One of the most important guys in the world...

Yes, from the Amazon company picnic, here's a shot of one of the most important guys in the world. And oh yeah, there's Jeff Bezos in the background, too.

I'd always thought the boys were Democrats...

or maybe it was just wishful thinking that made me get them longsleeve t-shirts that say "Lifelong Democrat." However, I think my hopes have been confirmed for at least one of them. I left the room and they did their thing trying to mess with the computer. When I came back in it was up on a donation page for MoveOn.org. I don't know whether to be irritated that they were messing with the computer or proud that they've got their politics figured out already.

The emptiest threat of them all....

From Eddie to Chas: "You say you're sorry or I'm putting myself in timeout!"

Hmm.

Yesterday was the best day of our whole entire lives...

OK, so when you're only 3 years old and some change, that's probably not saying too much. But yesterday we spent the day out with Thomas at the Snoqualmie Historical Railway. Today, Eddie keeps crying because he can't go back. It was hotter than Hades but that didn't dampen their spirits. Eddie in particular made excellent use of the small mister that was set up. But nothingn could make the heat anything less than oppressive.

They got temporary Thomas tattoos but now they don't want to go swimming, despite the continued heat, because they are afraid the tats will wear off. Yesterday definitely rekindled the flame of their Thomas love. He is cheeky and wonderful.

Something is scaring the sheet (and blanket) out of Chas

OK, I'm sure that everyone expects a post about the cruise. But really, I'm all talked out. It was awesome. It was amahzing. It was, on one night at least, a puke-fest for the boys and very nearly for me. (On a storm scale of 1 to 10 it was a 7 said the captain. Which was about 5 too high for my stomach.) Anyway, I'll post some photos of us (and the boys' donor-sibling Casey who we met on board along with her moms, one of whom is in the photo.) I'll also post the shots Steph took of her three seasick family members. (Thank God she's got a gut of steel.)

OK, now that we have that out of the way, the latest trauma around here is that Chas seems to have developed a fear of sheets and blankets. He keeps saying there's "some-sin" in them. I told him to go to bed the other night and he stood there looking at hsi bed and saying "I try." And try he did, putting a foot on the bed only to pull it off, then trying again etc. Clean sheets and a blanket seem to have done the trick last night -- but then he wet the bed. So he gets more clean sheets tonight. I'm hoping this doesn't become a nightly requirement. Eddie, for some reason, has decided that what Chas is afraid of in the blanket is not a monster or a spider but a kitty. As in baby cat. I have no idea what the hell is wrong with my boys.

Put your hand down, Cyndi...

raise ur fist
Originally uploaded by Rosie O'Donnell.

I'll blog about the cruise soon. No need to get all militant about it...

Summer is here at last!

OK, so officially it wasn't really late. But after some gorgeous spring weather taunted us briefly, we've had a long stretch of not so great days, weatherwise. But the sun is shining and the boys are playing in their wading pool, which may be the best wading pool ever. They laughed and laughed and giggled and played and kept getting back in the pool throughout the day. Finally as the sun was setting and the temperatures were cooling, they wanted to get in again and Mama let 'em skinny-dip before a bath, as if to prove to them that it was, indeed, too damn cold to swim.

All in all, a joyous day for the boys -- they played and played and played some more out in the sunshine with their Moms. Eddie keeps telling me he doesn't want me to go anywhere. Alas, my boy, I'm not leaving you anytime soon. Although I may want to sneak out to see Superman Returns next week....

Most. Excellent. Train track. Ever.

So Chas was verry clear on what he wanted to "earn" yesterday by going poopy: Train track including a turntable. This is what I made with it. It may not be the best track ever, but it's pretty danged cool if I do say so myself. Right now Eddie is singing and playing about trains puffing along, being clever, etc. It's very sweet that every night Eddie has to make sure Percy is safely tucked into his roundhouse.

s for potty training, I think it's going OK. Except that Eddie doesn't really go in the potty unless there's a prize he wants. Hmm.

Meanwhile, I must do some research on storage options because I am taking an ungodly amount of photos with my new camera. Excuse me, my bitchin' new camera. I could certainly start taking them at something less than 8 megapixels, but I have a coupon for two free poster sized prints that expires on July 1 so until then, I'm shootin' large.

Potty Training Update

Chas is pretty close to daytime trained. He had a teeny accident yesterday but caught himself. Eddie has made it through today and, most excitingly, pooped in the pot today. This is only his second time. He was really working for a prize.

The bad news is the poopy prize box is down to four prizes. So we'll find out soon whether they will return to soiling themselves once there's no new toy in it for them. I have my doubts.

This is a game and the game is over.

This evening at the Target Train, the boys were as violent and physical as I've ever seen them. And they laughed the whole damn time. I swear, the other parents must have thought I let them watch professional wrestling or something. The highlight was when Eddie would pull Chas to the ground, then stand over him and jump up, landing knees-first on the prone Chas. Chas responded to this, appropriately enough, with hysterical laugher and cries of "Again! Again!"

After several minutes, Eddie must have gotten tired. He walked away, telling Chas, "This is a game. And the game is over."

We've killed potato bugs for less.

