You Don't Say

Dave took the boys on a glass-bottom boat ride today, which resulted in my Favorite Picture Ever, taken from his phone. Don't have much more to say about it because I wasn't there, but everyone seems sufficiently happy about the trip.

Anyone who previously scoffed at Luke's hazard light habit (me) will now be suitably impressed at his proficiency in naming cars. He'll walk down the street, Rain-Man-like, and rattle off the make of every car and the location of its hazard light ("Chevrolet, steering column, Honda, between the heating vents, Mercedes, in front of the driving stick," etc.) Yesterday Dave had him do a neat parlor trick for the family: Dave drew the logos of all of the makes of cars he could think of and Luke was able to name them all. "I should teach a class on hazard lights," Luke mused the other day.

He's also becoming extremely funny in telling stories because he has all of the appropriate gestures and facial expressions to match. Last night when he was telling everyone about the magician at the campout, he mimicked the man's strange vocal cadence all the way down to his New York accent.

The other day when I was working on the computer, Luke came in and started talking to me and it was such a hilarious stream of consciousness that I just started transcribing. So here, verbatim, is a sample of what you get every day with Luke:

"I’m a special kind of policeman; I’m kinda like a voss (sic); I tell everybody what to do. I walk around the backyard and watch everyone who is doing the right things. I try to tell them what to do and if they don’t do the right things I will chase them. I watch the front yard too.

"I’m drinking a special kind of juice. It’s called 'Ford juice.' Only grownups drink Ford juice. No babies. You have to be five. Or four, yes.

"I run really fast if I see bad guys or I snap my teeth. I run like a really fast claw. Claw is a really fast person in a running race. I wear special shoes with bats on them. I push my foot up to my back. They kick all the way up here. I run as fast as, you know, Marty’s car, Marty who lives with Geraldine. That’s what I do. "

Give 'em a hand

First the news: Zach turned 13 months yesterday, and he also learned how to clap. He woke up clapping and continued clapping throughout the day on command, on his own, and even in completely incongruous situations. (At the gym he got mowed over by a big kid with a padded rolling mat, and while everyone else gasped in horror he popped right up and started clapping.)

We've had a week to end all weeks, with Dave gone...and gone... and gone some more. It was exhausting and trying and even somewhat confusing, after Luke's legs broke out in some mysterious rash.

I should back up, all the way back to last weekend when we had unusually hot weather and uncharacteristically camping-related activities. We did a city-sponsored family campout with a bunch of our friend-families at the local park (more accurately on the baseball field) that included a barbecue dinner, breakfast, games, magic show, crafts, a movie, and fishing. In other words, a tame version of camping designed to appeal to the younger set. Short version: Luke didn't sleep too well; he kept opening the moon flap on the tent and asking, "Is it morning yet?" throughout the night; by association Dave did not sleep much either. Zach and I opted to do our own special brand of "not sleeping" at home.


At any rate, after all of that not-sleeping, the real attraction for Luke was the fishing derby at the pond, which started first thing the next morning. I have to give him credit for his perseverance: Long after all other kids had given up, Luke was still standing out there in the broiling heat, determined to catch a fish. In the end he caught (and released) two turtles, no fish, and a bad case of the lack-of-sleep hysterics: "I don't want to go home! I want to FISH! I hate going home! I hate our house!" etc.

The day after the campout we noticed a strange rash on Luke's legs. Then it kept spreading...and spreading...and soon I started a lack-of-sleep freakout of my own: It must be chicken pox! No, it must be bedbugs! Turns out that it had nothing to do with camping at all (although feel free to insert your own joke here about our relative squeamishness when it comes to the Great Outdoors); it is a strange vascular inflammation that occurs in children, usually in the wake of a cold. Try explaining that to the other kids. At any rate, it's fading rapidly and the weather is cool enough that Luke can wear long pants for the next few days without further question.

We've had some rain here in the past few days. On second thought, when I look back at it, it was actually just one little rain cloud that followed us around the neighborhood. Every time we hung up a sign advertising our garage sale, the rain came down and ruined the sign. Oh, and there was some rain on the actual garage sale too. But no matter; people still came and we made a few dollars and we got a chance to chat with the neighbors.

Speaking of which, our across-the-street neighbors Janeen and Michael had their little baby boy yesterday and we are so excited for them - and for us to have a new boy in the neighborhood. The more the merrier.

Zach, give 'em a hand.

Friendly Fire

"Why did we have a baby?" Luke asked me the other night when he was getting ready for bed. "We had a baby so that you could always have a friend," I told him. I sure pulled that out of nowhere. But he must have internalized it somehow, because he's been introducing Zach that way.

"This is my baby brother. We had him so that I would have a friend," he has been telling everyone.

I probably should have said, "So that you could have cannon fodder," or "So that you could have someone to use as a target," or more simply, "So that you could have someone to blame." I love watching them attempt to play together during this early stage when Zach still doesn't have much to say. They still find a way to argue. "He called me a ball," Luke complained the other day. (But that's the only word he says!)

