Meet the Mayor

When Zach and I are home alone three days a week, we do quite a few retail excursions. Zach doesn't mind shopping as long as it is done at a quick clip with no loitering in front of displays. That works out OK for groceries but not so much for clothes. Exhibit A: buying a pair of jeans. In the past, for me, this would have involved several trips to several different stores, with plenty of time for mulling options. Boot cut or straight leg? Low-rise or mid-rise? Stone-washed? Premium denim? European sizing?

But today I just plain needed a pair of jeans, and I had no choice but to bring Zach along for the ride. As I pushed the stroller into Old Navy I could tell he was in no mood for mulling. So slowly, subtly, like a hawk gliding in to capture its prey, I guided the stroller in smaller and smaller circles closer to the displays, until I could read the sizes as I passed by each pair.

"Can I help you?" asked a sales clerk.
"Yes, I just need an 8-short."
"Which cut? Diva boot-leg?"
Still circling slowly, I surveyed the entire wall of jeans. "Doesn't matter - I'll take the first 8-short you see."

So she spotted some jeans and tossed them over to me, and -- as if in a small-scale, extremely boring version of the movie "Speed" ("This stroller cannot go slower than two miles per hour!") -- I dashed over to the dressing room - shorts off, jeans on, fits OK, shorts back on - and then off to the cash registers without ever stopping. Funny thing is, the jeans look just fine. Maybe I should try that at other stores too. I'll just wheel back and forth in front of, say, a shoe store, and call out, "I need a nice black pump in a 6 1/2!" and they'll toss a box out the door to me, without even breaking my stride.

Luke seems to have broken free of a lot of the crankiness/adjustment issues he had over the summer and now he's just back to being good old Luke, only more so. I really think he might be preparing to run for office of some kind. Like on Sunday, when he delivered an impassioned speech about dogs to a small crowd of people waiting for tables at our local coffee shop. (There might have been something in there about health care too, but I lost track after a few of the big applause lines.) Or yesterday, at school, when I learned that he had invited all of the teachers and the maintenance man over for dinner ("Mackerel and sculpin and ham sandwiches").

In the late afternoons, we've started going over to our little elementary school because it's kind of a neighborhood kid-gathering place. Yesterday, Luke took off when we got there and I was amused to find him hanging out and chewing the fat with some much-bigger kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders. By the time I got in on the conversation, he had already invited them over to our house to play. "I'll come!" said one kindergartner/future campaign volunteer. "OK," said Luke, "but I want that one to come too," - pointing to the biggest kid in the group, a second-grader three heads taller than Luke. One of our neighbors was laughing as he watched Luke work his way through the playground making sure that he knew everyone's name. "He's like the mayor of Morningside Drive," said Scott. That's kinda true. But when he starts asking for campaign contributions, we're in trouble.

Laugh it up

In the past few days Zach has really started to morph from a baby lump to a real personality. For starters, he's smiling and yukking it up almost all the time. Diaper change? Big smiles. Time for pajamas? Grins from ear to ear. Wiping spit-up off his face? Laugh-o-rama. And I have never heard a laugh quite as contagious as Zach's - probably because it's a belly laugh that comes from deep down inside the yummiest, squishiest baby belly you've ever seen. When Zach was just a little bud inside of me, I watched an ultrasound where he tried to put his thumb in his mouth and kept missing, and then he turned his face toward the screen and moved his jaw up and down as if to laugh and laugh. At the time, I thought we had a little comedian on our hands. Now who knows whether he will be a real jokester or not, but at the very least I can tell that he seems to enjoy life.

He's also zooming through a bunch of milestones: sitting upright in the tripod (hands down in front of him) position; sleeping as much as 9 hours at night (though if he does this, Luke will wake up just to make sure that I don't get a full night's sleep); grabbing things and putting them in his mouth. But mostly it's the cheery disposition that has us completely charmed. Even Luke, who one might think would be jealous of Zach, is beside himself with excitement every time Zach does something new. It'll be fun when things really start happening quickly in the next few months.


And what about Luke, my 3-going-on-60-year-old? He surprised us all the other day when he went "swimming" across the pool by swinging his arms in a wild windmill motion. Who knew he even wanted to get his face wet?

