Daddy's favorite

Some of my "Facebook friends" have accused me of playing favorites.

Regarding this accusation, a first point is that, yes, I have joined Facebook. Because I bitch and moan about how out of touch I am, I decided to join the preeminent social networking site and, sure enough, I am now in touch with people from high school that I haven't heard from in years. Now, I lived for almost two decades without being in touch with these people, so I'm not sure what I've gained by being a Facebook member. Perhaps I'm still just too old to appreciate the scope of Facebook.

A second point is that the Facebook commentators are probably correct, I do play favorites with Margaret receiving more attention and affection than Teddy. Margaret is simply more interesting than the boy. She can talk. She can (almost) read books. She's just very interesting to be around.

In contrast, as my last post suggests, the boy is a world of trouble. He requires constant attention to keep him from hurting himself. And he gets fussy for inexplicable reasons. Which, I think, sums up Teddy's drawbacks at this point - he simply isn't able to provide rational reasons for his various actions. He does have a charming chuckle - heh, heh, heh. And he has a funny walk, sort of like Redd Foxx from Sanford and Son. But, boy oh boy, is he a lot of work. When we visited Philly this past weekend, someone (usually Abby) had to chase Teddy around to keep him from plunging off the stairs.

In the meantime, Margaret, Andrew and I took the train into the city to see a kids' performance by the Philadelphia symphony. While she was a bit young for the show, Margaret was enthralled by the music. And she loved the train and the pizza that we had for lunch.

So I may be biased at this point, but the girl is just much more fun than the boy. I'm sure he'll come into his own, but it just gets tiresome to follow him around trying to keep him in check.

The Destructo Kid

At the end of every weekend, after spending two full days with the kids, Abby and I both think the same thing: it's good that the kids are heading to daycare tomorrow. I love the kids and all, and they're a lot of fun to have around, but good grief, they're a lot of work. I think that we both end the weekend with a renewed appreciation for the dedication of stay-at-home parents.

Lately, this sentiment has become even more pronouced due to the behavior of the boy. As I've noted before, Teddy has always been a troublemaker (or as Margaret calls him a "troublemarker.") But lately, it's gotten even more extreme. He is constantly, and I mean constantly, getting into trouble.

• Heading up the stairs. Repeatedly. He'll get about three stairs up and will sit down, grinning at us, but apparently oblivious to the predicament into which he's gotten himself.


• Getting into the dog's food container. Repeatedly. If we're not quick, he'll sample some of the dog's food. Even if we get him away from the container, he'll head right back there.


• Standing on the chairs for the kids' table. Repeatedly. He pulls himself up, stands up on the chair, and grins, again oblivous to his precarious position and the fact that it's unclear how he'll get down.

Basically, we spend all of our time chasing him around trying to keep him out of trouble. One the one hand, he does have a charming grin that he flashes at us when he's getting into trouble. But on the other hand, it's a royal pain in the arse. In contrast, when Margaret was the same age, I don't recall needing to secure the stairs by closing the child gates. With the boy, it's absolutely necessary. It's just a matter of time before he takes a header down the stairs when one of us forgets to close a gate. Even then, I'm not sure that he'll learn. Because what's really amazing is his determination. Pull him away from something or get him out of a dangerous position, and he'll head right back to the same thing.

Abby thinks that he knows when he's doing something wrong. Such as getting into the dog's food, because we always yelp at him. I'm not so sure. I think that he's either not too bright or he's a real risk-taker. People that I've discussed this with have either appealed to sexism ("he's just being a boy!") or ageism ("he's only one!"). Both are true and may have some relevance for this behavior, but when I sit there on the couch trying to read the paper, I just have to shake my head as I watch him pull a basket of books down on his head. Once upon a time, not that long ago in fact, I was able to read the Sunday paper in peace...

A belated post

I suppose that I have to start this post by explaining the lack of recent activity on the blog. Not that this post is that late, but given the political theme of my earlier posts, I suppose that my dedicated (sic) readers have been waiting for my insightful (sic) comments about the election.