Soon the wasp Armegeddon will be upon the yellow jackets of Milton. Or at least those around our house. Today Chas let out a horrendous scream and kind of fell. I thought he'd broken something or perhaps punctured a lung. He stumbled to me clutching his side. I lifted his shirt and saw a tiny dot of red. He was madly scratching at it. I thought not too much of it other than it was a heck of a reaction for such a small injury. Then he asked me to get the bug off of him. Bug? There's no bug! But he insisted there was, indeed a bug that had hurt him. A yellow bug. Now we definitely have wasps around here and I've even seen them in the house on occasion so it shouldn't have been a huge surprise. I looked again and sure enough there was a small hive forming around the "injury." Being the ace investigator that I am, I had him look at a bug lineup on the internet. He quickly identified a wasp photo as the "yellow bug" in question.

Armed with this uncontrovertable evidence, I have convicted wasps of the crime of stinging my boy. I will take on the task of destroying their homes, killing any of them I can safely exterminate without risking my own sting and just generally make them wish they'd never come to Milton. I would feel bad, but in staining the boy's play set this weekend, we inadvertently executed via stain fumes (and possibly drowning) numerous potato bugs whose only crime was taking up residence in a glorified swingset. I'm no moral relativist, but I figure in this case the wasps certainly don't deserve to live given what the harmless potato bugs faced. I have no guilt and, when it comes to things that sting my boys and make me worry about allergic reactions, no mercy.

42

Sigh. Yes. I'm officially 42. And about 24 hours. But who's counting?

So for my 42nd birthday (43rd if you count the actual day of my birth, but I need that number to be bigger like I need a hole in the head) I got Superman DVDs -- I & II. Chas told me shortly before I got them. Not so good with secrets, that boys.

That was from the booys onn the day befoe my actual birthday. For my birthday proper I got, among other things, a Canon Rebel 35 mm digital camera. These photos were taken with it. I find it, in a word, bitchin'. But then I'm a geek. It has a way cool (to me anyway) 3 fps burst mode. This is the sort of feature that would have made the adolescent and teen me positively orgasmic. It's the modern equivilant of the holy grail of my young photo fantasies: a motor drive. Best of all, with digital, I can goof around and take 300 or so pictures with it, fooling around with settings etc. and not have to go into bankruptcy or prostitution just to get them processed. Oh, the young geek in me rejoices at this new toy. Her heart sings. Hell, the 42-year-old me is still pretty damned happy about it.

The other big news of late is that Chas is no longer afraid of the battery-operated ride-on car that we gave them for their birthday. In March. This was heralded by screams of joy from Eddie as he drove his brother around the cul-de-sac: "Mommy! Look, Chas isn't scared anymore."

Look! There's a duck in the lake!

The great fruit fight of '06

Nice long nap for boys. (And Mommy). Moods should be good, no? No.

Eddie is first up and finds fruit cup from his lunch. Tries to share with a sleeping Chas. "Do you want a grape, Chas?" Mommy listens from bed and is amused.

Then, Mommy and Chas get up. Chas finds fruit cup. Takes grapes. Eddie yells. Chas stuffs grapes into his mouth. More yelling. Chas and Eddie both head back to the fruit cup, this time it's the apple that is left. Both grab some. Eddie runs down the hall. Chas tackles him, but Eddie manages to get his piece of apple in his mouth, chews and swallows.

Chas shrieks, falls on the floor, kicks and cries about his apples. "I grab them They not Eddie's!"

"The apples are down in my belly," Eddie announces.

"Stop!" Mommy screams as she grabs a knife and starts cutting up another apple. Eddie is pleased. Eddie eats some freshly cut apple and gladly takes a baggie full of sweet, fruity good morsels. Chas is offended at the thought that Mommy would try to subsitute this obviously inferior apple for the apple that is, indeed now in Eddie's tummy. Continues to cry and scream even as Mommy ups the ante by adding a banana to the mix.

Mommy starts to blog in frusration. Chas climbs up on her lab, still crying. Only then does Mommy realize that hee still has two pieces of the original apple clutched tightly in his fists.

Eddie goes outside. Comes back in. "Chas, come see the bees." "I can't," Chas replies, "I want to cry." He continues mumbling about the injustice of the apples. Mommy also wants to cry but seeing as she's the grown-up, she simply blogs.

Soon Mommy will put the basketball shirts on in place of the Thomas shirts. This will make the fruit fight seem like a party.

And so goes another day with the three year old joys of my life.

Vaccines and doctors and earwax...

OK, so for the past week or so, Sir Eddie has been complaining sporadically about having water in his ears. "Oh! Oh! My ear has water in it! Get it out! Get it out!" (His cousin in Hawaii once had a bug come out of her ear, but I wasn't expecting anything as dramatic as that -- just perhaps some badly impacted earwax, maybe a small toy or a bean shoved up there by his brother.) So yesterday I took him to the doctor. He sobbed at being called back to the exam room, which is a first. But when the doctor finished looking in the first ear he quietly turned his head so she could look in the other -- a very sweet little move. Looking into his ears she saw... nothing. Well, there was some wax covering his eardrum on the right, but she got a little scooper thing and got a bunch of it out. It was soft, which was good, she said. All I know is that this morning Eddie literally woke up singing: "My earrrr... is feeeeeelin'" (at this point I'm cringing...) "Better!" Thank heavens.

