Some Vignettes of life in the Allen Household.
1.
"A is for apple, Isaac, and B is for Ball."
"And G is for Google!"
"...uh...that's right. G IS for Google."

2.
While playing "snow plow" (a game in which Isaac pretends to be the giant crane and load the salt into the salt truck (the couch) and Daddy pretends to be the plow driver, which involves reclining on the couch and pretending to be a snow plow driver on "take your extremely squirmy baby to work day"), Isaac announces that there's "Big trouble up ahead."
"There's been an ice avalanche, and we'll need to rescue them. We'll need 200 helicopters, Two hundreds of thousands of planes, and two hundred hovercraft."
"Wait a minute," I interrupt. "Hovercraft?"
"That's right, 200 hovercraft!"
"Do you know what a hovercraft looks like?"
"What?"
"No, I'm asking you, do you know what a hovercraft looks like?"
"...no."
So we proceeded forthwith to that great sort of live, noisy movies about all things mechanical (to say nothing of eruptions) YouTube.
"Wow!" says Isaac, shouting over the roar of the Channel Hovercraft getting ready to leave from Dover, "Hovercraft are NOISY!"
3.
While I have always known that were he to become a Hip Hop star, Isaac's stage name would be Noy-Z (pronounce the 'Z' the American way), I have always struggled with what Sam's stage name would be. I have decided he would be Fussmaster Flex. Which raises the question - does anyone remember Funkmaster Flex at ALL? I know all I have of his is a couple of voiceovers - one on a Quincy Jones album, the other on a KRS-ONE album, so not exactly a startling body of work. But I do like to pay my respects to the old school (skool), so Fussmaster Flex it is.
4. Sam is, (see above) teething. And BOY does he not enjoy it. The problem is, that he's been teething for a year and a half now, and only has half of them. When talking to other parents of kids with DS, this is normal, but still unpleasant. Also, Sam is no longer a lamb, he is a Monkey. In fact, he's more than that. The other day, while out with Sam, I referred to him as "Captain Monkey of the Monkey Patrol," and Isaac loudly corrected me - "NOoooo, he's Crown Prince of the Monkey People." So there you have it.
5. Auntie Sib, in the great tradition of "Mixed Tapes" of old, gave me a mixed CD of music when she was here featuring Belinda Carlisle (ahhhh...Belinda), Madonna, George Michael, and a wide variety of modern Top 40 songs that I had either never heard, or had only heard in passing. So while driving to get Isaac Skates on Saturday, I was playing it, and halfway through the chorus to George Micheal's I'm Your Man, I realized that Isaac is REALLY good at picking up repeated lyrics. Too late, as I turned it down, I looked in the rear view Mirror and found him singing "If you want to do it, do it right - RIGHT, do it with me..."
Which wasn't as bad as us getting home and him singing "All the single ladies, all the single ladies..."
6. Years ago I worked in a high end shoe store in Calgary, and one boxing week, we did the usual put one of each pair of all of our close-out stock on a table, so a) people could see what we had to offer, but b) couldn't wander off with a complete pair without paying (we were in a moderately dodgy stretch of 7th ave). So a gentleman wanders in, and after a minute of rumaging around three 6x4' tables of shoes, looks up very quizzically and says "Is this all you have then?"
We were taken aback, and replied "Sir, I think if you'll look, there's quite a selection there."
He replied "Just lefts then..."
So on Saturday I went to buy skates from a used sporting goods...well...guy...who advertised in Kijiji. We showed up at his house, and he let us in, and in the living room were probably 20 different golf bags, and then he took us through one locked door, down a flight of stairs where there were three more locked doors, unlocked one, to reveal probably 100 pairs of skates, and 200-300 golf clubs all laid out in a wire rack with the club heads facing forwards. "This is about 1/5 of it," he said, as if to comfort us. Meanwhile, I'm looking around for Clarice's body.

Anyway, we try on some skates for Isaac, and he finds a pair that fit, and Al says to us "Make sure they're the right ones, a right and a left." So I do a cursory glance, and all seems good. Then about 3 hours later, we get to the flooded outdoor rink near our house (about a 6 minute walk - 10 if a little boy stops to jump into every snowbank) and realize...."Just rights then." So back to Al's place the next day to get the other one.
Long story short, Isaac needs a whole lot of practice, and when the big boys aren't using them for goal posts, they are more than happy to give him a traffic Pylon to hold onto.

Daddy, however, who has been on skates on just one other occasion since he was 8 years old, and who could not hold on to a pylon (a), it was too short, and b) there was considerable ridicule to be had should I have tried), and had no boards to cling to, did fairly well.

Supper Time Battles
So Isaac has been waking up in the middle of the night every night for the past two weeks, and that strain on Noelle is starting to show.

Now, I should say, in my defence, that I have offered on several occasions to get up and see to him should he wake up, but the truth is that Noelle just wakes up a hell of alot faster than I do, and she doesn't think to shove me and say "Go get 'im."

So we started thinking about what we might do to help him sleep through the night.

One theory was that because every supper for the last month or so has been a pitched battle between government forces and the "Eating a good supper resistance army", it might be contributing to a sense of unrest when he goes to bed.

So we made a conscious effort tonight to go with the flow, and let him eat what he wanted, and I tried to constantly praise when he was doing something good - eating nicely, eating his meat, and not just filling up on rice, etc. In the end, it was one of the most peaceful suppers we have had in ages.

