the end of an epic vacation

(Though the picture above wasn't taken on the vacation proper, I think it sums up the emotions pretty nicely... I haven't shaved, Elijah has taken tacos and made himself look like an 'Oompa-Loompa' -- so his auntie says-- and Judah apparently wears no clothes... yeah, that about sums it up)

In saying goodbye to last weekend's over the top vacation trip, I wanted to mention that we are super excited to be invited to tomorrow's Waffle Fest 2011, which involves endless waffles for twelve hours-- though we for the sake of the good people who invited us won't subject them to our mayhem for that long. As my favorite Facebook response of the year so far said in response to being invited to this glorious event, "I don't know if I can eat waffles for twelve hours straight, but I can damn well sure try." Amen to that!

Waffle Fest also reminded me of one of the truly great times in our lives (Anna Jane Martin, make sure and have Mike read this one if he has time), which would be Pan-Bo-Ult-NewbyFest... I know, right?? Anyways, in the days before we had our little restless wanderers, we actually did things like 1) go out to Panera Bread with our entire small group, about 20 wonderful people strong; 2) follow up the Pan- part with the Bo-Ult, which would be the Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon's last strong movie-- and one of my all-time personal favorites; and 3) celebrate the birthday of one of our very good friends, Matt -Newby... all on the same grand evening. An incredibly amazing time, and one that brings back fond memories of friends now scattered across the country in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the like. One final thought on this: I can't even imagine trying to do that with kids... Elijah turned loose in Panera Bread-- truly terrifying.

Which segues perfectly into terrifying things that happened that day. Really, terrifying is a little strong, but after everything that happened to just get us there, a relaxing day wouldn't have been all that bad. So I tried to relax by joining a game of bridge-- the game for the thinking aristocrat. You know what aristocrats have that I don't? Don't say a castle-- we have a very tiny one (and are developing a moat, which the Queen is quite worried about); no, what the old-school bridge players had that I don't were nannies/ governesses, etc. The element of surprise is somewhat taken away when Elijah walks behind you and says, "OOOH! Number seven card!" That or the fact that the game took four hours to play... epic fail. The other true epic fail of the night was that we forgot to take into account that we eat dinner at 5:15, sometimes 5:30 on late nights. Scheduled dinner time for the night: unknown. Actual dinner time for the night: 8:45pm. Both Judah and LJ were in bed long before the dinner was eaten.

Here's the real kicker, though. They were both in bed-- but not simultaneously. You see, we had a bit of a classic puzzle on our hands, and I'll leave it to you to figure out the answer. (Cue cryptic voice)-- "In a room there are three beds; one for a baby, a sleeping bag for a toddler, and a double bed for the parents. The toddler needs to read to himself for two hours to fall asleep. The baby cannot fall asleep while anyone else is in the room-- and needs about an hour after that to be sleeping deeply enough to not wake up with others in the room. The mother wants to go to bed immediately, and the father doesn't want to sleep at all. Solve the riddle." I don't know how to solve the puzzle, but hypothetically speaking (of course) we put Judah down, only to have Elijah wake him up when he went in. So we took the 'baby Judah' out and let LJ fall asleep (he was so exhausted it only took him an hour) and then put Judah back... this worked from 9:00 to 11:30, when the Queen dragged me to bed, at which point Elijah sat bolt upright and said, "Let's play!!" I kid you not-- I think we both wanted to cry.

We spent the next forty-five minutes drifting within inches of sleep only to have Elijah bellow, "I'll show you-- let's play now!!" It got old quicker than I would have thought :) Finally, he woke Judah up, which prompted more outside-the-box thinking... I switched places with Elijah, who kept Rachel up all night by rolling all over the bed and kicking her in his sleep. I didn't know this because I slept like a baby for four solid hours until Judah woke up at 4:45 am. From there on it was all uphill, baby.

Completely serious final thought: For all the (hopefully comic) whining/ sarcasm out forth here, I think that big families are a incredible blessing. There will be a full post on this at some near point, but I am the oldest of five and grew up relatively poor-- I wouldn't trade any of it. Siblings give you great stories like these, grow you and shape you in ways you don't know until adulthood-- oh, and keep you up all night... I guess there's a touch of grey in every silver lining (thanks, Grateful Dead!)

An incredibly grateful (and tired) Knight signing off...

vacation + kids + car = a Travis Tritt song (PART 2)

So the last time, we left a story hanging with my big black truck leading a convoy down a little highway in Maine. We were in better spirits, we hadn't crashed, blown up or rolled over, and (at least this far) there were no major meltdowns from the young knights nestled amongst the piles of baby stuff in the back. I felt even better when we eased past the tricky intersection that is basically a three-way option all out of one lane. In Massachusetts, we would call this game "chicken." (i.e. you gun it at a spot along with the oncoming traffic until one of you peels out of the way, becoming the 'chicken')... in a truck, I am rarely if ever chicken, but today with so many impressionable future drivers aboard, I was extra polite. Figures.

Less than 2 miles from our final destination, I was distracted by a police car speeding up the other side of the road. I pulled gently over to the right to give him room up the center, then continued on. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him whip a hard U-turn about 200 feet behind me and pull into the traffic on our side of the road, so I eased back even further and let him go right past me. He declined my invitation, instead pulling directly behind us and flicking on the blue lights. He then had the odd sight of watching the next five cars behind pull off the road in perfect formation about 150 feet past us, all craning their necks to see what was going on. My brother, in the car directly ahead of us, had the cheek or the good nature (my vote) to give us a thumbs-up as we sat there waiting for the officer to tell us what was on his mind. He must have been in for a shock as he approached the big, rough-and-ready truck from Massachusetts ready to give me a piece of his mind, only to find a modern version of the Brady Bunch jammed into a pickup, nervously smiling at him. I think he was actually a little disconcerted.

"License, registration and insurance card," he boomed.

"Here you go-- insurance card?" Clearly I hadn't gotten the memo that I needed an insurance card with me at all times.

"Yeah-- do you know what I pulled you over for?" I don't get pulled over very often, but I do know what the correct answer to this question is... 'no sir, I don't.' The people that answer this question tend to end up on America's dumbest criminals-- "Yes, sir. I was drinking just a little bit, but I sure wasn't smoking the weed in the back seat." or "No sir, I don't know how the gun got back there." So I said I didn't know, which in this case was the whole truth anyway.

