Sunday With Doodle

Hopefully, it's been fairly obvious as I've been writing here that I love my kids. They're often hilarious, always interesting and occasionally infuriating. Doodle lately has been daddy's boy lately, so he's been needing some time to be with me. We thought that this weekend would be a good time for the two of us to get out on our own and see a movie, especially with the way that he's been talking so constantly about Wall-E. I figured that we'd get home from church, eat a quick lunch, put Squeaker (and Anne, to be honest) down for a nap and head off, just us boys, for the movie. As many things seem to go in my life lately, none of this went according to plan.

We arrived home from church, as planned, but Doodle was a bit frustrated about something which, honestly, is immaterial at this point. I had to physically lift him in to the house from the garage because he wasn't coming in. This only served to frustrate him even more. Before moving on, it 's worth mentioning that since he was a little past two years old, Doodle has worn glasses due to being severely far-sighted. He's been fantastic with his glasses for the most part, diligently wearing them every day and usually being careful with them so they don't break. Anyway, after lifting him in the house, I turned away and hear Punkin gasp. I turned back around and saw that Doodle had taken his glasses off his face and snapped them in half. Needless to say, he got a bit of a chewing out for that along with some time in timeout.

Then, of course, came the inevitable conversation between Anne and myself which could essentially be boiled down to answering the question "What now?" It was finally decided that we should head to a local eye wear establishment since they could get him new glasses today. You see, when hes' not wearing his glasses, one of his eyes severely cross in. In fact, this was how we first discovered that he needed glasses. At first we just thought he was being goofy after having discovered that he could cross his eyes. We never guessed at the time that his eye was crossing because the muscles were straining so hard to allow his eyes to focus on whatever he was trying to look at. Quite honestly, when he's not wearing his glasses, it pains me to see his eye cross like that.

We knew that heading out for this sort of shopping experience could get a little bit (dramatic pause) interesting. For one thing, we were scheduled to go to some friends' house for supper, which would come up quickly since we had to essentially cross town almost twice in the allotted time. Added to this is the fact that Squeaker hadn't had a nap that day yet. Both Squeaker and Punkin would essentially have to stand around while we focused our attention on Doodle with him trying on pair after pair of glasses. The solution, as it often is, was the promise of candy.

So, after much trying on of glasses and debate back and forth, we settled on a pair of glasses for the young man. They said that the glasses would be done in about an hour. Since it was then nearly three, we figured they'd be done a bit before four, which would have been just enough time to get home, gather the necessary things for supper. No problem. We went to a couple of other stores, looking for things that we might need for a potential camping trip in the near future and then went back to the eyeglasses store a few minutes before the assumed time of delivery.

Just Doodle and I went in to the mall to retrieve the glasses. Him because they probably wanted to check the fit of the new glasses on him and me because the last time we let Doodle go around the mall on his own, he came out with a bunch of stuff that we really didn't need. He is, after all, only three.

We got in the store and they went in back to check on his glasses. We were told that they had to "resurface one of the lenses," so it'd be another 15 minutes. I called Anne and delivered the bad news. "Just hurry," was the response.

While we were waiting, Doodle decided to take advantage of the time to talk a bit. He wanted to play a game called "What's Your Favorite..." in which he asks a question about a person's preferences. Each player takes turns answering the question. We talked about favorite superheroes, books, songs, and colors. We talked almost the entire time that we were waiting for his glasses to be done. The glasses ended up taking a half hour longer than originally anticipated instead of the fifteen minutes that we were told when we first got back. By the time we got back to the van, Squeaker was in nearly complete meltdown and Anne was quickly reaching wits end. We were late for our supper appointment.

Despite all of this, I really enjoyed that half hour that I got to spend with Doodle just talking about what he likes. He's the middle child and can often get lost in the shuffle, but when he's able to have the individual attention, he really seems to blossom. He's a pretty cool kid. When he's not destroying his eye wear, of course.

