Mikaela has been making her own lunches since school started last week. Until tonight, she’s made herself the same thing each night - crunchy peanut butter. No jelly. Tonight, for the first time, she asked for jelly. Fine. No big deal. Then, I noticed what she was doing with the jelly, and had to grab the camera.
Posted on August 24th, 2008 by Aaron
Filed under: Mikaela | 3 Comments »
I’ve mentioned before how much Jonathan likes to go to Deanna Rose Farmstead to feed and pet the goats. Tonight marked a new stage of Jonathan’s relationship with the Deanna Rose goats - now, he’s teaching them manners! He would take a pellet of goat food and let a goat eat the piece of food. And then, he would scold the goat, “Say thank you!” He went through an entire handful of goat pellets, insisting after each bit he doled out that the recipient say thank you.(Now that I’m back home and got the details of the story, this section needs to be rewritten).
Jonathan would feed a goat a goat food pellet. And as soon as the goat took it; Jonathan would lean forward, throw his arms back (we call this “flight position”), and shout at the goat, “THANK YOU!!!” - in his barely understandable 20-month-old patois. It wasn’t the polite lesson that I initially thought it was. It was more of an annoyed insistence that the goats use their manners!
I think it’s time to teach Jonathan the saying about teaching a pig to sing. “Never attempt to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
Posted on August 19th, 2008 by Aaron
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Mikaela started kindergarten at Cottonwood Point Elementary School on Monday. So far, she LOVES school. She was nervous in the days leading up to school starting. She worried about not knowing anyone’s name and, oddly, about there not being a bathroom. In fact, in amongst all of the things she excitedly told me about her first day of school was, “Oh, and they DO have a bathroom.” She likes her teacher, Mrs. Hopkins. On the first day, her favorite thing was meeting the computer teacher (and finding out that they were going to get to use computers) and the new friends at her group of four desks. On the second day, she was most excited about reading a story about The Gingerbread Man — and about following clues to find a hidden Gingerbread Man in the library.
After school, Mikaela goes to the AKK program at the JCC. She likes the busy AKK schedule (which includes swimming twice a week), and bringing her princess lunchbox with the lunch she’s made herself in it. She’s adjusting to the lack of naptime.
Speaking of adjusting, Jonathan’s adjustment to the CDC is going a bit more slowly than Mikaela’s adjustment to kindergarten. On his first day, Monday, he started out OK but had a major meltdown in the afternoon - so major that the CDC had Miriam come and pick him up early. On Tuesday, he did a bit better. He got picked up a bit early anyway, because Miriam was picking Mikaela up for an appointment anyway. He had been crying, but it was just after naptime and he’s often cranky right after waking up. Hopefully, by the end of the week, he’ll hit his stride.
Posted on August 19th, 2008 by Aaron
Filed under: Aaron & Miriam, Jonathan, Mikaela | 1 Comment »
Corey & Mo’s comedy duo, The Union, got a terrific review for their performance last week at the Milwaukee Sketch and Improv Festival. The Shepherd Express reviewer Russ Bickerstaff said:
George Burns and Gracie Allen. Harry and Bess Houdini. Siegfried and Roy. Bonny and Clyde. Chicago sketch comedy pair The Union is the next in a long tradition of performing couples. Corey and Monique reached for comic brilliance in a number of skits. Sharp writing was delivered impeccably. In one skit, they’re discussing the genetic flaws in their family in anticipation of a baby. In another, they play dummy and ventriloquist in a piece that is tastefully twisted on many levels. A husband and wife comedy act runs the risk of being extremely cloying and tacky, but Corey and Monique stay a comfortable distance away from anything like that. There wasn’t a good enough rhythm to get the recurring pet homicide segments to work all that well, but the dialogue-less comedy bit featuring two nervous kids at a high school dance was delivered in a way that made it seem remarkably fresh. Again, it’s it’s the simplest stuff that ends up working the best . . .
Congrats on the great notice Corey & Mo - I hope I get a chance to see the show soon.
Posted on August 12th, 2008 by Aaron
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Jonathan has developed quite an affinity for blues music already - especially harmonica music. We listen to Blues Traveler and Guy Forsyth all the time when we’re in the car. Recently, he’s discovered Mikaela’s harmonica
Posted on August 1st, 2008 by Aaron
Filed under: Aaron & Miriam, Jonathan | 1 Comment »
On the way home from my most recent work trip to St. Louis, I was re-listening to the podcast of a This American Life episode, in which Michael Savage talks about discussing marrying his partner with his and his partner’s adopted son. Listening to that podcast reminded me of a conversation I had with Mikaela on the way home from camp a couple of weeks ago. It went something like this:
Mikaela: Can boys marry boys?
Me: Yes, in some places. Hopefully, everywhere sometime soon.
Mikaela: Can girls marry girls?
Me: Yes, in some places. Hopefully, everywhere sometime soon.
Mikaela: But usually girls marry boys, right?
Me: Yes, usually.
Mikaela: So girls can marry girls OR boys?
Me: Yes.
Mikaela: [deep sigh] I just don’t know who I’m going to marry. That makes so many to choose from.
Me: It’s OK honey, that’s not a decision you need to make any time soon.
Mikaela: [sigh] OK. But I just don’t know how I’m going to decide who to marry.
Me: I’m sure you’ll figure it out - hopefully sometime after college.
Posted on August 1st, 2008 by Aaron
Filed under: Aaron & Miriam, Mikaela | 4 Comments »
Up until this morning, Jonathan was doing great with the whole coloring (well, OK, really “scribbling”) thing. He’s been much better about following the mantra we’ve been drilling since the first time he picked up a crayon - “only on the paper”. So this morning, when he sat down at the table and started coloring, once I checked and made sure he was putting crayon to paper, I turned around to make coffee. Just as I was turning back around to ask him if he wanted to push the button on the coffeemaker, Jonathan came running toward me pointing at his legs and shouting, “ORANGE, ORANGE!”
