Dead Mouse

We found a dead mouse in our backyard recently, no doubt the work of the fierce hunter Sparkles. He'll leave these for us from time to time: birds, mice, baby gophers. We used to have a real problem with something tunneling under our side yard next to the woods, but since we got a cat, that problem is all but gone.

So he left us a gift in the grass outside, and I had the duty at lunchtime today of disposing of the body. This usually involves scooping up whatever is left with a shovel and flinging it over the fence into the woods.

Heaven only knows how many little bird and mice bodies lie in the woods just beyond the fence. If future archaeologists happen upon a higher concentration of small animal bodies there, they might conclude that a small, fierce animal lived here at one time. Which would be untrue. It's just a fat, merciless killer . . . named Sparkles.

[oo wee oo wee oo]

Ahem.

When I came downstairs to do the deed, the boys were on the computer. When I asked them if they wanted to come along and see the mouse, they all shouted, "Sure!" Out we went, a little parade, morbid and joyful.

After making sure that Jonah didn't pick the mouse up, I flipped it over so they boys could see both sides. Various Ooh's, Aah's, and Eew's ensued. The mouse was remarkably intact, which is why we think it was a gift to the family from Sparkles. He usually mangles pretty badly the ones he eats.

When the time came to properly remove the remains (i.e., fling the dead mouse into the woods), the boy's reactions were telling.

Timothy hollered, "Awesome!"

Stephen looked at me with big eyes and said, "That's the saddest thing I've ever seen."

Jonah, apparently mimicking the mouse's flight, yelled, "Whee! What a great ride! Oh no!"

Travels of the Mac

Nerd story coming . . . and here it is.

We bought a Mac mini for my other job. My partner is writing some software (work partner, not life partner; I refer to my life partner as "my wife"). This software is supposed to work on Mac, Linux, and Windows, and we already had the other two. But we needed a Mac for testing and to help develop the installation process, etc. God has been good to our company, so we bought a Mac mini.

(This is a big moment, I must confess. I love Macs. It's genetic; I get it from my Mom. She was an Administrative Assistant back when they were called Secretaries, and she worked for several engineering companies, always on Macs. My Dad, on the other hand, had been a programmer back in the punchcard days. He liked "real computers." One year, when I was in High School I guess, they decided to get a new computer. Oh, the yelling.)

Anyway, we bought this Mac on the 10th of June; Apple said it would ship on the 17th. The keyboard and mouse arrived separately (?), and when I checked the Apple site again, they said it would ship on the 22nd.

I was so mad. [insert winky thing here]

Then I got an email on the 17th. It had shipped. Woohoo!

I am a connoisseur of online package tracking. It tells the story of where my package has gone, which is great, because I never go anywhere. (By the way, FedEx and UPS are awesome. USPS is a pile of hoo.)

So, without further ado, here's the story of the travels of our Mac.

Jun 17, 2005 - 11:00 PM - Picked up - SHENZHEN CN
China? This is made in China? Oh, crap. I wonder if our defense mainframes are made in China, too?

Jun 21, 2005 - 11:30 PM - At local FedEx facility - SHENZHEN CN
That's right. Nothing for 4 days, only to be told that it's now at the FedEx facility in the same city. Did they walk it there? Did it travel by silkworm?

The expected delivery date is June 23. It took 4 days to cross a city. Based on that, how long will it take to cross the Pacific Ocean? In my mind, there is no way this will happen.

Jun 22, 2005 - 7:02 AM - Int'l shipment release - INDIANAPOLIS, IN
Now we're getting somewhere. Welcome home, baby.

Jun 22, 2005 - 12:42 PM - Arrived at FedEx location - ANCHORAGE, AK
Huh!?! (not my first response) What happened? Anchorage? It was in Indiana, now it's in Alaska. Is all of FedEx on crack? I like baby seals and all, but if one of them ends up with my Mac, it's clubbin' time.

Jun 22, 2005 - 2:36 PM - Departed FedEx location - ANCHORAGE, AK
Jun 22, 2005 - 11:30 PM - Arrived at FedEx location - INDIANAPOLIS, IN
That's more like it. I hope you enjoyed your detour. Does FedEx have some freaky pilot union that gets paid by the mile?

Jun 23, 2005 - 3:11 AM - At dest sort facility - HAPEVILLE, GA
Hapeville, also known as Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. That's an Atlanta joke, by the way.

Jun 23, 2005 - 8:32 AM - On FedEx vehicle for delivery - DECATUR, GA
That's right. Come to papa. The scheduled delivery time is 10:30 AM. It's now 9:24 AM. It just might make it. If it does, I'm adding FedEx to my stock portfolio. Just kidding. I have 4 kids; I don't have a stock portfolio.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy a copy of World of Warcraft.

