pain(t)

"I'm ready to PAINT!!!!!!!!!!"
...were the first words we heard on Saturday at 6:30 am coming from Luke's room. We had promised him he could paint his new room and when we went over to the house on Friday night to do some prep work he was already marching around saying, "Let's open the paint! Let's paint right NOW!" We promised him we'd start first thing the next morning, and he must have tucked that away in some little reptilian part of his brain, because that morning he went from sound sleep to ready-to-paint in what must have been less than 10 seconds.

For lack of a better analogy, painting a room with a toddler is like having a bull in a china shop. He wants to open the paint, dip the brush in, and run across the room painting wildly. He doesn't care about dripping paint, tracking paint with his shoes, elbowing up against parts that have already been painted, or randomly dropping the brush handle-down into the tray full of paint. And when you are letting a toddler help you paint a room, it means that he might be fully committed to the project for about 15 minutes, and any minute he might drop the paintbrush mid-stroke and dart out of the room to go hammer something. So basically I was on full-time Luke-watch and I followed him around saying "NO!" for most of the time we were in the room, and then followed him around doing hammering and digging projects until he decided it was time to paint some more. When Luke finally keeled over from sheer exhaustion at naptime, Dave and I took up painting together and made remarkably improved progress. In the end, we have two freshly painted rooms and one little guy who still has a blue streak in his hair that even a vigorous scrubbing didn't remove.

I have pictures but the camera and the computer are in two different houses at the moment...a theme that seems to keep repeating itself every time we need something urgently. On a related note, I'm sure Luke doesn't understand the full concept of the move but he is surely excited about the new house. I think at this point it's mostly just confusing because we're staying at the old house, but there's no food there, and we keep having to run back to the new house to retrieve things like Luke's bath stuff that we moved and then needed again. Then each time we stop at the new house Luke doesn't want to leave.

Adding to the weirdness is the fact that Luke will be with me as we watch the movers move on Wednesday. Then his school is closed on Thursday, and after a six-day hiatus, he'll go back to school with a new teacher in the mornings. I'm hoping he can handle all of these changes and we'll try not to throw any more at him in the next few weeks.

New Luke-isms to end on:
"A double-drum pan-cacter" - A double-drum compacter, the new steamroller-type vehicle that we're seeing everywhere now that we read about it in Luke's new book
"Oh - What do we have here?" - Discovering a big box of tools that Dave left out

House of Independence

I got up at my usual early hour, and not hearing Luke, I went into the furniture-free living room to read a magazine. Not two minutes later I hear footsteps and the sound of the door opening, and there was Luke, rubbing his eyes as if he couldn't believe it himself. Luke was completely unable to open the doorknobs at our "old" house and so when he woke up he would always call out for me. But here he can open the door to his bedroom and the door to the hallway, so there's really nothing stopping him from, say, waking up and sauntering into the kitchen for some breakfast. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but we're going to have to rethink our whole child-proofing strategy.

It's true, though; something about this new house seems to make Luke more independent. Remember, this is a guy who generally wants to be carried even on a playground. At the new house there's carpet on the stairs, and you can see your goal from the bottom of the steps, so he's perfectly happy to clamber up himself. Compare that to the old house where he wouldn't even think of walking up or down on his own. He'll also walk down the walkway by himself, walk out into the backyard, and even walk right into the hot tub (though we had to make a rule banning that right away). All in all, I'm glad to see him feeling more confident and self-sufficient and I think it's a good trend to come.

Speaking of other good trends: We met our first neighbor today and had a longer conversation with her than we've had with all other neighbors combined. She even went back into her house to get Luke an orange, because he had seen her eating one and it gave him a sudden craving. I think it's going to be good here. As I told Dave, we only have one more (albeit gigantic) hurdle before we can fully settle in here, but once we do, I'm going to think he's brilliant.

family soup

So everyone knows what I'm going to write, eh? Let me know, because I haven't quite figured it out myself. We've been slurping from a giant, messy, family soup in the past seven days and it's been fun and loud and crazy and exhausting. Luke is slightly worse for wear, and I suppose I am too. I guess I should be depressed about everyone leaving, or about moving, but instead I am baby-sad and just feeling at loose ends. Julie and Helena just left for the airport with Dave while Luke naps, and I'm flopping around the house, not quite sure what to do next (though I'm sure there's a lot to do). I told Dave this morning that I could grow to love Morningside, and that I think I want to buy it at some point, and even Luke was sad about leaving Morningside this morning...but still I can't seem to imagine living anywhere but here in our big bright colorful house on Pacific.

