Three Infections and One Birthday

We have a half eaten Chocolate Chocolate Cake from Cafe Latte on the kitchen counter, left over from K8's Birthday, begging me to add it to my already thick winter layer of all natural personal insulation. We have three separate prescriptions of Amoxicillin being administered at the prescribed regular intervals to all but me. We have Charlie Chaplin's The Kid in the DVD player reminding us of our nation's past and possible future. The house is a disaster of toys, clothing, and food shrapnel and I am without the gumption to remedy such overwhelming domestic intranquility. All gumption was exhausted the other day in meticulously, and lovingly, manufacturing the tiny 3D Q and O earrings out of origami paper. There is only one thing that can save me from this morose state of being. Beastie Boys. Loud, loud, Beastie Boys.

Ouch

It was a rough weekend. K8 spent the whole weekend with a nasty sinus headache that just wouldn't let go. Ouch.

Ozzi has a giant welt in the center of his forehead. It looks like the corner of the coffee table has converted him to Hinduism. Maybe Ganesha will make his new cold go away. Double ouch.

I have a wonderful little bruise across the bridge of my nose after being attacked by my ladder while trying to force it into a pile of snow and ice. Though considering the level of disregard for my personal safety while I attempted to remove the ice dams on our roof, I should consider myself lucky that's all I got, but still, ouch.

K8 has been doing a damn good job balancing a demanding career with getting in quality time with the boys. Yet Q, it seems, has entered a catholic mother phase in which he has taken it upon himself to break K8's will with guilt. I don't know how many times Q told K8 to, "Go to work for just a little bit then come home." All of my attempts to explain why mom has to go to work, that he's lucky to see her as much as he does, and that for many kids both parents go to work everyday are disregarded. The cliche "starving kids in Africa" speeches swim just below the surface. Then this morning Q and I have this conversation.
"Papa, Barack Obama lives in the White House?"
"Yep, now that he's president he lives in the White House."
"And he works in the White House too?"
"Yeah, his office is in the White House too."
He ponders this for a few seconds, making connections.
"Papa, I want MomMom to be president."
"Umm, No. No you don't."

OUCH!

Quote Of The Day

K8: "What did you learn at preschool today, Q?"

Q: "I killed Baby Jesus."

On Tuesday, while I was volunteering at his preschool, I was a bit concerned when a teacher mentioned to the class of 3 year-olds that "Jesus died for our sins." I'm not quite ready to get into a DEATH conversation with Q yet. I just didn't realize that he would turn these teachings into Nine Inch Nails lyrics.

DK: "Oy vey!"

Damn You Irony!

I am convinced the boys are plotting against us. Worst yet, they are using what I post on this blog as fuel for their clever cruelty. "Sleepyhead ehe? Comparing me to a raver? We'll show them! Muuhahaha!"

In the middle of the night Ozzi is screaming like he's on fire. K8 and I betray our better judgment to bring him into our bed. Like roadies digging for all the green M&M's to fill a bowl in Mick Jagger's dressing room, we know we're just condoning the behavior, but, at 1 in the morning, we're not willing to endure the wrath incurred. We must have dropped a few red ones into the bowl. From 1 to 4 am Ozzi was screaming, laughing, crying, babbling, flailing, and playing like a belligerent drunk. Not drunk on alcohol, drunk on power. Power over his weak enabler parents. He bites his beautiful mother. He stage dives onto my head and gives me a face full of pee engorged diaper. "This isn't a fucking Daft Punk concert you cute crazy little shit, it's Mama and Papa's bed. It's not party time, it's sleeping time. Pleeeeaaaaaaase go to sleep. Please! AAAAAHHHHH!"

Whimpers from the other room warn us of the approach of the whining reinforcements that Ozzi has called in. Q's arrival to the battle in our bed, however, does not work out to Ozzi's favor. Emboldened by overcrowding and sleep deprivation, I gather Ozzi up and place him back in his crib. I return to our bed.... and Q. Q begins to lightly moan and stroke my hair like a teenager on ecstasy and Ozzi catches on fire again. The battle rages back and forth until eventually Q, realizing a wild and ruckus neighbor is more tolerable than a wild and ruckus bedfellow, returns to his own bed. K8 manages, with great effort, to cajole Ozzi to sleep just in time to miss the morning sun rise into our window.

