The $2 question

Spending the past four days bed-bound has given me lots of time to ponder big questions. Such as, while we watch Luke's language skills take off, which is funnier/cooler? The things he knows or the things he gets wrong?

We're still laughing about when he aked Grandma Bobbie if she had a pool in her house and before she could register her surprise he added, "I was just kidding." And of course we got a big kick out of the lengthy story he told us about how he needed to pack his suitcase because he was getting on an airplane tomorrrow, by himself, to go to San Diego for two weeks, to do some work.

But I can't help laughing when he comes close but doesn't quite get something right. As in:

The "skeleton board" (bulletin board, which we just happened to hang up around Halloween)
The "bull-zoh-der" (bulldozer) in the empty lot
"Will you draw me a smelly face?" (smiley face)
"Is he Spanishing?" (when Raffi was saying something in French)
"That's the biggest hammer I've never seen!"
"Hush little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a walking bird."
And of course the big family dinner disrupted by song: "I know an old lady who swallowed a PIE! Fuh-naps she'll die!" (pause for gusty swig of milk) "Fuh-naps she'll die!"

Then there's "This is called robbers," which he says whenever he sees a hot dog, some roast beef, or a table full of food. It's not even worth trying to explain but suffice to say Dave and I have been laughing about it all week.

I'm still in bed this afternoon and Luke is perhaps a little perturbed or disturbed about my lack of activity. That said, he's been a great help, along with Dave, bringing me food, books, DVDs. I think we're all looking forward to when I can get a vertical perspective on things...

pinecone seltzer

Something about Luke's cheery talkativeness around strangers inspires them to give him things. Like the waiter (not ours) he befriended at the restaurant who was suddenly inspired to offer Luke his pick of desserts from behind the bakery counter (Oreo cheesecake, which he didn't really like anyway). Or the waitress named Pat at our truck-stop breakfast joint who brings him a muffin before we even order. Or the homeless lady on the beach who stopped her cart to offer Luke a small snack bag. (Luke: "What was that lady trying to give me?" Papa: "A bag of cookies." Luke (nonstop for the next hour): "I want to go back to the BEACH! And see the LADY! And eat some COOOOOOOKIES!")

We've been living it up for the past few days with Grandma Joan and Papa in tow; strolling through town at the merchants' holiday open house and seeing reindeer and (inexplicably) a zebra; walking to the beach; day-tripping to the mission; baking and cooking and eating incessantly. Yesterday, on our sunny cloud-free day at the mission, it was one of those rare times when by about 2 pm all I could think about was how much I would love to rewind the day and get to do it all over again. There wasn't a single bad moment that I would have been unhappy about reliving.

Luke is astounding us with his sense of direction. Even at nighttime he can tell you where we are ("There's the doctor's office! There's In N Out Burger! There's the 99 Cents store!"). Grandma Joan tripped and fell about a block from our house when we were walking home the other night; two days later, when we were approaching the same block from a different direction, Luke called out, "Grandma Joan! Be careful! Don't trip and fall!" Everyone started laughing, but perhaps hadn't even realized that we were about to be in the same place where she fell. Then when she stepped over the fateful crack, he said, "Make sure you walk in the middle where it's nice and straight!"

There may have been significant, weighty moments during our visit but the times that we are most likely to remember are the most ridiculous, because Luke wants to re-tell them ad nauseum. I'll let him tell this story: "Grandma Joan was clearing the table for dinner. She picked up the pinecone but by mistake she dropped it into Papa's seltzer! Papa picked it out but then he said, 'It's OK, I'll drink it anyway!'" (followed by fits of uncontrollable laughter).

This visit could perhaps best be characterized by the sound of non-stop toddler conversation. Being in a long drive on the freeway brings out the worst of it. Tonight when we got home from Long Beach, we had had our ears completely talked off for the last 45 minutes. Dave, in the front seat, pulled out his wallet and said to Dad, "Here's the $4 I owe you." I wasn't sure what it was from so I asked them jokingly, "Did you two have a wager of some kind?" "Yeah," said Dave grimly,"Four bucks says this kid doesn't shut up the whole way home."

Name that tune

It is cracking us up that whenever someone asks Luke his name now, he answers with first and last names (usually resulting in a polite, "What?"). It could be a function of being one of just too many Lukes. Or it could be a function of a new growing skill of being able to identify your full name, the town where you live, your parents' names, etc.

