Tantrum Harry

Yesterday, the unthinkable happened.

We had a bad time at the pool.

Gasp.

All because of some toys.


The other day, the baby brother of one of Harry's pool friends was gumming a water squirter that his mom left by the side of the pool when she took her kids home-- it wasn't their water squirter, just one of the communal baby pool toys. Harry gleefully played with it in the big pool, and Jack and I retaliated when he squirted us. Jack kicked and splashed and I stashed Jack on the side of the pool so I could throw Harry across the shallow end (he loves to be tossed all over the pool). Then I'd race back to the wall, and Jack would leap to me and kick his little legs until we reached Harry across the pool and the whole thing would start again. Super fun.

Yesterday, we brought our own water squirters, a pair of Buzz Lightyear ones that Harry scored for his birthday.

The game, though, just wasn't any fun. For one thing, the pool was a lot more crowded, and many moms gave us dirty looks as we played our squirty game-- which didn't make any sense to me because we were in the big pool. It's not like we were blasting babies. Maybe it's because we were playing with laser gun shaped toys? Second, Jack refused to stay stashed on the side, so I couldn't leave him for a moment to toss Harry (Harr'ys favorite part of the game). Third, Harry would not-- no matter how many times I asked-- stop squirting me in the face. In theory, I have nothing against getting squirted in the face. In fact, I get kind of pissy at people who don't like to be splashed in the POOL (and HATE the moms who sit near the fountain feature in the baby pool and give toddlers dirty looks for splashing them. They rival the moms who get pissy when kids dump buckets of water on the edges of the baby pool deck as the most annoying moms at the pool. Where there's WATER. To PLAY IN). The problem was that our water squirters are a bit more forceful than the one we played with the other day, so when he sprayed my face, I couldn't see, and Jack kept hurling himself off the edge of the pool into the water, and I missed catching him a couple of times because I couldn't see.

So, I said we had to put the water squirters away and play with balls or diving sticks instead.

Harry lost his shit. Screaming, punching, slapping himself in the head, pulling his hair, hitting Jack, biting me. Needless to say, we went home (I carried a silent Jack and all of our shit and Harry's shoes which I hoped he'd put on before we hit the blacktop parking lot) and Harry galloped screaming behind me. I had to hold his hand on the way to the car, and I was afraid he was going to twist his arm off. He kept screaming, "I'll be a good boy!" and I kept saying, "You are a good boy, Harry, but we have to go home now." I was out of breath after I wrestled him into his car seat.

He shrieked at the top of his lungs the whole way home. I made it within 2 blocks of our house when I couldn't take it anymore and screamed "SHUT UP!!" as loud as I could. MOTY. Also, it was totally ineffective. Effective? A snack (him) and a shower (me).

Of course we'll try again. And agin. And again. Every sunny day between now and September. The water squirters, though, won't be coming with us.

Little boys

Sometimes I forget that my little boys are babies still.

Last weekend, they found a jack-in-the-box lurking on the top shelf of their closet and demanded that Ben get it down. He was skeptical at first, asking, "What do you guys want that old thing for?" "To play," Harry responded flatly. "Me, too!" chorused Jack. Ben set it in front of them, and they stayed, cross-legged on the floor, facing each other with their knees touching, winding the crank, bobbing their heads to the music, clapping in delight when the jack sprung out, and stuffing him back in the box to start the process again, for at least 20 minutes.



Just now, Harry and I watched El Tigre on Nick Toons while I washed the floor and Jack napped (in his actual bed-- score!). "Geez, Harry," I said. "Do you think Manny is going to save the day?"

He watched the screen intently, looking kind of nervous. "I don't know," he said. "There's a lot of bad guys."

But the hero always saves the day on kiddie TV, I wanted to tell him but didn't.

Babies.



Speaking of the big boy bed. Jack has been making himself a floor nest after tuck-in and sleeping there until Ben and I come to bed, laugh at him, post his picture on Facebook, and scoop him back onto his bed.



