Shallow Thinker

I think that this is the first year that Butterfly has been able to anticipate and appreciate all that is entailed with the holidays.  I would like to write eloquently like my wife so that the perfect representations of the scenes swirl in your head and the emotions are almost palatable.  If you’ve ever read my blog before, you’re aware that I do not have this ability.  But that won’t stop me from trying!  (I’m a slow learner.)

Butterfly woke up like any other morning and played quietly in her room.  I crept in and found her sitting by her lamp reading to Mickie Mouse.  After playing for a few minutes, Kelley and I escorted her down the stairs while Ladybug slept soundly.  (We figured that Ladybug wouldn’t care one way or the other…we were right.)  I knew that she must have forgotten about what was to come, so I knelt down beside her and asked “What’s today?”  And she responded, “Christmas.”  Then I pressed “Do you think anyone visited last night?”  The biggest and cutest grin swept across her face.  As she whispered “Santa Clause”, her hand gripped mine.  She pounced into the den and discovered the selection of things that awaited her.  The astonishment and enjoyment on her face was priceless.

Eventually, Ladybug  joined the fun.  Butterfly did a great job helping her sister find her little toys.  I’m not sure if she was really excited for her sister or just trying to keep her away from her own stuff.  It’s tough to tell with sisters.  We eventually weaned them away from their piles to have a complete breakfast of cinnamon roles.  We finished out the morning by exchanging our wrapped gifts and playing as hard as we could so that each minute was filled with the most toyness that it could hold.  The biggest gift that I received this Christmas was the joy of my oldest daughter.  I relished her unbridled enthusiasm mixed with complete innocence.

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In stark contrast to our setting, the news blares stories about a “Santa Killing Spree” and other stories that make your skin crawl.  Can we really be living in the same world?  After special times like this with my girls, I flinch when the cruelties of society are mentioned.  I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s almost as if my time bathed in the innocence and love of my children make me more sensitive to the harshness around me.

I’m no theologian or philosopher, but in my little world that’s the biggest story of Christmas.  This world is harsh and full of evils that I could never dream of in my worst nightmare.  We have tried for centuries on end to combat those evils using our own devices.  Legislation. War. Punishment.  They seem to only make matters worse and to divide people further.  In what seems like a lost cause of society, the only way to melt the hearts of those around us starts with the innocence of a child.

Our poor little Christmas tree.  We put it out the day after Thanksgiving and there it sits…all alone.  No presents under it’s pre-lit branches.  Just a tree skirt and an aluminum stand break the monotony of the hardwood floor.  Even Charlie Brown would be disappointed.

Putting wrapped gifts out is a difficult decision to make with young kids.  Butterfly is old enough to understand the concept of waiting.  Sure, she’ll ask us to open the gifts approximately 643 times each hour, but she knows her limits.  Ladybug, on the other hand, does not see these items as gifts that will bring her joy when opened.  She sees wrapping paper that will bring her joy immediately if she can just tear it into small bits and scatter it across the floor.  Because of this, we’ve kept all of the gifts hidden in a top-secret location.  But it just doesn’t seem right to have a bare floor.  We need to have some things wrapped and under the tree.

Last night we decided it was time.  We put in a romantic, Christmas movie (The Patriot) and pulled out all the gifts.  Immediately, we realized that we had purchased enough for Christmas, Easter, birthdays, long weekends, random Canadian holidays, and even most Mondays.  We sorted items into piles.  I handled the logistics, organization, and labeling.  Kelley deemed which items could wait and which needed to go out this holiday.  When we finished sorting and determining that the piles were about as even as we could get them, we started wrapping.  (Yes, I have OCD tendencies.  Yes, I took me much longer to wrap mine than Kelley did.  Yes, mine were very pretty.)

Slightly after midnight, the movie was finished, the scraps were cleaned, and the parents were exhausted.  As I turned off the light, I glanced over at the tree, now with some presents neatly wrapped and fanned under its branches.  A slight chill cut through the house.  Now it felt right.