In fact, Luke has a whole cadre of different names that he keeps stored up for special occasions. When he's working as a worker or builder, he prefers to be called Harry. (Sort of an offshoot of wanting to be called "Scary" when he was a painter.) Lately, he's been asking me to call him "Team" (most likely a direct outgrowth of when we're getting all of our stuff ready to go somewhere and I say, "Come on team, let's go!")

He's also excited about the idea of being someone's friend. Like after we visited Mom and Dad (and Mark), Luke went around proudly identifying himself as "Mark's friend." Sometimes he'll take it a step further when he calls me, "Daddy's friend."

Of course, he doesn't always get names quite right. Yesterday before he left school he was talking with one of the teachers from the older kids' class. Later I asked him what her name was. "Her name is... (pause for deep thinking) ... Lawn..der..ee" "Laundry? Like a laundry hamper?" I asked, incredulously. "Hmmm. Yes. Laundry," he declared. That's one I'm going to have to investigate further.

So lately I've been feeding my amusement by asking him what we should name various characters or animals. He will give it a great deal of thought, and then often settle on the old standby "Harry." But sometimes he'll surprise us. Yesterday I asked him what he thought were the names of two cats in a book we were reading. "Their names are Harry and... (pause for deep thinking) ...Keet." Keet? I don't know where that came from but it has a nice, jaunty, feline kind of sound to it.

Last night when we came home from work and school I surprised Luke with a two-foot-high nutcracker. As expected, he was beside himself with delight. Lacking nuts to crack, he amused himself by flattening chunks of play-doh and announcing that he was working with his new "machine."

"What do you think we should name the nutcracker?" I asked him over dinner. This was apparently a great question because he literally had to tip his head back and scrunch his eyes closed to think about it. "I think we should name him... (pause for deep thinking) ... Sis." So that's our new nutcracker: tall, bearded, standing sternly in uniform with axe in hand. Go ahead and call him Sis. I'm sure he'll endure worse in the coming weeks.

Sunday, no words necessary

Mistakes were made

Sure, Halloween was great. It was the day after that was really scary. Mistake #1: I vowed not to use the car all day, so I pushed Luke in the stroller from the library, to downtown for lunch, to a toy store, and then back home. By the time we got home, I was completely wiped and Luke hadn't had any physical exertion all day. Naptime was a battle royale. I would have been glad to skip the nap altogether except I could tell from his protests that underneath his bravado, there was a super-tired kid just waiting to collapse. After his last-ditch attempt to cry for Daddy, he finally gave up the fight, conking out completely in my arms at an unreasonably late 3 pm, and having to be roused from some sub-human hibernation phase at 5 pm.

At class that night, I told the teacher I was glad to see that the discussion topic was temper tantrums, because the afternoon had been such a mess. "Oh, you just have to write off the day after Halloween entirely," she told me. Now why didn't someone think to tell me this earlier?

Luckily Luke has the presence of mind to remember these things and talk through the post-mortem. That night, it was a topic he couldn't get enough of: "What did Mommmy say when it was time to go to sleep? What did Lukey say? I was MAD!"

On Friday I drove to the park and gave Luke plenty of running-around time; then we had friends over for lunch and wore ourselves out running around the house. By the time naptime rolled around Luke seemed tired enough and we had even joked about how Wednesday's debacle wasn't going to repeat itself. We sat down in bed to read stories...and then...more nap protest! I decided to let Luke run around (safely confined to my room and his) while I took a breather in my bed. That was fine until he took Dave's basket of coins and dumped it into our laundry hamper. I marched him back to bed and kept him there until again, he gave up the fight.

On the way to dinner that night, Luke told Dave, "Daddy, at naptime, I made some mistakes." Dave gave me a sideways glance and asked Luke what kind of mistakes he made. "I dumped your money into your basket and Mommy was MAD. But I was MAD because Mommy said 'it's time to go to sleep' and I said 'no, no, no!'" "Well, thank you for being honest with me," Dave said. The next afternoon Dave put him down for a nap without even a whimper.

Lest it start to sound like Luke is all-Daddy, all the time (which he sort of is), I should point out that Luke and I are quite a pair in the kitchen. It's been progressively more fun as we unpack the kitchen boxes and find new tools that I have to think of some immediate use for. When we unpacked the meat grinder, we made chicken salad. When we found the Foley food mill, we made cranberry sauce. When we found the potato masher and the nut grinder, we made banana bread with a brown sugar/walnut topping. This morning we pulled out a little pie plate and Luke made an apple/Lego pie, which come to think of it, is still "cooking" on his little grill.