Luke and I also started our new science class, which for the moment we have all to ourselves because no one else signed up for it. So in our private science tutorial on Monday, Luke learned all about sound waves and how the inside of your ear works, and we did a little experiment building an "ear drum." I think he is just hungry to learn and his head is filled with so many exciting things each day it's hard for him to process it all and take it all in. "My head hurts," he told me the other day. "I have too many words in there." I think Zach is going to have to teach him how to relax and let it all out...

Friday I'm In Love

Dave is gone for many nights this week so I'm looking for new and adventurous things to do with both boys. Our garage is now chock-full of various transportation options. Some of you may recognize this jeep double stroller; Zach is big enough to go in the front-facing way now, which is exciting for everyone (at a time when the littlest thing can excite us). We also have a new Sit N' Stand stroller, which allows the older kid to either sit facing backward or stand up and "drive" it forward on a little standing board. It cracks me up that Luke can't seem to remember the name of the stroller; he'll tell people, "This is our new stroller. It's called a sit...a stand...a stroll...what is it called again, Mommy?"

Luke has had a little toddler rebellion thing going on for the past few weeks, which has been trying to say the least. The day after the dead-fish-on-the-pier meltdown, he must have remembered me saying something about me being the boss, because he announced, "Mommy, I'm the voss. You say you're the voss but I'm the voss." I figured I was supposed to be mad at that, but the only way I could keep from laughing was to agree with him. "OK, you're the voss. It's just that I am the boss. So you need to remember that."

This week, however, Luke has sailed into the sweetest of all moods: he's happy to help around the house and he is quick to apologize the moment I seem less than thrilled with his behavior. What was it that turned the tide? I don't know but I'm just going to try to keep everything exactly the same for as long as possible to keep this little alien visitor with us. Last night I pulled out Dave's and my wedding album, which Luke and I hadn't seen in ages, and Luke and I curled up on the couch to read it together. He was particularly taken by the picture of all of the male members of the wedding party - all of the uncles, grandpas, and friends we love. "Those are all of my favorite men!" he declared. "Yes - it was a great party. You would have loved it," I told him.

Oh, and Zach has really become a laugher. How sweet is that? The two people who can consistently get him to laugh the most are Dave and Suzi. Dave has to say something very specific, along the lines of "Goodley-goo!" to get him to crack up, but when he does, it's magic.

Not entirely related, but somewhat related: When Luke and Dave listen to music together in Dave's car, the playlist is carefully edited for musical authenticity, lyrical appropriateness, and cultural diversity. But when Luke is in the car with me, he gets pretty much whatever happens to be on the radio (Luke put some spare change inside my CD player more than a year ago, and we haven't gotten around to fixing it, but that's another story). Last week we heard "Friday I'm in Love" by the Cure, and out of the blue, Luke declared, "That's my favorite song." So Dave had to download it and put it on the Ipod, and we've been watching the video on YouTube, and listening to it over and over again in every possible venue, but the funny thing is, it's really one of my favorite songs too, and at this point I don't think I can get tired of hearing it. Doesn't it just make the day seem all dreamy?

Rat Pack

If it seems like I'm acting a little more rakish or debonair than usual, it's because we spent the weekend living it up in true Rat Pack style, at the former Palm Springs estate of Dinah Shore. There's just something about that desert lifestyle... the lush palms, the glamorous parties, the free-flowing liquor...oh wait -- my mistake -- that was milk and apple juice.


Yes, we did the trip with two other families and a total of six kids under age four, and not only did we live to tell, we managed to remain friends AND have a great time. The mercury topped out at 105 but we had a blast between bowling, a tram ride and hikes up the mountain, dinner and a band downtown, and lots and lots of swimming. We even wore the kids out enough to have some actual adult conversation time in the evenings, after we convinced everyone under four feet tall to go to sleep.

Luke was of course in seventh heaven with his two best friends Hatcher and Eitan, and plenty of moms and dads around to do book-reading duty. He had a few blowouts over candy-related issues (go figure) but for the most part he was just happy to be there.

And Zach - good little Goo that he is - actually seemed to be amused by his first-ever dip in the pool. I'm searching for words to describe what it's like to watch him swim but the best I can come up with is "surprisingly buoyant." Even when you try to push his legs and bottom down so that he is standing upright in the water, he still keeps popping back up. We were saying that we could probably just set him off on his back and he'd just float around all day.

One of the things that made me happiest was how well all of the kids got along. Even Zach and Daniel (the two littlest ones) seemed to have a good time just looking at each other for 20 minutes or more, and that's how all great friendships begin, right?