"I got you on radar doing 40 in a 25." This wasn't possible, and I now faced a awful decision. I hadn't been pulled over in Maine in a long time, and I couldn't remember how Maine policemen took to being challenged-- at this point, the way the day was going, I figured if I offered any resistance at all, I was going to be dragged from the car in handcuffs... now that would be a surprise for my grandmother! (and for everyone else, for that matter-- including the Queen, who to my knowledge has never driven my truck, and would have to learn in a hurry). So I once again said nothing. Elijah, meanwhile, was saying lots of things, quite loudly; "Look at the car, Daddy!"; "Pretty blue lights!"; "Drive truck now!" I couldn't have felt smaller if I were a midget playing NFL football.

Meanwhile, my beautiful wife, who is normally quite within her bounds to be termed the Queen, was steaming. "When he comes back, I'm going to tell him he couldn't have gotten you on radar," she said. "And then I'm going to ask where I can contest it, and how..." This went on for a decent while, until I suggested that it might cost as much in gas to contest a ticket 100 miles from our house than to just pay it. And her response is one of the reasons why I married her six years ago, and why I would again today: "It's the principle of the thing," she said.

While all this was going on, the officer came back from his car, and the game was clearly up-- sternly, he looked in my vehicle and said, with a hint (hint!) of a grin, "Make sure you go slower now..." and disappeared back towards his vehicle. Really... I thought to myself. Really. I didn't care that normally you let the officer pull out first. I wanted him to see the caravan pull away united. So I whipped out into traffic, five cars tucking back in behind and craning to see if I had a ticket, and started the (slow) drive the final two miles to our destination. It was noon... there couldn't be any more excitement to this day, could there?

This is why I never voluntarily go on vacation, I mused.

Tomorrow-- the grand finale-- what happened (or didn't) at midnight!!

A Moderately More Serious Thought, Part 2

Well, this family has just returned from fighting some epic battles in the wilds of Maine (although most of the battle was actually getting to the wilds of Maine), but that's a story for another day -- like tomorrow (How's that for a big market tease combined with a shameless plug...); anyways, today I wanted simply to complete a column started a week ago reflecting on envy. A weekend spent with young, good-looking, energetic people (most of whom are related to me, which I think makes the envy worse) who have no kids to take care of (though some of them were good enough to chase after and occasionally be bashed in the head by my two marauders) and no old age-imposed bedtimes is enough to drive anyone to serious envy-- so without further ado, I continue the list of what I've wanted to be over the years. Hopefully, in fifteen years, Elijah can 1) read this without cracking up, which is unlikely; 2) read this without having wished for some of the dopey things I've wasted my life trying to be.

2000- wished I was one of the cool kids who were king and queen of the prom. Actually got myself into the finals, which would have been cooler if I had 1) won, instead of being what winners like to call "first loser"; or 2) not stayed up all night after prom and fallen asleep at the beach the next day, leading to a sunburn so bad on the back of my legs that I waddled, not walked, across the graduation stage 2 days later. Yup-- when they say envy burns, I took it pretty literally.

2001-- Wished I had brought a sleeping bag when I drove eight hours to visit my girlfriend in Pennsylvania, only to find that it was basically closed at night and had to sleep in the car-- it was a little chilly. Did I mention I went in February?

2001- Wished I hadn't gone to visit her at all when she dumped me over the phone and ended our four-year relationship when I was asleep. My roommate (who would be the best man at my wedding four years later) still laughs to this day because he woke me to take the call (this is back in the days before cellphones, kids... or at least back when the cellphones were as big as your head), and I guess I talked for about fifteen minutes before she ended it. He asked me what had happened and why she would call at 1am. I said, "I think she dumped me," rolled over, and went back to sleep. Wasn't as funny the next day when I woke up and remembered what had happened.

2002- Wished I hadn't dumped my rebound girlfriend (who would later become the Queen of my life) just because I wanted to be cool and "pursue all my options."

2003- see 2002. (It's true-- I dumped her twice-- how's that for classy?)

2004- Envied people who were married and didn't have to live alone in the attic of a drafty house sharing a bathroom with four guys.

2005-2010 Too numerous to count, but you should ask the Queen sometime-- apparently I'm a bit of a "grass is always greener" type, or, as she likes to call me, "a little bit of a drama queen." Which I think is ironic, or at least humorously coincidental-- for all you literati types reading this who will correctly tell me that the situation above is NOT true irony. (I know)

2011- Envious (badly envious) of people with easy children...

So there you have it. Though I am slowing coming to grips with the positives of some of my shortcomings (I can't stay up all night even though I desperately wish I could so I could write my novel, be in marathon shape, and clean the entire house without missing time with the kids-- because I can't stay up all night, Rachel can go to bed because she claims she can't sleep without me... I think this might be a cheap ploy to get me away from writing this blog into the wee hours, but I can't prove that she doesn't sleep without me... arrgh!), I'm pretty sure it will be a lifelong battle. A man who is happy with what he has is truly happy. St. Paul speaks aptly to this in his letter to the Philippians when he tells them that he has learned "to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." -- Philippians 4:11-13 If I can learn that, perhaps even weekends like the one we all just fought through can be seen as opportunities to bond as a family and good family stories rather than torture... stay tuned.

vacation + kids + car = a Travis Tritt song (PART 1)

And that song is "T-R-O-U-B-L-E," if anyone now wants to watch it... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ms1IE6M3s&feature=related.

The fun all began at 7:30 am on Saturday... when I woke up. I blame the LJ for sleeping in-- I never even set my alarm clock anymore, because by 5:30am one of the two of them is always awake, generally LJ. Not so this morning!! At 7:30 I sat bolt upright with a horrible feeling that we had slept through the surprise party for my grandmother in Maine. It wasn't that late-- we didn't need to leave until 10, but Elijah and I still had a Dunkin Donuts date and wading through the Market Basket chaos before we could even head out. We came, we saw, we conquered... and by conquered I mean we ate a LOT of donuts-- for a skinny little blondie, Elijah can put down his weight in donuts. About 9:45 (we Nimon men believe in not wasting any time in between events) we pulled into our little Court when it started to feel like a was driving a tractor. For anyone that cares, I've never driven a tractor, nor have I been within fifty feet of one; it's just how I imagine driving a tractor would feel, because it took all my strength just to hook the car left and park it. That's right-- with ten minutes remaining to load up the car and fly off to Maine (or risk ruining the 'surprise' part of a surprise family gathering), we were carless. Foreshadowing: At this point, I thought to myself, "Gee, this is the worst thing that could happen to me today." And I would be really, really wrong.