When we cuddled up on Sunday morning, he said to me, "You're a good cooker, Mommy. You're a good breakfast cooker, you're a good lunch cooker, you're a good dinner cooker..."

*sniff* See? I can't have made that many mistakes...

candy man

Is it the hormones that just made me want to cry today when I came home and saw my completely grown-up boy, in full doctor regalia? "How was your day, Luke?" I asked. "Pretty good, Mommy. Thanks for asking," came the reply from the man with the stethoscope.

Dave and Luke went out to trick or treat in the all-out Halloween part of town (think adults pulling wagons down the street, lit up with a fully stocked bar) and Luke was an undeniable hit with all of the grownups. When they came home, Luke told me all about the mummy who asked him for help with her bandages and the house decked out like a pirate ship where they gave out candy money. "I can eat bubble gum because I'm big enough and I'm strong enough," he informed me. "You're not strong enough, Mommy." Hmmmm.

Shortly afterwards I became a patient at the "hopsidal" while he operated on my leg. Then he finally peeled off the doctor's outfit for a jaunt in the pool with Dave. "I'm surfing, Mommy!" he's calling in to me while I'm sitting at the computer.

Who's this grownup guy?

black humor

Shortly after the last time I wrote, Luke spent a morning vomiting repeatedly, and ultimately turning into little more than a wet noodle of a guy before he fell asleep for an early nap. Ninety minutes later, he bounced out of bed, bright and cheery, announcing, "I have to brush my hair!" (which he did) before continuing on to a perfectly normal day. Is it possible that things that seem completely bad on the surface are actually just plain funny? Like me finding a wavy grey hair on my head the other day? Or me using the bathroom at the doctor's office, then checking out at the front desk, walking through the reception area, walking through the parking lot, doing an entire grocery shopping trip, only to come home and have Dave tell me that there was a long strand of toilet paper hanging out the back of my pants? Or me writing the perfect little journal entry, the blog equivalent to the Great American Novel, only to have it disappear into thin air as Blogger crashed? Funny, indeed.

It's been a long week, with Dave gone two nights, followed by two nights of special activities, which have left me feeling completely spent. Luke was sorely missing Dave by the end of his trip (Dave to Luke on the phone: "I'm staying in a hotel" Luke to Dave: "Does it have a pool?") and I was sorely missing some relief from endless readings of "Little Pig" (the Three Little Pigs).

But "It's almost Halloween," as Luke keeps reminding us, and the excitement continues to build. We had a special Trick-or-Treat night at our Wednesday night class and Luke was a little skeptical at first. ("I just want to watch," he told us.) Soon he caught on to the idea that if he planned it just right he could get a lollipop from every trick-or-treat station.

Thursday afternoon, without a trace of irony, Luke went with me to the dentist, which was another big hit. "Are you going to use the drill yet?" he kept asking her. Then by Thursday evening, when we went trick-or-treating at Bill's mom's senior home, Luke was a Halloween pro. He had the whole door-knocking and "thank you" routine down pretty well, until he was somewhat unduly frightened by some big kids with face-covering masks. But he did get to eat two chocolate bars plus an oatmeal cookie, so there was at least something redeeming in the whole day.

Strangely, this whole time, Luke has been telling everyone from his teachers to the lady behind the pizza counter that he is going to be a "push-car" for Halloween. I think what he means by this is the railroad trestle car that the skeletons are pushing on our neighbor's Halloween display, but I have no idea how this translates into a toddler costume. I've managed to con him into wearing his doctor's scrubs two different times now, once for Bill's mom's, and once yesterday for a toddler Halloween parade that was little more than a few moms pushing strollers in a circle (Luke: "Where's the parade?").

Today I had the joy of watching Dave and Luke carve pumpkins together; tomorrow is downtown trick-or-treating. By actual Halloween I think this novelty will be pretty much spent. Although Halloween is supposedly a big deal in our new neighborhood our plan, for now, is to take it easy and just answer the doorbell. Here's to a weeklong sugar high.

jellyfish

Warning ahead: This may be the most boring blog entry ever because it has no theme or predetermined direction. You know, I would blog more if I didn't feel like I might be sick any moment. But hey, don't feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for Luke. I picked him up from school yesterday like a rag doll, coughing and whimpering with his trademark red over-wiped upper lip. Teacher Melissa said he wasn't able to sleep at naptime, so he was extra-tired and rolled around on the floor throughout dinner, refusing to eat and generally being inconsolable. I put him to bed almost an hour early but he woke up within 1/2 hour due to a mega coughing fit, and we had to go through the whole bedtime routing again to settle him down. How do people do it with more than one?