SO then Noelle took him up to bed, and read him his story, told him the Oopik story, and then he asked her to stick around, while he started nattering on about Friendly Ghost, and how she (did I mention that his imaginary ghost friend is a girl ghost) had forgotten to ask her mom to stay with her that night.

Then it dawned on Noelle. If he lies here in the dark and composes stories to himself about ghosts, be they friendly or not, no wonder he is waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares.

So she stayed with him until he dozed off. I'll report later as to whether or not Noelle has to get up tonight, but sometimes the simplest answers are the right ones.

A Husky Little Boy.
Years ago, in Calgary, I had a friend who had a husky. The dog. This dog was so in love with being outside, that it considered it some form of punishment to have to come indoors. Especially in the winter. No matter how freakin' cold it got, the dog was happy to be outdoors.

Well, now that we have a proper back yard, Isaac is showing his true husky ways. He wants to go outside a) as much as possible, and b) for as long as possible.

When he gets out there, he wants to build the world's largest snowfort. Today the batttlements went up, and then Isaac started talking all crazy about a roof...that's when the wind picked up, and I decided it was time to come in.

Isaac would have none of it. Forget that his cheeks care bright pink, and his lips are so frozen that he's slurring his words, he wants to stay outside. Even if we're not going to put a roof on it, he wants to just stay out in the snow as long as possible.

The only unfortunate drawback to this is that he won't stay back there on his own yet, so one of us (read: me) has to be outside freezing his little hiney off with said Husky.

Usually it's a good excuse to have a pipe, but when that's done, there's only so much freezing I'm willing to endure.

Meanwhile, an eerie calm has descended over the house now that Auntie Sibavaughn has left. She was here for just over a week, and it was glorious. She watched the kids, and bought them (and us!) gifts, and did lots of dishes. I'm just wondering when she can move in. :)

Getting ready, both physically and mentally for my upcoming trip to Honduras. I am committed to taking more photos this time, and posting them somewhere that everyone can see them...although I have been warned that the hotel I am staying at is NOT to be left at night...apparently it's right on the corner of the Transvestite stroll. Ahh, Business Travel. Never a dull moment.

Shouting
So I've decided that Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go prepare kids for a lifetime of watching professional sports.

Often, throughout the show, Dora will tell her viewers, "When you see Swiper the Fox (the resident bad-guy on the show), yell 'Swiper!'" And the kids, once they reach about Isaac's age, dutifully holler "Swiper!" when he appears.

This, I feel, prepares kids like Isaac perfectly for when he gets to sit down and watch NFL football with his dad.

I, like so many men, learned the manly art of shouting at the TV from my Father. Nary a Sunday would go by without my dad, and often uncle Peter rising from their chairs for a rousing chorus of "Go! GO! GO! GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO! NOOOOOoooooo!"

It's like it was part of our oral tradition. (Sorry)

So my concern at this point, is that Isaac is going to learn this incredibly valuable life skill (Life skill, I hear you mock? Of course it is, if he EVER intends to "go out with the boys" to a "local watering hole" and "catch the game", he is going to NEED this skill, or face total ostracisation. Of course, with the way he natters on about Volcanoes and Pyroclastic flows, the odds are pretty stacked against him as it is...but I digress) - he should really learn it from his Dad, and not an unquenchably irritating cartoon character.

And THAT, I would submit, is an excellent reason for me to spend most of the weekend of February 1st, just a boy and his dad, hollering at the tube.

Except I'll be in Honduras. No biggie, it'll be years before San Francisco make the playoffs again, anyhow.

Coming Home
So, it's been about 7 months since I posted to this blog, and the funniest thing has happened in the meantime. I started another blog, and put up all of .... 15-20 posts on it, thinking it was going to be a business project for me, and that somehow I had to keep that separate from my personal life...

Then I started reading more and more of the blogs of people I really respect, and found information about their families and lives were probably the most interesting part.

I have come to the startling realization that I am probably never going to be a social media maven...funny, if you have to call yourself it, are you really? The ugly reality, is that I like to think that I'm just a hell of a lot more compelling in person, and if that's not terribly scalable, then well, what the hell.

So I'm going to go back to the original reason I started blogging in the first place...to tell funny stories about my life, and about my family, and about my work. Cause in the end, couldn't everybody right now using just a little more laughter.

I'm also, thanks to Herr Brudermann, going to be doing a lot more mobile blogging in the near future, so when the mood strikes me, I don't necessarily need to be right next to a computer, although I have to admit I'm never really very far away from one these days.

BTW, Sam is crawling. He moves incredibly quickly. He moves immediately to his two biggest fascinations when they are opened, which are the fridge and the dishwasher. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except that Sam's idea of the purpose of a door, is something that opens revealing a container, the contents of which are meant to be emptied.

So he has a cupboard that is all his - plastic plates and bowls, but low enough that he can reach it. I have great photos of him waist deep in said cupboard systematically emptying every item from it.

You see my concern with him getting into the fridge or the dishwasher. So we try and distract him from it - we bring him over to the toy box just before we want to do the dishes, sit him down and say "Here, you are allowed to empty this. Throw whatever you like in here around."

Of course, he doesn't want the "legal throwables." He wants contraband, and if that involves him having to cross the floor at incredibly high speeds to get to said contraband, then that's just fine with him.

So he is keeping our hands incredibly full. As is Isaac, who still has not even slightly greater a grasp on reality than when I last reported. Tonight at the dinner table he was having a three way conversation (doing all three people with different voices), and inserting appropriate sound effects when the Volcano erupted.

Ah yes. Volcanoes. More later.