So with no time and no options, we thought outside the box. After all, what's more fun (to Elijah and Judah, not to us creaky-boned adults) than riding a truck an hour and a half on the interstate? So I emptied $5000 worth of tools out of my truck into the kitchen (I almost took a picture, but the sight out a kitchen filled with power tools was just so sad) and replaced them with what seemed like $5000 worth of baby junk... I think it's what the Queen always dreamed a weekend's worth of vacation would be: riding in a romantic vehicle (a beater truck with no shocks) with her husband and kids, complete with pine and cedar shavings throughout, an incredibly whiny Judah, and the fact that a bit of rain would ruin all our clothes, which were now in the open bed of the truck. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a romantic picture not even a good rain could ruin.

That theory was immediately put to the test, when it started raining 15 minutes into our epic adventure. "Do you think the clothes will blow out onto the highway?" the Queen asked me at one point, once Judah had finally fallen asleep. "No," I replied. "But it wouldn't really matter-- they're going to be soaked anyway." Fortunately, I was wrong-- the rain stopped within five minutes, we smiled indulgently at the lines at the toll as we cruised through with our EZPass, and we were only twenty minutes late to the rendezvous point off the highway where about fifteen of us met up to form a caravan to travel the last ten minutes to my grandparents' house. Then fateful event number two happened.

It's my theory that all things start with a single act-- for example, as you read tomorrow's edition, think what would have happened if my mom had stayed leading the caravan instead of trying to turn the wrong way in a supermarket parking lot. I swerved around her, wondering where she was going, and in doing so found our little family leading a six-car caravan down the road-- and that's when the fun REALLY started. Stay tuned.

why big families rock

(To all those who have one child and your world rocks too, fire back a counterpoint-- I grew up in a big family and am grateful for many of the things it taught me. Read on:)

To give a perspective, this is slightly less than one half of my father's side of the family-- circa summer 2010... and my mom's family is comparably sized.

This particular post is dedicated to my man-crush on big families, although I'm pretty sure I don't want a family as big as the ones on TV that are like "18 Kids and Counting"... what I always love about big families is the endless possibilities. I was the oldest of five kids, and being the oldest, whenever I had a bad day, there was always a younger sibling to take it out on. I feel bad for all the only children in the world-- what do they do when they have a terrible day? Run around their incredibly large room that they don't have to share with anyone else screaming at no one? BORING.

No, when you have four siblings under the age of 8, there's always fun to be had. Is it a sunny day? Excellent--let's play human ladder off the deck.... it's all fun and games until the one on top gets really tired and drops the three subsequent siblings into a massive pile five feet below. Hey, what about pitching a tent in the backyard? No hypothetical story here-- yesterday, while I was watching Judah and Elijah, I pitched them some on the deck. Whenever Judah would attempt to enter EITHER tent, Elijah would run over, and (knowing he's not allowed to hit Judah) angle his butt at Judah's head so that Judah would eventually fall over. This is a technique he perfected at our little piano. Often the two of them will want to make music, and it isn't odd at all to see both of them standing at our toddler-sized piano plucking away at the ivories. Rarely, however, do you see this for more than fifteen seconds. Once Elijah figures out that Judah is also playing, our territorial little madman will start walking slowly down the piano at Judah while he continues to play. Generally he just keeps walking right through him, forcing Judah off the edge of the piano. To Judah's credit, he generally holds his ground and refuses to move, which means that he tips harder and harder until he can no longer hold himself up, and PLOP! Down he goes in a crying heap. To re-emphasize Elijah's dissociation with his impact on life, the last two times this has happened he has looked at me and with some impatience said, "Daddy--Judah crying. Please make him stop." Not really sure whether to burst out laughing or crying on that one. But can you imagine what fun it would be with four at the piano?

Other situations where more might be better:

a)Fielding your own football team. I worked with a gentlemen who was the third of ten-- and his neighbors had sixteen kids!! No need for video games when you can actually field a squad worthy of Madden '12 with one phone call.

b) Epic outings. When Les Miserables was making its final run through Broadway in 2003, I scheduled a trip where four of the five of us skipped our respective schools/ high schools/ colleges for one day starting at 5:00 in the morning and drove through Boston and New York traffic to see our favorite musical of all time. Did I mention that we all brought friends? That my brother got lost in Manhattan because he didn't really get that every other street goes in opposite directions? Or that the Queen (who might not even have been my fiance yet) pretty much flashed the parking attendant getting out of the car at the parking garage? Try doing that without four siblings to go nuts on each other for getting lost, etc. Epic.

c) Massive simulated battles. Often, my brother and I would wrestle/ swordfight/ joust, etc., and it wasn't long before my sisters would often join in a limited capacity. One day, tired of just horsing around, we decided to teach my oldest sister (perhaps 7 at the time) how to swordfight. The tiny issue was that we didn't tell my middle sister (maybe 4 at the time) what we were doing. Bless her tiny heart, she walked out the door and saw my brother about to smack her precious older sister right in the head. Without hesitating, and remarkably silently, she grabbed a broken deck baluster and ran over to my brother without anyone noticing, where she gave him such a wallop that she opened a 2" cut right under his eye. Naturally, she was a little surprised when my oldest sister immediately tackled her for her efforts. This kind of inspired mayhem only comes at the hands of the many.

d) Potentially intimidating police officers-- if you haven't read about last week's vacation (shameless plug coming), it might be worth your time. And if not, it doesn't take that long to read :)

Not every lesson that a big family teaches you is good (I'm sure I taught my poor siblings a few things about pain for example, and for that I am mostly sorry), but the real things that you benefit from are the everyday lessons. Is it possible to learn how to share as an only child? You bet, but you don't get all that much practice. When you grow up being one of seven in three small bedrooms, you share a lot-- your bed, your food, your time, your dignity... sorry about that last one. It's not really true. Mostly. I'm going to go back to enjoying my medium-sized family now.