Update
Nurse, mark the time: 9:46 AM, EDT, June 23. Hello Mac.

Further Update
My wife (the lovely 4boymom) got home from taking the boys to the zoo and at first acted all cool, "No, I don't want to see the Mac," blah blah, computers are for nerds, etc.

Then, a little while later, she knocked on my office door and said, "Can I see the Mac?" Score! Of course, she only wanted to see the little white box. When I turned it on her eyes glazed over. When I started describing how OS X is built on UNIX, she fled.

Working at home

I was going to write a book on this at some point. But my writing attention span is short, just like my reading attention span. I can read well-written stories just fine. So Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter books are no problem. Also okay are books by good history writers, like Ambrose or Hanson (mmm-bop).

But magazines are great, as are blogs. Quick, what's your main point? Quick, support it. Now let's tear it apart. Don't fluff it up just because you're getting paid by the word (or, gasp, the page).

Therefore, I probably won't write a book. So here's my "business" book.

Working at home is hard, but not for the reason you'd think. Why?

Because there are two spheres for every working person: the public sphere and the private sphere. Lots has been written about this, and I seem to recall a good article or set of articles on this idea in First Things back in the 90's. But I'm too lazy to look it up. How's that for you?

We'll label the public sphere as Work. Work is where things get done and money gets made. Both of these are fine. Things need to get done: potholes need to be fixed, iPods need to be made and sold, software needs to be written, etc. Money needs to be made so that I can put gas in my car, buy an iPod, buy software, etc.

We'll label the private sphere as Home. Home is where two things happen. First, you enjoy the things that Work makes possible and rest from Work. We need to rest; if you don't believe me, read Genesis again. Even God rested.

Second, Home is where real relationships happen. Your deep, inner needs are met; your obligations to meet the deep, inner needs of your spouse and children are fulfilled, etc. You've gotta do these things or else you're just a shell. Sorry to be so blunt.

Now, Work and Home do not get along. They compete for their primary resource, which is you. Do you stay late, or go home on time? Do you work on your project, or IM your friends?

When you first start working at home, the focus is on keeping Home out of your Work. For us, the big problem was noise. I'm on the phone all day, so how do we keep the kids quiet, etc. Many, many times I've had to mute the phone and stomp on the floor to let my wife know that the boys were upstairs making a racket. This drives her nuts.

For all the talk about keeping Work and Home separate, it turns out it was all one-sided: how do we keep Home from interfering with Work.

But as we've gone on, the real issue has come to the fore: how do we keep Work from interfering with Home.

I mean, this is the boys' house. It's my wife's house. But there's this penumbra of expected silence that extends to 3/4 of the house. The old saying is true: boys will be boys. And that includes being very loud in their own house. Having to be quiet all the time is making them miserable, and it's making my wife miserable.

So we're moving.

Just down the street is another house with the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms. But there's an office above the garage that is completely separate from the rest of the house, and which even has its own staircase. The office is nowhere near bedrooms, so the boys can play in their own rooms. It's far enough removed from the playroom that the boys can run around like the monkeys, screech and throw poo to their hearts' content.

This will be our third house in Tucker. Our last move was one block away. This one will be even shorter. We'll probably walk most of the stuff to the new house.

So if you or someone you know someone wants a 4 BR, 2.5 BA Traditional home in Tucker, just let me know. It's priced to sell. But you won't be able to work there. It's just a Home.

Priorities

Stephen and Jonah just got home from Stephen's swim team practice (they have the 7 year olds practice at 9:30 and the 5 year olds practice at 11:30, just to make life miserable on everyone). I was downstairs talking to my wife when she told Jonah to take off his swimsuit.

He took it off (and left it on the floor) and was just standing there, so my wife told him to go upstairs and get dressed.

My wife and I continued to converse for a few more minutes and then I started back up the stairs. As I was coming upstairs, I saw Jonah rummaging through the LEGO box by the window in his room, looking for a piece to complete his masterpiece. As I climbed higher, I saw that he had not yet put on any pants or underwear and was LEGOing naked, as it were.

I asked him to get dressed, and he replied, "just a minute."

Festival of insanity, a.k.a. Fatherhood

This past weekend was a goldmine of nutty things my kids said and did. Jonah topped this list, mostly because almost every utterance out of Timothy's and Stephen's mouths these days concerns Pokemon, and because Sam still can't talk much. Which leaves Jonah as the primary non-Pokemon talker in the house.