We volunteered to drive Hatcher home from Palm Springs yesterday (because Julie had two kids to herself) and it gave us an interesting view of what it would be like to have three kids. Luke and Hatcher had a great time together in the back seat and cracked each other up for the first 90 minutes. But then it was amazing how quickly it degenerated from funny word games into "Stop touching me!" "He's on my side!" etc. It all came to a less-than-perfect ending when Hatcher, who was closest to the door, cracked open the car door when we were on the freeway, leading to a slightly hair-raising ride to the nearest exit, where we pulled over at a small industrial park. At that point we handed Hatcher back over to his mom (who had been trailing behind), and we set the childproof locks in the back seat not a moment too soon.

The best compliment about the whole weekend came from Julie, who said, "I'm already planning our next vacation." Where else do you think the Rat Pack would want to go?

Super/bad

Luke is currently bapping me with his "bad" hand and preparing to have his "good" hand, aka the "police" hand, step in and mediate the situation. Lucky for him he has an alternate identity to manage/blame for almost every situation: There's Pontrow, the genial visitor, Rico Ratchet, the mischievous troublemaker, Baby Cat, who likes to snuggle and get food spoon-fed to him, and of course the bad hand/good hand duo. The other morning, after Luke had woken up in the middle of the night, I asked him why he got me up.
"Oh, it wasn't me," he said.
"Well then who woke me up? Pontrow? Rico Ratchet?"
He pondered this a moment, then said, "No, it was just some air." Ah. OK. Remind me no to be disturbed by any bad air tonight.

It was a great birthday weekend, really. Nice massage on Saturday, amazing restaurant dinner on Saturday night with both kids in tow (!!) (Luke was on his best behavior and Zach slept through the whole thing), fantastic lunch "date" with just Dave on Sunday...But then how prophetic was the Zachary Enzo blog that I just wrote about not taking anything for granted? After our "date" lunch Dave and I were in the theater, just 15 minutes into "Superbad" when we got the phone call every parent dreads from babysitters Suzi and Boom-boom: "Don't want to alarm you, but you really need to come home right now..."

Turns out Luke decided that a very tiny Lego part would be much better suited inside his nostril than on the racecar he was building. Next thing you know, it got stuck, and we had to come home, and Dave had to take him to the ER, and there was a very long fine surgical tweezer involved, and blah blah blah. Fortunately there were no tears shed and no lasting damage, but the irony of it being six months to the day from when I went to the hospital was not lost on me. Now I wonder, was it Rico Ratchet who put it up there? Or did it just go up there because of the "air"?

Zach and Luke both crashed early tonight after a long day at the beach. (That's me in the background, holding a very contented Zach as he watches the waves.) In Luke's case, he wore himself out running around and arguing with his buddies; Zach must have simply worn himself out with his non-stop babbling and cooing. He's getting a little frustrated because he obviously wants to roll himself over but he just can't seem to move his big hulking body around too well. I wonder if that is how talking is for an infant - he must have so much to say but he just can't get the words out. Whatever he has to say, I hope he says it soon - I'm looking forward to bringing a new personality into the mix.

23 minutes

Lying on the bed, nursing a sore back here. Turns out Zach, aka "Frank the Tank," weighs in at a whopping 18 pounds, 13 ounces at four months, so I'm not just complaining about nuthin'.

I survived Dave's three-night absence last week in relatively good form; the boys were easy on me. When Dave was gone on Monday night, Luke and I hit a little bit of a rough patch, but we held it together. Then today it all fell apart in very public fashion, with Luke having a call-social-services-type meltdown on the pier when I wouldn't let him take two large dead fish home. Poor Zach was just plain bothered about his shots from the doctor today so he contributed to the screaming. It got to the point where total strangers (think: a group of pre-teen surfers) were asking "Ma'am, can I help you with anything?"

But when Dave came home, things got all good again, like they always do when Dave is around, and Luke and I bobbed around in the hot tub and looked at the sky and tried to forget about the day.

Curious point: If I'm home alone with both boys, it is possible to get them both to nap at the same time, but their sleep schedules only ever overlap for 23 minutes exactly (and yes, I'm looking at the clock). Has the universe just established this number as an acceptable window of time for Mom to get a break?

