But despite my only getting up 15 minutes too late, the kids refused to sleep any less than 45 minutes too late, and when they finally did get up, they weren’t too keen on getting ready for preschool.  I had already set out their breakfasts, but naturally Julie didn’t want to have anything to do with cereal or fruit, and demanded that Mary make her a ketchup and mustard sandwich.  That’s all well and good, except Julie didn’t actually touch her ketchup and mustard sandwich until it was finally time for us to go.  Meanwhile, Drew had been neglecting his cereal so that he could focus on pushing his giant dump truck around in circles.  We decided that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to send the kids to preschool on an empty stomach, so I made an extra trip to my car before leaving, so that I could take their milk cups, Julie’s sandwich, and Drew’s cereal.

Finally, fifteen or so minutes later (after the daily battle about whether the kids can take every single toy they own to preschool with them), we were ready to go.  Before I backed down the driveway, I handed each kid their food.  Drew decided that he didn’t want his cereal, so I took it back.  Then Julie declared that she would rather have cereal after all, and asked if she could have Drew’s.  I took her sandwich, and was about to throw it into the woods next to our driveway (squirrels like sandwiches, right?), when Drew piped up:

“I WANT SAMMICH!”

“Drew, you don’t even like ketchup and mustard sandwiches.”

Then Julie, trying to be helpful, let me know, “No daddy, he likes them sometimes.”

Sigh.

“Drew, do you actually want this?”

“YES!”

Rather than trust my judgment, I let Drew have the sandwich, and we began trucking our way towards school.  About five minutes and two or so miles away from home later, Drew screams from the backseat.

“DADDDDDY!  NAAAAAAPKIN!”

Crap.  I don’t have any napkins.  The kids are in my car for roughly 10 minutes a day, so I don’t keep a stash of baby wipes (and let’s face it, even if they rode in my car all the time, I’m not exactly Mr. Preparedness).

“Drew, just wait until we get to school.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! TAKE DISSSSSS!”

Meanwhile, Julie, with her mouth full of cereal, mumbled “Uh oh.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, reaching back blindly for the sandwich.  Drew plopped it in my hand — although instead of the expected feel of dry bread on my fingers, I instead felt the cold squish of ketchup and mustard.

Apparently, Drew wasn’t interested in eating the sandwich — he was more interested in peeling the two slices of bread apart, and experimenting with where he could wipe, smear or otherwise deposit ketchup and mustard in my car.  I knew that it was my fault once I looked back and saw the mess.  I knew he wasn’t interested in eating the sandwich.  But I yelled anyway.

“Drew!  Why would you do that??”

Drew sat silently, hoping that I could find a napkin to wipe his hands off.  But Julie helpfully mumbled through the cereal in her mouth, “Dabby, *I* dint make mess.”

Defeated, I returned home to find some wipes to clean up the mess, and deferred to another day any hopes of getting the kids to preschool, or myself to work, at a reasonable time.

The best example can be heard almost every night at dinner time.  Mary or I usually ask the kids how their day was, and it almost always plays out the same way.

“Julie, how was your day?”

“Good.”

Last summer, when Drew was just beginning to put words together to form basic sentences, his response would always be the same.

“Drew, how was your day?”

“Play hard.”

I wasn’t expecting that response the first time that I heard it — it was surprising, both because I don’t remember us ever talking to him about “playing hard,” and because he was little, and I still wasn’t used to his new language skills.  I laughed, and probably continued to grin at him or smile over the next several nights, when he said the same thing again.  By then, Julie had picked up on Drew’s saying, and was hoping to get a little extra attention herself.

“Julie, how was your day?”

“Good.”

“Drew, how was your day?”

“Play hard!”

Then Julie would pipe back up, “DADDY, Daddy!  Ask me how my day was!”

“Uh, Julie how was your day?”

“Played hard! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

These days, Drew no longer says “play hard!”  Now, six or seven months later, and he’s content to give us a mundane “good.”  But his sister is hesitant to give up the tradition.

“Julie, how was your day?”

“Good.”

“Drew, how was your day?”

“Good.”

Then Julie, again shouts, “DADDY!  DADDY!  Ask me how my day was!”

“How was your day, Julie?”

“I played hard!  Dreewwww, how was your day?  Can you say play hard?”

Drew, no longer interested, typically just stares at her blankly, or ignores her while he pokes around at the food on his plate.

Drew's version of Santa

This is the time of the year when Mary works more, and I’m tasked with the responsibility of watching the kids sometimes during the day, so that she can do so. It’s a nice reminder of the daily struggle against insanity that Mary goes through, and helps me appreciate what she’s up against each day. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how she does it. Because after five minutes I was cowering under a blanket in the bedroom.

Luckily, as I sat trembling in terror, Mary called me from work to check in. I tried to hide the fear, and whether she sensed it — I do not know. But her words gave me hope.

In her best you-don’t-have-anything-planned-do-you voice, she asked, “So, uh, what are you going to do with the kids this afternoon?”