Here we go:

Timothy
We were at my in-laws for Father's Day, and the adults were sitting around regretting the amount of food we ate and trying to decide which card game to play while we waited for dinner. (Okay, actually that was just me. Nobody else overate and everybody except the kids was too full to eat any dinner.)

Timothy walks up and asks, "Can we play the big CD's?"

I had no idea what he meant, and my face must have shown it.

He tried again, "In Papa's room. The big CD's that you play on top of the box."

Blank stares.

It took us a few minutes to determine that he meant a record player. [Insert "how old I feel" joke here.]

Stephen
All of the house males ran some errands on Saturday morning so that my wife could paint the bathroom. We began with the half-hour process of getting shoes on and then moved to the half-hour process of piling into the car.

Very early in the shoe battle, Stephen was geared up and ready to go. He asked, "Can I play my Gameboy in the car?" Thinking he meant "when we are in the car may I play my Gameboy," I said yes.

Later, all the other boys (and 1 Dad) had shoes on and were ready to go. But I couldn't find Stephen. I looked through the house and then finally checked the garage. He had been in there, playing his Gameboy in the car for the past half-hour.

Jonah
Part of what had taken so long was fighting with Jonah over what to wear. Jonah loves his overalls. He's got a couple of short pairs, and there is one in particular that he will wear whenever he gets the chance.

So while were getting dressed (and while Stephen was in the car playing Pokemon on his Gameboy), I instructed Jonah to put on "a t-shirt and some shorts." Oops, wrong word.

[Cue rocket-launching scene from Apollo 13.] "Not shorts! I wanna wear my overalls!"

At this point, a wise man would realize his mistake and back down. I am not a wise man. Perhaps I was changing Sam, but the fog of war makes memories hazy.

"Put on some shorts Jonah," I replied.

"But Dad . . ."

"Get dressed Jonah."

Holding up his overalls for me to see, he whined again, "But Dad, my overalls have shorts stuck on them."

And so they did.

Sam
He didn't say anything, but we did find him mainlining cat food. He now is able to open the door to the garage and eats it directly from the bag.

Cool beyond cool

If you have Star Wars lovers in your house (for example, 4 little boys), and if you have digital video of them swinging stuff around, you must have this: http://lsmaker.uw.hu/page.php?main=lsmaker.html#lsmaker.

Example here: http://www.wierdkids.com/will/index.htm

Awesome.

If, in the next few days, my wife finds our old video camera broken somehow, promting us to get a new digital video camera, you won't say anything, will you? I can totally make it look like Sam did it.

Out of hand . . .

When I started this thing back in September of last year, I originally did so for 3 reasons:

1. A personal diary - I had always wanted to keep a diary of the boys' early years, something to show them when they were older (and maybe had kids of their own). But my handwriting is awful, and I never found the time to buy and keep a journal, etc. Since I'm sitting on my brains all day in front of a computer anyway, this seemed like a good way to do it.
2. Writing practice - I need to practice, really I do. And this is a fun way to do it.
3. Toe in the door - as I mention in my first entry/post, I had an email address pretty early on (relative to the rest of the world, not to you nerds out there). My best friend and I were emailing each other daily back in '93 or so, and I hung onto that account for a long time. I figured blogs might be the same way: fun for now, but essential later on. Besides, I lack neither opinions nor willingness to share them.

I never thought other people would actually be reading this stuff.

To date, I have directly emailed 3 people about this: my wife, my mom, and my sister. So it's a little surprising to find out that all sorts of people are here, reading what I scribble down between phone calls and diaper changes.

What's really surprising is that I'm now getting linked to by a real blog. I'll get over this eventually, but I may celebrate by going out to dinner tonight.

So, to all of you, known and unknown: welcome. Enjoy the show. I promise more poop stories and existential Dad meanderings to come.

A metaphor, of sorts

Sam's dresser is in my office, which used to be "the nursery" when Jonah was a baby, and which still contains the baby dresser. I start work most days before the boys get dressed, and this can lead to odd moments where I'm on the phone and my wife tries to sneak in to get clothes.

The big variable is whether or not Sam is out in the hallway. If he's there, my heart stops, because he may yell out "Daddy!" before I can hit the mute button on the phone. This would blow my cover and reveal me to be a man-who-works-at-home.

I was not on the phone this morning, though, when my wife came in to get Sam's clothes for the day. He was with her, and so I got down on the floor to play with him. We tussled a bit and then my wife handed me his shorts and t-shirt.

And I noticed something interesting about toddlers (mine at least, I don't know about yours). Sam was standing up when I asked if he wanted to help get his shorts on. He said "Yuh," and then simply put out his hands and lifted one leg.

