Brothers

Sigh

At least once a week I flip my wedding rings upside down to remind myself to do something important. Then I look at them the next day and have NO IDEA WHAT THAT THING IS! Moral of the story? Never leave the iPad behind...

Vasco da Gama

It has been about ten days since D learned to crawl, and we have seen a complete shift in how he views both the activity and his world. The first couple days, he was so proud of himself for accomplishing the actuality of crawling. The act itself was his reward. Then on the morning of day four he was at one end of the hallway and I was at the other. He looked at me and started to crawl. As he realized he was making himself get closer to me, he started laughing his head off. At this point he started using his new-found skill to move from point A to point B. Want a toy? Crawl to it! Want to investigate the stationary mass of hair and drool? Crawl to it! (Roland is less excited about D's new-found skill). Watching him piece together the skill with what the skill allowed him to do, I started pontificating on what his spatial understanding of the world has likely been to date. He would exist in a particular location until somebody moved him to the next location. He had great familiarity with many common places (the living room, his bedroom, school, etc.), but not necessarily the idea that those places have some sort of relationship with each other. Last night we saw a sudden shift in his locomotory behavior. Rather than crawling to see us or a toy, he started crawling to explore. He kept crawling out and back and out and back, starting with a known location and heading to the unknown. As I watched him completely let go of his intense need to be near me at all times in favor of exploration, I realized that he was probably starting to build a map of his environment. In the span of 10 days, we have watched his entire perception of how the world is pieced together change. There are so many aspects of parenting that blow my mind, and this one is definitely at the top of the list. Here's hoping he has Daddy's spatial mapping skills, and not mine!

Little Locomotion

The downside of  a crawling baby: he can spit-up in random and unexpected locations.
The upside of a crawling baby: he cleans it up as he painstakingly drags his legs through the mess.

... Now all we need is a microfiber baby suit and he can mop the floors...

Houston We Have Mobility

Building a History

Cayden and I sacked out in the kitchen together a couple nights ago and cooked dinner together. He has been "helping" since he was 16 months old, and has gotten shockingly useful. With a bit of guidance, the kid can actually top a pizza on his own. We were making hummus to go with the filafel Ty had mixed up earlier (I know, we are a strange family that likes chickpeas with our chickpeas). Cayden learned how to smash garlic cloves with the flat of a (plastic) knife to make them easier to peel, how to juice a lemon, what to add to the food processor, and when the humus had been processed enough to serve. While I was talking to him I was struck by a profound sense of ... future history. I have no proper phrase for this feeling in my vocabulary.  As I was standing at the counter watching the chickpeas be annihilated by the food processor I could see Cayden's future memories. I could see him grown up, cooking dinner, and casting back to a night cooking with me. I could see his history, our family history, being written. It was an profound moment of seeing what exactly it means to live on in your children. Of course, knowing my luck he will have Tyson's memory and forget my name before he is thirty.

Couples Communication 101

Tyson asked me to stop being passive aggressive about the lights in the basement, so I asked him to please turn the f***ing lights off.

Four Year Old Boy Logic

I know we are miserably behind documenting our life on the blog. This is because our life is phenomenally full. Full of work, diapers, reading books, playing, joy and not even remotely full of sleep. I am hoping put together a holiday card (predictably late), but don't want to put off random updates in the meantime. For example, we are encouraging D to try to sleep through night. He did better Saturday and Sunday nights than he did last night, and Ty was thinking that Cayden's night light might have been the cause. Our conversation on the topic went something like this:

J: Mommy and Daddy think your night light might have kept your brother up last night, so we are going to use the turtle tonight.
C: No it didn't
J: You don't know that
C: Yes I do.
J: Mommy and Daddy don't know if the night light is bothering your brother, how can you know the answer?
C: Because I am a Space Ranger

Thunderstone

My lovely wifey got me a "deck-building" game for x-mas that we finally got into last night. It took around 2 hours to organize the disaster of randomly packaged cards into the very specific piles that the gameplay requires. In fact, once we got it all set up and understood we took one turn each and then put it all back away. But now we're ready to conquer it anew tonight.

Brothers

I can't begin to articulate what watching these two boys together is like. I don't have words, but this picture is a good start.

Not quite there yet...

C: Mommy, I am going to be a spy and find out all your secrets!
J: Okay sweetie.
C: .... Will you help me?

Career Plans

Cayden is getting old enough that he has started to map out his career goals. They are somewhat modest. He would like to be a space ranger during the week, and a dinosaur bone scientist on the weekends. He is somewhat saddened that he can't actually fly with a jet pack into space, but I told him to give it twenty years.

I Found A Motor!!

I found a Motor!! After removing the motor from my defunct washer I had an ecstatic, overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and purpose that had absolutely no correlation to the easy 7 minute job. I was elated but confused. Then it occurred to me.

Video gaming. So many years of video gaming. Countless hours spent hunting for motors to open gates, turn on power, run the generator, get the alarm system back on, fix the automatic door mechanism, power up the robot, run the tram, turn on the lights, etc.

So now it's on a shelf. Waiting for the right mission to come up. Call me pathetic if you will but when the turrets work again, the electric defense grid goes green and the communication system comes back online you'll know who to thank.

So much wasted time...

I choose not the see the fingerprint scanner security device as the boys' school as an ineffectual, outdated, and aggravating excuse for technology. I prefer to see it as a daily opportunity to practice finding my inner peace.

Awakening

Tyson didn't wake me up before leaving for work this morning. Consequently I was woken by the dulcet tones of the boys. When Cayden was an infant, he would spend the first 1/2 hour of his day cheerfully babbling and laughing at who knows what. Now that Dalton is starting to babble, he is doing the exact same thing. The stream of vowel sounds from down the hall pulled me from sleep. While Dalton is pontificating about just how nice 'aaaaaaah' sounds, Cayden starts trying to sush him. "Dalton! Dalton, be quiet. I'm trying to hear what the grown-ups are doing downstairs. Hey, wait! Those are birds singing. It is morning time!"

Remiss

I realized that I haven't posted pics of the rapidly changing offspring recently. Here are some from Vavo. Many entertaining stories of life with two kids to follow...

Tyson's Sons

(at the dinner table tonight)

Ty: How do you feel about your brother sleeping in your room for the first time tonight?
Cayden: ( laughs) yeah! Soon he will be big and when he wakes up in the middle of the night he will say, "Cayden, why don't we play some games?"
JD: and you will be a responsible big brother and say,"mommy and daddy want us to go to back to sleep"
Cayden: No, I'll say, "sure Dalton!".

Literal Thinker

One thing I have learned from living with our incredibly verbose (older) son, is how literal young kids are:

Nana: Cayden, I found a picture of a Great Horned Owl. Come and see it.
Cayden: Ummm, Nana... that owl doesn't have horns.

You know you are lactating when...

You reach down to pick up your second burrito and realize you just ate it.

Brothers

Okay, I give. I did not think C&D looked alike at first, but as Dalton fills out I began to suspect that what everyone was telling me was true. I looked up a old photo on the blog of Cayden at the same age, and lo and behold, can you tell who is who? The primary difference appears to be size: Dalton weighed in at 10 lbs 10 oz yesterday, while Cayden weighed in at 13 lbs 4 oz at that age (with near identical birth weights). Impressive, eh?

The brothers are awesome. I am so excited to watch this relationship continue to develop. Two days ago Dalton smiled for the first time at a person, and was it the woman who feeds, snuggles and cares for him 24/7? No, of course not. It was his brother...