Torturing Your Parents 101 with Professor Q

Good morning class. For today's lesson we will be discussing how to scare the holy shit out of your parents using what the medical community calls Torticollis.

• Step 1: wake up at 5:30 am.
  
• Step 2: lay down on the floor beside your bed.
• Step 3: grasp the back of your neck and start crying.
• Step 4: when your parent(s) enters the room and tries to pick you up off the floor, scream.
• Step 5: through your cries repeatedly say something to the effect of, "my neck's stuck." with panic in your eyes.
• Step 6: let your parent(s) imagine all the horrifying scenarios resulting from a major neck injury.
  

These six easy steps will most likely result in a trip to the emergency room. The staff will then inform your parent(s) that what you have is Torticollis, a very common ailment for children between 2 and 5 years of age. As a bonus, you get to watch the relief that your parent(s) are feeling deflate when the doctor tells them that Torticollis can last anywhere from 1 hour to 4 days.

Milk it! As long as you continue to clutch your neck and wince at even the slightest movement, you can enjoy sitting on the couch undisturbed watching cartoons and eating junkfood.

Quentin of Solace

K8 and I love James Bond movies so much that we already have a babysitter lined up for the 14th. So when I saw that Swatch has come out with 007 villain watches I damn near soiled myself. Some are definitely cooler than others and I'm a little bummed they only have villains. Though we'll continue to hope for change an official Q swatch watch, I think the Baron Samedi watch will suit our Q quite well for his very first watch. Q's Christmas list is getting longer everyday.

To Do List

An important tool to dealing with ADD is making lists. Unfortunately, the nature of ADD presents a multitude of roadblocks to the mere act of creating and using the list that you need to be anything other than a walking disaster. The production of a list of things I need to do, like fold laundry, vacuum, clean the kitchen, has many enemies in my world.

One is my stubbornness. "I know I need to get this stuff done. Why should I make a list?", I ask myself. I often ignore the obvious answer, "Because the list of things you know is the reset button on the old dusty Nintendo you call a brain. The cartridge is in there but its hard to beat the game if the screen constantly goes all staticy."

Another distraction from making a list is that having to make a list of obvious stuff feels a bit like I'm admitting defeat to my own stupidity. I can admit to my own stupidity. I just can't admit that it is winning.

Then there is the matter of remembering. If I remember to make a list I will probably forget everything that I need to put on it. Then I have to remember that I made a list and where that list is. Grocery lists are a nightmare for me. If I actually remember to make one, I get through about half of what we need before I get distracted and forget to finish it. Most of the time then the half-assed list sits on the counter while I have gotten both boys into the car and we are on the way. If I did managed to get the list into my pocket there is a very good chance it will stay there forgotten until I get home to realize that I forgot most everything on the list.

Ironically one of the big distractions to maintaining a list of what I need to do is the ongoing, constantly in flux, list in my head of what I want to do. This isn't me choosing to do what I want over what I need to do. This is random, most often unrealistic, ideas popping into my head punching the "you have an appointment at 10 am" part of my brain in the voice box. What are some of these synaptic bullies running around in my head right now?

• wanting to take Q to San Francisco to go to the new California Academy of Science.
• grandiose romantic date nights and/or gestures that I do not have the means nor the gumption to bring to fruition.
• getting St. Paul to build a park like this one.
  
• figuring out how to convince Google, the wonderful, thoughtful, and generous company that they are, to give this blogger one of the new Google phones for free.
• wanting to go to the Mixed Blood Theatre's Distracted.
• coming up with a post for the blog where I can mention a few totally unrelated things that I think are super cool.
  

An unfair advantage

If the Minnesota State fair is a fair assessment of this fair state and nation, we're screwed! On the other hand, if the fair is an accurate sampling of the population at large, I am a much better looking individual, compared to the observed average, than my poor self-esteem allows me to believe. That same boost of confidence via the observed average fair-goer ends up being a bit of a trap for me. "I can totally have another deep fried candy bar. I have a long way to go before I look that bad."