On Monday night when Dave was gone, Luke kept popping up out of bed, and it was 10:00 by the last time I tucked him in. Then I could feel my own eyelids falling and I had a little internal debate: Do I try to keep myself awake until Dave's 10:30 pm phone call? Or do I just succumb? Last thing I remember was propping one eye open to look at the clock: 10:23 on the dot. My "personal" time was up; I was out.

Confidential to Bill-O: Thanks for the Zach pics. And happy anniversary to you and Suzi.

Confidential to Joe and Sara: Today IS your anniversary. Seriously, do I need to be the one keeping track of this? Hope it's a good one.

Put on a happy face

Dave is currently upstairs trying to convince Luke to go to bed; I'm downstairs dreading doing it for the next three nights on my own. There is some crying involved, which is not good for Zach's sleep future. Let's hope Luke cooperates. As Dave was trying to get Luke to go to bed the other night, he told him, "Mommy is trying to get to sleep. She needs her rest. She worked hard all day being a mommy." Luke said, "I know. I'm still teaching her."



One little-known fact about Luke is that he is positively obsessed with Christmas desserts. He carries around this one little Betty Crocker Christmas cookbook, which we "read" all the time, and he has it practically memorized. When Beatriz and Felipe came the other day, Felipe was amused to have Luke sit down and read him the recipes, page for page ("These are Chocolate Mint Brownies. This is Raspberry-Chocolate Torte. This is called Bundt Cake." etc). Sometimes when he wants to be lulled to sleep he asks me to describe for him all of the desserts we are are going to make for Christmas.

The reason this is relevant is that on Friday he just couldn't wait any longer to make Christmas cookies, so we made the recipe for Santa-face cookies and just turned them into happy face cookies. Look for more quasi-Christmas desserts in the months to come...

So we had a wild, exhaustive day at the beach yesterday with friends. Luke's highlight, or lowlight as the case may be, was when a giant seagull came down and swooped up the baggie containing his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This resulted in Luke screaming uncontrollably, various dads scrambling to chase down the seagull, and various moms rummaging to find new food offerings to appease Luke. After Luke pulled it together he led all of the other kids around using their shovels as "metal detectors" to find his sandwich. He later identified one bird as the "police bird" who was going to track down the perpetrator and "put him in jail." Then, throughout the evening I had to answer endless variations on, "What do you think a bird might say if he takes my sandwich?" By bedtime it was obviously still on his mind because he had decided he didn't want to go to the beach any more if there were birds there. I had to promise that we'd keep all of the food in the cooler from now on.




Poor Zach...The second child. Nowhere near as many stories about him. But I can say this - he sure loves any play that involves sitting up. He always has a comically surprised look when he's upright, as if he's discovering a whole new world that is vertical. Whoa.

Yesterday Dave pulled out the exer-saucer for Zach to try. Predictably, Zach looked quite surprised. Not as predictably, Luke was more excited than anyone. "Look at him! Look at him!" Luke crowed with delight. "He's in a baby manhole!"

A handful

Did someone mention that being home alone with an infant and a preschooler is hard, hard work? If you didn't mention it, why didn't you think to do so before yesterday?

We had a great morning with friends coming over to swim, and Zach conveniently slept through the entire thing, so I was able to hang with Luke and serve lemonade and fruit to the kids. But once they left, things deteriorated quickly. Zach kept crying inexplicably; Luke didn't want me to hold Zach, didn't want to take a nap, and didn't want to stop bapping me on the foot. By 3 pm I thought I was going to lose it so I packed the kids in the car and just drove around for 30 minutes (they both went right to sleep) until I could clear my head a little bit. It's TOUGH to entertain two kids who have such very different needs. I don't want to turn into TV mom, but just about the only thing that consistently makes both of them happy is to let Luke watch a movie while Zach and I walk and bounce around the room and into the backyard.

This sorta comes at a bad time, because Dave is planning to be gone for three nights in a row next week. Um. Can we just same some time and call for the Code Grey now?

But I should mention a few positive things...Zach rolled from his tummy to his back on Monday. He hasn't repeated it since then, but it's a start. Luke has been walking everywhere without asking to be carried - AND he's started peeing standing up (but we don't discuss potty issues in this forum so I will say no more). Dave is having great success in all manners of his work life. And hey - I have a massage on Saturday. It was a birthday present from last year that I had yet to cash in. Question: If I refuse to get up from the table, does that mean that they have to keep massaging me?