I'm sure there are a lot of fun Luke stories I could be sharing but it's hard to bring them to mind when I'm so me-focused right now. We went to a massive birthday party at an indoor playground on Sunday and while it was slightly overstimulating for Luke, it completely wore me out beyond repair. I slept for two hours when we got home and then later in the afternoon declined the invitation to go to the pier and the aquarium with Luke and Dave and Suzi and Bill in favor of vegging out on the couch and generally doing nothing productive. When we got home, Luke approached me cautiously: "Are you feeling alright?" (I guess he can't conceive of any reason why a person would choose not to go and see jellyfish.)

We're warming up to the Halloween season and let me first give thanks to all of the cooler voices that prevailed in preventing me from hosting a Halloween party. I'm not sure what I would have done, as I haven't even been able to keep myself on track, let alone do any kind of party planning. I'm considering taking him to a few different Halloween-type events and I'm trying to weigh the scare factor vs. the overwhelmedness factor vs. the sweets obsession factor for each one. The main question remains: Will he wear his doctor costume? And then: Will he stop obsessing about candy long enough to just enjoy the holiday for what it is? And then: Will he have nightmares for weeks to come about scary stuff? He told me that he was scared by a jellyfish he saw at school the other day, so there's no telling what might haunt his little brain late at night.

Speaking of the sweets obsession factor: We all know Luke is obsessed with gumballs for whatever reason, but the larger reality is, he just seems to be a sweets junkie. I'm trying not to make it a forbidden fruit, but it's all he wants to talk about eating. On Friday Luke helped me make chocolate chip cookies with the mixer (a big treat) and the pile of remaining cookies (that is, the ones that didn't burn to a crisp on the as-yet-unexplored bottom shelf of the oven, setting off the smoke alarm for 10 minutes, but that's another story...) proved to be too much of a temptation for the entire weekend. But he's ever-optimistic about the possibility that any meal might be an excuse for a marshmallow, or ice cream, or some other super-sugar treat.

I made him a yogurt "milkshake" the other morning and he was thoroughly unimpressed. When we got home last night I tried to cheer him up by hauling out the mixer again so we could make pudding, which I thought would be a big hit, but he turned that down too. Maybe he saw how much milk went into it and realized it might actually have nutritional value. He keeps talking about a kid from school named Sammy who brings "gummies" for lunch. Could it be gummy bears? Or gummy fruit? I have no idea, but I figure it's only a matter of time before there's some serious lunch-swapping going on around here.

tooled out

What to say, really, after a great week with everyone and all of Luke's tool fantasies fulfilled? He got to use the post-hole digger, drill press, all manners of saws, and had other extravagances like apple-picking and tractor-riding. Oh, and of course seeing Papa and Gamma Joan and Uncle Joe, Aunt Sara, Sam, Lily, and the dogs made it all worthwhile.

The good news was that we made it through the flight on the way home and I have that particular stressor out of my system. My favorite image is of Luke walking down the darkened aisle toward the bathrooms, with his crazy shoes sending red-and-blue flashing lights ricocheting around the plane and causing various disoriented passengers to lift their heads up from sleep with a somewhat alarmed, "Huh?"

By the time we landed, we had reached the absolute threshold of exhaustion, with me sitting comatose in the back seat on the way home from the airport, and Luke finally giving it up once we got home, unable to even finish the marshmallow sitting in front of him. "I'm finished," he croaked. Luke slept in, spent about an hour in the pool in the morning, then took a long siesta on Sunday. As for me, I never even made it out of the house all day.

Luke is settling back in but is probably feeling a little tool withdrawal. He was bugging Dave about wanting to use the drill press again until Dave finally came back with, "Luke, you have already used at least three different drill presses and you are not even three years old. I didn't use my first drill press until I was 33!"