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Congrats, It's a Puppy

I know that there are certain advantages and disadvantages to having been raised on a farm. Sure, I couldn't get a group of neighborhood kids together for a game of football, but I had a quiet area to call home and could pee outside without worry about being arrested. One of the things that I might not have appreciated as much as it deserved was being surrounded by animals and creation. There were birds galore, deer walking through the front yard, dairy cows providing fresh milk, more felines than you could swing a cat at, and a variety of dogs at various points. We had a Scottish terrier, a stray collie that hung around for a while, a cocker spaniel, and some little mutt of a dog. My wife, Anne, grew up in the city and never had a dog. She had a cat, but her mom drew the line at feline. Yeah, that line was on purpose. I'm sorry.

Anyway, as years of our marriage have gone by, it became very obvious that eventually, we'd be adding a dog to our family. Anne keeps claiming that it was part of our marriage license that I signed. I'm still going over the fine print. Because of Anne's personality, she researched the different breeds of dog in order to find one that fit our family. I tried looking on Consumer Reports, but didn't find much.

This past Thursday, we finally took the plunge in to dog ownership. She's a tiny (around three pounds) King Charles spaniel named Shelby. We've been working hard to keep the kids calm around her which is nearly a full-time job in and of itself. The kids have really gotten a kick out of having a puppy and none of them have crushed her yet. I consider that a victory.

All of my shoes remain intact for now and the poop has been confined to linoleum, thankfully. Anne is certain that eventually, I will consider Shelby to be part of the family and have more enthusiasm for having a dog. For now, I remain my normal, ambivalent self. At the same time, though, I find myself trying to understand things from my wife's perspective. This whole "owning a dog" thing is completely new to her. There's a newness about it that's almost like a breath of fresh air. Oh wait, that was just the dog. Gotta go clean that up.

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I Gotta Go Potty!

Travel with my family continues to get more interesting. Today was the first day that we went on a trip since starting to potty train Doodle. The current state is that he's in his normal underwear when we're home (his choice of Spider-Man, Diego or Transformers). If we're going to church or the store, he's in a pull up. For bed time, he's still in a diaper. Progressively, his pull ups have been dry. This also means that we've been making more trips to the rest rooms lately.

For the most part, this is OK. Anne will watch the other kids while Doodle and I head in to the restroom and take the largest stall available, and he goes potty. Then he covers his ears while the toilet flushes. Those things can be loud some times. If at all possible, he likes to wash his hands by himself. Usually, the sink isn't low enough for him, so I have to lift him up for the washing.

Today, we made sure that he went at home before we left and put a pull up on him. Then it was on the road. We were about half-way through the trip to Grandma's house when it started.

"I have to go potty."

"Well, you're wearing the pull up. You could just go in that." This was an unacceptable solution to the young man, and to a certain extent I can understand. Once you've had the sensation of not having a wet diaper for portions of the day, I can imagine that one would want to keep it that way.

Since it was almost time for supper anyway, we stopped at the nearest Unnamed Fast Food joint and took care of both outgoing and incoming business.

Of course, an hour later, we had to stop again for a bathroom break. I have a bad feeling that trips are going to take longer for a bit.

Really, he's doing a great job with it all, for the most part. It's just frustrating that that my schedule is being interrupted.

Of course, maybe that's being selfish.

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They Grow Up So Quickly

My daughter, Punkin, took another step in her journey towards becoming a young woman. It, of course, brought back memories of changing her diaper, late-night feedings, running full-bore down the hallway when she should be asleep. Ah, the memories. This is normally where a sentimental musical number would be placed. Pretty soon she'll be moving out of the house and finding a husband. The continuing journey was evident today once again. My daughter played Super Mario Bros.