Toddlers cannot stand on one leg, hence the name "toddler," as opposed to "steadyer."

I was close by and he didn't go very far until his hands rested on my shoulders and we could begin the 5-minute enterprise of getting each leg into its properly assigned short-area.

But he didn't even look before he put out his arms and lifted his leg. He just assumed that I would be there, to steady or to catch him.

Hm.

Enough is a good as a feast

When I was younger, if someone had asked me to define a good evening, I would have required a nice dinner out somewhere, followed perhaps by a night at the symphony or at a coffe shop with friends, discussing semi-weighty matters late into the evening.

Fast forward . . .

Tonight The Bigs are at a swim meet with my wife. Jonah and I played Lego Star Wars together. (FYI, Jonah has now decided that he wants to be a "good General Grievous" when he grows up, instead of Darth Vader.) Then I made peanut butter toast for The Littles while listening to the Hugh Hewitt show. (Also FYI, peanut butter toast is to Jonah what pizza was to me in college: the perfect, all-occasion food, suitable for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It must be cut into 4 squares, though, because 4 is the magic number in Jonahland.)

While The Littles were eating (or, sadly, not eating) I made red beans and rice for myself. I made enough for dinner tonight, as well as some for lunch tomorrow. I ate it while listening to Hugh.

In a few minutes, the boys will go to bed, and I will either go watch TV (Battlestar Galactica pilot or Team America: World Police, so hard to decide) or else keep playing Lego Star Wars. Or I may work on an online ordering page for work.

And it occurs to me that I'm happy.

"Silly man," you may say, "you only think you are happy."

That works just fine for me.

Names - having only very little to do with children

Names are important. If you don't think so, just name your kid "Stupidhead" or "Poopeater" and see how many bruises he comes home with after the first day of school.

So I am hereby releasing to the public two of the greatest names, ever.

Loyal Clay - Pastor
My cousin got married a year or so ago at a tinsy little church (I assume it was Baptist) outside of Atlanta. The pastor's name was Loyal Clay, which I think is the best pastor name in the universe. Aren't we all, brother, aren't we all?

Nobody You'd Know - band name
When I was in high school, various friends of mine were in several gazillion bands, and some of us stayed up late one night making up band names. A year or so later, this one popped into my head. It's the greatest, most pretentious band name of all time.

"Who did you go see last night?" a friend might ask.

"Nobody You'd Know," you could answer, in all truthfullness, and snicker to your other friend, who was in on the joke. Stupid friend 1.

You are welcome to use the band name if you would please contact my lawyer first to sign some documents . . .

Different

One of the benefits of working at home is that, in the summer, I can be at the pool, boys in tow, by 5:15.

Jonah (3 at the time) liked the water but didn't like to get his face wet. He spent most of his time splashing in the baby pool, playing on the side, or floating along beside me in the big pool. He and I would float and watch what was going on. This allowed me to spend a lot of time doing my favorite pastime: observing the boys.

I was watching the Big Boys on the diving board early last year, just after they had finished their second round of swimming lessons. We had not been to the pool together much, and I had yet to see them on the diving board.

Timothy (6) went first. "Watch me dad!" he yelled. He walked to the end of the board, held his nose, and jumped in. He dropped a few feet from the end of the board, legs straight, arms by his side, eyes closed. Up popped his head, face bright with a smile, and he swam to the side of the pool. Good job.

I was still watching Timothy swim when I heard "WATCHMEDAD!" zooming from right to left. Stephen (4) ran the entire length of the board, hollering and launching himself as far out as he could. Arms and legs flew in all directions as he rocketed through the air. He hit the water in a blur

Oh, holy crap.

When you’ve got just one child, you have a tendency to think that your own kid is typical and representative of the species. What he likes, how he behaves, how he reacts, when he sleeps, what he eats, etc., are pretty much the same as how other kids are or should be.

We were as guilty of this as anyone. Timothy was a pretty good sleeper, a pretty good eater, and responded well to scheduling. He slept through the night at 8 weeks, thanks in no small part to copious thumb-sucking. We'd hear stories of other parents and issues they were having that we weren't. And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I'd think, "They're not doing it right. We tried X with Timothy and it works just fine."

I don't think it was hubris (my parents would probably disagree), but rather inexperience.

Then we had Stephen. Wow. Night and day (we thought). Timothy was quiet, Stephen was loud. Timothy played by himself, Stephen needed other people.

Timothy was neat, Stephen was messy. Two stories. One time, we were eating cupcakes or muffins at the table. I looked up and watched Timothy for a minute. He was pinching off small bits of the cupcake, over his plate, and putting the bits into his mouth. Then I turned to see Stephen, holding the cupcake with two hands, wrapper still on, burying his face in the cupcake to take a bite. Crumbs everywhere, cupcake smeared on his face, he was a mess. Both kids, happy as clams, eating cupcakes in their own happy way.