In Memoriam, Dr. Stine

Dr. Peter Wilfred Stine (1939- 2011)

http://peabody.patch.com/articles/stine-longtime-pastor-and-professor-dies-at-72#comment_1209693

About a month ago now, one of this area's great personalities--an orator, a pastor, and a professor among his many callings-- passed away. Peter Stine (whom I knew as a professor in the English Lit. department at Gordon College, where I majored) was one of the few people I ever knew who hushed a room by entering it. It awed me because I always wanted to command such respect-- I had never seen a room quiet so fast. As he entered the room , he literally filled the doorframe as he passed through, pausing briefly to seat himself and rock slightly forward to face us all. "My name is Dr. Stine," he boomed, "and I thought we should get this out of the way first thing. This," he roared, though a whisper would have been just as effective, "is my fake leg." Here he rolled up his right pantleg, and lo and behold! A fake leg. "And," he continued, "I somehow managed to park five minutes away, limp here on one leg, and arrive on time. I expect the same from you. I'll even spot you two legs to do it with." A classic Dr. Stine moment-- disarming curiosity with humor, while simultaneously letting us know the standards were dangerously high.

I was hooked. After that one class, I signed up for two more Stine-run classes the next semester. It was the best move I made in my entire collegiate career. In addition to clearly being enraptured with the literature he taught (and imparting that love by example to at least this wide-eyed sophomore), he clearly cared about us, his students. He just had a funny way of showing it. Beware the student who wandered in late. One morning for an 8:00am class in about the furthest point on campus, a varsity soccer player wandered in about five minutes late. When Dr. Stine pressed him for a reason, he mentioned that they had a big game today and he needed his sleep. It was never a good idea to give Dr. Stine any fodder to fire back with-- when you were late, the best idea was to hang your head in shame and beg for the mercy of the court, which was surprisingly abundant considering Dr. Stine's gruff exterior. In this case, however, Dr. Stine was fed up with varsity athletes in general skipping his classes. "Sheppard!" he rumbled. "So what you're telling me is that your soccer game is more important than four hundred years worth of classic literature?"

Bewildered, Sheppard tried to backtrack. "Yes... No... not at all. No,sir..."

Dr. Stine cut him off. "You may want to go back to sleep, Sheppard. Clearly, you haven't slept long enough." With a wink, he turned back to the class.

I had never experienced any sort of joy in reading poetry before I took Dr. Stine's Romantics class... an experience in more ways than one. This class was an upper-level experience and a much smaller size... only about fifteen of us huddled in a small circle, which is to say that there was truly nowhere to hide. The mysteries of Byron, Wordsworth, and Shelley were unraveled before our eyes.

What was truly memorable were the moments that you just couldn't script-- moments that professors with a lesser sense of humor or a less bombastic nature might have let slide, but moments that Dr. Stine seized. My turn before the firing squad came one afternoon when I showed up to a 3pm Romantic Poets class of his having missed a different 8am class I was taking with him. I forgot my own advice about never offering an excuse, and, when asked to justify my absence, very righteously responded that I had taken my sick girlfriend (who was later to become my wife and Queen of this small kingdom) some food for breakfast. Stine rocked back in his chair with a big smile. "Sick,eh? I suppose you had to give her mouth-to-mouth?" The class roared, and feeling somewhat less self-righteous, I sunk into a nearby chair. My one regret was that over the past five years, I have on two or three occasions ALMOST written him a letter thanking him for being one of two people that set me wanting to share my writing talents and for being a mentor to a little twit who he didn't know from Adam. But I never wrote that letter, and now, I never will. I guess this will have to do. God bless, Dr. Stine. I hope that the streets of gold are treating you well.

failure to communicate-- or was it a communication of failure?

It would seem that I should be fired from having to watch my own children based on recent history. (I can hear most of the parents who read this blog saying to themselves, "Ah, if it were only that easy...") To be fair, I have had to watch them a little bit more the last couple weeks, so some craziness was bound to happen... but to put it in perspective, "more" means I went from watching them somewhere in the neighborhood of two hours a day to perhaps four-- not enough to [whine] and moan about.

This particular revelation of "epic fail" came about 7:00pm. I had been watching Judah when a crisis erupted-- well, it wasn't really a crisis, but almost everything is a crisis to Elijah when things aren't just so. AND he's loud, and quite destructive-- he's been a headbutter since 8 months, and whacking and throwing things since a year. Somewhere, my father is grinning bigger than you can imagine. (Two points of clarification: 1) my father is very much alive, lest you should think somewhere is the "great white cloud of mystery" and 2) Elijah is just like me when I was a baby--- something my father has reminded me of when LJ had colic, LJ wouldn't eat, LJ was incredibly defiant at 15 months old, etc... I think he just loves me getting my payback with Elijah). This story, though, isn't about Elijah. He was just the red herring that drew my attention away for five minutes while the real drama was about to unfold. After I had talked him down from the ledge that a bath wasn't going to be all that bad in TEN minutes (we weren't going anywhere just yet), I came back in and made sure Judah was playing happily before starting LJ's bath water up. When I came back, Elijah was putting his puzzle together happily in the kitchen, and Judah was cooing (cooing!) in the living room. Aaaaah. Way to go, dad. Another battle won.

When I got up again to go turn the bath water off, I smelled something funny-- a bit like blueberries. Blueberries? This little fortress has smelled like a lot of things, but never blueberries. "Rach," I yelled at the Queen, "is there any reason the house would smell like blueberries?"

"Shouldn't be," she said. "I gave Elijah some blueberry yogurt ten minutes ago, but he stopped eating it when he did his puzzle."

Every once in awhile, I have a Sherlock Holmes moment. The pieces to the case align before me, and I know! I wished this one had left me in the dark. Slowly walking to the living room, I peered around the corner to see Judah cooing as he happily smeared (you guessed it) blueberry yogurt over table, carpet, couch-- anything his hands could paint. The fragrance wafted deliciously through the whole house.

"My love," I called down to the basement, "next time might you let me know when we leave the yogurt out?" She laughed-- I get the idea I've done this to her a few times too :)

a free anatomy lesson

Disclaimer: this blog often deals with children and the mortifying and embarrassing things they say... today is one of those times. If you are easily embarrassed, read no further.... no one will think less of you. :) The rest of you, read on ----

Tonight was LJ's bath night, and when he's in the shower he's generally good for a couple of revelatory comments about body parts that adults don't normally talk about in great detail. Today, nothing-- he was far too busy with his foam alphabet letters while I whiled away the time doing crosswords. Finally, I scooped him up and wrapped him in his bath towel as we walked into his bedroom. He glanced up at me as if he was seeing me for the first time that night, "Daddy!"