Some other highlights of the fair:

Scoring an awesome Current t-shirt.

The best weather for the State Fair ever.

Crazy chickens.

Cooooooooookies!

Giant hunk of bacon on a stick. (to the right of the corndog)

The fine arts building. Awesome as always.

Our internet friend PumpkinGirl winning a crafty ribbon.

Watching Q go ape-shit watching the BMX and skateboard show. (ape-shitting not shown)

Some low points:

The couple that, at 9am, I could smell the booze on from 5 feet away in the livestock birthing building.

The 4H building slowly turning into the Nintendo Wii building. What the hell. 4H being dominated by video games is like the boy scouts being run by people that know nothing about outdoor survival.... oh wait.

We're screwed.

PBS Hip-Hop Battle

Bob da Builda' & That weird pumpkin dude

VS.

Bert & Ernizzle

DANGER: Loose gravel

You would think the total numbness over most of my knees would serve as a good reminder as to the dangers of loose gravel on streets when hitting it at a high rate of speed on a bicycle. Despite flying over my handle bars when I was 12 and grating the skin on both knees down to something that resembled raw ground beef, I have yet to learn this lesson. I blame the poor learning curve on almost 20 years time and the inherent forgettable nature of numbness.

In my defense, Minnehaha Park is pretty damn dark at 9:30 and a dark road of loose gravel looks pretty similar to a dark road of tarred and packed gravel. Of course, when I say gravel, I mean tiny shards of broken glass engineered to look like gravel. Trust me and my bloodied thumb, Minneapolis streets are paved with little evil shards of glass waiting to collect the flesh of those going foolishly fast through a busy park at night. St. Paul streets on the other hand, are all made of a space age polymer engineered by NASA that contours to your body as you sleep... and they're paved with gold.

Once again my amazing karma/luck/guardian angel/spirit animal/whatever saved me from myself. I have two little scratches that only required the removal of a few bits of rock when I got home. It could have been much worse. If the minivan didn't slam on the brakes as it came barreling around the corner to see me and my bike prone in the middle of the street I would probably be typing this with a stick held between my teeth.



Nice bike ride otherwise. Saw a family of 7 raccoons, a great sunset over Lake Nakomis, a red fox, a big bright full moon, and a plethora of little bats zigzagging through the evening sky.

Gone Baby Gone. The Goat is Gone!

If it wasn't bad enough that I had to take the boys to the mall this morning, somewhere between The Apple Store and Urban Outfitters, Goat, one of Ozzi's favorite wrestling partners, abandoned stroller never to be seen again.

With the tragic irony of this and my previous post fresh in mind I frantically searched everywhere praying I would find him. No luck. I annoyed the hell out of a few MOA employees. No luck there either.

But, all is not lost. Pacifier reassured K8 that Goat is still replaceable. During the search I also meet a super cool family from Iceland, Norway, or one of the other Nordic nations. Their orange Phil & Ted's was much cleaner than ours and they weren't in a panicked frenzy.

And just in case you were wondering who makes the cutest and cuddliest little goat this side of the alps: blabla kids. A fantastic globally responsible company that you can be happy to give your money to.

Big Ups to My Homegirl in NYC

We got a care package in the mail yesterday from our favorite New Yorker, Becker. A couple of great books that we surprisingly didn't own and a "I (heart) New York" shirt for Ozzi. Great. Thanks Becker.

But forget all that stuff. She also included a tro-tro book that she picked up in Ghana a while back. I guess my begging the last time we saw her paid off. Tro-tro books are wonderfully bizarre and unintentionally hilarious. The Girl Who Lived in a Tree Part 1 seems to be about a little girl that climbs a tree to avoid the outbreak of a disease. Like I said, hilarious. They are a bit like a West African Aesop's Fables but with much stranger "lessons".

Thanks Becker. One of these days we will come to visit. I swear.

Update: Holy shmoly! She sent us 2 tro-tro books! "The Wicked Teacher and the Stubborn School Boys 1" was stuck inside one of the other books for the boys. Sweetness!

Quote of the Day

Q: "nah nah hah.... nah nah hah.... foxy.... later... nah nah hah..."