Fish for lunch

Here's what happens when Mom takes a break for a few hours (to write a speech for work) and leaves Dad with the two kids at the beach:

Ninety minutes later, the three-year-old shows up at the front door, dead bloody fish in hand, saying, "Mommy, I caught this fish and now we need to eat it for lunch!"
Try explaining why that's not going to happen and his eyes fill with genuine, jumbo-sized tears. "But it's from the OCEAN! We eat fish from the ocean!"

And so Dad finally troops up the stairs, with a sigh of resignation, and turns on the grill. When the "lunch" is finally "cooked" no actual ocean fish is consumed, as predicted. Said boy is given some teriyaki chicken, which he asks if it is ocean fish, and when given an affirmative, takes a tentative bite, then moves on to the next project.

But I should say this: His baby brother is all smiles, all the time. Well, OK, not in the car on the ENTIRE 30-minute drive from Dave's office to our house (think non-stop, this-can't-be-humanly-possible screaming, the whole way). But bring him to, say, a crowded doctors' office and he is all smiles the whole time and will sit patiently for an hour at a time while you get your eyes measured or whatever it is you might need to do. Whatta baby.

Rain, rocks, dreams

Every day, without fail, when we're walking in the door, some version of this scene is re-enacted at our house:

Luke asks to wait outside while I go in and close the door. Then he rings the doorbell and I open the door.

"Hi. What's your name?"
"My name is Pontrow. I'm just visiting."
"Well, Pontrow, come on inside. We're just about to have some breakfast/lunch/dinner."

He then proceeds to examine the house and admire everything with great enthusiasm.
"This is a wonderful house!"
"Why, thank you!"
"These are very nice big chairs. And this is such a nice play area for your baby!" Etc.

Yesterday he moved on to our bedroom: "This is a wonderful bed. And such a nice crib." Then he tugged on the co-sleeper/basinette to see how securely it was attached to the bed. "Nice and tight. Very good."

The enthusiasm continues at mealtime. "These are wonderful crackers!" "Did you make this spaghetti? It's delicious!"

Some who know Luke probably remember that he is notoriously finicky (Example: He stopped eating syrup on his waffles and pancakes because he does not like anything to be sticky). So it's actually a nice little change of pace to have his super-gung-ho alter ego come to our house every day. But has Pontrow expanded Luke's eating habits at all? Um. No. Still, it's enormously entertaining to watch such a big imagination at work.

On Tuesday at the farmers' market, Luke befriended a charming woman named Edith, a retired food writer, with whom he chatted on and and on about crabs, oysters, halibut, clams, sculpin, and barnacles. "This is a a kid who gets a LOT of interaction with his parents," she said to us. That left me and Dave beaming for the rest of the night, for as Dave put it, this is our luxury -- to have a life made richer every day by two amazing kids.

From the random file: I asked Luke what they talked about in school that day. "Weather," he said. "Oh, what's weather?" I asked.

"Weather - you know, like rain, rocks, dreams..." came the response. I guess the weather is just dreamy today.

Mem...ries...lightthecornersofmymind

Still basking in a post-Seattle glow out here ... Yes, it was tiring. Yes, it was chaotic. But even still, I can't wait for next year. (If pressed, I might even admit to having bookmarked several potential Bethany Beach homes already. )

Being so far away from everyone, this vacation has become a really important time for me. It's also increasingly an important time for Luke, and surely, Zach as well. Seeing Antonia, with her beautiful art projects, Sam, with his amazing speed and fearlessness, Helena, with her sweet helpfulness, and Lily, with her startlingly articulate conversation has made us all wish, as Luke did, to have his "brothers and sisters" with him all the time. And don't even get me started on how much I miss the grownups.

Oh, and hey - this vacation is the whole reason I started blogging two years ago (as a way of recording our trip to Cape May).

So I'm just going to enjoy it for what it is for now, until soccer practices, or summer theater, or swim teams, or whatever else get in the way. Then the kids can fly on their own to visit their cousins (like the two skateboard-toting preteens behind us on the plane, who displayed an endearing combination of confident swagger and vulnerable "I-love-you-Mom" on the cell phone.)

Will they ever be that big? Could they be halfway there already?

Here are some more pictures to hold everyone until we finally get The Disc from our faithful photographer.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for making it happen!