A-HA! That’s the ticket! Engage the kids in some sort of activity. That ought to stave off the crazy, for at least thirty minutes or so.  I sprung into action, and went back into the living room a new man.  Fishing the spongy foreign-object from Drew’s mouth, and instructing Julie to stop banging the TV screen with her plastic fairy-wand, I proclaimed, “Alright, kids! Craft time!”

Luckily I had vague memories of craft time from my own childhood, and remembered the classic use-cotton-balls-to-give-santa-a-beard craft. Mary, who pretty much keeps us prepared for anything, already had all of the supplies we would need in our art area (except for the cotton balls…but luckily I found some of those in the bathroom).

I mainly assisted Drew with his Santa, while Julie followed along making her own version. They both seemed to really enjoy it, and by the time we were done, I felt pretty accomplished, and they apparently felt less bored, because they were no longer trying to destroy every … well, everything.

But my proudest moment came after I had gone to the kitchen to start working on dinner, and after Drew had gone to play quietly with his toy trains. Julie, who had already found a square of purple construction paper, asked if she could have her safety-scissors back. She’s pretty good with them, so I obliged. A few minutes later, she asked me for the glue. At this point, I was intrigued, so I asked her what she was doing.

“Santa needs boots,” she said.

My adorable little three year old cut boots out for her Santa, all by her freaking self. I’m not sure where creativity comes from — if it’s in all of us, and just needs to be fostered, or if it’s innate, or what. But her Santa boots are awesome. And I’m so glad that Julie apparently has that spark of creativity within her.

Julie's Santa, with custom-tailored boots

Drew is still too young to care about the Elf (and Julie didn’t seem to care about him last year either — apparently three years is the magic age). But every time that Julie happens to see the elf, she starts laughing hysterically. Several times this past week, Julie’s first words to me in the morning have been, “I wanna see what that naughty elf is up to.”

I’m not exactly why she calls him that naughty elf. It might just mean that she didn’t quite understand the book explaining the elf. Or, she could be trying to cast aspersions, hoping to ruin his credibility as a neutral observer of her behavior. Because she definitely understands that he’s there to keep an eye on whether she’s good or bad.

After we first read her the story about the elf, Julie quickly responded in her most serious voice, “I don’t want one.“

Then, the other day, when the kids were alone with the elf in the living room, Drew suddenly started crying. Mary came in and asked Julie what happened. Julie gave her stand-by excuse that “Drew hit his head all by himself.” When Mary approached the Elf to get a second opinion, Julie yelled, “DON’T TALK TO THE ELF.”

But your kids will also teach you things about your life, or family, that you might otherwise overlook. One thing that this behavior has taught me in the past week is that we apparently don’t like our cats anymore. Before we had kids, I guess Mary and I paid more attention to them. I seem to remember like, petting them and stuff. And being interested in playing with them from time to time. But lately I’ve noticed that any time that a cat comes within five feet of Drew, no matter what the cat is doing, Drew will start shouting “STOOOOPPPPP,” and then chase it off. After this happened twenty or thirty times, I realized that the only interaction Drew ever observes between myself and the cats is when I’m yelling at Maggie to stop scratching the patio door, or at Gracie to stop attacking the other cats, or at Lily to stop skulking around the piles of clean laundry and/or blankets for nice litterbox alternatives. So now, when Drew walks into the bedroom and sees a cat sleeping quietly in a sunbeam, he figures that he is just being normal when he runs up to it and frantically yells “STOPPP!”

With the cats, anyway, we’re trying to show Drew and Julie that you can do more than just yell at them. You can pet them when they’re in a sunbeam. And the cats will flip out and chase the feather toy for as long as you’ll swing it around.

So, on the plus side, having children that mimic you can lead you to improving your behavior. But so far there’s been no luck with making myself less weird.

See what I did there?

This was our second year of taking the kids to Ganyard Hill Farm.  Last year Drew was still too little to really do much of anything other than stare at all of the other kids running around.  So it was nice to see him in the thick of things this time.  I think that he liked the slides the most — both the “hay slide,” which is a large pipe tunneled downwards through a mountain of hay, and the normal slide that they have on a small play structure.

Drew sliding down the Hay Slide

Julie, just like last year, was all about the corn crib. Last year she mostly swam around in the corn — burying herself, sinking into it on her back, or just thrashing around in general. This year the farm had wooden walls confining the corn, which were perfect for jumping from.

Julie jumping into the corn crib.

In April, when his language was really just beginning to blossom (and, coincidentally, when we bought him his first wooden train set from Ikea), he would sit up in bed first thing in the morning and shout, “TRACK!  TRACK!”

As spring turned into summer, and his train set expanded to include some wooden Thomas engines, he would wake up saying “TOMTEN, TOMTEN!” — which was his way of saying Thomas.

