(Bagged) Grapes of Wrath...

Children. They do this to you. Pictured left is my wife, Laura. Or rather my wife's hands. She wasn't quite feeling a perfect "10" at this point so she wouldn't let me include her face.

But I digress.

This is a beautiful picture of her hands. What is she doing? Yes that's right. She's squeezing a "bag" of wine. Yes that's correct I said a bag of wine. With the grip of an Olympic wrestler. She's trying to squeeze every drop of happy juice out of the bag. Why? Because the time is 6:04pm and both kids are still up. There's no end in sight...and there's wine to be consumed. And god damn it when will those kids go to bed so we can get properly tanked?

"Let There Be Yellow....!"

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Let me be the first to announce that our first child, Avery Anderson is finally, at long last.....on her way to being potty trained.

God both Laura and I thought she might make it into grade school wearing size 12 diapers. We tried subtle direction, cajoling, small amounts of bribery followed by obscene bribery...all to no effect. Avery Anderson is her dad as a female three year old; cautious and stubborn beyond all reason. But today I am here to announce that era is officially OVER. Today Laura sweetened the pot (pun intended), offering Avery toys, candy and vast, untold riches if she sat her fanny on the potty and lo and behold at around 3:46pm Avery Anderson requested her tush be placed on that most wonderful piece of royal blue plastic where she would be free to "stream at will" and no I'm not talking about the Internet.

By the time I arrived home at about 5:15pm she had already sat her keyster on the can AGAIN...and wonder of wonders, lightning struck for a third time at around 5:28 and 32 seconds I believe, though somehow I wasn't asked to participate in the live "streaming" session. After she dropped some liquid refreshment into her little potty she and mom poured said pee into the real potty and joyously flushed it all away...

Congrads little Avery. This is one small whiz for a little girl. One giant leap for this family. Oh I know there may be setbacks along the way. The road to porcelain is paved with mishaps...but this is a time for celebration, not contemplation. So the above picture is dedicated to you. With your rump making three visits to the plastic goddess in less than two hours you are well on your way to imitating that annoying, incontinent 90 year old uncle that everyone has. You know, the one who stretches minutes into hours, reading the paper cover to cover while sitting on the john till his legs have lost circulation...? That could be you....

You go, girl...

"It's Just That It's Delicate..."

Sometimes a song matches the mood you are in perfectly. Logan taking a one hour nap in her crib. Waking up as a fusspot. You walking her around and feeling her start to make a delicate nest of your shoulder. Damien Rice's brilliant "Delicate" playing in the living room. Filling every crack and every inch of space around you. No one else is home as Logan snuggles up and settles in. The light just starting to fade on the day. You listening to the wide open spaces in the song and swaying back and forth, imitating the quiet flow of a rocking chair. Kissing the back of her head and whispering in her ear. Knowing that she needs more sleep. Beaming inside that you might be the one to give it to her...

You moving to the sound of that sweet violin mixing in with the not so delicate sound of a six-month old snoring. That beautiful sound rising and falling like waves on the ocean and your shoulder is the beach. Feeling damp as a pool of saliva slowly spreads on your shirt. Thinking that you are happy no one else is around to disturb this...your back will soon ache and your arm will lose its strength but you're still happy no one else is around...you walk by the mirror roughly 56 times in the next 15 minutes and snap this picture...

As You Are So Shall You Parent...

So last night Avery woke up at 11:30pm earlier than usual and you tried to get her back down but it was no dice..so you slept in her big-girl bed five feet away but it didn't help and she woke up again and again and again crying and sobbing and nearly hysterical.

So then by 12:30am you brought her into bed with you and hugged her as tight as any lover but she wouldn't stop shaking and you hugged her and then let her go and then hugged her harder but she kept waking up and you didn't know what the hell was wrong and a few times you were pissed cause you thought she was just afraid of the dark or something but she kept waking up and sobbing and she couldn't tell you why.

You even enlisted mom to come in and help at 1:30am but by 1:45 mom was gone and your little girl was waking up every 20 minutes and nearly hyperventilating. So by 4:30am you weren't peeved anymore you were just dead tired and she was spitting and dripping saliva she was crying so hard and you still had no idea what the hell was going on.

So by 7:15am mom walked down with Logan and couldn't believe the battle you had gone through and she said to you "maybe she's sick" and the thought had never really occurred to you but she's NEVER like this and the fact is you never get very sick. You haven't taken a sick day in like 12 years and you'd NEVER let anything less then a full blown fever or flu keep you down and the fact is you never even considered that for your little girl. And then Laura takes out the thermometer and sticks it in Avery's ear and then announces that she has a fever of 101. And in a way you felt like a great dad for bearing the last 8 hours and boy did that feeling go right out the window in three seconds when you realized you never considered the most obvious thing...