He sleeps great, though, so we can't complain. We have also discovered the secret to sleeping past 6:30 am. Harry, who has never once peed his bed (and now that I wrote that, he so totally will), was waking up before five screaming that he was wet. This, understandably, woke up his roomie and us, especially when both kids insisted on breakfasting at 5:15. And? Harry wasn't even wet-- he just really needed to pee. A couple of times, he woke up and ran to the toilet before 5, but the clanging of the lid woke the whole house, too. We cut out all liquids after dinner, and still, the pre-dawn pee-fears continued. Finally, Ben and I started taking him to the potty before we go to bed-- we carry him into the bathroom and sort of half-wake him; he pees, and we carry him back to bed. Easy peasy (also kind of funny). Long story short-- we're already stopping by the boys' room to take zombie Harry to the bathroom, so plopping Jack back in bed is convenient, really.

All right. Jack's up. Back to the pool we go.

Tan

So, despite my best efforts, I am tan.

Jack, my pasty little monkey who uses the same sunscreen I do, is not tan. Harry is a little tan. Ben has had six forehead sunburns.

We went for a walk on campus by the lake today, taking turns hauling 70 pounds of kid in a wagon.

Harry brought his binoculars. For bird watching.


I wish Ben had been standing a little farther away when I took this, so it would have looked like he was holding up that little clump of trees.

Harry. Can swim. Really swim, with kicks and strokes-- he can float on his back and dive and jump and swim under the rope and have tea parties on the bottom of the pool and do canon balls and backwards summersaults. He practices these skills everyday for at least 2 hours. Which is how come I am tan.

Pictures I would have posted when they happened, but I was too busy doing nothing at the pool

In the past week, we've had a visit from Ben's parents; we've hung out around our house; we've gone swimming a ton, and we've played a little tee-ball. And lucky for you, I have pictures of Harry and Jack doing most of those things.

Here they are riding the badger that adorns the world's ugliest fountain-- which happens to be right outside Ben's office window. lucky him. it's a dreamy view.

We went to the farner's market and let the kids horse around on the capitol lawn

When we walked to the lake, Ben's dad gave him a boost on a really steep hill

Harry and I went to the dentist, where we discovered that Harry's teeth are totally perfect as usual and that I have 3 (maybe 4, but the doctor won't know for sure until he starts drilling around in there-- yikes!) cavities between my top teeth. Probably from all the gum I used to chew until my appointment 6 months ago when they were like, "Dude-- you might have a ton of cavities up there. Stop chewing so much gum and we'll see you back in 6 months for X-rays." Also, Harry and I have always gone to the dentist together. He plays in the room while I get my teeth cleaned, and then he gets cleaned while I take pictures. At the end of our visit, our hygienist suggested that next time, we have our appointments simultaneously, meaning Harry gets to go into his very own exam room unsupervised-- so cool!

We played a mean game of Nerf darts. All of us got blasters, and we bought extra dart packs. I donned a mask because those jerks kept aiming for my face

Clearly Ben was not messing around with extra ammo in his headband (headband-- wtf?) and a crib mattress and bean bag chair for protection

We misplaced Jack but discovered him in the tub (with a step stool-- wtf?) hoarding darts and reloading

Jack wants to play tee-ball more than anything in the world. Last week, he even insisted upon wearing an extra team t-shirt, and he hung out by the fence, ready to dart on the field the moment he was called. He was never called.

Harry is considerably less fond of the sport, but I love his bobble-head batting helmet.

Big Boy Beds

I spent $4.25 vacuuming my car this morning, and while that is a ton of quarters, I think it's a real bargain. Last time I vacuumed my car, I used (and broke) my central vac and had to pay $425 to get it fixed.

Under Jack's chair, I found 3 entire cookies and an in-tact piece of toast. Also at least 400,000 Trader Joe's fruit flakes and enough Annie's bunny crackers to feed 8 preschools for a month.