While visiting Anne's folks, her mom mentioned that Punkin, now five, was getting to be a little too big for the baby toys that she had in the bedroom for the kids to play with. She made the suggestion that we should maybe break out the old Super Nintendo and see if she'd like to do that. I was all for it. After all, I really enjoy video games and quite often long for the simpler days where the controllers don't have 20 different buttons. They make me feel old and ineffectual. Super Nintendo may not be as simple as the original Nintendo that I had growing up, but it's simple enough for me. Besides which, I was able to get quite a bit of Super Nintendo time in at friends' homes when I was growing up. Then we fired it up.

It's amazing to me how quickly a little girl who has never before in her life played an actual video game system. Sure, she has this little pocket pet sort of toy that lets her care for a rabbit and play some games with it, but that's it. Once she got the hang of moving the little guy on the screen and jumping, it wasn't too long before she was able to get through one of the first levels all by herself. I cried a little bit.

She has a long way to go, of course. She still hasn't gotten the hang of the cape or being a fire guy. That will come in time, I'm sure. She just has to practice a little bit more.

The biggest surprise to me was that Anne agreed to it. Excuse me now, while I perform the sentimental musical number that I mentioned earlier.

"Is this the little girl I carried?"

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Give Me a Break

Life has been busy and tiring lately. Part of the tiring half of that is my own fault. I have a tendency to stay up much later than I should, including Thursday game night. You see, some years ago, Anne and I made a decision that each of us needs to have some time each week to ourselves. With Anne currently being a work at home mom, she especially needs time away from the children, as her job doesn't currently accrue vacation time, though there have been rumors of a union starting to organize.

Anyway, every Wednesday night I'm in charge of the kids while Anne gets to head out of the house or go upstairs and watch a movie or whatever. The biggest thing is that I'm in charge of the kids, and she's not needing to be concerned with them at all. At least in theory. My night is Thursdays. I'm a natural home body. My idea of a great vacation is a few days away from work and sitting around the house doing as little as possible except for spending time with family, reading, and doing stuff on the computer. It stems from when I was growing up, and we had dairy cattle so we couldn't go anywhere. So when Thursday nights come around and the kids are in bed, I make my way to the computer. It started with just myself, but then I realized that Frederick III might have free nights as well. Or at least that the kids might be in bed over there. I called him up, investing a few cell phone minutes. He was interested. After a couple of weeks of playing Diablo II, F3 had the suggestion of including his brother-in-law in the game as well. Through the magic of Skype, we were able to talk and socialize while enjoying the cathartic experience of smacking pixellated creatures with a virtual mace. A good time was had by all. We've since added another of F3's brothers-in-law. He currently only has one BIL that isn't playing with us. Which is fine with me. See, I've known his BILs prior to their joining the game, so it's all good. Let's hope that's the last time that I use the phrase "it's all good" in my writing. Ever.

Since we don't start until after 9 (9:30 if F3 is running late) and we want to get some good, quality gaming time in, we usually play until about midnight. Or so. We thought that we'd have a hard cap of midnight, but it's really turned into a soft cap. The big thing is getting to a good stopping point so that we can pick up very easily next time.

What's the point? Time to unwind. Time to spend with friends. More importantly, it's so that I get more time with my family. That might initially seem counter-intuitive, but you need to understand my personality. Before having that definite time to play games, a hobby that I've enjoyed since we would go to Pizza Hut and I'd play their Pole Position game, I'd try to sneak away for a few minutes here and there whenever I could. This meant that I had less time to spend with family. I have a personality that takes things that I like to excess. This way, I know that I'm going to have time to play games for an extended period of time, so I don't have to worry about sneaking it in when I should be spending time with my family.

I highly recommend doing something like this in any marriage. I know that it's helped ours.

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Punkin and Circumstance

As much as I hate to admit it, I go through life looking at many things with what might be termed an unhealthy amount of cynicism. That I've grown up to be a sarcastic jerk is really what it comes down to. I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is part of a traveling freak show connected to "Lalapalooza." He's the dude that gets shot in the gut with a cannon ball. As he's walking onto the stage, one of the "Gen Xers" out in the crowd says, "Here's that cannonball guy. Yeah, he's cool." The girl standing next to him says, "Are you being serious or sarcastic?" He responds by hanging his head and saying with a slight bit of panic in his voice, "I just don't know anymore." I'm like that guy sometimes. I've become so used to being cynical and sarcastic that there are times where I have to tell someone explicitly that I'm being serious in a statement and not sarcastic. Last Friday, I was asked to place my cynicism aside for the evening.

