THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (TO EACH OTHER)

Her Awesomeness: "Are all six-year-old boys fixated on farts like Beast is?"

Me: "Wait until he finds out they're flammable."

---

And that's gotten 2012 off to a classy start.

THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (FAITH-BASED EDITION)

Mom: "Okay, repeat after me. Our Father..."
Beast: "Our Father..."
Mom: "Who art in heaven..."
Beast: "Who art in heaven..."
Mom: "Wait...where are your pants?"
Beast: (pauses) "That's not in the prayer!"

--

Noodle: "Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake...Beast gets extra pancakes? NO FAIR."

--

Noodle: (pointing to sky) "So He's up there?"
Dad: (pointing elsewhere) "And over there too."
Noodle: "Up on the wall?"
Dad: "I suppose so."
Noodle: "There on the floor?"
Dad: "Well, it's kind of a mess down there, but sure."
Noodle: "Under the pillow?"
Dad: "Yes...and behind the door. I like that song, too!"

THINGS ONLY CHILDREN SAY (INTRODUCTORY BIRDS-AND-BEES EDITION)

Child development experts will tell us parents to be prepared with age-appropriate answers for the inevitable questions about how they came to be. Being the nuanced and thoughtful dad I am, with none of the previous generations' silly silly hangups about the human reproductive process, I considered myself ready for whatever Socratic queries the Noodle and Beast threw at me.

"Well, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, and they've had a few, and that scene in 'The Thomas Crown Affair' is on, and any other kids are sleeping, and the phone's not ringing, and they're not exhausted, and they don't smell like gasoline and sweat from mowing the lawn, and the litterbox doesn't need cleaning, and the bills have been paid, and the laundry's done, and the dishes are done, and the trash has been taken out, and the cats haven't vomited on the bed, and everybody's been checked for ticks, and nobody has gas, and nobody decided to load up on curry at dinner, and there's no JW's at the door, well, THEN what happens is..."

That's a good start, right?

What I was NOT prepared for was to be cross-examined on the topic by Beast, in the middle of a busy shoe store.

"THAT'S not how babies happen, Daddy. I'm asking mom."

What? I didn't hardly even get started. What did I say?

Wrong movie?

The shoes fit great, however. Kudos to Montano's in Saugerties.

BIG DAY FOR THE BEAST

That's because a big truck is coming this afternoon...with about four yards of DIRT.

TODAY'S ODD CONVERSATION

Beast, battling a tummyache: "Daddy, does the Sarlacc ever puke?"
Dad: "Er...um...I sure hope not."
Beast: "It would shoot straight up in the air!"
Dad: "Maybe that's how Boba Fett escaped it."
Beast, making pondering face: "Wow..."

ONE MORE AT FOUR

The Beast...the Little Dude...ain't so little any more...tomorrow he turns five!

At any rate, we are trying our best to provide something entertaining and useful here from time to time - it's just that every time the wheels really get turning the plate coincidentally tends to fill up with Real Life stuff.

Like now.

T-MINUS TWO DAYS...

...and then Beast gets to experience the wonderful world of kindergarten.

CHICKEN SNAILS!

Her Awesomeness busted this one out while yours truly was rolling around in the annual Epic Huge Pile of Leaves with the now-4-year-old Beast. Oh yes, there was very much of the OM NOM NOM NOM at the dinner table last night. (hat tip: Clumsy Wife, Careless Mom)

PHIL, YOU NUT

Busy times at the house...we're about to try something new for our semi-staycation: camping out.

Not full-blown Bear Grylls stuff, certainly not. We've got a cabin for starters, and if that works out for Noodle and Beast we'll try something more rustic in the future. Her Awesomeness has been camp-supply hunting all week, and me? I've been watching stuff like this:



It's assuring to know there are places where it's not raining.

ON THE KIDS' PLAYLIST (DADDY IS KVELLING EDITION)

Noodle AND Beast:

Los Endos - Genesis.

They like it. They really like it! Noodle is big on the keyboard-guitar interplay (and we quote: "what's that violin sounding thing, Daddy?"), and Beast's there for the drums. Daddy is a happy prog-dork this morning.

THE INEVITABLE TRIP

Silly me, I thought that since Beast had turned three-and-a-half we had safely negotiated the era of Emergency Room Visits Thanks To Weird (Stuff) My Kid Did, but no.

Chopstick in the ear.

No eardrum puncture, no serious or lasting damage at all, just a bit of a scratch in the ear canal to keep an eye on while it heals up. It goes into the annals of Jones famililal greatness alongside yours truly's Great Raisins-Up-The-Nose Caper of '67. And the ER at Northern Dutchess Hospital gave us a 5% discount for dealing with our copay up front, which reminded me a little of George Carlin's old "Bud's Medical Center" bit (Bud's! Where all the sick people go!). But hey, a buck-seventy-five saved.

After posting this on Facebook, I heard from two friends who had both taken their kids to the ER in younger days to deal with...tiny doll shoes lodged in the nostrils. We must have missed that trend.