"What is it, LJ?" I said.

"Daddy," and here his tone got very excited, "LJ have penis-- Daddy have penis." The whole body parts thing is the Queen's domain-- her family is the medical one; I can't even say "penis" with a straight face. But Elijah wasn't done imparting his wisdom. "LJ have nipples-- Daddy have nipples. Mama..." here he got a big grin and paused for dramatic effect. I was crimson. "Mama doesn't have nipples."

Just in case you ever wondered!

things I forgot

Today this particular knight arrived back at the small blue castle fresh, eager to see his children and to kiss his wife goodbye and wish her a fond farewell as she headed off to work-- then he and the boys would romp vigorously around the house until they were exhausted and he would kiss their angelic little faces goodnight as he tucked them in. Man, this is the good life! he thought to himself. (#1:I forgot this rarely happens)

(If you don't have kids yet and really really want them someday and don't want me to rain on your optimism parade with realism, skip to a different post or go watch Monday Night Football)....

(Sound of bell ringing as I wake up from my happy delusional state)

What actually happened: I got to my house and walked inside to find-- no one. They were stuck in traffic in Revere dropping an amazing auntie off at the airport (as always, some awesome alliteration there--take that, 4th grade English!) Anyways, by the time they did get here, (#2:I had completely forgot they were coming back) I was down here thinking about what games I should buy for my little reward for working back-to-back 100-hr weeks in August. (#3: I forgot that when my little men at least get back from a long car trip, they are cranky!) Having survived that minor onslaught, we got the Queen off to her job earning pennies towards the next horseless carriage this family will buy and all seemed back to normal.

(#4: I forgot that I should have already known the bait-and-switch was coming-- I wrote about it last week, for Pete's sake!) Judah, as usual, was a peach, cruising around the kitchen and grinning while Elijah tickled him and cackled at his antics. 6:30 came and went and I was feeling might pleased with myself-- half an hour to go and Judah goes down, 1 hour to go and "the day is mine, Trebek!" as Sean Connery used to tell Alek Trebek in SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy. (#5: "The day" is never mine. Limp off the field with the victory, yes. Outright dominance, unlikely.) Without exaggeration, the following things happened between 6:40 and 7:00pm, when I declared a truce (i.e. I was leaving and taking my ball -- in this case, Judah-- home):

6:40 Judah, from standing position at our coffee table, goes down hard without warning-- smashes face, screams. This is pretty common. What's not common is that there are no pacifiers around. (#6: I forgot that we had to get our house exterminated today... this is a much longer story in its own right and will be told at a later date, but hence no pacifiers in plain sight-- also, 35 loads of laundry to do this week) Judah continues screaming as I frantically search with little results. Finally, I offer him my finger to suck.

6:42 (#7: I forgot he has four teeth, not two) Judah chomps down on my hand-- and I wish it was socially acceptable for grown men to cry. See no sign of Elijah.

6:43 Elijah comes out from under the Pack 'n' Play and says, "Daddy.. light not work." I yell at him for finding the one outlet in the entire house that isn't plugged with those silly little baby-proof plugs, tell him it's dangerous, and go to plug in the lamp back in.

6:44 Plug the lamp back in; hear CRASH! That's right, it's time for #8: I forgot the plug on the lamp is about two feet long. Time to change the lightbulb.

6:48 Finish changing lightbulb; have to listen to Sir Elijah say oh, about fifty times, "Daddy-- now light can't work;" look down and see Judah attempting to gnaw on rope light, as my finger is no longer being offered to him.

(#9: I forgot what I did the next ten minutes after that) ... thank God for our daily 7:00 Wheel of Fortune break. In departing, I quote something I've had told to me so many times I can't even attribute it to anyone, but still rings true, "I was such a good parent before I had kids." Now I'm just a battle-weary knight who thanks God every night for the chance to battle them again next morning-- have a good night, everyone!

Surviving the Suburban Jungle

I don't know how it's possible that the most hazardous activity I do all week is wandering into a grocery store, but it's far and away the most dangerous thing that we here on the Court do . Let me put it in a little bit of perspective-- I wake up every day and try to corral two active young boys, one of whom thinks biting and clubbing are still funny (though daily discipline is slowly turning the tide-- sigh); I regularly work on a job that has me on heights of over 20 feet or surrounded by tools that can remove digits at the (incorrect) press of a button; I play as many sports as possible; and I voluntarily drive 20 miles over the speed limit when I have no children in the truck... and I stand by my original statement about the grocery store.

The real trick to the grocery store is balancing which crowd you want to fight-- if you go at 7am, you have to fend off the senior citizens; if you go at 9am, you have to avoid moms with double-wide strollers. (Again, I realize that the finger points straight back at me-- we own something so truly ginormous to stash small children in we call it the 'Suburban.' BUT WE DON'T BRING IT IN THE STORE). Both crowds have their particular eccentricities. We generally go at 7am and brave the senior circuit, because the injuries sustained here tend to be funnier and less worthy of trips to the ER. Generally speaking, the early morning 4-cart pileups are caused by 1) Elijah running without looking in front of him, a trait he gets from me, 2) Elijah stopping suddenly without warning, a trait he gets from his mama, 3) a vigilant shopper swerving around the LJ to avoid him, and 4) said vigilant shopper getting their eggs scrambled by 80-year-old woman who isn't paying any attention at all to the aisle in front of her . Every once in awhile, things will actually fly from grocery carts, which shouldn't be funny but always makes me giggle.

The real dangers, though, lurk in the 9am hour. Less benign and more calculated,this shopper is typically a housewife (though let's not discriminate against that most domesticated male of the species) on a mission-- get all the shopping done before church, Sunday morning soccer, etc. You can tell by the focused look and don't-screw-with-me elbow that they'll occasionally throw to wiggle into the space you thought you were contentedly occupying in your search for organic red peppers. Never yet have I heard an "excuse me" or a "pardon me," just an elbow... sometimes I actually wait and let someone go ahead of me if they look like this just to avoid the confrontation. The best wars, however, happen not in the supermarket but in the parking lot. If you think I'm medieval, you should see the jousting that happens when two cars at opposite ends of a lot lane see a car pull out of a space. I've seen two BMWs accelerate at each other in a giant game of chicken to get a spot, only (to my great amusement) to see the driver of that car correct the angle that he had ORIGINALLY pulled in on, lock his car and walk in, leaving the two BMWs sitting fuming at each other. Yup, by the time I get home from my weekly exercise in hunter-gathering, I'm ready to go back to work and pound nails. It's far more civilized.