Either he forgot his mantra, or he decided that his legs were made of paper.
The worst part - those markers seem to be not so easy to wash off.
Posted on July 26th, 2008 by Aaron
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I guess I should finish telling the story of the St. Louis Trip, before a whole other weekend of fun and excitement comes and goes. Our Sunday started early, for a vacation day, but we wanted to get to the St. Louis Zoo before it got too hot. (Of course, for the second year in a row, we chose the hottest day of the year to go to the zoo). Getting packed up, car loaded up, and checked out of the hotel when more smoothly than I thought it would - getting most of the packing done on Saturday night was the right plan. We brought a luggage cart up to the room with us from breakfast, which also helped - Mikaela and Jonathan enjoyed the ride down to the car on the luggage cart.
We got started at the Zoo a bit before 10 a.m. - an old youth group friend, Sara Levin, met us there and was a big help with the kids. That first picture of Jonathan is from the special Dinoroaurus animatronic dinosaur exhibition. He roared back at all of the dinosaurs - right up until he saw the T-Rex. That one made him nervous. We cooled off some by visiting the penguin exhibit, but we moved through relatively quickly - it was COLD in there. A bit later, Mikaela and her buddy Maddie climbed aboard the giant beetle statute (and it was at about this time that Jonathan decided to take a nap for a hour or so, until lunch).
After lunch, we headed to the Children’s Zoo. After spending some quality time brushing goats, we stumbled upon a great fountain in the playground area that gave the kids a chance to cool off. The kids ran around in the fountain for at least a half hour - it’s a good thing I had a change of clothes in the diaper bag for Jonathan just in case, because they managed to cool off so much that they were actually kind of cold when we moved on to an indoor exhibit. At that point, we realized that the kids had had about enough, so we took a circuit of the zoo on the train to give the kids a chance to dry off in the heat and then loaded up and headed back to Liz and Craig’s to have some leftover pizza for dinner before hitting the road.
The drive home was actually easier than the drive up, as my friend Eddy hitched a ride back to Kansas City with us. A couple of movies; a few car snacks (a treat that Jonathan expected to continue after we’d gotten home, throwing a fit and demanding “seepo, seepo, seepo” - his word for “pretzel”); a potty break emergency at a skanky gas station in Warrenton; and we were home by 11 p.m. All in all, it was a great trip, the kids were remarkably well behaved, and I might even consider doing something similar again some time.
Posted on July 25th, 2008 by Aaron
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Saturday in St. Louis was Pool Party Day. My friends arranged for an extra life guard at their neighborhood pool, and reserved the clubhouse so we’d have a gathering place. Mikaela spent much of the day going off the diving board over and over (and over and over) again. I took Jonathan in the baby pool for a bit, and then we played in the shallow part of the big pool. Jonathan liked walking up and down the steps into the water.
We took a swimming break to have lunch at the clubhouse, after which I decided Jonathan had been out in the sun/heat enough and I kept him in for a nap. He did NOT want to sleep - I think he just didn’t want to miss anything - but he finally crashed. He crashed so hard that he continued to sleep as I moved him from the clubhouse to the car, and then from the car to the crib in our hotel room. When he finally fell asleep, he revelled in that nap!
Meanwhile, Mikaela headed back out to the pool for more swimming. She got a piggyback ride from her friend Maddy and showed off her swimming skills by swimming the length of the pool. We packed it in at the pool at around 4 p.m., and (as I mentioned above) we headed back to the hotel to relax in the cool room for a couple of hours before reconvening for dinner. After getting some good rest and a change into clean and dry clothes, we headed back to have pizza with the gang. The kids played some more after dinner, until I dragged them away to go back to the hotel at about 8:45 p.m.
I got everyone asleep by 10 p.m. again, then spent some time getting things picked up and organized so that we could check out in the morning and head to the zoo (hopefully before it got too oppressively hot).
Posted on July 21st, 2008 by Aaron
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Some friends of mine were getting together in St. Louis, and Miriam was waaaaayyyy overdue for a break, so I packed up this kids this past weekend and brought them with me for a roadtrip. We headed out late Friday morning, getting as far as Boonville before we needed a lunch break. I stopped at a McDonald’s Playplace, so the kids could get a chance to move around after being cooped up in the car. After stopping off at our hotel to unload and change clothes, we headed over to my friends’ house for Pasta House dinner and hangin’ around fun.
Mikaela played dress up with Maddie, so the two of them disappeared to the playroom right after dinner. Meanwhile, Jonathan developed an obsession for Guitar Hero. I took a turn playing, and just for fun chose to play the Dead Kennedy’s “Holiday in Cambodia”. Imagine the amusement when Jonathan decided to sing along with Jello Biafra! Sorry, I don’t have video - my hands were full at the time. We spent the rest of the weekend trying to keep him corralled while he dragged around a Guitar Hero controller.
We got back to the hotel at about 9 p.m., and after bathing both kids (an unusually frustrating exercise when the tub won’t stay full and there’s nothing handy to use as a bucket to pour water - particularly over Mikaela’s long hair) I got the kids down to bed by 10 p.m. I discovered that my MacBook, with screen shutoff disabled, made a perfect nightlight for Jonathan. It was late, and it wasn’t pretty, but both kids were asleep by 10:15. There was the normal/expected up and down with Jonathan, and by the time we were getting up on Saturday morning, Jonathan was in the bed with Mikaela and me. But all things considered, we had a fun day and a reasonable night’s sleep.
Posted on July 21st, 2008 by Aaron
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