Alas, illness prevented me from being more active in my recent blogging. It started with Margaret on the weekend before Halloween, then moved to Abby, and then passed to me. Margaret was knocked out for a couple of days, while Abby seemed to be ok as it wasn't clear that she was really sick until she noted that her sore throat was accompanied by a 102 degree fever. Once it hit Papa, however, around Wednesday before Halloween or so, he was in bed for 3 days straight with a sore throat, body aches, head ache, and high fever. So I suppose that we know who the tough people are in this family.

As for Halloween, Margaret was a dinosaur, while Teddy wore Margaret's pumpkin costume from the year before. We had some conflict as Margaret initially wanted to be a pumpkin again, but she ended up being happy with her dinosaur costume. I was pleased with that outcome as I'm shooting for gender neutral costumes for as long as I can so that Teddy can wear them in the future (next year: Teddy the dinosaur). Some people noted that Margaret looked more like a dragon than a dinosaur, but that didn't seem to throw her off. Instead, she collected lots of candy as part of the mayhem that occurs in our neighborhood during Halloween. Notably, she didn't appear to understand what she got from her trick-or-treating. When she got home, she spent most of her time sorting her treats by size, shape and color without actually eating any of it. By the next day, her treats were hidden away and, beyond an occasional request for her "trick or treat pumpkin," she didn't seem to miss anything. And I'm fine with that.

Here are some pics from the time around Halloween.



As for the election, we spent the evening watching the news with a bottle of wine. Early on, I texted some friends in Chicago to see if they were heading to Grant Park for the celebration. None of them were devoted enough to brave the crowd, although it turns out that my brother from Minneapolis was in Chicago and was young, idealistic and energetic enough to head down to Grant Park.



Around the time that they called Pennsylvania for Obama, I started sending texts saying "I think it's over." "Not so fast," my cautious friends replied. Then they called Ohio for Obama. "IT'S OVAH," I sent. Some agreed with me. Other's, perhaps remembering 2000, were more hesitant. Then 11:00 PM rolled around, at which point California and Washington closed, and BOOM, there it was. Done. Over. Nothing left to discuss. President Barack Obama.

And my initial reaction was subdued. Apparently, people were dancing around all over DC at that point. As a colleague who lives in DC Chinatown said, "I can't recall people being this excited about the outcome of an election." To which I responded, "Yeah, but what recent outcome would've excited people in DC? Or any other city? But think about those people in Alabama or Oklahoma. For better or worse, they're probably not dancing on cars." I thought about taking Maddie out to find some of those people dancing on cars, but decided that it was too late to do so.

My second reaction was one of panic. "Oh my god," I thought, "What have we done? We've put an incredibly inexperienced person in the most important position in the world at the worst possible time. Based on what? Hope? Change? What the hell?" My attempts to communicate this sentiment to Abby received little sympathy. After taking a few deep breaths, I realized that the next president was facing a world of sh*t no matter who he or she was, and Obama was preferable, from my point of view, to anyone else who could face that world of sh*t.

So, at the end of the day, where does that leave us? I dunno, but we did wander down to the "Obama Wall" at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. A pretty cool scene, although I was still disturbed by the somewhat naive idealism reflected in many of the posts. At the end of the day, I signed the wall, as you can see in the following pics.



As for the big picture, Margaret sums it up better than I ever could in the following video:

Almost done

I have a colleague who lives in NoVa, part of the battleground state Virginia, whose two-year-old walks around saying "I Barack Obama and I approve this message." My colleague is a McCain supporter, but regardless, what are we doing to our kids? I suppose, when I vote with Maggie and get the "I voted" sticker that I put on her (hopefully, we'll get a few because those stickers are the key from her point of view), we're introducing them to their "civic duty."



Margaret had earlier looked through the rouges gallery of commentators in the Washington Post that gave predictions on the election. Her prescient observation: Lots of guys! Sure enough, out of 14 commentators, there were two women. Those women? Adrianna Huffington and Eleanor Clift. Double groan.