Archive for the ‘Aaron’ Category
December 1st, 2009
it’s going to be an interesting december around here. miles is really excited about christmas because he remembers some of the highlights from last year. but he doesn’t really understand everything he remembers so we’ve been trying to explain why santa didn’t come on thanksgiving and why he hasn’t come every night since. why we had to wait until today to start the advent calendar. why some places had christmas lights up but some places didn’t.
we put up the tree on sunday. the boys helped with the ornament hanging and were fully engaged the entire time. the front bottom third of the tree looks ridiculous, but they did such a good job coming to me to get an ornament and then taking it over to the tree and finding a spot for it. miles would stop and ask about different ornaments and where they came from and ozzie would stop and pluck ornaments off the tree and try to hit vixen with them.
i waited until this year to put up christmas lights outside. i wanted to wait until someone besides me would appreciate it and in past years erica’s been a little grinchy about stuff like that. miles was pretty oblivious to lights last year but i knew when i saw how excited he was when he saw the christmas lights on the starbucks in september, that this year would be the year. i finally finished the job today and had the house all lit up when i brought the boys home from daycare. miles said, “daddy, the house is so BOO-dee-ful!”
the cutest thing so far though is miles singing “jingle bells.” his best bit is the part that goes “oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, HEY!” in miles-speak it goes “oh what fun it is to ride and what, What, WHAT YOU SAY? HEY!!”
before i get in more trouble, i have to say that erica isn’t grinching this year. she was supportive of my idea of starting a “snowy village” she says that like everyone knows what that is. she also said she wanted to start collecting snowmen which prompted our friend to say, “when did you turn so middle-aged?” which i think is what erica always wants to say to me at christmas time. i’ve been planning our future christmas traditions for the past three years and obviously that makes so much sense to erica because “planning” is her middle name. hopefully we’ll have plenty of traditions that develop organically, but the years fly by and without a little planning, before we know it the boys will be teenagers and i’ll be all, “where’s my snowy village?”
Posted in Aaron, Erica, Miles, Oz, family | 1 Comment »
August 18th, 2009
miles: dad, those people didn’t pick up they garbage.
me: yeah, we don’t leave our trash out do we?
miles: dad, they bad people.
me: i think they’re good people who just did something not very nice.
miles: dad, some people are bad people.
me: most people are good, but yes, some people can be bad.
miles: dad, some people are bad people and some people have swords.
me: bingo.
Posted in Aaron, Miles | 1 Comment »
July 20th, 2009
the funniest thing happened last night. we had had a pretty busy weekend with a little shopping on saturday morning followed by our usual trip to the vancouver farmers’ market for lunch. the boys like to visit pete’s paella stand. they’re so fancy. there was some kind of firemans’ chili cookoff happening so miles got to check out some big fire engines and spray a fire hose into the trees. after a late nap we went out for dinner and then played in the backyard until bedtime.
we had promised miles a trip to the zoo on sunday so after i watched the end of that day’s stage of the tour de france we went to the zoo and looked at the animals and took a train ride around washington park. from the top of the hill miles spied the playground on the other side of the park and requested some play time at the “red park”. unfortunately by the time we got loaded in the car oz was semi-conscious and miles was being agitated by everything. the air he was breathing, the sun in the sky, the color of his shoes, he just did not yike it. i finally just told him that i knew he was unhappy and uncomfortable and that i was sorry but he needed to just sit and not talk. somehow that worked.
our neighbor and her daughter were coming over sunday night to watch the boys so that erica and i could get dinner and go see a musician perform in portland. so after another late nap for all of us, we decided to take the boys to the park for an hour to get the squirrels out a little bit. we stopped and got some fried rice to take to the park for a little picnic. miles was too busy playing to eat much and without a table, the extra distance from food to mouth was too far for ozzie to get much in his mouth with a fork, which he insisted on using. when we got home i set them both up with a little plate of food they needed to finish and then gave them each a fortune cookie.
either ozzie’s was a special kid cookie with no fortune or he gobbled it almost immediately after cracking the thing open. wouldn’t put it past him. some lucky diaper changer may get an inspirational message today. miles cracked his cookie and handed me his fortune and i read, “today you will have an important discussion.” i set it down on the counter and he immediately picked it up and pretended to read, “you will go to the zoo again today.”
Posted in Aaron, Miles, family | 2 Comments »
June 25th, 2009
miles: daddy, cover me.
(daddy covers miles)
miles: daddy, i cold.
(daddy snuggles close to miles)
miles: daddy, get a-WAY from me!
(daddy rolls eyes and scoots back to where he was)
miles: daddy, i can’t be-YEEVE this room.
miles: daddy, i can’t be-YEEVE you paint this room.
daddy: why?
miles: daddy, the shy-yer (shower) broken.
daddy: i kn…
miles: daddy, why the shy-yer STILL broken?
daddy: i have to wait until i get paid to have someone come and fix it.
miles: daddy, i want to help you fix the shy-yer.
miles: daddy, i went to coyege (college) yessday.
miles: daddy, i learn about ammals (animals) as coyege yessday.
miles: daddy, i yike cheetahs. they FAST!
miles: daddy, take me to the couch for movies, please.