My car is gross.

Harry and Jack (and, in turn, Ben and I) slept until 7:30 this morning, which was completely awesome and also the teeniest bit inconvenient because their babysitter came over at 8.

Which is how I came to be in Panera in my gym clothes with sopping wet hair, looking totally dreamy, working on some odds and ends for fall, and contemplating the end of an era. Today is the last day I will be hanging out in a coffee shop for awhile. The rest of my summer childcare is extremely limited (or nonexistent, really), and I imagine I will spend any hours I can scrounge on campus, furiously sorting out my life for the end of August. I need to copy stuff for my TAs, make packets of books and syllabi to send to out-of-town TAs who want a jump start on course prep, ready my materials for my rhetorical criticism class, and finish reading the common book my university has chosen for its 2010-2011 reading program (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which I started yesterday and am in love with so far). I also need to prep my rhetorical criticism lectures and finish finding speeches for the class to practice on, although my syllabus and course schedule are complete, and instead of a pre-made course reader, I am having students bring in journal articles every week, like my rhet crit class at Miami that helped me master the art of scholarly research, find my way around a library blindfolded, and learn to worship research librarians. So I am ready for class, and if it started tomorrow, I'd be a-okay for at least 2 weeks. The only unknown that's keeping me up at night is the small course I direct-- I have no idea when I am going to squeeze extra meetings into an already packed week before classes start. The large class I direct is set up to run like clockwork and really only needs the finishing touches like photocopies, packet assembly, etc. These tasks would be so easy and mindlessly appealing if only I had help with my rambunctious children, who make the logistics of the whole thing terrifying. (Also, page numbers. I need to update all of the page numbers on all of the course materials because I revised our workbook for this semester, but the revised workbook is still being printed, so I have no page numbers. I am sure it will arrive the day our beloved babysitter moves to Colorado. Because Harry and Jack will be big help with a detail-oriented editing task, I am sure.)

Anyway, today's my last coffee shop work day for a while because when the boys start school in the fall (after Labor Day, which is NOT GOOD FOR ME and why can't preschools run on the University's schedule??), they will be at school while I am on campus, so no more odd hours mid morning or in the endless expanse of the weekday afternoon for me to be rescued by their sitter and turned loose with a plate of oversized pastry and my laptop. I am excited about this milestone-- both of them in preschool-- and nervous about it, too. What if they get sick a lot? What if Jack cries? What if my school schedule doesn't fit as neatly into theirs as I think it will? What if they miss me too much? What if the don't miss me at all? You know, the usual.

These boys. So fast.

Truth be told, they have been cramped in their crib and toddler bed for quite a while now, but Ben and I have done our best to ignore faces bulging between crib bars

And the banging in the middle of the night caused my giant feet colliding with a plastic fire truck or a long leg jammed over the side of the bed

But Jack started asking to nap in the "beep beep," and Becca set up the cutest little big-boy bedroom for her boys, so we figured what the hell.

Waiting for the Company Store outlet to open up at 10 am so I could find matching quilts that incorporated the fire truck theme in their room, we went to Target on Monday to buy Harry some Star Wars sheets and pick up a few pillows, a mattress pad, a dust ruffle and assorted other bed-related stuff.

We never made it to the quilt store, though, because they both fell in love with Target comforters, glow-in-the-dark rocket ships for Harry and robots for Jack (who says robot in a monster voice and splays his fingers like little claws), and even though they don't have anything to do with fire trucks, I bought them because Harry and Jack were so proud and excited to choose their own bedding.

Yesterday's nap was a little dicey. There was much thumping and little footsteps pounding over my head. I did not investigate until Jack opened his door and shouted "Mom!" at me down the stairs. Here is how I found him, wearing some of Harry's soccer shorts as a shirt:

I asked him where he was supposed to be, and he showed me:

Still, there was much escaping and eventual screaming when I put the baby gate up outside his door. Jamie came over and played Legoes with Harry while I took a shower and got ready to head to the doctor for my annual physical. Before I left, I checked on Jack and found him passed out in a heap just inside his bedroom door with a Buzz Lightyear blanket clutched under his chin and a Sleepy Time Tales book next to him.