I am thankful for my girls and their excitement.  I am thankful for my wife as she helps me to show and teach our girls that the world is a difficult place, but love conquesrs all things.  And, in this moment of reflection, I am thankful that I am at work today so that I don’t have to deal with the girls trying to get at those gifts.  Good luck, Kelley!

Here are a few pictures to illustrate how much my family appreciates my hard work.  I labor tirelessly to rake the leaves…

I’m not very artistic.  I’m an engineer.  Anytime I try to be artistic, the OCD comes lashing-out to place straight lines and perfect geometry everywhere.  By the time it’s done, my attempt to create “art” has given way to a symmetrical representation of squares and circles.

Butterfly gets her skills from her mother and has the ability to create art a bit more freely than I do.  The people that she draws are unaware of social norms that dictate their shapes or sizes.  Her colors freely, and beautifully, spill over the lines meant to contain them.  When she uses scissors and glue, the finished creation cannot be defined by words….mostly because you don’t know what it is.

A week or two ago, the girls had driven Kelley crazy.  So, I snatched up Butterfly and we decided to do a craft.  I drew the basic shapes and allowed her to color, cut, and glue them.  The only exceptions are that I had to help cut some of the smaller pieces and she wanted me to draw Baby Jesus’ face.  (She did his hair, though!)  Here’s the Nativity scene that we came up with.

The plan was to expand and add animals, but she laughed at my animal drawings and said “Daddy, you’re not very good at drawing camels.  Maybe we should let Mommy try.”  See why I stick to straight lines?

The pattern of our life hasn’t been the most exciting recently.  Butterfly was sick, then Ladybug.  then Butterfly.  Then Ladybug.  Then Butterfly.  Then….well, hopefully you’ve been able to figure out what the pattern is by now.  Last night, our beautiful pattern of sickness and health was shattered to bits.  Kelley decided that she wanted in on the action so she gobbled up a stomach bug as fast as she could.  Right about the time the girls were drifting off to sleep, Kelley began her fast roll downhill.  I knew she was sick when she decided just to sleep on the couch.  She never lets me have the bed to myself.

As the sun rose, Kelley wasn’t feeling much better, so I started making some calls.  Two contracts at work needed immediate attention, a midterm was scheduled for this evening, and an important meeting was on the calendar for Thursday morning which meant preparations were required.  Geez, how thoughtless of my wife to get sick at a time like this.  Now I was forced to stay home from this high-pressure situation and tend to my girls’ every need.  How would I make it?

The girls have preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, so my first order of business was to get them ready.  I don’t know how Kelley normally does this, but I spent the better part of 30 minutes chasing Ladybug between rooms.  I would have been frustrated, but her squeals of delight every time I caught her softened me quite a bit.  As we walked out the door, Kelley gave her clearest sign yet that she wasn’t well.  She didn’t even take the girls upstairs to change them out of the clothes that I put them in.  Wow…I might better call the emergency room.

After dumping them off for some learning, I ran down to the office to crank out some work.  About three hours late, I met the girls as their classes were letting out.  I was entranced with tails of crafts and games.  We shared a healthy lunch of fried chicken, french fries, and buttery toast (thanks, Zaxby’s!), and then settled down for rest time.  Ladybug napped, Butterfly watched a movie, and I hammered out some e-mails that made it appear like I was still in the office.

The rest of the afternoon, I basked in the joy that my daughters bring.  We shared laughs, giggles, tickles, runs down store aisles, ice cream, and even some songs.  What I was given was far more valuable than the hugs and kisses that I received…though those were much appreciated.  I started this week with a lot on my list that I needed to accomplish.  If I go back in tomorrow, that list will still be sitting there, waiting to be checked.  The time with my daughters, however, will have slipped off into the past.  I am sorry for my wife and her sickness, but I am truly thankful for the time that I got to spend with my girls.  I might have to start taking sick days a little more often.