My daughter, Punkin, has been attending preschool twice a week for the past year. She's loved it. Her class is small (around eight students), and she's made some friends that she would talk about constantly at home. I was happy that she was getting to know some other kids her age. It was good for her. However, we're now getting really close to summer, and school was almost done. I come to find out that they're going to have a graduation ceremony for the preschool. Immediately, my mind went to the slight silliness of the situation: "Congratulations, kids! You have 13 years of public school ahead of you plus any extra that you do post-high school! Hope you enjoyed the finger painting while it lasted." However, for the sake of my daughter, I put that aside. I decided I would enjoy myself and be proud that Punkin (and Anne) got through the year successfully. After all, there is a bit of "grading" in the sense that they recommended that she move on to kindergarten as opposed to pre-kindergarten. So there we are in our seats, waiting for the ceremony to start, juggling two boys and three different cameras (video, film, and digital) between the two of us. We've been out-numbered for a while now. They marched in to "Pomp and Circumstance." They sang some of their songs with actions that were cute, but never quite synchronized among themselves. They had a video of the year together in pictures and set to some appropriately - I hate to use the word, but I have to - sappy songs. After all, it's just not a graduation ceremony at a Christian school if you don't get to hear Michael W. Smith belting out, "And friends are friends forever..."

Then the ceremony was over. The teacher was fighting back tears as she was saying "Thank you" to the parents and all of the kids. Punkin was unusually quiet when saying goodbye to her teacher and on the drive home. After we got home, we were cleaning up all the toys in the living room like we do every night before bedtime. I went over to help Punkin put the books on the bookshelf. I saw a little bit of moisture in her eyes and asked her if everything was OK. She turned to me and said, "I'm sad that I'm not going to be able to see my friends again." Then she started to cry. I hugged her for awhile. She was like that for the rest of the evening, crying two or three more times before going to sleep. It was very sweet and sad all at the same time.

I'm glad that I had to put aside my cynicism for the day. I'm glad I was able to see my daughter "graduate" even if she has a long way to go yet. I'm also glad that I got to see a bunch of five-year-olds doing what looked remarkably like "Raise the Roof" during one of their songs. Mostly I'm just a bit melancholy to see my little girl grow up, even if it's just a little bit.

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The Raw Dirt

I never thought that it would happen to us. We've been happily married for the better part of a decade and thought we would be past the danger zone for it. I had always promised myself that it would never happen in my marriage. Growing up, I had seen what it did in my family. The division that it caused. The struggle and the strife. Here we are, though, and I see it happening in my own family. Today, we planted a garden.

When I was growing up on the farm, my mom had a big garden. By the end of the summer, we'd have all the zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, strawberries, corn, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, pumpkins, green beans, carrots, and peas that we could possibly eat. As I've gotten older, I've finally realized why she kept such a large garden for all of those years. Sure, it was nice to have all those fresh veggies to help us save money. My suspicion, though, is that Mom wanted to have some alone time. She was living in a house with her husband and three sons. All she had to do was yell throughout the house, "I'm heading out to the garden. Who wants to come help me?" and she wouldn't see us again for hours. She was able to just be in the garden and not have to worry about any of us.

