second-place finisher's view

i just like watching him run. he's such a little boy.

flood

the boy gets an invitation to a birthday party.

a) i've noticed that the children, esp. the boy, have taken over the blog, and 2) he's doing stuff at a clip faster than i can document.

earlier this week, after we'd gotten up for the day, he and i sat on the couch as he sipped milk.

he heard a beep and an engine revving and asked, "what that?"

"that's a school bus," i said.

"lion?"

i puzzled before realizing his new favorite kiddie show character, jojo the clown, has a pet lion. in one episode, she was looking for him and he was waiting for her in the school bus.

no lion, i said. that's just for jojo.

he then said he was going to go on the bus. for what, i asked. "boing shoes."

("boingy shoes" were spring-loaded shoes that jojo wanted in another episode.)

"well, who's going to go with you?" i asked.

"you," he replied. and i gave him a kiss and a hug.

as we sat trying to wake up in the early morning light, i began wondering about my day ahead.

"first, daddy has to call the hospital. then, daddy has to call the doctor. then, daddy has to call insurance."

"and coffee," he added.

this was a carryover from going on shopping trips with mommy, where she always had to remember to add a can of java to her list.

funny boy, this one.

later that day

after the morning's vcr debacle:

Mommy stepped on glass. So it's ice cream for dinner! twitter.com/grumpnet/statu…

— some asian guy (@grumpnet) May 18, 2012

 kris said he was happy as a clam sitting on the bench outside baskin-robbins watching people, traffic -- and a motorcycle!

once home, though, she said he was vibrating like one of his cousins after consuming a wheel of fondant icing.

first rescue

vcr monster, a photo by grumpnet on Flickr.

had my first dad emergency today.

i was still mostly asleep when i heard a muffled call for "mommy!" (kris was in the shower.)

something about his voice didn't sound right, so i hopped out of bed and looked for the boy.

nowhere. not in his room. not in his closet. not in the dining room or in his tv chair.

so i called him.

"oh, hi daddy." (that's sort of become his default greeting. like everything's a surprise.)

he was directly in front of the tv, hidden by the couch. he appeared to be touching the screen.

up close, i could see he had his hand in the vcr slot. and he wasn't taking it out.

yeah. he was stuck.

he began crying when i admonished him that's why he shouldn't put his hands in there.

i calmed him down and felt around the guts of the tv. (he'd broken off the vcr door last week.)

he had four fingers free and one caught in the tape carriage, probably in the eject position.

mama came out of the shower to check and was worried. i told her to get dressed and that we'd be all right.

i began to wonder for a while if we were going to have to take the tv apart to see what we were doing.

luckily, about 10 minutes of fiddling and a few scenes from "jojo's circus" later, i somehow got the carriage into "play" position, which freed his finger.

by this point, mama warned him again not to put his hand into things and he cried some more.

i picked the boy up, wiped his tears and watched the rest of "jojo."

that's one for one. hope i don't have to something like that for a long time.

Via Flickr:

nearly ate the boy's hand today.

for the record

good boy, a photo by grumpnet on Flickr.

the boy was as close to an angel as he's ever been at mass today.

he sat mostly quiet and mostly in one place with nary a squirm.

i was able to sit in on and participate in an entire service with him alone for the first time.

some kind of unspoken prayer got answered in the affirmative today for sure. i'll say amen to that.

Via Flickr:
the prelude to the good friday was the pretty good wednesday at coonskin park.

a pretty good day

all systems go, a photo by grumpnet on Flickr.

as days go, friday was pretty good. actually, if not for the rocky start to the day -- screaming and tantrums, i think -- it would have been great.

the boy and i got to spend about three hours at the clay center to play in the toddler ball pit, splash around in the earth exhibit and experiment with science and a new space exhibit.

i was able to bribe him out of the place with the promise of french fries, which he persisted in reminding me about for the whole trip to wendy's.

we hit rush hour traffic on the way home. luckily, the freshness of the fries slowed down his consumption ("'ot!") so he had to let each one cool.

by the next-to-last stop light, a great bottleneck, i recognized that he wouldn't want to eat his chicken nuggets when we got home if i kept feeding him fries, so i handed him a nugget, which he ate without complaint.

he'd eaten three by the time we got home, with a french fry in between each serving.

he ate his last nugget (i thought there were six) at the dinner table, ate most of his fries and finished his milk.

we looked at books and, oddly enough, the new new yorker and i was able to send him to bed without the usual delaying tactic of "mo' milk ... please."

daddy even got to go bed before 8.

thank the Lord for a good end to a hard week.

Via Flickr:
they added a new exhibit at the clay center: astronauts! the boy got to play in a mock-up of a space shuttle cockpit.