Squirrels
So the other day, Noelle and Isaac were home, and they hear this godawful sound coming from upstairs.

They proceed to Isaac's room, and just outside of his window, is a squirrel, to whom it soundls like we should be administering last rites.

I should mention that it has been unseasonably warm here.

So the squirrel carries on, and Noelle can't help but thinking - please don't die outside Isaac's window. I don't want to have to explain death right now. Oh the irony.

So the squirrel moves to a neighboring tree, where it is joined by another very 'assertive' squirrel, who begins the process of - well - making more squirrels.

It's a few seconds before Noelle has a chance to react, and Isaac manages to sneak in the question "Are they fighting?"
"Kind of," says Noelle. "They're wrestling." Which is about as appropriate a euphemism as I think I can imagine at that juncture.

They then proceed out of his room, and post haste downstairs, where she distracts him with something else.

Now, normally, I encourage questions, but I think even the most liberal reader of this blog would agree that the age of 2 is a little early for "the talk". So we left it at that, and mercifully it hasn't come up again.

He is, however, displaying more and more precocious tendancies. The other night in the bath, he looks down sheepishly at one of his toys and says, "Dad, what's the situation?"
"Pardon me?" I reply.
"Nothing." he says.
Then a few minutes later "What's the situation?"
"The situation, kiddo, is that you are taking a bath, then mommy will put you in a nice fuzzy sleeper, Dad will read you a story, and you'll be off to sleep.'
"Ok."

On one hand, I have been known to say "I don't know where he gets it from." But the problem with that is that I DO know where he gets it from, which means there's a whole lot more of it to come.

Finally, the other night, I was sitting on the large Ikea piece of furniture (let's hear it for the 'As is' section!) that houses most of my music collection, and is known as the 'crate'.

Isaac pulls on my hand and says "Get up daddy."
I'm thinking I'll turn this into yet another manners lesson, and just sit there until he figures out to say please. Once again, oh the irony.

Because the very next thing out of his mouth is "Come on, Stupid daddy."

I have to admit, I raised my voice. And when you're two, an erstwhile Opera singer's voice when raised, can carry quite the punch. So he ran to Mom, and when she began to chastise him aswell, the howling started.

The thing was, he knew he had screwed up. I think the main thing he was upset about was that he was getting "told" in no uncertain terms just how much he had screwed up. And he didn't like it one bit. No siree.

Of course, he calmed down, but for the next half and hour or so he was a little "snitty" with me, knocking toys out of my hand, and just generally seeing how much he could push the envelope in terms of expressing his displeasure with me.

It's going to be an interesting few years.

On a brighter note, the preperations for
****SPOILER ALERT - SPOILER ALERT****
IF YOU DO'NT KNOW THE GENDER AND NAME OF THE BABY THAT IS ON THE WAY, AND DO NOT WISH TO KNOW, PLEASE DO NOT READ ON.



















Sam's arrival continue apace. The room is painted (our usual one wall routine, apple green this time, and we did the window trim the same colour), and the Crib has been disassembled (with remarkably little opposition from Isaac - it could be a result of the tables we set up in it's place and all of the extra Thomas the Tank Engine train track we assembled on them). We are just awaiting an appropriate "cooling off period" before we reassemble it in Sam's room.

We also have a lovely glider rocking chair, that will be wonderful for nursing in. I even might let Noelle have a go.

So all is good in Allen land. Sorry for the long distance between posts. You know how it is.

No Blocking, No Wimping.
That was (and may still be) the motto of the infamous Loose Moose Theatre Company, home of the much vaunted Theatresports.

Theatresports, for those not in the know, was a form of improvised sketch comedy, where a member of the audience would shout out a topic, or a genre, or even a household appliance, and the actors would create a sketch around it.

I was fairly active with Loose Moose in High School, volunteering there quite a bit, and even taking improv comedy classes, and going on stage for a couple nights.

Some of the people who were there at the time (I'm thinking Roman Danalo, of Comedy Inc. fame, and Rebecca Northam of Alice I Think) have gone on to be moderate Canadian comedy stars.

But from it all, one thing that stayed with me, was that if someone is doing something funny, you go with it, and keep the 'thread' of the joke alive as long as you could. If you cut them off, or tried to change the direction of the sketch, this was called 'blocking.'

Similarly, if someone presented you a golden opportunity to do something funny, and you either missed it, or saw it and were scared to go there (either because it was too racy, or too silly, or too whatever), that was called 'wimping.'

So 'No blocking, no wimping' was the motto.

Where am I going with this, I hear you ask. Well, tonight, Isaac and I had a 20 minute or so Improv session around his Cell Phone.

It started out with him telling Mom he was going to call the owl on the bird clock. Then he decided to call the Owl's Dad. Both were on their way, he reported.

Noelle needed to eat something, so I went upstairs with him, and then he announced he was calling Darren (a friend who was here over the holidays). One more floor up, and the fun began. He sat in the office chair, and I on the couch, and we played a little game of let's pretend.

"I'm calling Grandad, he's on his way." Then he would pretend to call Grandad.
"He's on his way?"
"Yes," Isaac would reply, "He's on his way from the Island."
Seizing the opportunity, I'd ask, "Who else is coming."
"The Owl."
"You should probably call the Owl Dad too, to see if he's coming."
Several pretend phone calls later, and Isaac announces the Owl's Dad is on his way, and now he's calling Uncle Jonathan. "He's on his way too."
Remember, no blocking, no wimping.
"Is he bringing pretzels?" I ask. What the hell, if everyone's coming, we'd better get some grub ready.
"No," replies Isaac. "We're having a tea party." He then makes a pouring motion with his cell phone, makes a slurping noise, and says "Thank you."

Then he announces that Grandad is going to work.
"He's not coming here"
"No, he's going to work."
"So, he's going straight from the Island to work."
"Yes," decides Isaac. "He's on his way."

Now you see what I have to look forward to. Years and years of increasingly imginative play. I already wonder where the boundary lines are between reality as he perceives it, and everyone else's reality. And frankly, I think that's great. 20 years from now, that kind of fun will cost him $400 an ounce, so why not enjoy it now.

I am, however, reminded of the cautionary tale about my dear friend Rachel Joo's daughter, Blythe. Rachel emailed me one day when we were expecting Isaac, and regaled me with the story of how Blythe had come up with a 20 minute monologue, about how her father was going to be late, because he had to fix the C-Train (Calgary's Light Rail Transit system). Blythe was about the same age Isaac is now, or so I recall.

Rachel was quite intimidated, or so I gathered, by the prospect of her daughter's increasingly life like imaginary world, and just what she was going to do with the little braniac when she got older.

I am starting to really feel such trepidation myself.