For me, however, I equate it with a lot of work. All of the tilling, hoeing, planting, weeding, harvesting and cleaning took up a lot of time and energy, and always keep in mind that I'm incredibly lazy. As such, when Anne said that she wanted to plant a garden, I groaned inwardly. OK, maybe it wasn't so inward. We have a small patch of dirt on the side of our garage that we could use for just such a purpose. We measured it, and it was just enough for a few veggies as a test run to see what grows well and what doesn't. 23' X 3 1/2'. Still I grumbled. I think that I'll always equate gardening with hours in the hot sun doing work that I really didn't enjoy whatsoever. It's the same reason I put off mowing the lawn. In my mind, mowing the lawn is still the all-day event that it was when I was growing up. The job just kept getting bigger. Each time that we would get a larger mower, we'd increase the size of the lawn that we would mow. Finally get a riding mower? Now we can mow on the other side of the clothes fence. Get a bigger riding mower? Now we can mow on the other side of the drive way. To a certain extent, even though we live in town now and it's a half-hour job at most, I still have that image of hours on the riding mower ahead of me whenever it's time to mow the lawn. Perhaps it's just the curse of my long memory. Or maybe I'm just a weenie. One of the two.

So, now we have plants growing next to our garage. Two tomato plants, a hill of cucumbers, two rows of peas, four potato plants, and a row of onions. Hopefully, we'll be able to give away what we can't use. If we were smart, we'd coordinate with friends and neighbors so that each of us grows only one crop and share amongst each other, but I digress. Also, I've rarely been smart. I know, intellectually, that the work will be minimal. I'm going to try and have a good attitude about it. Honest. Still, though, you should probably pray for Anne.

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Spoiler Alert

My wife and I have quite a few similarities, especially in our background. We're both the middle child of a three child family, and were raised in very small churches in which our families comprised the majority of the youth group. We both have horrible sweet teeth. An actual exchange from this weekend went as follows:

Anne - I think I might make bars.
Me - I just printed out Cold Stone coupons.
Anne - OK, I'll make the bars tomorrow.
Me - Sounds like a plan.

However, there are some very strong differences that we've had to work through in our marriage. She grew up in a large city while I was living on a farm in the middle of nowhere. She's incredibly cute with very questionable taste in the opposite gender. I'm the polar opposite of that assessment. One of the differences that I was reminded of recently was in how we consume our media.

I'm very particular about allowing the storyline to come to me and be unveiled as the creators intended as part of their overall story. To me, the journey is the important bit, but for Anne the destination is what's most important. She'll frequently skip to the last chapter of a book just to see how it ends. Otherwise, she won't be able to sleep very good that night. I avoid even opening my book to the wrong page for fear that I'll catch something that I'm not supposed to know just yet. I want to experience it as I go along.

This difference was very evident last night as we finished the first part of season two of Battlestar Galactica. This series of disks ends in a huge cliffhanger that leaves the viewer wanting more. Very smart of the creators except when they are dealing with people like Anne. She can't stand not knowing. She was mad at the creators for leaving it hanging where it was. She was mad at the library for not having the second half of season two on DVD yet. She was mad at me for getting her to watch another show in which she becomes emotionally invested but can't immediately see the story line reach its conclusion. I slept with one eye open that night. After a few minutes of watching her fume over not being able to peak at the next part of the story, I pointed her to Wikipedia and the fact that they have spoilers/plot synopses for every episode of Battlestar. As she was reading through the next two-part episode, I would hear gasps and utterances of "Oh, my goodness" that means she had come on one of the juicier bits of the plot. She then turned to me and said, "I can't tell you any of this, can I?". To which I responded with a smile on my face, "Nope." You see, not only does not knowing drive her mildly insane, but also the fact that she can't discuss what she just read with me causes her internal conflict. Thankfully, she understands that I want to experience it first-hand as opposed to reading someone's description on a website of what happens. I want the story to unfold before me. The fact that she respects my stance in this just shows how much she appreciates me for the similarities and differences in our personalities. The fact that I asked around at work until I found someone with the next set of disks proves that I'm not a complete moron.

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A Saturday in the Life

I've tried to not write many articles that are just a running journal of the happenings in my life. I mean, after all, what is this a log of things on the web? Er, wait, don't answer that. Anyway, I usually will use something that happened during my day/week as a jumping-off point for a rant on society, life, cheese, etc. However, I had an interesting Saturday, so I thought I'd relate it to you.

