IN WHICH WE PLAN TO SHVITZ OURSELVES SILLY IN THE CITY

At this point I'm well used to not getting a chance to read the Sunday papers until Tuesday, and only get to skim them when I do...but today with Noodle home from school early, I got a chance to plop down on the couch with her and actually read while she half-watched My Little Pony.

And to my surprise and delight the Times travel section featured not the usual 1%er fantasy-journey pieces ("The Hamptons to Macchu Picchu, By Balloon and Sedan Chair")  but an honest-to-goodness useful quick piece on getting around with kids in the city without causing a wallet hemorrhage.

MY KINGDOM FOR A HACK

So my darling Noodle this fall will be entering the grade where there's lots of project-style homework to do. That means graphics. That means printing stuff.

That means my wonderful and reliable black-and-white laser printer is not going to cut it.

That means I have to venture into the world of printers and printer supplies, the Mos Eisley of the computer-sales universe, where what I thought would be the kids' college fund will be eaten in ten minutes flat.

Unless there's some kind of way around walking sheeplike into the slavering jaws of the toner-cartridge-industrial complex...is there?

I thought maybe one of my local libraries might have a color printer handy, but no dice. What are some of the available workarounds? (If you have some local Hudson Valley knowledge, do share.)

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.

WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A LITTLE GIRL WHO ROCKS

Noodle finished up her homework promptly after school. 100% correct and everything, without even the slightest prodding from on high.

SORTING OUT THE SANTA THING (PART 1 OF MANY, WE SUSPECT)

Noodle: "What if I have to go potty while Santa's here?"

Me: "You just go straight to the bathroom same as always. But no peeking down the hallway."

Noodle: "But what if Santa has to go potty?"

Me: "He always makes sure he goes potty before he leaves the North Pole."

Noodle: "What if the reindeer have to go potty?"

Me: "They wait until they're flying over the ocean so they probably won't hit anything."

(Yeah, YOU try coming up with a better answer in a snap in that kind of situation.)

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.

AND THEN THERE ARE THOSE DAYS...

...where everything works wonderfully:

Congratulations, my darling Noodle.

THREE EXCELLENT REGIONAL CAUSES

The first one is to help out five-year-old Frankie Flora of Wappingers, attacked by a pit bull back in April and now recovering from some heartbreaking injuries. It's going to take him one heck of a long time to come back.

That's www.frankiefund.com.

The second one is in memory of a brave and dedicated radio colleague of mine, Jen Coudrey - who died last week after seven years battling a rare form of cancer.

www.jenfund.org is where you want to go. I only worked with Jen for three years, and hadn't seen her in ages - but on any given day, even in her suffering, she continued to be one of those rare souls who spurred the people around them to try to live their lives in the best possible way.

And finally there's continued great work being done at Albany Medical Center, who saw my darling Noodle through more than two years of treatment for kidney disease (still in remission!). Here's their link, and you can check out the Vasculitis Foundation for more on Henoch-Schönlein purpura, the condition that triggered her kidney disease.

This concludes the earnest and serious segment of our blogging day.

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.

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

BUT IS HER PIG NAMED PIGGY?

Vaguely disturbing thoughts from the Noodle yesterday...along the lines of what would happen to her if mommy and me weren't around. I'm told this is pretty typical anxiety, although it's still not fun to see in my otherwise-carefree little girl.

Either it's anxiety or she's working out some "Lord of the Flies"-for-girls scenario, where she and an army of ponies and princesses attempt to form a society. We'll see.

IN WHICH MY LITTLE GIRL CALLS SHENANIGANS

So I'm reading "Little Red Riding Hood" to Noodle this evening, and it crosses her mind that the Big Bad Wolf could have dispensed with the pleasantries in the forest and simply eaten Little Red the moment he laid eyes on her. But instead he hauls it over to grandma's place and eats her? Without even marinating the old bird?! Philistine. And thus did we get these words of wisdom from my daughter:

I'm much yummier than an old lady.

Girl's got a point, one must admit.

THAT'S RIGHT (UH!) THE WOMAN IS...SMARTER

We both get tired, my wife and I.

She, however, can stop herself before pouring Ovaltine into the coffee machine.