Band-Aid Beach

Is Seattle just the best place in the entire world or what? Can you tell I just got back from a yummy Greek dinner and a (gasp) glass of wine?

At the very least it's a great time for Luke to be in Seattle because of his current fish obsession. Could he have thought that buying fish at the Pike Place market was as good as it got? Not after we spent half a day at Constellation Beach where the purple starfish are as big as dinner plates, the snails are bigger than grapefruit, and the crabs practically crawl up to you and ask to be cooked for dinner. At low tide, there's a long rocky stretch where you can walk out and see all of these creatures as close as you like, and/or slip on the rocks as appropriate...to the point where we had four out of five walking kids with bleeding injuries that required bandages. Joe renamed it "Band-Aid Beach." "It's like freakin' Normandy out here," he declared, surveying the casualties.

And where else but Seattle could it be not just bearable but actually pleasant to go out to dinner with eight adults and six small children? This Greek restaurant is the second place we've been where they have a special play area carved out for kids. By the end of our two-and-a-half-hour orgy of food, we had some kids busy in the play area and we had attracted some kids who weren't even our own to our table.

I'm just putting a few pictures out here to get the ball rolling. More to come as our adventures continue...

Ocean creatures

I think I've mentioned before that Luke is fish-obsessed. Evidence includes:

1) He will only eat if the food he is eating is described as some sort of seafood; i.e. spaghetti is jellyfish, tamales and sausages are lobster, rolls are clams, red peppers are redfish, etc.

2) He got a birthday card that folds out into a long chain with pictures of all different kinds of fish, and he keeps the card next to his guitar at all times. He uses it as "sheet music" to help him think up new lyrics to his ever-evolving composition, "Robot Ocean Clouds."

3) His favorite question is, "What kind of fish are we going to eat in Seattle?" Preferred answer: Salmon, king crab, Venus clams, lobster, monkfish, sculpin. Recurring follow-up question: "What do you think the fish might say?" Preferred answer: Please put me back in the ocean!

4) I asked him what they served at snack yesterday in school and he said, "Watermelon...and salt cod."



On an unrelated note, here's a pic not of ocean creatures, but of real-live air-breathing members of the family. Looks like Zach and I are the least cooperative of the bunch...

The party continues

What a week, with cousin Samson in town, big work party, lots of family events. I'm still trying to catch up but I thought I'd share another pic from Luke and Hatcher's party, courtesy of Super Photographer Bill-o (a.k.a. Boom-Boom). This is my "tropical" vegetable platter, during one of the rare moments when the palm trees weren't falling over. Little did I know the palm trees would become valued currency by the end of the party, with the kids fighting over who would get to keep them.

Not included here is what I like to refer to as "The Frosting Series" a group of about 8 pictures of Luke licking every possible microgram of frosting from his fork after he was finished with his cake.

More family pix to come soon...

Party pooped

Too tired to say too much tonight ... The party was great, but Luke ("I can subsist on cake alone") is currently melting down in the background so that's not much fun.

We had not four, not six, but nine ukulele players come and entertain us. They led the kids in hula dancing, then co-opted the adults to do a round. Amazingly, Dave and Stu were both willing participants - and this is after we got them both to wear sumo-suits at last year's block party (Dave: "I think I prefer the fat suit.")

Luke helped me make the cakes too...The only amazing thing about them, really, is that I got them done at all with a three-year-old leaning on my arm and saying, "I want to write the words!"

The big squiggle in the middle of the string on Hatcher's cake is when Luke pulled my arm to say, "I LOVE you, Mommy!" How can I argue with that?

Telling it like it is

Signs from today that maybe we have some more things we need to teach Luke before we can let him outside again:

In the restaurant this morning, as a lady with an exceptionally large posterior walks by:
Luke: "That's a big, big, big, big, big-"
Dave (cutting in with the first thing that comes to mind): "Luke! Will you close that door please? It's a little drafty in here."

After Luke struggles with it for a minute, Dave, who knows full well the door is solidly propped open, says, "That's OK, never mind." The great save is made, and the moment passes with the large so-and-so forgotten.

We think we're safe until tonight, eating dinner at the pizza restaurant when a Rasta-man with long dreadlocks walks in.

Luke: "Hey! There's a Muppet!"

