ook

the boy has lately taken to creating pileups with his wheeled vehicles.
he may want to be godzilla when he grows up.

mama had a hard afternoon yesterday:

Kris: He is like a 250-lb escaped chimp that was confined for too long and is now overturning the cop cars that were called to the scene.

— some asian guy (@grumpnet) April 15, 2012

she followed later that evening with, "i just put holy water on our son."

hard, hard night.

some days

toy hurled by boy during fit after being told a previous tantrum
negated a chance to play in the tub at bathtime.

for about a minute today, the inhabitants of this house epitomized the scenario single people and some couples envision when they conjure the hassle of family life: a domestic war zone littered with toys and keening with a soundtrack of crying children.

all that was missing was the high meowing of our cat demanding to be fed.

mommy was battling a headcold, toddler was irritable with a low-grade fever and baby was hungry.

all daddy had was what he hoped was the end of spring allergies, but he was off balance from a vacation-shortened work week and lingering fatigue.

mommy and daddy recognized the moment maybe seconds after it passed and were duly impressed.

by the end of the day, kris dubbed the previous 48 hours as "the lost weekend."

i'd hoped that we could hold our ground by way of domestic chores, but even there we were forced into retreat as nothing got picked up or put away. we were strictly on survival mode.

i can only hope we can re-group and make up for lost ground over the coming week.

little human behavior

the boy and his cousins, easter 2012.

it began with a couple of texts.

first:

From kris: I have no idea who this boy is in our house.
— some asian guy (@grumpnet) April 14, 2012

then:

More from kris: The alien being has said, 'no, thank you.' twice.
— some asian guy (@grumpnet) April 14, 2012

this was about 24 hours after his last exposure to his cousins. (which was easter sunday, not the post time on the twitter.)

this boy -- whom kris figured to have some sort of developmental issues just a couple of weeks earlier -- was being both verbal and civil rather than demonstrative and demanding.

we'd stopped making television or webcasts part of the boy's daily routine just before holy week. cold turkey. we'd neither mention characters in his favorite video or the familiar words for it, like "tee-tee" "dvd."

he never asked for it and didn't seem to miss it.

kris made a conscious effort to not raise her voice to him. instead, she did her best to make clear to him the effect that his actions would have on his choices -- ie, consequences!

i was even able to use it: "if you keep playing on the stairs, then we can't go to the library." he turned around and we walked to the library.

dad and the boy, outside the kanawha county public library, 10 april 2012. © tom hindman

it was miraculous.

kris got the idea from her favorite child behavior specialist, john rosemond, a dude i regard as curmudgeonly and snide, yet not without some merit in the advice he dispenses.

he is against all screen time for children in that he believes it hinders imaginative play and turns them into passive consumers of entertainment, even edutainment, like sesame street.

kris noticed the boy more into playing by himself with things like boxes and blocks and actually asking to be read to, which blew her mind. book after book at the end of the evening.  it was as if a switch were turned.

then came the weekend with his cousins -- less than a full day between saturday and sunday, actually -- and he was suddenly using his words and making simple sentences.


i chalked it up to his speaking with small people like himself who were communicating with words rather than actions. who knows, really, but it was my best guess.

we had a bit of a backslide this weekend, though.

we gave him the tv a couple of times as sort of a treat by the end of the week and then he got to not feeling so good with the sniffles and a low-grade fever and he became whiny, demanding and tantrumy.

we'll go back to the reduced screen time and see what happens once his health improves.

confession

i missed both holy thursday and good friday services for probably the first time in 15 years.

and while i was truthful in that child-rearing went a long way in derailing my plans, the same activity put me in such a state of, shall we say, agitation, that i'd have felt like a hypocrite for being less than single-minded on the observation of a high holy day.

the boy had gotten the best of me both nights with his pre-bedtime antics. the one on good friday led to angry cursing directed at my son for the first time ever.

i know, i know, the perfect time to experience the Lord's grace, but at the time it felt like the opposite of love, that's all.

video!

while i've been bitching and moaning about the new interface for youtube being a pain in the ass to navigate, i have found one thing to praise: customized code for embedded video dimensions.

now i can get these things to fit within the confines of this blog without having to do math when i want to post video.

here's the girl and me one morning where she's looking like cutie mccuterson. she chirps a little at the beginning, but i'm really waiting to get her making grand locutions, which she always does when there's no camera nearby.



oop. but then i find this.



and some exercise video from the same session:



here's one of the boy from a few months back doing a little gene kelly impersonation.



and here's him late last year getting his first haircut. (which bore no resemblance at all to kris' efforts to get him a haircut two weeks ago. she had to leave with the boy unshorn, that's how freaked out he was.)



well, that was simple enough. this blog may be well on its way now to becoming much more multimedia.

so swing away!

triduum 2012

i took today and sunday off because it's holy week and today marks the start of the holy triduum, which is marked by the mass of the Lord's supper on holy thursday and stations of the cross on good friday.

we were in the process of putting the kids to bed around 6 and i thought i'd take a little nap before mass at 7.

but the way it worked, as kris was putting the boy to bed, the girl woke up and i tended her until mama came in to relieve me.

it was after 7 and i wasn't ready to go, so i punted. i kept thinking i'd go in later for adoration of the blessed sacrament, but i let kris get some sleep instead and watched out for and fed the baby.

(i just now see from the sacred heart website's handy pdf of the sunday bulletin that i probably could have made the mass, because it actually started at 7:30.)

i'm already accustomed to the toll parenthood is exacting on my sleep and overall physical fitness. i won't say it's detrimental to my faith, because it and the love of my wife and family are probably the only things keeping me in the game as dad. in its own ragged way, my faith is reaffirmed and strengthened almost daily.

no, i know the Lord isn't judging me for not being present at a holy observance (what with so many other things to judge me for.) i think He'd rather i continue to toil in my labor of love and be present with Him in it as my own gift to my loved ones.

extraordinary things are happening now that i'm a father. life isn't the way it was for the previous 40-odd years. i'm just going to have to roll with it for now and work a little harder to make time to give the Lord honor.