Night and day.

Second story. My wife took the boys up to visit my sister's family in Richmond. Timothy and Stephen slept in the same bed. One morning, my brother-in-law looked in on them to see Stephen sprawled across the bed, sideways. Timothy was next to him, on his back, covers tucked under his arms, head still on his pillow (Stephen's pillow was nowhere to be seen). Josh said, "Wow. Timothy even sleeps neatly."

Once Stephen came along, we replaced our previous fallacy (all kids are like our one kid) with a different fallacy: kids are binary, and each kid is a mixture of different binary values for attributes just like ours are.

Kids can be neat (like Timothy) or messy (like Stephen). They can be loud (S) or quiet (T), etc. “Our kids are neat and quiet (T), and messy and loud (S). Yours might be neat and loud or messy and quiet. What a wonderful world of possibility.”

Fortunately, Jonah arrived about 16 months after Stephen and blew everything out of the water. Ditto and more so Sam.

New paradigm: kids are who they are. They like what they like and do what they do. Parents can change certain surface features of that, but there's really not much you can do.

Unfortunately, parenting isn't easy. We can’t just throw up our hands and say “Oh, well. He likes to hit other people with baseball batts." It's still my job to define limits and say that certain behaviors are beyond the pale. But I don’t expect all my kids to react to them the same way.

An example: Timothy, Stephen, and Jonah were all great sleepers as babies. Sam wasn't. The tricks that worked with the other three to get them to sleep just didn't work with Sam. He was a rotten sleeper, but he wasn't about to get in bed with us (big rule) and we weren't going to get up and play with him at 2 AM every morning (another big rule).

So when he’d cry, we'd go into his room, lay him back down, and pat his bottom to let him know we were still aware of him. And then we'd go back to bed. We did end up moving him from Jonah's room (Sam's crying would wake Jonah) into Timothy's room (Timothy can sleep through an artillery barrage).

Similarly, current bedtimes. Timothy and Sam go to sleep pretty early. Jonah and Stephen stay up late. Everyone goes to bed at 7:30, but only a moron would try to force everyone to go to sleep at 7:30 (“CLOSE YOUR EYES AND BREATHE MORE SLOWLY AND DEEPLY NOW!”). So while Timothy and Sam are usually asleep by 8:00, Jonah and Stephen will stay up talking (yelling) and playing (jumping on the bed) until 10 or so. But their feet can't touch the floor except to go to the bathroom. We don't care when they go to sleep, but they all go to bed at the same time.

One more pool story.

Another time I had the Big Boys in the water with me and we got to go swim at the deep end, just us 3. Nice. Timothy looks at me and says, "Hey dad, want to see me touch the bottom?"

"Okay," I reply, "are you sure you can do it?" (I really had no idea what good swimmers these guys were.)

"Yeah," he says. So I go under water to watch (visual verification is required by the boys), while he pushes down with his arms, stretches out one foot to touch lightly with his big toe.

His head pops back up, beaming. "Good job," I say. At this moment I'm a very proud water dad.

Without missing a beat, Stephen says, "Watch this!" He dives under the water head-first, kicks his little legs, and swims down to slap the bottom of the pool with the flat of his hand.

Night and day.

Lilla Pictures!

Go here: http://welcomelilla.blogspot.com/2005/06/june-8-pictures.html.

Go now.

What are you waiting around here for? I got nuthin. Go see Lilla.

Welcome Lilla

Some very good friends of ours are in China (right now!) picking up Lilla, their new daughter. They're blogging their trip (adoptionblogging? Sinoblogging? Chinablogging?) and posting about once or twice a day.

Check it out here: welcomelilla.blogspot.com.

Cat food

Observed this evening:

We were returning from dropping off a friend, and, as usual, Sam was the last one to get out of the car and the last one to leave the garage.

As he was coming in, I heard this rustle from the gargantuan bag of cat food we keep near the door. It's Timothy's job to feed the cat every morning, and he won't go very far into the garage by himself (Timothy, not the cat), so we keep the bag right by the door.

So Sam was rustling around in there, and then he came into the kitchen carrying the cup filled with cat food. He emptied into the cat's bowl, saying, "Ah-hoo," which is his way of saying Sparkles, the cat's name.

He even put the cup back into the bag and shut the door to the garage. I beamed with pride.

Then Sam bent down, picked up a piece of cat food out of the bowl, and put it in his mouth. Ew.