On Monday afternoon, we took our annual trip to the “pumpkin patch.”  It’s actually just a bunch of pumpkins lined-up at Forest Hills United Methodist Church.  Butterfly was in charge of picking out our pumpkins this year.  Prior to our arrival, she let us in on her strategy. “A BIG giant one for daddy, and itty-bitty, baby one for Ladybug and a medium-sized one for mommy.“  We asked what she would do for one for herself and she simply stated “well, it will be smaller than the medium-sized one, but bigger than the itty-bitty one.”

Upon our arrival, Butterfly helped identify the perfect pumpkins to represent our family.  Ladybug found much joy in patting the big ones and picking up as many small ones as she could.  The bumpy ones intrigued her for a little bit.  Within a few minutes of our arrival, the girls’ gazes shifted from the pumpkins in the patch to the adjacent playground.  Want to guess where we spent most of our time?

My company observes federal holidays.  Columbo Day is named for a guy who seems to not have a clue where he’s going and appears really surprised when he gets there.  Some other internet sites will tell you that the it’s actually called “Columbus Day” and named for Christopher Columbus, but the description of the guy is still pretty accurate.  Heck, we’re still calling people “Indians” even though the dude was thousands of miles off.  So clearly, there’s no reason to celebrate him.  At least Columbo solved crimes.

In keeping with tradition, my family spent the weekend piddling about and achieving very little…which is my favorite way to spend the weekend.

On Friday night, Kelley and I decided to have a “date night”.  (As much as a couple can have one after putting the kids to bed and being unable to leave the house.)  As she grabbed a couple of things around the house, I laid back on the couch to rest…and fell asleep.  Apparently, and you’ll have to forgive me because I’m no expert on this…but apparently, naps are not considered an appropriate way to spend a date night.  This isn’t written anywhere, and my wife never stated this out loud, but somehow, I was supposed to have this information.  Women are so hard to understand.

Saturday morning we took the girls to the Museum of Arts & Sciences (see pictures on Flickr).  They had a blast enjoying all of the exhibits.  Kelley enjoyed the help because we could go with a man-to-man defense and keep up with both girls.  Butterfly wants to sit at each station, absorb all of the information, discuss the findings, and reflect on what it all means…she’s like her mother.  Ladybug, by contrast, enjoys running throughout the museum, pushing anything that looks like a button, breaking objects within reach, and  trying to lick the monkeys…she is her father’s child.

The rest of the weekend went on and things happened, but I’m going to guess that you’ve probably stopped reading now.  You looked at the post title, saw the picture, and then moved on.  The faithful few of you have probably even resorted to skimming.  It’s OK, I understand.  My wife is a better writer and you want to visit her site and see what cool musings she has.  Now go on, get out of here.  You crazy kids get off my lawn.

Butterfly will be four at the beginning of November.  Even though there is a vast age difference, she still feels empowered to make rules for our house.

A couple of weeks ago, Kelley cooked up some tacos for us.  The tacos managed to do to me the same thing that chili does.  We spent the rest of the evening changing rooms to avoid the smells that I left behind.  As bedtime neared, I worked with Butterfly to get ready for bed.  Realizing that there was no escaping my gassy wrath, she finnaly had enough.  “DADDY!  I’m making a rule.  No more pooting in my room.  Only pooting in the bathroom.  Now, you go in there if you need to poot.“  And so, a new rule was adopted.

Last night, I was getting Butterfly ready for bed when she escaped the confines of femininity just long enough to break the silence (and the wind).  I looked over at her with a weary eye and asked “Was that you making those noises.“  Apparently, this little girl is smart enough to realize where things were about to go.  She immediately began to adjust her rules. “Daddy, this is my room.  The new rule is that I can poot in my room, but you have to go to the bathrooml“  Such tyranny and injustice!  Why am I limited in my location?  I decided to force the issue, “If you can poot in your room, then I can poot in your room, too!“  In the wisdom that only soon-to-be-four-year-olds can understand, she gave me the basis for the rule. “No, daddy.  I just poot and make sounds.  You are stanky.”