Dave and I have had to face some crushing realities about the direction that the market seems to be headed and the complete lack of homebuyers out there right now. We've had some tough conversations in the past few days and we just sucked it up this morning and made one more big price cut, which will hopefully put us more in line with our competition. The sad fact is, it's a far different market than even a month ago when everyone was telling us how well-priced our house was. Now we're going to hunker down and hope for some action before the home-buying dead zone that is Thanksgiving/Christmas. For now, all I'm thinking of is just making it through the week.

blog-nanza

It's been so long since I've posted a picture that I have a blog-picture backup of sorts. Luke is a little cranky this weekend because he has a cold, but he's otherwise fine and funny. I thought I'd just jot down a few trends of the last few weeks:






1) Wanting to be buried up to his neck: This can be traced back to Sam at the beach, or any number of our beach books, or curiously, a William Wegman photo called "Pup Pot" that cracks Luke up every time he sees it. At any rate, he loves being inside something (sheets, laundry hamper, sand, afghan) and poking his head out. This afternoon when he was supposed to be taking a nap he wandered out and I brought him back into his room, to find his hamper in the middle of the floor. "I was doing Pup Pot," he explained sheepishly.








2) All things are tools: The house is a mess because basically everything that Luke can get his hands on becomes a new tool for the workshop. I'll find my kitchen spoons, writing utensils, and any manner of musical instruments being used to build. The squeegee from the bathroom became a hammer until he whacked several large chunks out of our new coffee table. We had to absolutely hide the putty. Yesterday at Home Depot Luke was desperate to have his hands on a tool, so I gave him a metal supply line from the toilet/plumbing department. Of course we didn't buy it and of course Luke was mad this morning: "Where's my supply line?" he demanded. We also bought Luke a tricycle recently and as he peddles around on it, he announces, "This is a leaf cutter!" as if he doesn't want to damage his worker's street cred by being seen on a tricycle. (Incidentally, when we last saw Dave's parents, we were laughing about Luke making something into a circular saw, and Dave's dad reminded us that Dave could be counted on at around Luke's age to be obsessed with a recirculating pump. Go figure.





3) The four food groups are cookies, cake, ice cream, and marshmallows: I didn't ever want to make dessert an every-night trend, but somehow it's become an expectation with Luke. We're even slipping into the two-times-per-day territory; yesterday it was In-N-Out Burger (read In-N-Out Milkshake) for lunch; for dinner we ate our pizza at the little shop where the Italian ice is right next to the table, and Luke was completely driven to distraction until he got his "spu-mo-mi." Possibly we started the month of September with too many birthday celebrations for me; today at the supermarket Luke told me we needed some cake for Daddy's birthday. At any rate, once he finds out Halloween involves candy, we are in deep trouble.

Dave and I are stressed about the house not being sold, about the competition, and about any number of unpacking or home decorating issues, but thankfully Luke seems to be oblivious. He likes this house, and when I think about it, why shouldn't he? He doesn't have to travel any great distance to do anything, he can pop up and down the stairs to his heart's content, and he can swim in the pool as often as Dave is willing to let him. Yesterday I took a snooze during Luke's nap, and at some point he must have woken up, seen me asleep (a rarity) and wandered downstairs to find Dave working. He somehow convinced Dave that 3:30 pm was as good a time as any to go for a swim, so when I woke up, disoriented, I looked around only to find the two of them downstairs in the pool, playing with tools, laughing their heads off.

...in which I become Rodney Dangerfield

Luke is getting more and more conversational, all the better for him to express to me how truly bored with me he is. I mean, there was all of that gestating, birthing, nursing, comforting, etc. that I did - I'm sure I've gotten to be a real drag.

I wasn't going to take his Daddy-ism too personally until Monday when I picked him up from school and he was practically insulted. The first word out of his mouth was "Daddy?" and he insisted on going over to the door to survey whether or not Dave might be rounding the corner. Compare that with Tuesday, when Dave picked Luke up from school, and it was practically a national holiday. There was much running, and squealing, and hugging, and then all of the other kids got in on the act, and draped themselves all over Dave like a big happy Maypole. I mean, I swear, I wasn't going to take it personally, but "I don't want you, I want Daddy" pretty much says it all.

Oh, and then there's my cooking. Sunday he was unhappy because he wanted rice and beans for dinner and we didn't have any. Then I remembered that Luke and I had bought a special rice and beans mix at the supermarket. So I made that, and twenty minutes later when it was gloriously gooey and piping hot, he took one look at it and rejected it. "Maybe we can go to Wahoos tomorrow, where the rice and beans are better." I mean, come on!

