Barrettes are not cheaper than haircuts

I don't believe in cutting Baby Girl's hair. Mommy talked me into giving her hair a trim once about a year ago. It will keep it out of her eyes she says. I know it's silly, but I was disappointed for a week. Not to mention we're now months behind in growing it out, so really it just prolonged how much time her hair is in her eyes. Mommy disputes this point. So anyway, Girl's hair is getting long which creates hair situations. A 2-year old isn't exactly the neatest when it comes to paint, food and the such. Things get in there. So we must do something to get her hair away from her face. Now, getting some sort of hair accessory into a 2-year-old's hair is difficult. She doesn't sit still for anything. We have tried many different things. Clips, bobby pins. Well, let's be honest, here's where my knowledge of little girl's hair basically ends. I'm not sure I even know what a bobby pin is. So I must trust those in the know. Namely, Mommy. And she tells me that after the exhaustive research of hair products sold at the Claire's in the mall, that the best solution is these little clips she's found at some random little baby clothes boutique a half an hour away. You squeeze them to open. Let go to close. (Mommy note: they are called alligator clips) Pretty intuitive. Especially with a squirming child. I've only poked her in the eye once or twice. They stay on her head pretty well, when she is not being funny pulling them out. They fall off after a certain amount of play anyway, but luckily they are easy to put back in. If you can find them. Mommy keeps buying more as we lose them. I keep randomly finding them around the house. Mommy gets excited every time. It's like I'm finding a Jim Rice rookie baseball card the way she reacts. Different colors and patterns elicit different levels of excitement.

Here's where it gets difficult. These things are not easy to find. Mommy calls the store she buys them from her "supplier". She has spent somewhere between $50 and $100. At least that's what I've been told, which makes me think we're closer to $200 at this point. We, of course, have to have them for all the different outfits. Rainbow stripes. Bright green plaid. White for spring. Yes, they are all quite adorable. Now, I'm a dude, so I immediately think to myself, wouldn't it be easier to just buy 10 black ones to go with everything? Not to mention the black won't show the crap she gets in her hair. I'm learning to keep these thoughts to myself. Now the store (The supplier) goes out of business. Why wouldn't it? This, of course, causes all sorts of commotion. (It's like when my favorite Design markers were discontinued. The ones with the aluminum bodies and Xylene in them) Now the Gramdmothers get involved. Finally, Grammy finds a place at her mall that has them. They cost 6 bucks for 2. I think one of them has Hello Kitty on it. Problem is, she thinks the dude at the kiosk swindled her out of a 20. So really, they cost 16 bucks. She didn't have it in her to argue. Really, it just adds to the mystique of Girl's barrettes. So now, there's no way I'm ever allowing any sort of cute haircut. I'm in way too deep.

The day Mommy almost inadvertantly ruined barbecue

Halloween, late afternoon. Mommy is helping Boy put on his Halloween costume to go out trick or treating. He's a pirate. Auntie made great pirate costumes for both Boy and Girl. As Mommy is putting on Boy's pirate vest, she bumps his ribs. Owww. Oh I'm sorry Mommy says, did I bump your ribs? Boy looks concerned. His face falls. Ribs? People Ribs? We eat people ribs? It dawned on me that the only experience Boy has with ribs are pork ribs. I like to break out the smoker and make ribs a couple times a year. Boy goes to town on them. Good times. He never gave any thought to the idea that he, himself, also has ribs. He suddenly went back in time to the last time he ate ribs and in his 4-year old mind, for one split second he thought that he had actually eaten people ribs. We explained that he has people ribs, we don't eat people ribs.

My hopscotch.

As every parent of a young child knows, the size of a child is inversely proportional to the size of the toys that they have. The smaller the child, the larger the toy. We have a small house. It is full of plastic, rubber, foam, paper, cardboard, wood, metal and other unimaginable space age materials in all the colors of the rainbow. My feet are calloused from walking on all sorts of sharp things. My living room is like the scene in Die Hard where Bruce Willis needs to walk across the shattered glass in bare feet. Needless to say, I get a little bent over this from time to time. I declare that it's time to purge.

Purging is no fun, so you need some sort of a system. More importantly, you need commitment from all parties involved. Leave your emotional connection to objects at the door. Just because your adorable baby girl once played with a cute stuffed animal and you will never get that adorable image out of your head doesn't mean you must carry the prop around with you forever. Toss it is what I say. I know it's cold, but you gotta live your life. I like to begin with finding 2 or more objects that are similar and get rid of the lesser favored of the 2. Or anything with any kind of broken part should be tossed. We tend to do this when the children are sleeping. Late at night or possibly nap time. So we rarely have the time. So when we do I like to make quick difficult decisions and hope for the best possible outcomes. Please don't let this random toy be the toy one of my children is about to want to play with.