In the afternoons we've been hanging out in the backyard and Luke wears his whistle around his neck and announces that he's the "voss" of the backyard. "I need this whole area cleaned up," he'll say, and he'll blow the whistle for extra emphasis. "Zach, you have to put all of these things back in the bucket." Lucky for him, Zach's second-favorite thing in the whole world (after playing with balls) is putting things into a receptacle.

Yesterday we filled the little plastic pool and instead of pretending to shoot Zach with a cannon, Luke was able to shoot Zach for real with a squirt bottle. My protests went entirely unheeded because Zach thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

Side note #1: Zach has sorta started pointing at things. Dave discovered this because he took the boys out for a walk and Zach kept pointing up at the moon and saying "Ba! Ba!"

Side note #2: Yesterday it was broiling hot outside, I had both boys at home, and Dave was out the door by 8:15. So...I took our little crew on a field trip to the wildlife rescue station, then to the farmers' market, then back home for pool time, then to the big kids' school and for a walk around the neighborhood, then to chat with our neighbors, then back to the house to make dinner and have a welcome home sign ready for Dave by the time he got home at 7 pm (!). "You're like a mommy machine," Luke said to me this morning. Yup.

Side note #3: I just noticed that on Dave's nightstand there are a pair of salad tongs, a whistle, and a toy chainsaw. Good thing the people who help us clean our house know us very well - otherwise they'd really wonder.

Mom's day

I can't quite muster full enthusiasm because I feel like I've been dragged through the mud. Tough week... little sleep... kids have been sick and whiny... and then today when things were FINALLY turning around, I backed my car into another car in the Costco parking lot. It's just a little scrape, and it's unclear whether the other lady is going to pursue anything, but the whole ordeal was stressful.

So with that cloud over everything, what's new? For starters, Zach got a super-short haircut. When I ran my hand through it, I had the strangest experience of thinking - whose hair does that feel like? Then I realized: It feels like Dave's hair. Trust me when I say that has never, ever happened with Luke.

Zach's also learned to be jealous of Luke. When Luke wakes up in the morning, Zach freaks out when he sees me hugging Luke and wants to crawl up to my lap right away no matter what else he has been doing. That's a development that I wasn't quite prepared for yet. So sibling rivalry is working both ways now. How many years does this take to clear up again?

Mother's Day was a nice diversion. We went for brunch with Suzi and Bill and then they took the boys for a long walk while Dave and I crashed. Then Suzi and I played actual real-live, tiles-and-all Scrabble while Luke held up my letters and announced them to everyone.

For Mother's Day Luke's teachers helped him prepare a little book for me with one of those fill-in-the-blank Mad Lib type paragraphs all about mom. Excerpts include: "My mom is 55 years old" and "She likes to eat shrimp" and most curious of all, "My mom is special because she takes care of Zach."

Pacy thinks this last one is a sign of incredibly advanced emotional maturity on Luke's part; I thought it was maybe a sign that I had been neglecting Luke. Oh, it's true; I'm so easily manipulated. Luke knows that he can say or do anything and all he has to do is look up at me through those long eyelashes and say, "Mom, you know you're in my heart of love," and all is forgiven.

Rug wrapped

We're completely tuckered out from a whirlwind weekend with Julie, Eric, Antonia, and Helena... The kids haven't seen each other since last summer but they don't miss a beat when it comes to catching up. Luke was so excited to have everyone here that he actually convinced all four kids to take a bath together on Saturday night. (It was quite a scene, but common decorum prevents me from publishing any of the pics.)

I'll see if I can boil down the last few hours of the visit, as told by Luke (to Dave, who was not able to be with us on Monday): "Helena hit me with a jackhammer and I screamed really loud but I was so sad when they left and their taxi had the hazard light on the steering column and Eric forgot his socks." OK, Got that?

Luke loves Antonia and calls her his "sister." Partner in crime is possibly more like it. Luke and Helena, on the other hand, get together like oil and water - coexisting peacefully sometimes but never quite mixing. Luke was only too happy to help Eric and Antonia bury Helena in the sand on Saturday.

That said, I'm pleased to report two things: One, Helena is completely game for just about anything, which includes looking at hazard lights, so that automatically endeared her to Luke.

Two, Luke and Helena had such a good time at the Huntington Gardens on Sunday that they actually had a happy kind of argument on the way home: "I want to move to Seattle." "No, I want to move to California." "No, I want to move to Seattle," and so on, until they both fell asleep, heads together.

Zach, I'm afraid to say, came out a little worse for wear over the course of this busy weekend. While we were making dinner on Sunday he pulled down a two-liter seltzer bottle from a low shelf and gave himself a big black-and-blue mark on his foot. Then just moments after we got over that trauma, he toppled off the little kids chair into the screen door and scratched up his face. It's a rough-and-tumble world out there, Zach. Better toughen up before the summer.

I have no idea why, but Luke suddenly decided that his new favorite game is "Wrap Rug," in which he pulls out the area rug from his room and takes turns with Helena and Antonia wrapping each other up like burritos. "Time for Wrap Rug!" he declares, blue rug dragging by his feet. It'll be a while before Zach can play it with any enthusiasm.

Parting shot: Beautiful birthday girl Helena about to blow out the candles.