A Tribute to the Knight Nicknamed 'Big Air'

That's right, today's musing are a simple tribute to the young man named Elijah "Big Air" Nimon... though most of the time we just call him LJ. The Queen and I think he's pretty cool, and --in what I think is more indicative that we may really care about him-- she said he's even worth the throwing up twenty times a day the first sixteen weeks of her pregnancy with him (do the math on that one). He got his nickname at the ripe old age of five months old. On those manic Mondays (and Thursdays, back in the dark ages two years ago) when Rachel would leave for work, it was just Elijah and I-- and since we are essentially carbon copies of each other, we would both be bored in two minutes flat, which he generally voiced with great volume. So off we'd go to the Commons in the jogging stroller that I've never actually jogged with him in (quick question to any other runners out there-- is it really that much fun to take a screaming baby running with you? I run for the sanity and occasionally the weight loss, not as a babysitting tool... just thinking out loud) and I would toss him up into the air and he would giggle-- GIGGLE -- giggle, which is a sound that renews your faith in humanity. Basically the only people that don't like a baby's giggle are sociopaths and the child's siblings... for whatever reason, they seem to hate it.

Anyway, fast forward a year, and it was not only something we would do on a very regular basis, it was a ritual, much like bedtime or Sunday morning decaf dates with Daddy. I'd come home and he would toddle out to see me and say, "Daddy... big air?" (Humorously enough, this has morphed yet another year later into "Daddy, ride truck?" ... and off we go to terrorize all the old people on the block into thinking that a 2-year-old is trawling their quiet little cul-de-sac in a black monster pickup truck) "Of course, LJ" I'd say, and launch him up a couple feet. "Higher, Daddy, higher!" I remember one time I got him up a little further into the air then I wanted and caught him and went to put him down when he turned to me and said, "Do again, Daddy-- Lijah see over fence!" Apparently I had thrown him high enough that he had seen the grass in the other yard next to ours. We didn't do any more big air that day :)

Side note: if you happen to be a woman (or a man like me who doesn't like heights at all... I know, go ahead, a construction worker who hates heights... look, someone's gotta work INSIDE the house, people!!) and think that this whole thing is crazy... you're not alone. About nine months ago, we went to visit some dear friends who had just had their first, a beautiful son who was (and is) their pride and joy, when Elijah got bored and we started playing 'big air' while I continued talking to my friend. His lovely wife came out mid-flight and without taking a breath looked straight at my friend and said, "Jon, promise me that you will NEVER do that to our son." My friend smiled. "I promise," he said. "I won't do that until he's at least six months old."

Elijah's love for heights has changed. He doesn't really ask to do 'Big Air' that much anymore, mainly because he's replaced it by sneaking up and jumping off a couch onto my back commando-style (thankfully, he's never done this to young Sir Judah yet!), but he still loves him some airtime. He will often approach Rachel with a broom and ask her to pick up the broom while he dangles from it... then jump off from ungodly heights.

I know that his fearlessness won't last forever, and that even a brave little knight will be battered by this world at some point. But I hope someday he reads this and remembers (or just plain members, if he never knew) what it felt like to fly high.

theme music for the Court

Today seems like a very interactive day-- from waking up with Judah at 4am and having to watch Bones with him until Elijah woke up some two plus hours later to explaining to a homeowner and their lovely children why they shouldn't necessarily walk on their deck while we replaced all the posts that were holding it up (we rarely have homeowners on our construction sites) , today has been a very people-filled day for this reclusive knight. So I figured it should continue with the first intentionally interactive post...

Every Court, even a well-run court such as ours with knights errant (or in the cases of Elijah and I, just error-prone knights) and jesters-- Judah got a dunce cap for winter from the lovely Auntie Laura, Rachel's sister (sister to the queen? princess? nothing? I don't know my royal titles at all) and lovely monarchs needs theme music, and in our house the theme music is definitely from the 80s. There's nothing like four men with mullets blasting out "Eye of the Tiger" to make you go crazy-- or CRAZY. Love it or hate it, I'll detail my five favorite 80s songs and I am curious about yours. Here are the five power 'ballads' that get this court's seal of approval.

1) "Jump" -- Van Halen. I used to literally jump on my trampoline for HOURS to this and I have passed it along to LJ. Humorously enough, the band with the top guitar player in the world uses almost all piano on this one.

2) "Like a Prayer" -- Madonna. As much as I hate Madonna now, back when her hair was as poofy as a poodle in need of a haircut, her music kicked butt.

3) "Video Killed the Radio Star" -- the Buggles. The first video ever to play on MTV (I mean, remember when MTV played videos?) -- is still pretty cool.

4) "Africa" -- Toto. I couldn't understand this song the first five times I heard it and I still loved it.

5) "St Elmo's Fire" -- John Parr. There are probably eight key changes in this song, which means that no matter how low you start singing (and you have to sing along), your voice will hurt by the end... my all-time favorite 80s song.

Honorable Mentions: One Night in Bangkok (Murray Head), which is a song about chess and prostitutes (of all things), With or Without You (U2), which is a timeless song that happened to be written in the 80s, and Final Countdown (Europe), which is a song that should only be played in gyms because it makes you run so hard every time they play the trumpet part you pass out on the treadmill... anyways, looking forward to hearing some of yours!!

Having Kids is Insane ...