Noodle had herself a midnight hurl last night, and so she has a day with the Memere and the Pepere to be pampered and spoiled and otherwise coddled. The girl is just shy of four feet tall at age five and a half, and the charts say...well, just look for the black dot.

For those who didn't click to enlarge, she's still 97th percentile for height. And 99th percentile for wisenheimery.

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.

THIS IS WHY...

...we bought so much safety gear for the house. News days with stories like this make me go cold inside. Only now are we slightly dialing back the freak-out when Noodle gets out of our sight outside the house for a moment or two, even though I can distinctly remember being five and spending hours thrashing around in snowbanks, making forts and having a grand old time by myself.

I don't want to speculate about the circumstances in this case - it suffices to say it'll send you flying down to the store for doorknob safety covers, especially if you've got kids with the wandering bug.

THREE-DAY WEEKEND + OBAMA = DEAD SPACE HERE

Frazzletime should be more or less over by 11am tomorrow. Which is when my inaugural pre-show show wraps up on the AMs - 920 in Kingston/N. Dutchess, 1260 in Beacon/Newburgh/Wappingers, and 1420 in Peekskill, and on www.thesoundofthevalley.com if you're listening at a distance. Noodle's over-the-river dance class is done as well, replaced by an after-school kids' yoga class.

(shakes head) After-school yoga...just amazing. Childhood in Northern Dutchess has come a long way since "c'mon son, let's go shoot rats at the town dump."

NATURE ABHORS FREE TIME

(It might help if you envision me as Bob Newhart at this point.)

Rrring, rrring.

Yes?

Whothewhat?

Wrong bus?

But I'm NOT home.

It's Route 9. I can always make good time there... (/sarcasm)

4-1-1. It's what 555-1212 used to be.

Oh, hell. I'm a-s-a-p-ing it home, okay? Love you. Bye!

Half day at school today, see, and our best-laid plans to have Noodle spend the afternoon at her old nursery school and give me a hair of the ever-elusive Free Time were scotched when she wound up on the usual bus that takes her home instead of (as we requested) the bus that goes to her nursery school.

Worked out just fine in the end, though. Mrs. H down the street covered for us, and with her two daughters combined with my daughter there was a grand convergence of little-girl squealery from which it was difficult to extricate Noodle. Turns out both our homes are pretty much identical - and so if one of us gets the notion to upgrade the other finds themselves with plenty of spare parts!

I was looking forward to that nap, though.

THE DANCE RECITAL

A success. Noodle was beyond adorable in her red tutu, and the kids all had a blast. Despite what it may imply to the uninitiated on my Facebook description of the event, Noodle's dance class was more about fun and staying active than it is about ballet.

We may re-visit it in the future, but mid-winter mid-week late-afternoon schleps to Kingston are not cutting it in anybody's long term schedule for now. The Red Hook schools have some great after-school programs for kids on down to kindergarten, and Noodle's in one of those now. Either yoga or cooking, I forget which. At this hour you could tell me she signed up for a class in arms smuggling and I'd give you 20 seconds on how cool it is she's taking an interest in international relations (and would sail through those confirmation hearings today).

STILL SCANNING SLIDES

That's where I was all weekend. I think the 40's and 50's are done and now come the terrifying 70's-vacation slides. Because there's nothing to make a kid photogenic like 250 miles in the sweaty back seat of a Ford Maverick, then being dragged out for a picture in front of a historical marker half-covered in dust.

So there was that, and also converting this weekend's snowfall from driveway-blocking menace into mighty fortress to defend against any neighborhood yoots come to seek my wife's renowned banana bread.

Next up, an afternoon trip to the eye doctor's to help Noodle pick out a new set of eyeglasses. And doesn't this drag up old memories of my own trips to the opthalmologist where I'd be given the choice of the black Buddy Holly model or the brown Buddy Holly model - until Elvis Costello showed up and made those glasses cool. Obviously my having stumbled upon something in vogue was completely unacceptable to the parental powers that be of the day, and so those glasses were replaced by the kind you'd see on a doughy 45-year-old watching Da Bears over at the Swerski's. Yeah, great.

The same mistake is not being made twice with Noodle.