Luke and Helena had their moments throughout the week but they seem to have grown on each other, like an old married couple. Of course Helena can't get in his face without him screaming bloody murder, but I'm not sure which one was happier to see the other when they woke up this morning. Sam, on the other hand, could be poking Luke's eye out with a stick and Luke would still think it was funny. And Lily...well, she's a crafty one. I think Luke tends to classify her as "baby" but I'm sure in the next few months he's going to see that she's one to watch out for. No question that it's been hard for Luke to share his turf and his toys this week; maybe at Christmas it'll be easier to manage.

I don't know how we all wound up so far away from each other geographically, but I dread the day when we just can't get it together to get together any more. I know it's hard to do the schlep but I think this time is so good for us, and I'm so glad Mom and Dad have taken the lead on making it possible.

I'm having some technical problems with posting the "family soup" picture, so I'll just let it go at that and maybe come up with something intelligent to say later.

pause-stop-rewind

Here I am back at the original reason for this blog - a family vacation at the beach, and me wanting to remember every detail. Dave and Luke and I came home tonight, and what I think I really want to do is not to move forward in time but to pause, stop, or possibly even rewind. Rewinding might mean that I'd have to go through my current sickness again - yechh. And I'd have to rewind some of the chaos and stress of getting settled at the house. But we'd get to go through that dinner again - the spaghetti and meatball dinner that dissolved into kid chaos that was so raucous and unbelievable that the only thing that could have topped it was Helena having an accident and Julie waving the underwear around at us asking if we saw any wet spots under the table. Which happened. And I just couldn't laugh hard enough. And then even better, Julie was the one who pointed out that the only possible caption to the Papa-reading-on-the-couch photo was "Look OUT!"


I'm sad to be home but I have to admit I know I need a very short break if I'm going to make it through the whole week. Just for kicks, here's my cool man Luke:

Moving

Getting more and more excited...it's only a matter of hours before the crew gets here! This may be my last blog for a few days because I will be too busy having fun (or at least eating a lot of food)!

Dave and Luke and I spent the morning focused not on our visitors but on our upcoming move. We took a tour (the first time for me and Luke) of our house-to-be. And you know what? It's a real "rental" - nothing fancy inside - but I can see how it might work. The woman who lives there now gave us the lowdown on the house, the neighborhood, the school...and she was so enthusiastic you'd think she was paid to talk it up. The neighborhood looks like it's really nice and being able to walk everywhere is a real plus. Anyway, we have to figure out how and when we're going to tell Luke about the move, and since he's so interested in building houses we told him it was a house that Daddy was building for us (technically not a lie if you look at it in the figurative sense). Luke seemed neutral on the house itself, but beyond excited about the "pool" (technically a hot tub). When we left he was adamant about wanting to go swimming and I said of course we could swim...but he was mad to learn that I was thinking about the public pool while he was thinking about the hot tub. "I want to swim at the house that Daddy built!" he cried. Give it time, I told him. You'll have lots of chances to swim there again and again.

Not much to say about the subsequent trip to the public pool, except for one crazy incident with a mom of twins who are about the same age as Luke. She was trying to manage them in the locker room, and one was running around without a diaper on and peeing indiscriminately. Potty training a boy is the worst, she told me. "It's the 'power of the sword,'" she said. "He'll just go anywhere. I just feel bad for the dogs at home - they're the ones who are taking the brunt of it."

I think about that and I say, "Hmmmm..."

We're not really potty training right now, but we are trying hard to get Luke to be at least marginally polite. For some reason, there is literally nothing that helps him remember to ask nicely for things. So we could spend days talking about the word please, and then in the middle of dinner he'll come out with, "MORE HOT DOGS! I WANT MORE HOT DOGS!" So last night when he was yelling for banana bread I coached him on a nicer way to say it. Then this morning when he woke up, I heard some odd rustling before his usual call of "Mom-MEEEE!" I went in the room to find that he had turned off the noise machine, opened up the shutters, and walked toward the door. When he saw me, he said, "Excuse me, Mommy, may I please have some banana bread?"

