Urgent Idiots

Please forgive me for posting my first non-trivial entry not relating to my children. It was just on my mind.

There appears to be a subset of users of public transportation who live, sadly, in constant fear that the next stop will be the one in which the doors open ever-so briefly, allowing only that one heady passenger who fought his way to the front, to exit.

These people stand behind you. They fidget much. They are ever poised, muscles taught, ready to leap off the train during the painfully brief TWO MINUTES the doors ALWAYS remain open. As a stop approaches, perhaps even it is your stop, they press forward. "Excuse me," they say with feigned courtesy. Their tone reveals the true thought: THIS IS THE TIME THE DOORS WILL ONLY OPEN FOR ONE SECOND. MOVE YOU IDIOT!!!

An elbow. A frustrated grunt. They are in the front. They cast a satisfied glance your way and you see, even through their thick glasses, the glint of joy in their eyes: I beat you, it says. The door opens and they spring to the platform...followed leisurely by everyone else they pushed out of the way.

But they know, deep down, that the time will come and the joke will be on us.

Maddie Suddenly Sees

Her best friend Clara was the source of Maddie's revelation.

"Maddie, you can't move to Utah," she said. "Because you have such great princess dresses."

Later, as we were telling bedtime stories, Maddie reflected on her friend's concern: "Are there princess dresses in Utah?"

"Yes."

More thinking. "Will we have a yellow house in Utah?"

"No, honey, we'll have a gray house."

"But we can come back to the yellow house when we're done with Utah, right?"

"Not to the same one, but we can look at moving to a different yellow house," I fudged. "But you know, our new house in Utah is across the street from a big park," I diverted.

"How big?"

A successful redirect.

Fare thee Well 515 Putnam

It is over. The final documents were signed at 10 a.m. this morning. We were cleaning and making final preparations until 2 a.m. I am tired. I am nostalgic.

Our first home. Sitting on the floor watching the ALCS before we had any furniture. Maddie dancing to "This Old Man." Train tracks around the coffee table.

515 Putnam, we have outgrown you, but you will be missed.

Caleb-ese II

An axe in it = not on purpose
Popsipah dick = popsicle stick
Peanuts = um, let's just say he's fond of pointing out that Maddie doesn't have any
Baby's OK = I just hit Henry

Yippie

NFL training camps start this week! Kid in a candy store. Oh, and my kids are fine, thanks for asking.

Rules

I'm not really sure how this came to pass but Caleb and I now sleep together on a mattress on the floor of his bedroom. No decision was made in favor of this arrangement. Somehow it just came to be. He occupies 75% of the mattress and the pillow. I get about seven inches of bed and a pair of old jeans to rest my head.

"Daddy," he whispers at 6 a.m. with alarm clock precision. "Watch a show." And thus my day begins. There is more negotiating than I had anticipated...and wrestling...and discussion of bodily functions. When Maddie wakes up, I become referee of a game in which I don't know the rules.

That has to be a foul, Time out.

"Can I come out yet?"

I don't know. "No, that's a two-minute foul."

"Why?"

I DON'T KNOW. Geeze, what's with these kids.

Stars of the Show

This morning I took the kids to the Independence Day Parade at Boston City Hall Plaza. The crowd of maybe two thousand, mostly foreign tourists, stared with befuddled curiosity as Mayor "Mumbles" Menino spoke near-coherent sentence-like utterances. He announced the Army...a whisper in his ear...he meant Navy Color Guard. I leaned to my foreign co-bystander: "Don't worry, I can't understand anything either."

Caleb, for his part, was eagerly waving his mini US flag. Aforementioned co-bystander got the idea to photograph my posterity for theirs. Then it went viral and I stood by as dozens made "click, click" of my son.

Next stop: The reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Old State House, site of the Delcaration's first declaration. I was near the front with a crowd of hundreds squeezing in on me from all sides.

The reading began and, on cue, so did Maddie: "TAKE ME HOME! TAKE ME HOME NOW!" I looked around and saw no escape through the tightly packed crowd. I stepped back: "Who's the idiot who brought kids to this?"

Henry Joseph

6.27.08
10:22 a.m.

8 lbs, 5 oz

20.5 inches

No News

Katie is still pregnant. Maddie and Caleb both beat their respective due dates by ten days so we had a false expectation of a repeat performance. That has left us (by "us" I mean Katie) disappointed even though we're still six days from official due date.

Meanwhile, we're getting ready to move to Provo, which is a pain...not Provo, but the moving. Katie claims that she can't bend over to lift up boxes. Pretty convenient time to be pregnant.

Firsts

Last week brought two firsts: bee sting and stitches.

Maddie stepped on a bee. The trauma was real but short-lived. She announced her full recovery at about 6 a.m. the next morning when I woke to a foot in my face: "Daddy, look. It's all better."

Caleb got stitches. In his own words, this is how that happened:

"Muzeen a sinance. I was runninin. Bonkinin my head. Stitchinin me. Ouch."

Maddie's Birthday Party/Modeling Session