(daddy picks up miles)
miles: daddy, you big.
miles: daddy, my big too.
daddy: yes, you’re getting really big.
miles: daddy, i watch wubzy and have milk now.
silence
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June 22nd, 2009
it’s been quite a while since i’ve had a chance to update my blog. i’ve been working quite a bit and spending the remaining time playing with the kids or working in the yard.
i have just been enjoying the heck out of our kids. miles has kept me laughing since day one, but he continues to up his game. in addition to being accidentally funny, he uses a growly fake yell to signal “this is a joke.” the past few days instead of taking his morning milk on the couch, he joins me in my bed for ‘nuggles under the sheets in our ‘tent’.
this morning i was having a hard time waking up and had started to nod off again. suddenly miles was fake-yelling and i realized that the tent had been filled with a noxious smell. then i realized what miles had been saying, “DADDY, YOUR BUTT IS DIS! GUSS! TING!!”
oscar is growing into his personality more every day. miles’ favorite song is “another believer” from meet the robinsons. we listen to it over and over again in the car and at home. every time i put ozzie in his car seat his starts singing the song.
we’ve started instituting a binky in bed only policy. removing the plug has resulted in a constant stream of sing-songy babbling. he has a few words: more, cracker, puppy, ball. mostly he just babbles with lots of inflection.
he does sometimes manage to make his way back into the bedroom to grab the binky. he then slowly walks out of the room and makes constant eye contact while sucking vigorously on the binky. it’s somehow obvious that this is him asking if he can have his binky. we then tell him to go put the binky back to bed. he slowly turns around and ambles back to the bedroom and then reemerges after a few seconds. then he comes back out more slowly again with the binky and the asking eyes. he knows what we’re saying but he just can’t quite bring himself to put it down.
i just can’t believe i have such wonderful kids. i hadn’t planned to be a parent, in fact i had specifically planned not to be a parent. part of that is because in my unmedicated state i can only make the con side of pro/con lists. i didn’t want to have to deal with discipline and teenagers who hated me and my own inevitable failings and second-guessings.
then my sister had her son and my mother-in-law couldn’t believe how comfortable i was holding a baby and our parents and a few other people started mentioning that we would be great parents. this coincided with me beginning to take an amazing medication called effexor that allowed me to begin to imagine the positive outcomes of a particular course of action and to stop living in mortal fear of my own failure.
i’m not any kind of evangelist for parenthood, i have no energy invested in whether anyone else does or does not have kids. i will say that i have realized that there is something amazing about being a parent that you just can’t grasp if you haven’t been a parent. i’m not necessarily claiming that it’s something everyone should experience, but my own life is certainly richer for it.
it’s incredible to be one of the few people my kids feel completely unembarrassed around all the time. i get to be right there when miles says from the backseat of the car, “hey aaron, what you doing, aaron?” to open the door to a room and have miles so excited to see me that he comes running across the room and leaps into my arms. to have oz raise his arms to me and when i lift him up he stops crying and pushes his cheek into mine.
i can’t believe i get to be ‘that guy’ for, as far as i’m concerned, the two most amazing kids in the world. they’re so full of energy, humor, surprises, love and sweetness and i’m so excited to get to know them as they grow. i hope i don’t forget to help them get to know me so that in twenty years on father’s day 2029, they don’t have to call erica from the bookstore to ask her what kind of books i like, they’ll know that what i’d like a million times more is for them to read one of the books that i like, come and sit in my backyard and talk to me about it all afternoon and tell me that my butt is still disgusting.
Posted in Aaron, Miles, Oz, family | 2 Comments »
May 4th, 2009
i followed a link to an article titled “33 surefire ways to screw up your marriage” not because i was looking for tips but just to be able to give myself a pat on the back for not doing most of them, i guess.
all was going according to plan, then i found this one which made me spit my coffee for so many reasons:
16. Your idea of the perfect vacation is one you take with the kids. You would never hear of going away somewhere just with your spouse, even though you have many viable baby-sitting options.
i can’t even begin to enumerate the reasons that this does not apply to my life. that aside, the list is actually pretty decent and the first comment is awesome. but i can’t vouch for the rest of the blog contents. i’m about to read “12 surefire ways to get in the mood.” i have a feeling that entry is going to make or break it.
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May 3rd, 2009
today was also supposed to be rainy but was actually beautiful. we started working in the yard fairly early. i took down all the bamboo and erica cut the stalks close to the base. and that was when we got our first visitor. during the course of the day, everyone who lives in the circle of houses that surrounds ours had to stop by and ask why we were cutting down the bamboo.
they all said something that alluded to the fact that our bamboo situation had been a conversation topic in their homes over the past week or so. ugh. so embarrassing. but in case you were wondering, numbskull gardening project = quick way to meet the neighbors.
