed him with saline drops hoping to loosen him up, but it's not doing the trick. I even admit to something bad. While I was watching him alone on Friday afternoon I held him down and tried to get them out with tweezers. I couldn't get a good hold on them.

So now that I've outed my wife and myself as baby nose pickers, please be honest with yourselves and admit to it too and tell me how to get Stewart out. Help my son breath better.

The Name game. . .

I was going to post a whole thing about this story. Then I decided not to go too far. Just an interesting story to read.

Can you tell me "what the f#$@!". . .

Dear Children's Television Workshop,

Until this past year it had been a long time since I watched an episode of Sesame Street. My days as a Sesame Street kid were circa 25 years ago. Sesame Street taught me numbers, letters, some spanish, and some of the core values I still carry today.

Now, I'm returning to the Street as a parent. It is just as good as I remember. I am so happy to see a lot of the same characters I remember, even the humans. My son is little, but he lights up when he sees all his Muppet friends—Cookie is his favorite. One of his first hand full of words has been "Big Bird," normally when he's looking at his yellow friend on his Pampers during diaper changing, but also when he sees him in a book or on TV. We watch the show and sing and dance along to the fun songs. . . we all love "Murray Had a Little Lamb." We need more Murray. We TiVO and watch every episode, even repeats.

Sure, I'd rather have Bert and Ernie as Muppet's only and not as stop motion characters, and Baby Bear's lisp makes my wife, a teacher, cringe. Still, Sesame Street is the gold standard for children's programing. It's wonderful.

Then we hit minute 35-37 and our TV is attacked by a little, red, furry monster. In short Elmo's World is awful. It talks down to children in a way Sesame Street never does. . . It feels like a marketing tool to sell more talking dolls (which we received for Christmas and already had to send back, not your fault, but annoying still). I know one person griping—especially and adult—isn't going to stop this juggernaut. It's just makes me sad to see my childhood memories being jackhammered out by that little, red piss ant. . .

That's harsh. Elmo with the rest of the cast is OK. I even like that you have him getting annoyed with Zoe for thinking Rocko is a real pet. He's got real personality there, but once you remove him to Elmo's World it goes downhill.

Anyway, keep up the (mostly) good work. I hope my son stay interested for a long time. I find most adults I get along with have a solid Muppet upbringing. Maybe we'll get the DVDs of the first few seasons.

Sincerely,

I'm Not Skippy!

Warning. . .

Now THAT was an Icy Situation. . .

This morning brought two unusual situations. My wife had a faculty meeting at school (meaning it was my job to drop off the kid at Grandma's house) and overnight a thin sheet of ice formed on almost every flat surface outside. Normally either of these wouldn't have caused me too much of a problem. But, combined with the fact that my car is the one parked in the driveway, today they put me in the situation of walking on ice WHILE carrying the kid.

You guessed it, my feet started to come out from under me during the 6 foot long walk to the car door. I dropped what was in my non-baby holding arm and grabbed the door handle before I fell. I got him in the car and gathered what I had dropped.

I don't normally panic. . . that made me panic a little.

Island of misfit toys. . .

A month ago one of my wife's students bought a Tickle Me Cookie Monster doll for our son's first birthday, a sweet gesture, but Cookie doesn't work. That doesn't matter because our little man LOVES him and drags him around the house all the time.

Then, Christmas day, Elmo Live arrives at our house and sings and dances when you touch him in various places (don't go there). So now our little investigator wants to know what's wrong with Cookie. He pushes on Cookie's feet and belly and nothing happens. He really wants Cookie to talk or sing or dance.

Elmo's cool and all, but he falls over a lot, is noisy (and by that I don't mean the talking, I mean the gears), and now he clicks when he moves. He's like a little, red, arthritic, old man who likes to tell the same boring story over and over and over. . .

So I called Fisher Price about these issues, as well as our creepy music from the Rainforest TV. They are sending a shipping label to return and receive a new Elmo Live, a Gift Certificate/Coupon for Cookie, and a new Rainforest TV. They were so cool about it all I didn't even complain about the bathtub-toy basket that won't stick to our bathtub.

After receiving this great news we hunted for a bit and found a Tickle Me Cookie of clearance at Toys Be We. We swapped it for the original and let him go. . . despite all of Elmo's fancy tricks Cookie still wins, hands down. So the new Cookie is ruling the toy kingdom while the chattering Elmo is on his way back to the mothership.

Fruit Snack update part 3. . .

I'm a little annoyed. Yes, some boxes looked like squirrel brains, but some were OK. Now Beechnut has removed the fruit snacks from the line. Which sucks. They gave a full serving of fruit and had no artificial anything in them. Our little monster loved them.

Who's watching the baby?. . .

Ah, Christmas break. Two weeks off work, mostly, to stay at home with the family. . . also the same time every year that I get the worst cold ever.

I apologize for the shortage of posts. Sure I was home for two weeks, sure I might have had time to post (when not coughing up a lung), but I was also spending almost every waking hour with the little monkey. That meant nap times and bed times were for not thinking about him. . . which meant not writing about him.

So today I'm back at work. Normally at this time we're finishing up breakfast and moving on to watching Sid the Science Kid. I never thought I'd be so happy to be back at work. Don't get me wrong I loved my time at home with my wife and baby, but I needed some time away.

Part of it comes from not having a day away from it. My mom and little sister (our normal babysitters) made it very clear that they were tired of always having a grandkid around. My other sisters have two kids each and one of them is always around. And my mother-in-law already has our little guy every weekday. So we feel bad leaving him over there when she's not supposed to have him.

It brings up the importance of having time without your child(ren). I've talked before about needing to keep the marriage going and not letting your job as parent overshadow you job as spouse. This includes time alone. . . not time while the baby is napping in the other room (which is good time), but time out being adults with the kid in the care of someone else.

We need to find a non-relative baby sitter.