Last night, we went to the pool for dinner and stayed until 8, so both kids were wiped out when I put them to bed. Jack got up once, but I told him not very nicely that he needed to get in bed and stay there (because Ben was working late, and I was more than ready to clock-out for the day). When I tucked Harry in 30 minutes later, we found this:

Harry went to sleep on a Storm Trooper pillow, all smiles, snuggled up with the crib quilt he's had since birth that only overs his torso, but used to be 3 times his size.

A ho?

Because we are extra super classy, our kids learn all kinds of rarified turns of phrase. Why, just today Jack stuck his hat hand down my shirt and asked "Boobs?"

"Yes," I told him.

He rubbed his own chest. "Me no me boobs," he said, looking a little worried.

"Well," I told him, "You have nipples."

He patted them. "No boobs," he concluded. Then he brightened, and he stuck his face close to mine. "A ho?" he asked, holding up an index finger.

"No," I told him. "Santa can't bring you boobs for Christmas."

Oh," he said, dejected. "Me no me boobs." He put his hot pink purse on his arm, extracted some dental floss and a Tinker Toy he calls "Key!" and slipped in to his closet.


Nice hats.

WTF, bank? No wonder you're having such a crisis

OMG you guys. You would not believe what happened when Ben and I went to our bank (where we keep all of our money and send all of our mortgage payments) to find out if there was any way they could help us get the frick out of our upside down (but only a little upside down!) townhouse.

At first the manager didn't know what the hell we were asking him. "You mean like a short sale?" he asked. We were all no dude, we can afford our payments, we just want a bigger house. He started at us, not able to believe our stupidity. We went on to explain that we have enough money to either lose it on the sale of our home or make a down payment on a new house, but not enough cash on hand to do both of those things, and he still looked at us slack-jawed.

"Is there any program available to help people in our situation?" I asked. "An unsecured loan, even?" He seriously almost laughed at me. Then he asked us how much we made and how much we wanted to spend on a new house. We told him, and he waved his hands at us. WAVED HIS HANDS AT US. He waved his hands at us as if to dismiss our problems.

"We'd approve you for that mortgage no problem," he said. "You could keep your current house. Maybe rent it out?"

WTF? First of all, why the HELL would we want to compound the very worst financial decision we have ever made (buying a house) by DOUBLING it (buying a house on top of our house)? Second, does he KNOW how much money we have contractually agreed to pay for fancy schmancy preschool? Third, WTF, bank? How does it make any sense for us to have 2 houses when we could have one? Why is there no help for people like us who were victims of the market in the best sense-- can afford our house and would actually like to buy
another one-- but may never be able to unload House A because we overpaid for it and even if the market rebounds 1 or 2%, we'll still owe more than it's worth and will have to pour buckets of money onto our mortgage or bring buckets of money to the closing table or will have to own this house for the entire 30 years of our mortgage?

WTF?

Then I spent a few hours looking at the MLS and was pretty much ready to call a realtor immediately. But still. 2 mortgages sound like half the fun and twice the worry. And tenants? I don't know if we can handle the responsibility. We might just leave this house empty, I guess. Which seems really wasteful, even for us.

Anybody have experience with either of these scenarios? Advice? Should we just suck it up and keep saving, so we can lose money on both ends of the deal (depressing thought)? Foreclose on our house out of spite (not really an option, but I kind of think that if every consumer who is upside down on their house just said fuck you to the banks, it'd be pretty awesome. Also devastating). We'd like to move before H starts kindergarten for a whole host of reasons, but we don't *have* to move. We just want to real, real, real bad.

In other news, I need to relax and step away from the appliances (I was "taking a nap" with all of these devices last weekend).

And Ben and Harry are adorable.