ON THE KIDS' PLAYLIST

Noodle's been in the mood to dislike everything Dad chooses due to his utter uncoolness, but Beast? We may have an incipient Deadhead:

Ripple - Grateful Dead
Swamp - Talking Heads

FLU BE DOO BE DOO BE DOO DAH DAY

Looks like the local health officials were right about this year's influenza peaking right on schedule, although what my kids have appears to be a mild case of the creeping shpilkes and not the full-blown flu that's laying people low. Beast has been cranking out the green schmutz at an impressive rate but that hasn't stopped his usual rascality, and now Noodle has picked up a mild fever and she likewise is far from debilitated; she's spending the morning at work with Her Awesomeness and I pick her up for the trip home in a few hours, then it's coloring and bumming out in front of the TV from there on in.

Here, have yourself a song you might never have heard before.

PLEASE DON'T ASK...

...what happened to the week. Two days of ice, sick wife, catching up at work, daffy Nana, and...and...I'm sure there's something else I've forgotten for which I will be justly berated.

Anyway, it's Phil's birthday. Beast and I will drum-duet with our chopsticks tonight in tribute.

I LOVE IT WHEN THE LACK OF A PLAN COMES TOGETHER

So after the telephonically-truncated nap, I went over to Noodle's school to pick her up to be dropped off at the grandparents' while I met the missus to take care of the various legal things that we'd put off because of general parental day-to-day frenzy: wills, health care proxies, &c.

Stood there at the school like a lox until it sloooowly dawned on me that Noodle was already at her grandparents' because she was under the weather, slunk out, picked up Beast and off we went to Poughkeepsie. 9/9G traffic is many shades of evil in the afternoon, so we took the Milan-Schultzville-Salt Point route to the grandparents. Over the river and through the woods, indeed.

Dropped off the kids, got talking to my father-in-law about growing up eating brains for lunch; seems like every ethnic enclave has its old-school brains dish, and now I can add French-Canadian to the list since he grew up along the Massachusetts/Rhode Island border in Blackstone/Woonsocket, which is the largest French-Canadian area of the continent south of Montreal. All this talk of brains (braaaaaains) was grossing out my mother-in-law a bit, so I took that as a cue to make my exit and meet up with my wife.

And when I got to our meeting place the meeting was already over and done with, and I hadn't done had to be there nohow no way. Five minutes, boom, and Bob's your uncle. Which meant...

Free time. With my wife. And only my wife.

DINNER DATE!

We hadn't had one of those in...I can't keep track of the months, it's been that long.

Suffice to say there's a new entry in the Food and Drink section of the blog, and that's Peza in Hopewell Junction, in that plaza on 52 just west of the Parkway. She: the shrimp scampi pizza. Me: the macaroni & cheese with chicken and caramelized onions.

We like.

A shame it's 40 miles away from us up here in the boonies otherwise we'd be there more often, but if you're a Parkway commuter it's right there for you. Om nom nom nom, ladies and gents.

I even got a smooch at the end of the meal even though I had cheese-and-onion breath. Score!

UPDATE: my old mate Miller reminds me that Longobardi's in Wappingers is also a good one, so it's on the List now as well.

HOT STOVE BASEBALL

This blog is the only entry that comes up when you google the phrase "mooned Fenway Park".

Thanks, son!

(Oy, the things I do when I have a minute of free time.)

SOMETHING ELSE ONLY PARENTS SAY

Overheard just now from Beast's room:

"Don't pee on your friends. Your friends don't like it when you pee on them. Trust me on this one."

The sad thing is, once Beast masters toilet skills he'll be the neatest person in the entire house. Soon to come: extensive photographic evidence of Beast cleaning.

If he keeps this up, and maybe learns a little cooking, every mother in a four-county area will want him for their daughters. Looks, brains, charm, and he cleans? There's got to be a catch. Maybe his dad is dysfunctional.

UP AT 12:30

Celebrated the kids going to bed early just a little soon. They started waking in shifts starting at 12:30. Beast, scared of something. Noodle, potty. Beast, scared of something else.

I am told this is what happens as children's imaginations develop. We will have to teach Beast in particular how to be a brave little bear.

HOME AMID THE MESS

One bad thing about getting the power back on after it's been out for long enough is that every bit of junk that was lying around when the power went out is still there, but the alarm on the sump pump down in the crawl space at least stops howling like one of the Nazgûl once the power's back, and since the pile of scoodge-encrusted dishes in the sink are now merrily being cleaned in the dishwasher we will score this as a win for having electricity.

Oh, but has it ever thrown off Noodle and Beast's schedule. They've been down at Mémère and Pépère's having a barrel of laughs on their second straight unscheduled day off...and that means no FREAKIN' way were there going to be naps, but they WILL zonk out in The Awesomemobile (wife's car, if you haven't gathered) on the way home, making for one tremendous challenge to get them from sleeping in the car to sleeping in their beds. I'm hoping the restarted oil burner can heat the house in time, otherwise we've got a Phil Collins song on our hands:

YAY, CHRISTMAS PHOTO TIME!

Either it was Noodle acting up, or Beast, or the camera, or some combination of all three. We wound up with a lot of shots like this:

After about 40 of these...we couldn't even get a good photo-session tantrum pic, that's how bad it was...we gave up and went with the one from our summer trip to New Hampshire, viz:

Pretty much a metaphor for 2008, especially the last few months. The splash at the end was a great relief.

(Photo taken at Santa's Village, Jefferson NH. Great place if you've got small kids. It's an old-school amusement park scaled for smaller children, and without any of that Disneyhassling. We like.)