After that, it was almost always “TRAIN TRACK DADDY!”  And now, that he’s really started to talk with the best of them, it’s a lot more specific to the actual engine he was last playing with.  Like, “WHERE PERCY?” And it’s never in the ‘oh boy, it’s morning, now I can play!‘ type tone.  No, it’s always the desperate ‘why the hell are you depriving me of my train, which I clearly need to be holding in my hand at all times in order to survive‘ tone.

Once he makes it out of bed and into the living room, where his trains are usually set up, he’ll repeat his words again, either in a way that’s like when you’ve been in the desert without water for three days, and you suddenly come upon an oasis, or in a way that’s like when you wake up on Christmas morning and discover that all of your presents have been stolen (all depending on whether we left his toys out all night without moving them, or cleaned up and put them into their toy bin).

And then he will spend every available minute of the day playing with his trains.  Laying on the floor, guiding them along the track.  Pushing them under the “tunnels” of the coffee table or bed.  Carrying his engines with him on his other adventures throughout the day.  Until it’s time to go to bed, and the cycle can begin again.

Julie: Awwwaaawaaaaghgggggh nooooooooo I not wash my hair!

Me:  Julie!  Calm down.  C’mon, let’s just get this over with instead of wasting our time fighting about it.

Julie: Arrrrrgaaaaakwaaaaachaaaa nooooooo I wanna play trains.  Arrrrgaaaa–

Me: –JULIE!  KNOCK KNOCK!

[pause]

Julie: What?

Me:  You’re supposed to say “Who’s there?”

Julie: Who’s there?

Me:  Uhhhmmm….Granny?  Now you say, “Granny who?”

Julie: What?

Me:  Granny’s grits!

Yeah, I know.  It doesn’t make any sense.  But I feigned hysterical laughter after I said it anyway, so that she would sort of get the point that it was a joke.  Or something.  To my surprise, she thought that my feigned hysterical laughter was…well, hysterical, and she started laughing along with me.  I then followed up with a few more just-as-nonsensical jokes until she got the hang of it (mostly).  By the time she got out of the bath, her version of the routine had been reduced to delete the “who?” part of the joke.  Instead, the response to “who’s there?” became the punch line, followed always by hysterical laughter.

The trick worked, we made it through the bath, and I didn’t really think about it again.

Then, last week, at a parent-teacher night for her preschool, her teacher was telling us about how at snack time the kids had started telling knock-knock jokes, except that they didn’t really “get it,” that they never told an actual joke, and instead, “they just sort of say something random after who’s there.”  Then she paused, and continued, “…but they all think it’s really funny.”

As all of the other parents sat with blank looks on their faces, politely nodding their heads, I was grinning, and trying not to bust out laughing.

As a newborn, Drew cried a lot.  And it wasn’t one of those gentle hey I kinda need something but don’t know how to tell you cries.  It was one of those holy crap what is colic and why is it happening to me cries that somehow flips a genetic switch in your body, triggers your adrenaline and causes you, as a parent, to start freaking out just as much as the kid.  I kept imagining, at the time, that I might open the front door one day to find twenty or thirty anxious moms, searching for the crying baby that attracted them via their parenting gene, like some sort of irresistible dog whistle.

After some trial and error, we learned how to settle Drew down and help him sleep.  Mostly, this involved bouncing him next to a HEPA air filter, which blasted a healthy dose of white noise.  For some reason the loud whooshing sound calmed him.  At the same time, another filter would be blasting in Julie’s room, with the idea that it would insulate her from any disruptive sounds that Drew might make if we couldn’t get him to sleep.

This setup worked well and, as the weeks turned into months, and now the months into years, we each got used to it, and now consider it normal.  Drew outgrew his colic long ago, and is now just the opposite of his newborn self:  always happy, and rarely upset about anything.  But we still sleep with the loud sound of wind all around us.  One day I assume we’ll go back to sleeping in the quiet.  But at this point, the thought of a quiet house at night just seems strange.

First, during this stage, anytime that you asked Drew a question, instead of answering, “No,” he would pause and then emphatically say “NOT,” with a grin on his face, as if he was delivering a punchline to a sarcastic joke.

“Drew?  Do you want some milk?”  …. “Not!”

“Drew?  Do like your oatmeal?” …. “Nnnnnot!”

“Drew?  Can I cut your fingernails?”  ….  “Nnnnnnnottt!”

Second, like Garth, Drew has light blonde hair.  It was even getting a little long there late in the summer, before he went for a haircut.

Third, during this stage Drew had a sometimes-crooked, yet endearing smile, just like Garth.

Fourth, Drew lives with his parents.  Okay, that one was a gimme.  But still.

Fifth, during this stage Drew was prone to over-excited giddyness, where he would more or less just giggle for a few minutes and not respond to any other interaction.

Finally, I heard from a lot of people this summer that Drew was taking after me.  Really, that’s the biggest sign of all.  I’m not sure I ever grew out of my Garth Algar stage.

Potty on, Drew!