But like like Billy Joel said, "I may be crazy-- but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for." I'll finish the list of the things I've been envious of next post, but I just thought that today was more of a lunacy day than an envious. Like how the day started, for example... at 5:30am, when not one but both boys were up-- seriously, a conspiracy at this age? They're not even old enough to communicate effectively and yet both were complaining that they were hungry. So I decided, at the risk of waking the entire enclave in which we live if I didn't, to feed the beasts. Thus pacified (at 6am, mind you), I let them play nicely together while I wandered upstairs in search of a shave, without which I look truly medieval. (Sidebar-- the Queen once tried to get me to grow my hair and beard out to look like Aragorn back in the Lord of the Rings days... I lasted ten days. It was awful)

Anyway, about halfway through the shave, I heard an ungodly whining. "REALLY!" I thought to myself. "Just shut it." As is usually the case, it got louder, not softer, so off I went, looking like a rabid version of Two-Face from Batman. When I got to the platform at the top of the stairs, I saw the source of the whining-- Judah (which is not surprising). What was surprising was where he was whining from-- four stairs up, with eyes the size of fried eggs. Then he let go. I caught up with him at stair three, one stair further than I would have liked, but enough so that there was no structural damage-- "just a wee bounce," as my sister would say. Basically, at that point I had worked through an entire day's worth of emotional energy-- and it was now 6:15am. It's a good thing I like the insanity, because there's only 16 more hours to go. I think I'll go drown my sorrows in a vat of coffee-- the real stuff, not what Elijah ("more dee-li-shus DEE-CAF, daddy!!" ) likes to drink. Have a wonderful day, everyone. and I hope you were sleeping!!!

A (Moderately) More Serious Thought (Part 1)

Not everything in our life here at the Court actually revolves around ourselves (or is particularly funny, as much as I would like it to be so), and it seems that lately the waves of envy have been crashing over not only myself but a few others both that I read online and off.

This pernicious envy which comes in the form of wanting a job while others have great ones or wanting to spend more time with the kids or wanting, humorously enough, to spend less time with the kids-- and the "I'll be damned" part of it is that no matter what you want, there's someone pretty near you who's got what you want while secretly wanting your life. I guess the trick is, from the mouth of wise King Solomon himself, "[to enjoy] life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad." -- Ecclesiastes 8:15

This got me thinking-- what have I been wishing that I could be along the way? I submit, for no particular reason beyond that it cracked me up all the numbnuts things I have wasted my time wishing I could be, an abridged catalog:

late 1980s-- wished I could be Mario from the Mario Bros. and be able to fly, spit fire, and crawl through pipes. This led to an ill-fated attempt to crawl through a snow tunnel, whose collapse has left me claustrophobic to this day.

early 1990s-- wished girls would think I was really cool. I actually thought they did until one day in fourth grade I got up the nerve to say hi to one after which she ran away... let's just say I played hockey at recess for the rest of the year and didn't try that again for awhile.

mid-1990s -- wished I could be Pele and play soccer better than anyone I knew. At this point I realized I may have been aiming too high and reverted to playing soccer as well as anyone I knew so that ... girls would think I was cool. Worked about as well as the first time.

late 1990s -- wished my hair was blond. This led to, in order, hair colors of blond, light brown, black, and back to white-blond again, when I showed up to our Senior High Baccalaureate with white-blond cornrow dreadlocks. My father still gets all-time points for being cool when another parent asked him, "Have you seen Micah's hair?" and the response was, possibly a little hopefully, "No, he didn't shave it all off, did he?" Seriously, I hope those pictures never hit the internet....

I'll finish this post later. Feel free to add your own stories or questions about me or our family as (hopefully) I get better at invading the blogosphere...

Mondays = mayhem

Today is definitely not a Monday, but it feels like one. Why? you may ask. Because, today, on a TUESDAY night, like every Monday night when she goes to work , the Queen has left the building (much like Elvis-- though, unlike Elvis, she comes back) and left the three of us men to 'run' the household. Run might be a loose term. We run the household like a schizophrenic cheetah-- full speed, with maximum mess and little forethought.

Over the past two years, my wife's expectations have changed. When she first used to Elijah and I home alone, the lists read something like 1) Take out all trash, 2) Bathe Elijah, 3) Feed Elijah, 4) Clean all dishes, 5) Put Elijah to bed, 6) Don't watch TV or work out until you do #4!!!

Now, the list is considerably shorter. It reads something like: 1) Try and have fun, 2) Don't let them kill each other, 3) Maybe think about dishes... ? We're really good at #1. Don't think that I've never actually gotten to the dishes --it's just that when there is an option between washing the plates and a three-man pileup under the kitchen chandelier, it seems like a no-brainer. That's the reward for being a daddy, right? But I think the real reason that I appreciate when Rachel leaves us home is how much more as a mom I appreciate her when she gets back four hours later. The appreciation shouldn't be limited to the stay-at-home crowd, either. Whether you get to spend every waking hour with your child or have a shorter and sweeter interval with them, you moms give your children something that we fathers just can't -- like patience (and breastfeeding, but I digress). I think that Gods made moms with just a little extra well of patience somewhere that I haven't found yet.

The moments where I need said patience always sneak up on me. I should know by now that we never have a quiet and sedate evening-- but it almost always starts that way. Rachel leaves, we wave goodbye, maybe even start a puzzle-- and then the madness descends. While Elijah does the puzzle, Judah crawls behind and chews on the remaining pieces. For whatever reason, this bothers LJ more than anything else in the world, and he gives Judah a 'gentle' chuck to the side to regain his piece, which turns our very physically able but emotionally fragile little man to a puddle. LJ starts yelling at ME from two feet away, "Daddy! Judah crying! Make him STOP!" (Digression part 2: Elijah is very aware of his environment but radically unaware of how he affects it-- he sent the Queen and I into convulsions one evening when he strolled into the living room, turned to let out a gaseous blast of perhaps ten seconds in length, looked around curiously and said, "Mama, what that smell?) In this scene, seeing that in the millisecond since he yelled for Judah to stop that I haven't done anything yet, he grabs Judah's pacifier and jams it into his mouth far enough to block most of the airway, and turns away satisfied while I perform an emergency tonsillectomy on a six-month-old simultaneously screaming and gasping for air. Yup-- fifteen minutes into a four-hour session, I'm wishing that I could dial Nanny 911.

Inevitably, I lose my cool and have to ask Elijah's forgiveness (which he, beautiful man, always looks at me and says, "Of course, Daddy,") or Judah's (his is more of a blank look), and the night generally winds to a close with some relative peace. I then spend the next two hours running or (more recently) unleashing a little story here in a vain attempt to find the little bits of sanity that have drifted away over the course of the night. By the time 10:00 pm rolls around and Rachel strolls royally back in, I am incredibly thankful that she is back on duty to take care of them for the next six days. "How do you do it?" I asked her one night after telling her about my night's adventures. She just smiled.