From Dave's perspective, this week probably reads a lot differently. There was a solo daddy-Lukey trip to a baseball game, Dave finally taught Luke how to blow bubbles in the water, they bought a great giant plastic saw from the 99-cents store...But when you're not part of the club, you tend to see things a little differently.

Anyway, this week is one of those rare weeks when I'm working M-T-W so maybe by the end of the day today Luke will decide that a day with me might not be all that bad. Here's to a long weekend of being second fiddle...

"I don't want to go to the beach, I want to go to Home Depot"

...were actual words spoken by Luke on Friday. Which was followed up by an actual trip to Home Depot on Sunday, which was followed up by a few painting projects, which was followed up by me making the shocking discovery that Luke KNOWS HOW TO OPEN A CAN OF PAINT. Yes, with the actual paint can opener thingy. He's quite proficient at it. On the one hand this thrilled me a little bit (a painting prodigy!) but it scared me in equal measure. I can't just leave him alone in a room for a minute without fearing that some sort of unwanted project (painting? sawing? hammering?) might be launched.

(Side note: When he paints, for some unexplained reason, he insists on having us call him Smoke. I arrived home in the middle of the paint project to have him tell me, "My name is Smoke. This is Smoke's friend," with a nod over in Dave's direction.)

Again, he continues to be fascinated by all things Daddy. If you want to paint, hammer some stray nails, or if you just plain feel like spackling something, Daddy's the go-to guy. Last night Dave had some work to do on the computer so I took Luke in the hot tub with me. But Dave sat just inside the door, close enough that he could hear our conversation and chime in occasionally. That drove Luke to distraction: "What's Daddy doing?" "Daddy, will you come play in the pool?" etc.

I read somewhere that it's very typical of kids this age to develop some sort of passion bordering on obsession. Think birds, or presidents, or...well, those are two good examples. These toddlers want to read and learn and collect and do everything relating to their favorite pastime. I think they also want to mimic. When they see Bob the Builder jackhammering, they want to jackhammer. When they see the man in the Home Depot paint department mixing paint, they want to mix paint. So at least I know where it's coming from.

This afternoon I bought Luke an adorable red kid-sized chaise lounge (or should I say longue) to go out on the back patio. When I asked him if he liked it, he tossed his head back and threw his arms open wide: "Mommy, I LOVE it!!!" And who did he look most like when he made that unabashed expression of joy? Dave, of course.

Toddler shopping list

...as dictated by Luke to some imaginary family member on the phone:

"Hi. We need...milk, bread, um...chocolate chips, cookies, ice cream...electric guitars, jackhammers...um, Gatorade..."

(one furtive sweep around the room to make sure he didn't miss anything)

"OK? Terrific. Thanks. Bye!"

paterfamilias

We've been on a little island of sorts - surrounded by all manner of boxes, bags and suitcases, and entirely disconnected from the world without any web access. And it's OK. Well, it's sort of OK. Dave and Luke are fine and I'm the one having the sporadic freakouts about who knows what.

When it comes to any manner relating to the rental, the home selling, or the move, Dave has been entirely in charge. He's the one on the phone with the exterminator, the furniture rental guy, the plant rental guy, our realtor, the landscapers, the rental company, the moving company, the housecleaners, our financial advisor, and probably lots of other people I haven't even known about. My job is basically to surf Craigslist idly for outdoor furniture bargains. And yet he's the one who's calm, cool, and collected. And cheerily optimistic too. I happened to ask Suzi the other day if Dave had always been like that. "Pretty much," was the response.

Maybe that's why Luke is in a little bit of a Daddy mode right now. Up until now, he's more or less never turned down an opportunity to see me (to be fair, I had the added advantage of offering milk for the first two years). But lately, whenever catastrophe strikes or knees get bumped or chocolate milk gets spilled all over the patio, it's, "I want DADDY!!!!!!!!!" He must have clued in to the fact that Dave's the guy who never seems to get ruffled, always finds a way to get things done, and who can see only sunshine on the darkest day.

Luke chose this weekend to stop taking an afternoon nap and it made for some cranky afternoons, but whereas it sends me up a tree, Dave doesn't seem to mind in the least. He and Luke took off for the beach yesterday afternoon while I ran some errands. Then I strolled down the hill to the beach to meet them, and there they were, silhouetted in the late afternoon sun, jumping up and down with total joy as soon as they saw me.

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!"