Posted in Aaron, Erica | 2 Comments »
April 24th, 2009
we’ve been having busy times now that the weather seems to have caught up with the calendar. last weekend we went to the zoo early on saturday. we were out of there before lunch time which was great because on our way out the line to get in was up the block. crazy.
we rode the zoo train for the first time and both boys really enjoyed that. the train boarding area is near the tiger exhibit and when we got off the train there was a zookeeper standing near the fence with a tiger skin for the kids to feel. miles went over and was feeling one of the paws and said something in his weird little whiny voice. erica asked him to repeat himself and he said, “i want to wear that!” the zookeeper said, “i thought that’s what i heard.”
sunday we had no plans but ended up having a ridiculous craigslist day. i spent the afternoon with miles hacking away at an enormous bamboo root ball at someone’s house. i managed to get about 12 stalks out of the ground. they were all about 20-25 feet tall and i had to figure out how to get them home in the van. i got home without getting a ticket but that’s about as much as i want to remember about that debacle.
i pulled out a few bushes along the side of our house to plant the bamboo so i’ve been working on that and constantly readjusting all the strings i have holding the bamboo up until it takes root. i had one fall over the first day but no casualties since then. pretty good considering most of them are taller than the house.
we still had 2 enormous lilac bushes on the side of the house that we’ve been trying to get rid of for a billion years. they’re beautiful but seriously huge. erica spent sunday fielding calls from people who were interested in them but then erica would say, “no, you don’t want these. they’re really big. like really big.” so we didn’t get rid of those.
erica decided she wanted to plant a vegetable garden with miles this year. we ordered a raised bed to attempt to keep vixen from digging up all the goodies. we found a guy on craigslist who would deliver the beds and fill them at our house so he brought us a 2′x5′x18″ garden bed and a 3′x3′x3′ compost box.
he came and started working and then erica got home and started doing her thing which, “oh, you like that? you can have it. no really, you should take it.” so before he knew it he was pulling two 700lb. lilac bushes out of the ground and trying to load them on his truck plus hauling off everything i’d pulled out of that bed the previous week. he seemed excited about it but the guy he had working for him was making serious hate eyes at erica.
so that brings you up to speed. tomorrow is miles’ third birthday and we’ve got some seriously fun weekend plans planned. there’ll be pictures coming tomorrow night hopefully.
Posted in Aaron, Erica, Miles, family | 2 Comments »
April 12th, 2009
oz is finally back to himself which is really good news. i can’t speak for erica but i was just hanging on by fingernails. another day of worrying about my kiddo on top of non-stop laundry and puking and a three year-old trying to gawk at all the puking would have been one too many for me.
seeing good old ozzie smiling and eating this morning was about the best thing i could have woken up to. unfortunately for me it was one of those situations where the adrenaline or absence of a known ending just keeps me trucking. then having the end in sight takes the edge off enough for me to realize how exhausted i am.
we decided to take the boys to church since the weather was crummy and we wanted to get them out of the house a little bit and get a little break ourselves. after church we made egg salad with our colorful eggs. we put the boys down for their naps and erica hid easter eggs in the front rooms. then we tried to catch a bit of a nap ourselves.
miles took a great nap on saturday so i was really hopeful that he’d sleep again. after about ten minutes i heard a thump and got up to tell miles to lay down and turn off the light. i opened my bedroom door and saw his light on and bedroom door wide open. i found him out in the living room with all the eggs in a pile and half the candy eaten.
i had to march him straight back to his room and tell him all the things he did that were not cool and try to convince him that it would be best for him to have a nice little nap and not continue acting like a crazy monkey. i must have been convincing because we didn’t hear from him for two and a half hours.
once he was awake we had to talk to him about how he had played our special game without us. i didn’t want him to have bad easter memories so we had him apologize to erica and ask nicely if we could play the game again (with reduced candy content).
the discipline thing is a bummer but i’m trusting that small unpleasantness in the present is likely to prevent larger future unpleasantnesses. and since no one can prove otherwise i’m going to keep believing it because it makes me feel better.
Posted in Aaron, Erica, Miles, Oz | No Comments »
April 9th, 2009
this morning while i was in the kitchen miles came in and asked for something. i couldn’t understand what he said so i asked him to repeat it.
“daddy, i want beard.”
beard?
“yeah, beard, in a cup.”
you mean root beer?
“yeah!”
no, sorry, you can’t have any root beer.
“but why?”
my heart just about stopped. i don’t know if i can handle entering the why phase before ozzie is sleeping through the night. at least he stopped after the first one. i’m not thrilled about entering the multiple why zone. right now ozzie is in the permanent cry zone. this is going to be a long night.
Posted in Aaron, Miles | 2 Comments »