Party time

Luke and his "brother from another mother" Hatcher are having their third annual half-birthday party. This year's theme: Luau. This year's invitation object: A pineapple, hand-delivered to each of their buddies' houses with the following tag:

Come to our luau - we'll play and laugh
As Hatcher and Luke turn three and a half
Jump in a bouncy house, eat tropical fare
While ukulele music drifts through the air!

My favorite response so far was when I asked one mom, "Did you get the invitation?" and she replied, "We already ate the invitation!"

Whole wheat flour

OK, do I need to explain how I somehow wound up with 15 pounds of wheat flour in my cupboard? No, I'll leave that one alone. But what's important is it led me to discover this recipe, from Betty Crocker, for whole wheat chocolate chip cookies that are so good I don't think I'll ever make the "regular" kind again:

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
2 cups Gold Medal® whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 package (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips (2 cups)

1. Heat oven to 375ºF.
2. Mix sugars, butter, vanilla and egg in large bowl. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt (dough will be stiff). Stir in chocolate chips. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet.
3. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown (centers will be soft). Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack.

Picky, picky

I continue to be confounded by Luke's picky and completely unpredictable eating habits. If what my mom says is true, I ate everything, all the time, preferably at the same time. Luke has a very limited repertoire of food that he will eat and he won't try anything beyond that (in other words, he's no Antonia or Helena eating crispy whole fish). We're lucky we started him early on tamales; otherwise there's no chance he'd eat them now.

Luke also has a fussy/meticulous side that I will attribute to Dave, because I am the world's biggest slob (true confession time) who will even avoid using utensils and will eat out of the container whenever possible. Contrast that with Dave, who, for instance, won't eat foods at the same time if they're going to run into each other, and who is famous for, when he cooks, somehow using every single plate and utensil in the kitchen. That's why I was amused but not surprised the other day when I gave Luke a cookie after dinner and he protested about eating it on the same plate as his dinner ("That's where the meatball was!") I mean, it's a cookie, for crying out loud.

As a mom, I've been trying to be more creative about sneaking new foods into his diet. I made a zucchini bread the other day and told him it was sugar-and-spice bread, and I only nonchalantly let it slip, once he had eaten the last piece, that there was zucchini in there too. The next day we made a zucchini chocolate cake together, and he knew that there was zucchini in it but he seemed excited about it anyway (though it turned out he was mostly interested in the frosting). Finally, the next morning, he turned to me wearily and said, "Mom, I just don't want any more cakes or breads with zucchini in them, OK?"

So now, given all that, explain to me how his interest in crabs came to pass. We have books about crabs, and he thinks they are cool, and he knows people sometimes eat them with a hammer, but we never really eat crab so I don't know where it came from. But on Sunday, Dave called me from the supermarket with Luke in tow: "I just want you to know that there's going to be a meltdown unless I buy Luke some crab."

Me: "Crap? Why is that news?"
Dave: "No, crab. He wants me to buy crab, and the smallest package I can find has a lot of crab in it."
Me: "Krab? I love that stuff. Sure - go ahead - I'll make a seafood salad."

Thirty minutes later or so they came back with crab, as in actual crab, as in slightly crabby-smelling disembodied legs packaged in supermarket styrofoam and plastic. Gross. But Luke insisted on having crab for lunch, so I held my nose and picked out the crab meat, heated it a little bit (it was precooked) and put it out for him on a plate.

He stared at it. "No mommy, I wanted to eat the crunchy part."
"Like the shell? You can't eat the shell."
"Well I don't eat this part, I only eat the crunchy part."

So there goes $11.99 down the drain. Next time he'll have to experiment with something a little cheaper, like beans. Anyone want some slightly used crab legs?

Random conversations

Luke: "Mommy, I don't like school."
Me: "Why not?"
Luke: "Because it's too windy."
(Luke was later heard to proclaim, "I love going to school!")

Me: "Luke, what's your favorite vegetable?"
Luke: "I don't like any vegetables."
Me: "Oh, that's too bad. Why don't we just eat these green peppers then?"
Luke: "Yeah!"
(We proceed to chow down on green pepper strips.)

Me (while Luke is eating french fries): "Luke, can I have a french fry?"
Luke: "Sure!"
(Luke grabs a french fry, climbs down from his chair, starts to walk over to me, but stops to sneeze...right on the fry. He hands it to me. I eat it anyway. I feel like a true mom.)

Luke (hugging me): "Mommy, I like to hug you. You smell like odorant."