Which brings me to the hopscotch set. A giant foam puzzle with giant foam pieces that connects to form a giant hopscotch (I think it's called a) court. Let's go through our purging checklist shall we?

1. Do we have other toys like this one? check
2. Are we missing any parts? check
3. Is the carrying case broken? check
4. Does it take up far too much room? check
I feel no need to continue. Into the garbage.

Boy loves garbage trucks. The garbage men love Boy. When Boy hears the truck rumbling down the street he runs to the front door to see the truck and to watch the men throw the garbage into said truck. There he stands, in our full view front door, often only in underwear marveling at the process. The guys always wave. They honk the horn. They stop and make a point of dumping the smaller garbage container on the front of the truck into the back of the truck while boy watches. It's almost like a dumpster on the front of the truck with forklift arms that turn it end over into the main garbage holding area in the back of the truck. It's industrial. It's loud. Boy loves it. I admit it's pretty cool. I assume you know where I'm going by this point.

The giant foam hopscotch set has made it from our garbage barrel into the front dumpster without being noticed. Phew. Moment of truth. The arms slowly lift the front dumpster to unload into the back while Boy stands in awe. In my head, the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyssey is playing. It is all in super slow motion. From the dumpster comes tumbling giant foam pieces in all the colors of the rainbow into the back holding area. Crap. There's no way he's missing this. Boy sadly says, "my hopscotch", in a tone somewhere between statement and question. He is slowly learning that life isn't all cupcakes and cookies. Sometimes it's rough.

"Before we get started I'd like to take a moment to talk about shop safety"

Boy and I watch TV together sometimes. Girl watches also, but she's still a little young to express her opinion on specific programming. So the boys tend to take over, except for the specific times I put on Elmo's World during Sesame Street or Jack's Big Music Show. Both excellent shows. Anyway, Boy and I like to watch some specific shows when we watch TV together. Dirty Jobs on Discovery. Good Eats on the Food Network. The This Old House Hour and New Yankee Workshop on PBS. Good times. We talk about animal poop, cooking and tools, respectively. The thing that cracks me up is the fact that he typically doesn't name the show host by name, he assumes the show host's name is the name of the show. To Boy, Alton Brown's name is actually Good Eats. Where is Good Eats going? he'll ask. Norm Abrams and New Yankee Workshop are interchangeable ideas. Except for some strange reason he knows Mike Rowe by name. Mike's become family, so to speak.

Boy recently celebrated a birthday. His 4th. He basically received a giant pile of toys and a giant pile of clothes. He plays immediately with the toys. The clothes pretty much are at the discretion of Mommy. She takes out his clothes in the morning. The clothes choices tend to not be a problem. He rarely questions Mommy's style aesthetic. Getting Boy to put the clothes on his body is the larger problem. I've pretty well established this fact, so I won't dwell. A couple days after the party, Boy says to Mommy, I want to wear my New Yankee Workshop shirt. Your what? My New Yankee Workshop shirt. Then, he goes to the closet and points it out. Grandma had given him the shirt. It's pretty cool. A dark plaid flannel shirt. Like Norm Abrams wears. Now, I feel the need to point something out here. This is a leap that he made. Never once have we discussed the wardrobe choices of any of our favorite television personalities. He, in his head, must have made some sort of mental note of how good Norm Abrams looks in his plaid flannel shirt. Or perhaps he sees plaid flannel in association with tools in general. Like some sort of woodworking uniform. And we all know how cool tools are. I'm not sure. I just enjoy the thought process. Clothes are somewhat of a novelty to young children. They don't really have any kind of established societal norms built in their heads. A Halloween costume is perfectly appropriate attire for the grocery store. A fireman rain coat for playing soccer. Why not? The lines are blurred between uniforms and costumes, pajamas and clothes. So I think he sees the shirt as some sort of uniform and in his head, he wants to try out the role.

Oh and this next point is somewhat irrelevant, but Boy is wearing his New Yankee Workshop shirt reversed. I have no idea why, but the buttons and collar are facing backwards. Just to complete the image. Again, he's not naked so I say go with it.

