Caution: Splash Zone

They say age is a necessity of wisdom but the opposite is not necessarily so.

My thirty-fifth birthday passed in recent history theoretically qualifying me for some totally kick butt knowledge of this mysterious world we occasionally dance upon. I'm just sitting here waiting for it to beam into my head like the automatic downloads of software updates my Macintosh computer requests on a bi-daily basis. So, yeah...anytime now. No? Well, I guess I'm going to have to earn it like everything else in the equitable stasis of human existence. Darn it, too. I was really hoping for a free handout, what with my birthday and all. Well, in the meantime, In the place of something incredibly deep and insightful, you will get this instead. Enjoy.

I'm not sure how many times you can read the same 12 page/12 word book in a row before your head bursts like a Gallagher watermelon, but I may be nearing the qualifying mark. Amelia's favorite (octo-daily) book these days is Duck and Goose's Book of Opposites, mainly because she likes to point out that the goose on page 5 is "sad" whilst herself making a frowny face and speaking with exaggeratedly empathetic overtones. The funny thing is though, even if I knew I had only one more reading in me before the folks in the front row would need raincoats and a tarp, I would still agree to read it five times beyond that. Yeah, it's really that cute.

Elijah has become quite the reading machine, too, and has completed almost all 40 thousand books of the Magic Tree House series. I can't tell you how much joy it brings to me to see him so involved in expanding his mind and doing it with reading material of a more practical application than that of pocket monsters waging in endless/pointless battle. It seems authors in our day and age have become quite clever in disguising education as entertainment to the pleasure of both parent and child. I mean, here is Elijah, voluntarily reading about world history without me having to do a single leg take-down with a half nelson in order to encourage the action. Thanks, Mary Pope Osborne: Let me buy you a watermelon.

Not Guilty

I hear the buzz.

It gets louder and becomes more difficult to ignore. As the buzz grows to an almost deafening level, I begin to pick up on the gist of the message, which is, "Just because you don't watch Zach anymore doesn't mean you can stop blogging. There are people who still read this thing who want to hear about Amelia and Elijah stuff, too, you know?"

I reply, "But I'm tired and I have a lot of chores to do" even though I'd rather get a hair cut with a weed wacker than to jump into some of the tasks on my to-do list today.

"Fine, Steve. Let your blog rot and wither away while all of us sit around wondering how Amelia's potty training is going and stuff."

"OK, you got me." I throw up my hands in mocking surrender with a smile, "But I won't like it."

Guilt is a powerful tool completely undeserving of it's bad reputation. I would venture to say, about half of the things which need doing in the world would not get done without the motivation of guilt. Whether it be recycling, weight loss, or piano recitals, we would be so much worse off without the noble acts guilt brings, as unpleasant as it may be sometimes. Just chalk it up as another victory for the hen-peckers. Please, eyebrows up, people.

With Zach at his new school these days, (I hear he's doing wonderfully apart from a little trouble napping in the new environment. Hey, let's see you take a nap with ten toddlers in the same room!!) we have a bit of a power vacuum to be filled, so naturally I have taken on the role of Zach in our household; to some difficulty. I'm still getting used to the position as it is a lot more responsibility than I had realized. For example, I had no idea how important it is for children's social development to desire the same toy at the same time. To me, all of the toys look exactly the same, so you can imagine how challenging it is for me to find exactly the right toy to make Amelia insanely jealous and hysterical. Zach was an expert at finding this toy, and evidently, much of Amelia's happiness depended on his doing so. With the way that I just try to hand any old toy to her, she may as well not even have any. They are cheapened beyond recovery by my total lack of taste and callous acts of kindness, so she tosses the toy back into the bin as if to say, "dad, if you don't mind, I'll handle this on my own.".
Zach, if you're reading this, could you e-mail what you think her favorite toy is? I promise I will just walk around the room with it of top of my head teasing her with it. What ever you can do, bud-zo, I'd appreciate.

Amelia has enrolled in a toddler tumbling class down at the rec-center, which she gets incredibly excited about. Her favorite part of the class is at the very end when the teacher breaks out a huge, brightly colored parachute for the parents to lift high in the air while the kids run and scream like crazy monkeys underneath. Eventually, the parachute droops down on their heads as they sprint to the sides, each generating a static charge powerful enough to drop a horse. I think if she were given the opportunity, Amelia might sell off our house and live under a parachute.

Elijah is keeping in shape through these winter months with a wrestling class where he is being taught the proper way to assault and pin kids his own size. The way I figure it, I would rather Elijah be taught the proper wrestling techniques from a professional instructor rather than from the Power Ranger's academy of theatrical planetary defense. Maybe that's just the underwriter in me talking.
On a side note, I'm sure Elijah would want me to notify you that he won his first wrestling match last night with a single leg take-down and a half nelson pin. Be afraid. I know I am.


Lastly, and because I asked for it, Amelia's potty training is going great, measured, of course, by the successes only.