One last word that I've been meaning to mention, and that word is "poopdeck." It's in the first line of one of Luke's favorite Dan Zanes songs, and from the very first time he heard it, he decided that it was one of the greatest words he's ever heard. Unfortunately, he uses it all the time (sing to the tune of the alphabet song: "A, B, C, D, poopdeck G") and apparently he's spreading it around at school, to the point where one of the teachers asked us if we happen to frequent a local bar called the Poopdeck. How embarrassing; we're now the Poopdeck family. I guess things could be worse.

Doctor's office

We are revving up for the once-every-four-years visit by my entire family. Of course I am beyond excited, but it's been tempered by a few bouts of sickness...Luke had a slight cold, Dave got mowed down by an extreme version of it, and now I'm starting to sniffle. Ugh. That said, we're more or less set: The carne asada has been purchased, the special breads have been ordered, the gift bags assembled, the beach toys collected, the Costco visited, the front yard completely dismantled...wait, that's in the "we're not ready" column...well, anyway.

Yesterday Luke had to go to the doctor for a TB test. I told him he was going to get a "special stamp" - the four-prong thingie. But then the nurse sailed into the office holding out one of the longest needles I've ever seen. Apparently, or so she told me, those four-prong thingies were found to be unreliable, so they've switched to a needle. Great.

So I held Luke in my lap and held his arm out on the table, bracing myself for screaming and kicking. Now here's the amazing part: Not only did he not make a single peep, he watched the needle very solemnly throughout the whole procedure. I couldn't even look, and he didn't want to miss a thing. "That's very unusual for someone his age," remarked the nurse, who gave him a whole cup full of cookies for his bravery.

On the way out, I said, "Doctor, you did a great job. Is that because you're going to be a doctor?" and he said, "Yes, I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up!"

Can we build it? Yes, we can

How long has it been? It's been so long that my computer didn't even recognize me when I tried to get on to Blogger. Hmmm. I haven't been writing because I've been (pick one): busy, cranky, sulky, depressed, despondent, stuck under a large object, all of the above. On the first round of attempting to write this, I began with a long list of complaints about my life. But then I erased them because really, who else wants to hear that (besides Dave)?

So, how's Luke?

On Saturday I thought I'd indulge his current building fantasies with a trip to what is called, innocuously enough, "Adventure Playground." It's an outdoor park open only in the summers that offers a large mud pond with Huck Finn-style rafting, a rope bridge, a giant mud slide, and a large separate fort area where you can work with tools and "build" a fort. What it boils down to, at least for 2-year-olds, is it is the Most Dangerous Park in the World. When you walk in, they give each kid a large steel hammer, a two-foot saw, and three nails, and they're sent off to a large cluster of rickety, hand-hewn tree forts and large piles of splintery wood scraps. "You might want to keep an eye on him with the saw," advised the teenaged parks employee as we watched it flap around back and forth in Luke's tiny hands. You think? Of course Luke was entertained, and of course he had no interest in the mud/water attractions, but an hour after hauling wood scraps and pounding on them with the tools, he took me up on the opportunity to go and watch the band playing in another part of the park complex. (And between the two of us, I was the one who wound up with the huge, painful splinter. Go figure.)

Sunday morning we headed down to the beach to see the results of the sand castle competition. We thought Luke would be more interested in the structural aspects of the large pyramids that won the competition, but he was more intrigued by the large mermaid, and later, just wanted to build his own darn building.

In fact, I don't know why we even bother dragging him down to these contrived events when some of the best action is happening right in our own front yard. (Men with power tools, lots of digging and pounding) Lucky for Luke, he has the best "seat" in the house, standing on a chair in the playroom and peering out the window.



Speaking of building, whenever I ask Luke what he dreamt about, he always says, "Diggers." The other night I told him I had a dream about one of his favorite bluegrass duos, Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch. He sighed and said, "Mommy, you don't dream about Dave Rawlings. You dream about diggers."

Final Luke observation [after burping]: "Steam came out of my mouth."