And later that morning you confessed your idiocy to Laura but it didn't help much. You still felt like a giant tool anyway and sort of felt like you should apologize to your daughter and Laura took this picture of Avery napping and you wondered if she was dreaming of better parental care the night before...

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star..."

Tonight contained one of those unexpected bits of sweetness that life as a parent sometimes brings. You were reading to Avery before she went to bed. It's your night time ritual. Upstairs. Into her pajamas. Reading "Thomas" the train engine book. EVERY night. Till your hoping that somehow on the next page Thomas has a nasty derailment that leads to a long career on the scrap heap...but you digress...

The book comes with a button that when pressed, plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star..." Avery wants you to sing it EVERY night. Tonight you did but you asked her to join in. Somehow she knew the words. Not just the "Twinkle Twinkle" part but the rest of the verse as well. There you were singing completely off key and holding your little girl while she mis-timed every word and it was glorious...and you both laughed and laughed and laughed for the longest time in her bed until your cheeks hurt and you wanted to cry...

You were amazed she knew the words and you're still not sure how or when she memorized them but as you ushered her into the bathroom to brush her teeth you picked her up from behind and gave her the biggest, most spontaneous hug you can ever remember for just making your day.

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #6 (PPPQ6)

The time is 3:45pm. You're alone with Avery and you're starting to watch her progressively melt down before your eyes. She has had a crazy active day and the chance that she'll make it to 7pm without emotionally disassembling is between slim and none and slim is leaving the townhouse.

You've got all the warning signs. Rubbing her eyes. Starting to overreact to little things. Usually the cut off for nap time is 2:15pm. You're way past that but you'll be staring in a remake of "Misery," if she doesn't sleep and you'll play James Caan's character. The down side is that by napping her and keeping it to 30 - 45 minutes you'll be waking her out of a deep sleep and be inviting Armageddon. Guaranteed she's a bear for an hour after that. Lock it in. But from 5:30pm on she'll be the better for it. A quandary to be sure...stick it out or put her down for a short nap....what do you do? And by the way the wife is out running errands so as much as you'd like to pass the buck and go cycling that's not on the table...

A) Against your better judgment you put her down for the nap. The FULL nap. Let her sleep till about 5:30pm and hope somehow she isn't thrown completely off her sleep schedule. Fat chance she'll go down before 9pm...

B) You put her down for the nap. BUT you wake her up around 4:30pm. She'll hate your guts for awhile and life will suck but she'll be ready to go down by 8pm...

C) Stick it out. Life is for the bold and you'll boldly hope she'll hang on till 7pm without an emotional apocalypse hitting North Boulder.

D) Start randomly calling sex hot lines and don't worry about it for a second. You're busy, so she'll figure it out on her own. If you see her slumped over on the couch with drool dripping from her mouth you'll guess she fell asleep. If not, who cares anyway, mom will be home to deal with the aftermath in 20...

And the answer is...?

B Holy crap she was a bear. She was snoring loud enough to shake the bed when you started waking her at 4:30pm. 10 minutes to get her out of bed. 10 to get her downstairs. Another 10 to get her to stop crying. You played your favorite new sing-along, John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" and that finally seemed to snap her out of it...you sang "Rocky Mountain Hiiiiiiiiigh" and she responded with "Colorado!" at the top of her lungs. It was actually a pretty sweet moment. And by 5:15pm she was back on her "A" game. Today you made the right choice...

Tonight's Thought

It always makes me chuckle that a number of people clearly look up to us as parents. I mean, if all of them knew the times I wanted to drop Logan in her crib and slam the door behind me...how many times I feel like we had zero clue what we were doing; letting Avery sleep in our bed one week, then making her cry the next and then choosing some entirely different path the week after that...

Parenting is taking the gobs of advice you get, filtering it into something workable that you and your wife/husband are comfortable with and then hoping for the best. Then it's about not getting discouraged and trying something else when Plan "A" fails miserably...

It's nice to be put on a pedestal once in awhile. Good for the ego I guess...but pedestals always lead to nasty falls and I can't tell you with certainty that our children won't grow up to be crack-whores at 15. No one plans for failure as a parent...sometimes it just happens that way...

Wait till they're off to college, then judge us on the job we did...