Hendrix (and Garth) would be proud.

I wasn't quite sure if I should correct him or not. But it's nice to hear another song added to the short list of choruses constantly sung by Q around the house. He knows the words to Tegan and Sarah's Walking With a Ghost about as good as his alphabet.

The fact that he has become such a Tegan and Sarah fan does have me a bit concerned about his psychological wellbeing. I love their music too, but it is a bit dreary for a three year old to be this into it.

I really need to get the cable for the video camera so I can start proving some of this stuff.

Get your geek on.

I know computers are supposed to count as the "screen time" that pediatricians say are destroying our children's brains. At least the computer is interactive. Plus, in order for him to be able to use the computer I would have to stop. So his computer screen time is still pretty limited. Anywho, here are a few things I've found on the internet that Q and/or I have been enjoying lately.

starfall.com, Q is loving this reading education website.

The Geekdad blog at Wired.com. All sorts of great things that combine children and technology/science. Like a website that lets you spell out your child's name in Elements from the periodic table.

Freerice.com, If you ever find yourself board with the internet, why not test your vocab and feed hungry people around the world at the same time... for FREE! This site is genius and I would expect several similar sites to start popping up all over like the Crocus in our front yard.

I Say Goodby, Snow Says Hello

March 31 and 7.5 inches of snow!?! I know that's not totally unheard of here in Minnesota, but this is killing us. We need to get outside. I need to get outside. Q has started singing along to Target commercials. At least its a Beatles song.

Warning: The following tirade contains language not suitable for children... unless its Q, in which case he already knows them all.

I took the boys to the MN Zoo today.

DK: "Oh my god! What is wrong with these people! Parking a car inside some yellow lines is not that hard! What the hell!?!"

Q: "HOLY SHIT!"

DK: shaking head, inaudible "fuck"

Seriously though, what the hell is wrong with these people? The yellow lines marking where to park were clearly visible. Yet, a bunch of fools decided just to start making up their own parking spots. Strait lanes and commonsense be damned. It got so bad that the back of some of these a-holes' cars were actually encroaching the clearly marked handicapped parking spots on the other side of the driving lane. Then, of coarse, the whole place was packed with people calling the lemurs "monkeys", mispronouncing tapirs, and asking "where's Nemo?" in front of the fish tanks.

Why does everything I come to enjoy have to get ruined by people not as smart or as cool as I am? WHY?

Take The Nook as another example. Just a few blocks to stumble home from, its a neighborhood staple. Then some god damn cable tv show shows up and does a bit about them. Now every douche bag on the planet is packing the place so all us regulars from the neighborhood can't even get in the door to clog a few arteries when we need to. Don't get me wrong, I love to see the business do well, but there's a fine line here.

I suppose if more than 5 people actually read this blog I would be part of the problem.

Is there a fashion week for toddlers?

This doesn't quite make up for Tyson Beckford and co. not selecting me to be on Make Me A Supermodel, but its close. Not that I actually tried to get on the show, but come on they should have found me by word of mouth alone. They probably just didn't want someone that would be the obvious winner.

Anywho, in my constant quest to turn my children into well balanced celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears I have managed to get Q a spot on Pacifier's website. The picture of him that they have is my all time favorite picture of him, thus far, that I took a while back with his guitar.

While there, check out some of the super cool new clothes for the little ones like this shirt from infinitee.

My Theme Song!

We just got the They Might Be Giants two kids DVD/CD sets in the mail today. This is probably my favorite as a stay at home dad:

Q's Future is Clear!

My attempts at ingraining an appreciation for music is starting to pay off in Q's love for everything and anything that seems "rock & roll" to him: cool sunglasses, check. guitar, check. (pretend) tattoos, check. sex pistols-esk shirt, check. rockin' attitude, check!

Our Little Smart Ass

Today, while having lunch at the Walker during Arty Pants, Q made papa proud by showing that we are succeeding in raising a serious smart ass.

K8: singing along to the Stevie Wonder playing

Q: "Stop! Stop it!"

K8: "You're mean."

Q: "No, I'm Q." pointing an accusing finger at K8 "That's you."