Anyway, today, in order to do some work for the hospital next week, I had to go get a TB test and MMR vaccine (totally pointless, but hopefully it won't kill me.) The boys came along and were intrigued to see Mommy get a shot. A bit scared, but clearly relieved when neither of them was summoned to the nurse. Anyway, the shot was in my left arm. And I can definitely feel it. In my right arm. If I think about it, I can also feel it in my left arm, but I suspect it's either all in my head or just the way my arms feel at the end of a long day.

And so my sore arms and I say good night and good luck.

More Sandbox surprises...

Pleasant and not-so-pleasant. First, the photo of our froggy visitor. It's blurry, but you can see I was not kidding.

However, yesterday as the kids and their cousins played in the sandbox, we found a dreaded "wet spot." After much smelling, we decided it was cat piss. Of course, we then proceeded to smell cat piss just about everywhere, so who knows. The lid was off only briefly while the box was unattended. But it is a rather luxurious outhouse so.... Emptied (mere hours after fresh sand was put in) and vigorous cleaning will follow soon. We are dismayed.

To top it off, a neighbor kid swears she saw a weasel in our yard the other day. There was a bear in the U. District last night, so a weasel in the 'burbs isn't exactly earth-shattering. But it is weird. Damn aimals. Whose planet do they think this is, anyway??

The boys have passports

Photos (No longer) TK.

To put this in perspective, I was 34 when I first got a passport. They are 3. Admittedly, they aren't going anywhere more distant than Canada in the foreseeable future but still. They don't know how lucky they are.

And while I'm typing this I'm thinking about "photos TK." Does everyone understand that TK mean "to come?" Or is that another one of those arcane and ridiculous journalism things?? Why???? Not that I'm complaining. Only because of being in a newsroom do I know the correct use of the word "penultimate." And that is the penultimate thing I have to say in this post.

I am the Mighty CD player repairwoman

The other day the boys got into the van and shoved a college fund worth of coin into the CD slot Needless to say it stopped working. In fact, when we turned, we could hear coins jingling. A few months ago they did this and I -- not realizing what had happened though in fairness sort of suspecting it -- took it in for repair under warranty. They replaced it, then brought me the change and told me to tell my kids it's not a piggy bank. So purely from the humiliation factor, I wasn't going that route again.

So I was feeling lame about something completely unrelated andn decided to see if I could redeem myself. Using Internet directions, I ripped the dash apart, then used my own guesswork to take the cd player apart enough to get the coins out. I was stunned when I put it back together and it worked. I'll be even more stunned if that's the last time I have to do it.

The great mystery crap of '06

For as long as we've had a sandbox, roughly two years, I've been concerned -- bordering on paranoid -- about keeping the sand clean. This completely violates the whole spirit but I gotta be me.

I've also been worried/paranoid about neighborhood cats deciding that we had simply installed a luxurious outdoor toilet for their use and convenience. Every time we would forget to cover it, I would make Steph come do a search for poop. I would look for telltale pawprints if she was at work. Over the months, she continually reassured me that with the plethora of pointy plastic and in some cases metal toys scattered throughout the sandbox that no cat would want to come and, let's say, sit a spell. After many, many forgetful nights of coverless sandbox and no turds, I actually began to believe she knew what the hell she was talking about. When will I learn?

So a couple of days ago, the boys run out back and I follow them at a leisurely pace since this is becoming something of a habit. I glance at the open sandbox. Horrors! There is a gigantic turd right there in the box! It mocks me as I frantically try to cover the box and ascertain if the boys have already played with it. Now, I understand that for most people, scooping out a cat box is an unpleasant perhaps, but entirely reasonable task. I'm not most people. Excrement of any kind -- with the exception of that coming out of the nether regions of my or other adorable young infants/toddlers -- immediately triggers my gag reflex.

I told the boys to stay away and did what to me seemed an admirable job of not freaking out. However, I spent a few minutes devising the manner in which Steph would deal with this. (I briefly considered that we might need an entirely new sandbox, but I was talked down from this position.) Then I discover two -- TWO cat turd "groupings" in our front yard. I feel surrounded by excrement.

So I made Steph scoop up the yard turns, then soak all the toys in a tub full of water and probably too much bleach. She emptied the remaining sand into the field next door and Lysol-ed the box itself. She found a second, heretofore undiscovered turd. I found a heretofore undiscovered distrust bordering on hatred of all the neighborhood cats. Each time I see one I think, "Was it you? Are you the bastard that shat in our sandbox?? In my yard? Every cat I see is a potential perp. In my mind, and I have no serious evidence to back this up, I think it's Dusty, the black cat across the street. I swear I'm not profiling. But I never liked that damn cat -- and he ran into our house the other day. All I can say is I'm keeping my eye on you, Dusty.

The next day I looked out and there in the now sandless sandbox was... a frog. A much better (and smaller) surprise. So things must be looking up.

Chas loves chips