My day started off with a bang, or more appropriately, a cry. The youngest of my three children, Squeaker, decided that 6:30 was a fantastic time for the entire family to wake up. Anne and I have a tendency to disagree with that assessment, but the older children concurred and since they had a majority (and the volume to back it up), we all awoke. This was followed by the normal activities of getting juice for the older children, eating breakfast, taking showers, getting dressed, and so on.

All of this is slowed by the fact that my second child, Doodle, has begun demanding to do everything on his own. He's two now, so he's a big boy and should be allowed to handle everything on his own. At least, that's what he thinks. He can be very particular about it however. He gets quite upset if we do something for him that he's identified as one of his tasks to complete. For instance, he wanted his stuffed monkey, cleverly-named Monkey. It was sitting on the floor next to me, so I picked it up to hand it to him. That was not sufficient for Mr. Self-Sufficient, however. He took Monkey from my hands, placed it back where it was on the floor, then picked it up himself. This had been going on for a few days, so we thought we had grown smart. When he wanted his juice, Anne picked it up and began to hand it to him. This set off another round of "no, me pick up juice!", so Anne set it down where it was. Again, we thought that we had grown smart, but we still had a lot to learn. You see, Doodle had decided it was also his task to put the juice back where it was. Therefore, he picked up the juice cup, handed it to Anne, took the juice cup from her, placed it back where it was to begin the merry-go-round, and finally picked it up himself. We have since decided to become psychic so we know what we're "allowed" to do for him.

We decided that we couldn't decide what to make for supper, so instead we went to a local Mexican restaurant. The menu is limited, but the food is good and quick and we can find something that the kids want to eat. If was only cheaper, it'd be the perfect eating establishment. We go through the line, order our food, watch it prepared before our very eyes (well, my eyes, Anne and the kids were already sitting) and get to the cash register to pay. I pat my breast pocket where I always keep my wallet and my hand meets no padding as it hits my chest. There's no wallet in my pocket. I had done the checkbook earlier in the day and had neglected to replace the wallet in my coat. I turn to Anne and ask her if she brought her wallet. No joy. So, then I have to explain to the under-paid and over-worked restaurant employee that the idiot customer has forgotten his wallet. They were nice enough to allow Anne and the kids to eat while the fore-mentioned idiot customer runs home as quickly as he can after wolfing down his (large) burrito to retrieve his wallet. They knew that I wasn't just skipping out on the check, however, since Anne and the kids were left there and they were probably quite certain that the kids weren't going to be able to wash the dishes. Mop the floors, maybe, but they most likely wouldn't do a very good job. Idiot customer returns triumphantly (read: meekly), however, and pays for the food. Crisis averted and they can stop making wanted posters with my face on them. On to the grocery store.

The grocery store is another aspect of life that becomes exponentially more difficult with three children since there aren't many carts made to hold all three and, if left to their own devices without being tied down my a retraining system, the older kids will wander the isles, greeting fellow patrons and asking people why they decided to go with skim instead of 1%. Our kids are very taste-oriented. Normally, I will go to the grocery store with one or both of the older children and leave Anne and the baby, Squeaker, home to rest a bit. This day, however, the whole crew made the trip. The trip itself went by uneventfully, however getting groceries put away is an adventure of its own. The older kids will fight over who gets to put what away and where it should actually go. At one point, Doodle ran away with a container of chili powder because it was his duty to place that container in it's proper place. Somehow, the proper place in the mind of this toddler was the living room. Since it was then in the proper place, he saw no reason for the chili powder to be constrained my such a restrictive container any further. Doodle opened the chili powder. I don't know exactly how. I don't know why. I don't know that I want to know. However, he was somehow able to get the plastic wrapper off, the cover off and the shaker cover off and get chili powder on the carpet and the blanket that we keep in the living room.

Just another Saturday in the life of the Kamp family. *Sigh* I'll get the vacuum.

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