Boy, this one gets more and more like her mama every day.

This past weekend, Queen Kelley loaded up the van and took Butterfly away on a mother-daughter trip in Tennessee.  While they lived the high life in a luxurious cabin with a couple of friends, Ladybug and I were left to fend for ourselves.  From about 10:00 on Friday morning until 6:30 Sunday evening, we had to lean on each other and find some way to survive.  It was a difficult, arduous task, but we somehow made it.  Here are a few of the lessons I learned:

• Kids can poop up to 350 times a day.
• They always do it when you’re in a store, museum, or something like that.  Even if you just changed them, they’ll do it again.
• Stores are good for shopping.  They’re also very good for allowing your kid to run around and get some energy out.  They can play with all the toys they want and when they’re tired, you just pick ‘em up and take ‘em home.  No clean-up required.
• Nap time is never long enough.
• Kids do the cutest things when no one else is around to see it.
• When you try to describe the cute thing, it never sounds quite as good.
• The person you’re describing it to probably doesn’t care, anyhow.
• I am getting old.  Ring-Around-The-Rosies is a wonderful game, but Daddy’s knees find it difficult to continue falling down….over, and over, and over, and over, and…
• Toys are good for entertainment in about 5-minute spurts.  If you want to keep a kid occupied for 30+ minutes, put ‘em on the bed and wrestle with them.  Oh, and watch-out for the whole “falling off” thing.
• Olives are a food group.  They should be sliced and eaten by wearing them on the tips of your fingers.  This way it’s a food and a fashion statement.
• Ladybug knows who her mother is and asked about her during the absence.  She only cried for her mother when I took away the shoe that she was eating.
• I am not capable of being a primary caregiver.  I love my girls and I devote a lot of attention to them, but my skills are in the realm of entertainment.  Health and Hygiene require too much work.
• There’s almost no way that I could handle 2 kids for an extended period of time.  I don’t know how my wife does it everyday.  I suspect drugs.

So there you go.  That’s why there was no post on Friday or this weekend.  I was busy devoting my time to the little 18-month old.  I suppose I could have let Ladybug play a little by herself, but this was my weekend to devote attention to her…and that’s exactly what I did.  Kelley claims that she’s now spoiled rotten.  That’s odd, she was a perfect little angel for me.

It’s nice to be recognized when you do good work, isn’t it?  Some people are great at doing work behind the scenes, but even they have to admit that it’s reqarding to be appreciated.

My appreciation was noted last night when Ladybug decided used her 18-month-old wisdom and deemed that I was worthy of being inducted into the alphabet.  During the middle of supper, she burst forth into song, and this is what transpired:

“Aye-Bee-See-Dee-Eee-Daddy…”

So there it is, folks.  I have officially become important enough to replace “F” and “G” in the alphabet.  Granted, those two letters don’t carry much weight, but still, I’m in the alphabet.  Not many of you can make that claim.

Last night Kelley and I attended the annual Summer Reflections at the Z.  Lance, as he does each year before school, showed a video with pictures and movie clips of the youth throughout the summer.  Meanwhile, our little girls played in their respective preschool classes.  Butterfly’s teacher was unable to attend, so Mr. Rickie filled-in.

Around 7:30, I went ahead upstairs to get the girls.  The video still had a way to go, but I’d eaten too many chicken nuggets and couldn’t stand to eat another one.  Upstairs, in the jungle themed room, Mr. Rickie sat in a small chair in the corner.  Butterfly and her best friend (we’ll call her Jitterbug…because it’s a cool name) were standing close to Rickie and jumping up and down.