Birthday Dinner

Well Boy turned 4. I've always had a tradition growing up that when it's your birthday you get to decide what the family has for dinner. No questions asked. So I ask Boy. What would you like for your birthday dinner? Pie. With cake for dessert. As a lover of pie, I couldn't be happier. Mommy and I had wedding pies instead of cake. There are endless directions we can go in there being infinite configurations of pie. Savory meat pie. Fruit pies. Endless. I could go on for pages. Sounds good to me. Boy says, no, wait. Sushi. I want sushi for my birthday dinner. Now, Boy is turning 4, not 34. That sounds good too. I'm really not sure if he actually likes sushi or if he likes the novelty of the sushi experience. Soy sauce. Salty. Pickled ginger. Spicy. Wasabi. Too spicy. Chopsticks. He's actually kind of got it figured out. So we go and pick up the sushi at our take-out place. Boy comes in with me. He tells the man, it's my birthday. Good for you, happy birthday. I'm 4. Wow, 4, that's a big birthday. Nice guy. Then Boy says, I'm going to eat sushi. We get the package home and Boy does what he says he's gonna do. A first in our house. We ordered a couple with raw fish and a couple just vegetables and a shrimp tempura. All rolls. He starts shoving food into his face, he's got 2 pieces in there at once. Not the vegetable stuff, either. The raw fish stuff. Mommy asks if he should he be eating all that raw fish? Neither one of us is too sure. So we push the veggie rolls. He shovels them too. He's talking with a big smile. Mouth full of rice. I was actually a little hungry at the end of the meal as I didn't order enough food. This kid doesn't fool around. He eats sushi, lobster, ribs, all the good stuff. Needless to say I'm very proud. We next ate celebratory birthday cupcakes and opened presents.

from the wilderness archive

Here's a good story. So 2 days ago (actually, it was 2 years ago, I just never posted this anywhere and I came across it in my email and it made me laugh), there is clearly a skunk in the neighborhood. I was away from home for the night with Boy. Mommy smelled it in the air. It had clearly sprayed in the yard. Nobody thinks too much of it, just that it sucked. So yesterday morning, Mommy and her parents (who were in town visiting the just born Girl) are leaving the house to run errands at about 9. Mommy calls me to say they see the skunk roaming about in the back yard and could I deal with it. Wildlife apparently falls under my jurisdiction. This is bad. Skunks don't come out during the day, only at night and dawn. He's nosing around in the garden, then in the sand box Mommy tells me. Great. I get to come home with Boy to deal with this. Poor timing. I stop at the garden center and pick up some fox urine. It's a skunk's natural predator, but really, it doesn't do anything. Anyway, I'm putting the urine out in the yard in tiny little bottles when I see the tail. It's just a little feller. He's wedged in between the little rock wall in our backyard and a large pot we grow tomatoes in. I was a couple feet away. After a pause, I take off running. No chase. Thank god. Then I wasn't sure why he didn't move so I went back a little closer. He seems a little off in the head. There are flies buzzing around him. Big flies. I poke in the area with a long stick. He doesn't move. It could have been a cartoonish scene if he all of the sudden jumped up, but nothing. I think to myself that Costco probably has giant cans of tomato juice just in case. I love Costco. I call the police, who are somewhat helpful on the phone, but they do nothing. They give me the number of some guy from some licensed wildlife company. I get him on the phone. He says he can get rid of it. $100 cash. Cash? Trying to avoid paperwork. He says he'll call back when he's on his way. Fine. Couple hours later he calls to say he's on his way. It sounds like he's at a BBQ or pool party or something. I run out back to see if the critter is still there. Yup. Tail sticking up. Come on over, make it snappy. While I'm waiting for this dude, I go to watch the area. The skunk shuffles his way back a few steps, then falls over on his side. Flies buzzing. A pickup truck pulls up. Big dude gets out. I show him the scene. He goes over to the fence. Where is it? Turn around I say. He turns around and makes a wincing face. Oooooowwww. Without skipping a beat he bends down and picks the thing up by the tail and starts heading towards me on the deck. Did I mention I stayed on the deck? At that very moment Boy comes out the back door in his underwear. Seriously, no pants. Is the skunk sick?, he asks. Yes, Boy, the skunk is sick. The man is going to take him to the doctor. The thing had clearly died when I saw it fall over. He has some foam around his mouth. The dude says something about rabies or distemper and to look out, cause these things sometimes have a family. Rabid animals will attack. Super. Thanks for that. He takes the thing out front and asks for a garbage bag. I bring a large garbage bag out front and open it as if I'm looking to help. I'm not. He takes the bag and says he better do it as he's up on his shots. I did not argue, as I'm not really sure what kind of shots I would have needed to get to have been helpful. Not to mention, that's one of the benefits of a paid service. You really don't have to assist. As he's dropping the animal in the bag, Boy, of course in his underwear, is standing in the picture window out front of our house watching. The man take the sick skunk to the doctor? Yes, Boy, the man take the sick skunk to the doctor. I slip the man a benjamin. Best money I ever spent. I just paid a man (that the town referred me to) cash to remove a dead rabid skunk that had fallen dead on my patio. I then went and hosed off the area. Oh, and I got a quote for the groundhog we have digging up the yard. $275 to trap and dispose. $100 to just dispose if I catch him. He says they are tough to catch, you need special traps, says I might get lucky though. I think I've decided I like having him around.