An Official Translator's Guide for the Court

As I was walking upstairs last night with young Sir Elijah in our nightly attempt to put him to bed (generally successful) and have him fall asleep (generally unsuccessful-- he will often go to bed at 8:15 and still be chattering away or reading his books at 9:45 when we go to bed), the Queen traipsed by on her way to the sanity of the basement and told Elijah good-night. Immediately he responded, "Mama wrong! Or not go bed now! More five more minutes!" Everyone knew what he meant-- nothing further was said between the two of them; I told him he still had to brush his teeth or face the wrath of the dungeon without BOOKS, which is a very effective attitude adjustment tool, and the night ended happily. What I couldn't get over was how very effective our young sir has become at communicating without any use of pronouns, limited adjectives, and lack of general good grammatical sense... in short, he's pretty funny to listen and (as with most two year olds) borderline impossible to decipher. Without further ado, I offer the best of the "LJ-isms" and a quick guide to what he might be saying should you ever meet him in person:

"Mama/ Dada / Judah wrong!" Said with special emphasis on the 'wrong', this nifty phrase is his way of telling you he strongly disagrees with you. Often followed by "Elijah right." As a sidebar, I still don't know how Judah can be wrong; so far, to my knowledge, he hasn't said anything.

"You do it!" Our first attempt to teach him pronouns was not only an abject failure, but led to him thinking his name was, of course, 'you.' Thus, whenever Elijah wanted desperately to do something on his own, he would look directly at whomever was there and scream, "YOU DO IT!" What happened? Yup, you guessed. They would try and do it for him... leading to more tears and screaming. Sometimes the cycle would even repeat itself for a couple minutes. Fun for all.

"Or not." This beautiful turn of phrase (we're guessing he learned it from me, because the Queen's diction is far better than mine) negates everything he's just said, making sure you keep on your toes. As in, "Want Cocoa Krispies now..." (two-second pause) "or not." If you, silly parent, went and fulfilled the request immediately, you can come back with said Cocoa Krispies box to be greeted by "Daddy wrong!" (see above)

"No five more minutes!" Thinking we wanted to teach the young knight transitions, about two months ago we started telling him "five more minutes before bed" in an attempt to help him wind down. EPIC FAIL. Now, from 7:00pm on, about every five minutes, we hear "no five more minutes" as he lets us know that he has no interest in going to bed yet. Interestingly, Elijah has a close friend who, in an attempt to negotiate bedtime, told his parents, "not five more minutes-- two more minutes." They were happy to oblige their shrewd negotiator.

"F***!" What he asks for when a spoon won't do... it's a little shocking. We actually never ask him to say "fork" anymore, not do we ask him to repeat the word "sit." -- unless we REALLY want to hear a two-year-old cuss like a sailor. (Which, unfortunately, is really funny)

"Naughty!" This is his way of letting us know that he has done something REALLY bad. The funny thing about this is that when he tells us that he has been naughty, it's almost never actually naughty... it's more like the milk that used to be in his bowl is on the floor. For really naughty, it's generally silent (see 'Why Silence Isn't Always Golden'). The only other time he uses this is when he's playing with his Noah's Ark Animals and the 'baby cow' has to chastise the 'daddy cow' for being naughty-- why is it always the 'daddy cow' that's naughty?

Finally, "proud of you" or "Good job, Elijah." This is what he tells himself (special emphasis on the affirmation) when he has done something especially noteworthy in his own mind. Never one to let others have all the fun in praising him, our self-confident knight-in-training has taken it upon himself to let everyone know just how much he's accomplished lately.

It's not just the LJ that uses these catchy turns of phrase, either. "Dada wrong!" has become a catchphrase for even the Queen, and whether or not I started it, I have re-adopted "or not" into my own lexicon. There's only one cure for all this; Sir Elijah and I are going to huddle around the Square Table and read Strunk and White's Elements of Style.

why silence might not be golden...

Recently, the Queen and I were sitting peacefully at the dinner table enjoying the summer atmosphere. It was just after dinner, little Judah had dropped off for his pre-nighttime nap (a luxury I think most of us wish we had-- an hour nap right before an 11-hour sleep... I've encouraged him to consider a 13-hr nighttime sleep, but he insists that the 7pm hour is his to destroy our sanity) and silence reigned in the house. It was so peaceful as to almost be romantic. There is one small thing I should mention. As most of you all know, we have TWO young knights-in-training, not just one.

We have been married long enough that approximately 30 seconds into this bliss, we both raised a figurative eyebrow at each other and wordlessly decided that I would go investigate this strange condition of noiselessness. I can't speak for other parents, but at our house, the optimum level of noise is a low buzz. Not loud enough to annoy, yet loud enough to 1) let you know they are alive, and 2) loud enough to locate them and confirm that they are not immediately preparing your imminent doom or the destruction of the castle around you. Silence is not as golden as the Tremeloes tried to claim.

I didn't have to go that far. Sitting peacefully in the hallway was 2 1/2 year old Elijah, beaming at me. "Daddy, I made a heart!" he said gleefully. "Proud of you!" (this means that he is very happy with himself, the self-affirming little madman that he is)

"Where's the heart?" I said, frantically scanning the walls.

"Here!" With a big smile he pointed to his arm, which upon inspection revealed something that looked like a heart. "And rectangle, and square." Behold, those shapes were revealed as well. "And other arm!" By the time he had finished showing me, we had found more tattoos than I can count on both hands. They should wash off in a week or so.

And that's why if you ever visit us and we look twitchy, we might just be politely fearing the silence .

A Brave New World

While talking to my wife (henceforth known as the Queen) in our small castle last week, she commented that she reads ten or fifteen blog posts a day to stay in touch with our friends, but that she often wonders what the gentlemen are thinking, as she has never read a blog written from the perspective of our less fair and gentle sex. As I am the resident prude in our household, the very use of the word in public forum just made me blush... but I digress.

"She's right," I thought to myself. "Why should the girls have all the fun?"

With that was started this tiny adventure... as this is the first time in five years that I have attempted to put my college degree in English Literature to any sort of test at all, it might be a bumpy ride attempting to chronicle the goings-on in our small estate.

One thing I do know-- if young Sir Elijah and his golf-club broadsword have their way down here in the basement, this may be both the first and last entry this computer ever makes.