“DO IT AGAIN!”  Shouted Jitterbug.  Butterfly ran over to me and said, “Daddy!  Watch what Mr. Rickie can do.”

So, Mr. Rickie place his hands together and magically, pulled his thumb apart.  (For the faint of heart, the magical instructions are here.)  Again, the girls jumped up-and-down excitedly.  Then Jittebug and Mr. Rickie had the following conversation:

“I wanna catch it!”
“No, you can’t have my thumb.”
“But I wanna hold it.”
“If I give you my thumb, you’ll drop it and you’ll lose it.”
“I won’t drop it, I promise!  I’ll hold on to it tight!”

Mr. Rickie later commented how he’d done that same trick six months ago and the girls could not have cared any less.  But today, this was the neatest thing they’d ever seen.  Unfortunately, though, in another six months, this trick will become boring again and Mr. Rickie will have to come up with new surprises…which I’m sure he will.

It’s neat to watch ‘em grow and learn and become so excited about the world around them.  A part of me wishes that they would remain this naive and innocent to the nastiness of society, but I know better.  What I do know is that the only way to combat the cruelness of world is with an unquenchable love for others and for their maker.  And there’s one true way to instill that in them.  It’s to hope beyond all hope that my girls turn out like their mama.

It’s interesting some of the things that you can store away in your brain.  My wife always looks at me weird when I spout out a proverb that fits into a discussion.  We’ll be talking about decisions and I’ll say “fish or cut bait”.  She’ll look at me and say “what?!”  It’s not my fault, really.  I blame Ms. Schwartz, my high school English teacher (all 4 years…plus 8th grade, too)  Every Friday was devoted to cramming in a bunch of stuff that required memorization.  Mythology, Proverbs, Idioms, vocabulary.  I liked it because it was kind of like story time…and I didn’t have to diagram any sentences.

So here I am, 16 years after the first time I walked into her class.  I was thinking about this past weekend and one of her phrases came to mind “comme il faut.”  (I always thought it was Latin, but the Googles tells me that it’s French.)  The phrase is roughly translated “as it should be” or “fitting.”  Allow me to explain:

Saturday morning  I woke up with a mission.  I needed to do some work on the house and I figured that I’d better get started first thing before the sun heated the roof up to 750 degrees (F or C - take your pick).  I walked outside and this amazingly cool breeze rushed through the air.  Some people would classify this as the beginning of fall.  My muscles tightened just a little because my bones could feel it…I could smell it…football weather.

After playing on the roof (and surprising myself at how well my project turned out), we piddled around with some music and then had lunch.  Kelley sprinted off to watch a movie, and I spent the next couple of hours entertaining my two biggest fans.  That evening, we went to visit Rickie and Sheri again.  The girls love the pool, but they really love Mr. Rickie and Ms. Sheri.  We were able to enjoy supper with them and play with some of their plastic fruit.  Sure, they have toys, but plastic grapes are hours of fun.  Mr. Rickie has made so much of an impression, that Ladybug will now run up to him with open arms when he’s approaching.  I got to sit back and watch her pick him out of the crowd on Sunday afternoon and run to play with him.  He didn’t seem to mind occupying her.

Sunday afternoon, I got to spend some alone time with Butterfly as she “helped” me set-up some sound equipment at our church.  While I was untangling cords and finding music stands, she sang into the microphone and played the piano for me.  After about an hour I was done, but Butterfly insisted that I play my guitar “like rock and roll” so that she could dance.  I obliged and then we headed home.  The only detour was to stop and get Butterfly her slushie…a treat that she spent more time playing with than eating.

So many little things were crammed into the weekend, but it was one of those that just hangs in the air…like the smell of popcorn drifting onto the gridiron on a cool friday evening.  Coming in to work this morning was a little tougher than normal.  I got an extra kiss from Ladybug and hugged Butterfly just a little tighter.  Weekends like this aren’t anything extraordinary.  It’s just plain ‘ole living…the way it should be.