Category: family

I just like the word. I’m not really. I’m not even sorry that I haven’t been posting. I’ve been steadily busy on a host of important projects and thinking about a redesign. If my scanner was plugged in, I’d post some doodles. I’m thinking of abandoning my stolen spaceman and doing my own. Astronauts with pointed sticks are a ton of fun to draw, and I’m trying to find the right mix of POW and whimsy while retaining the general look of my current spaceman. All of those goals combined with my under-used drawing skills will make for an interesting combination. Maybe I’ll let Max design it.

I think I’ve hit my stride again. I’m not stressed out, even though the workload is pretty crazy. I’m just chugging along turning out some really good stuff. I’ve written my first real API for public consumption, a ton of frontends for a myriad of products and basically kicked a lot of ass in the past two weeks. I fit in nicely in my little group up here on the fourth floor, in my poffice with a door.

No Segue, just news… And now on to Max and his amazingness. This week, he wrote Jen a birthday card that actually said “Happy Birthday, Mommy”. I’m not sure how much help he had with it from Grandma, but he’s getting really good with his letters and numbers. He writes the 5 – 10 words he knows over and over again, just for fun. He’ll sit down and go through a legal pad writing out numbers and letters in different colors, as happy as he could be. It’s fun to watch.

Max has also started making up games. His current is the Oh no, I’m falling… aaaaaahhh game. He’ll take all the cushions off the couch and put them on the floor around the couch. Then, he’ll sit or stand on the couch and in a high pitched voice (higher pitched than normal anyway) will start going on and on about how he’s falling, oh no, and then go “aaaaaahh” and roll off the couch on to the cushions. It’s all very entertaining.

To wrap up, life is good. Now, back to work.

I went down to the basement this morning to get a clean shirt. As I was heading back up the stairs, I hear a loud, plaintive “KEV-IIiiiiin!!!” from the top of the stairs. I thought for a split second that Max had gotten stuck in the garbage disposal or something. But no, it was worse – much worse. My wife appeared at the top of the stairs, hands on hips, grim expression on her face and said, “Max stole my last caramel egg!!!” Relieved that he hadn’t done anything horrible or disfiguring, I snickered and made my way up the stairs. My toddler son was sitting in the armchair, smile on his now sticky, chocolatey face, half-eaten caramel egg in his hand. My wife glared, and then laughed, then in her frustration said, “Now I have to wait until next Easter to get more!!” Yes dear, you do. But wasn’t the look on his face totally worth it?

In other Max news, he’s reading and spelling now. Yes, he’s two and a half, and he keeps picking up new words and I’m not sure how. We encourage him, but definitely aren’t forcing him. He loves to count, practice his letters and numbers and read stories. He brought Jen a piece of paper this morning (don’t get me started on how much paper this kid goes through) and said, “This spells ‘no’” and sure enough, he had put “no” on his paper. For longer words, he knows all the letters, but when writing, they take a decidedly abstract, Paul Klee-ish look to them. He made a Mother’s Day card for Jen that said, “I love you Mommy”, but it ended up more like “I mo o lo mm v y u e”. The letters were all there, just in a new order.

There’s more going on with my favorite toddler, but I need to get back to work. Maybe I’ll get Jen to start posting here too… sweetie?

There are new Max pics up that Uncle Steve was kind enough to take: Playing in the backyard at Grandma’s. There are some really nice shots of my little boy. Good job, Steve!

Max woke us up last night crying. That usually means he’s lost his pacifier and just needs help finding and reattaching it to his face. I hopped out of bed, wandered down the hall and when I opened the door was attacked by a smell I don’t remember smelling before. It was a combination of vinegar, summer deli dumpster and dill pickle juice. Max had puked all over himself, his clothes, and his bed. I grabbed him, ran him to the bathroom, fired up the tub, stripped him down, wrapped him in a towel and held him until the tub was ready. He was shaking uncontrolably, and visibly uncomfortable, so I put him in the tub, washed him off quickly, washed the vomit from his hair, grabbed him out of the tub, dried him off, ran him downstairs, put on a fresh diaper and put clean jammies on him. Just as I was standing him up to pull his flannel pants up, he let loose another pink deluge of partially digested food all over me and the towel. I caught most of it either on me, or the towel, sparing him the need for yet another change of clothes. The smell, again, was amazing. I had to fight back my own heaves just to keep catching chunks and hold him up so he didn’t fall off the changing table.

It was great fun. Jen and I spent the next two hours on the couch with him in my lap. I held the bucket and did my best to catch the ensuing expulsions. I’m pretty proud of myself. I only missed the first part of the first one after we sat down, and that was only because he overshot. I was able to catch the rest in the bowl, keeping him nice and dry and me less puke-stinky. Jen sent me to bed after it looked like he was all done and worn out. She laid down on the floor in his room with him, and I tried to get back to sleep. I think I may have gotten about 4 hours of sleep, but it wasn’t very restful. He’s feeling much better today, although he’s fighting eating the blah food and will only eat popsicles or pedialyte.

I think we handled the whole thing really well. No one flipped out. We didn’t call our parents crying for help. We did what we could do for him and comforted him the best way we knew how. I think I’m getting the hang of this parenting thing…

I’m exhausted, but at work toiling away on my big project. There are so many things I’ve wanted to write about this week but haven’t had the time to, like Greg the Bunny, and how I want to start a Tardy fan club. The show is brilliant. I hope it lasts longer than Steve Levitan’s last show (which was also very good, but stuck in the morass that NBC Thursday night has become – Must Cancel TV), Stark Raving Mad. I was going to talk about this whole “warblogging” thing, but it’s old and getting older the more I read. I want to talk about James Lee Burke and how everyone should read him, how much I love to hate the South, the joys of toddlers and the many things I’ve learned about being married. But, they’ll have to wait for some other time. Now, it’s back to work and answering the minute-by-minute e-mails flooding my box.

I had Max all to myself last night. Jen had to go to church to herd her girls into something meaningful, so it was a boy’s night at Chez Lawver. We watched Lyle Lovett on Sessions at West 54th and some basketball. We played with Marbleworks, jumped on the couch (he did the jumping – I spotted), drank juice, sang songs and read books. It’s a lot funner now that he has a little personality and can keep up his end of the conversation. He danced with me to Lyle’s Church song, and after I made him listen to If I Had a Boat a couple times, tried to sing along with me.

I think he’s really close to reading too. He knows all his letters and can point them out (and does – ALL the time) when he sees them. He can spell his name, has been trying to spell “mommy” and “daddy” and has started recognizing words in the books we read. And to think, he’s only 2 and a half. If he’s reading by 3, I’ll be shocked. And what’s even crazier is he wants to. We’re not forcing him to spend time with his “letters”. He can’t get enough of them. I just hope he doesn’t get burned out and by Kindergarten, he’s bored with numbers and letters and wants to go back to colors, shapes and drooling.

There are things I probably should be doing now, but I can’t seem to get started. Motivation, where did you go? It’s probably at home singing the ABC song along with Max. Instead of being my echo in the four or five songs he knows, he’ll now sing along at the top of his lungs. If I slow down the tempo, he slows down. If I go fast, he does his best to keep up. My favorite part is the middle of the alphabet. He enunciates all his letters very well until he gets to el-em-en-oh-poo. I love watching his face as his tongue flails around trying to get the letters out faster. It comes out like el-ah-no-BEEE! And then it’s back to normal through to Z. I love my kid, can you tell?