Those weren't the droids I was looking for...?

So, perhaps dressing Liam and Graeme as Yoda and Darth Vader for Dragon*Con a couple of years ago wasn't as random as it might seem.

Our sons have developed Jedi mind trick powers. I suspect they've been doing this for some time, but when I watched the following exchanges in succession I realized that we've probably been had before.

As I mentioned in an earlier post (actually it may be a later post depending on the order I get the pictures uploaded, but there's more in queue after being offline most of June) Tiffany is teaching them to drink from cups without lids or straws. This involves her metering out milk from a third cup into their cup in manageable doses (read limited area of effect weapons). When Graeme finished the following exhcange ocurred.

Graeme, insistent, "More! More!"

Tiffany, patient, "More what?"

Graeme, insistent, thrusting cup at his mother, "More! More!"

Tiffany still patient, "Can you say, 'milk?'"

Graeme, insistent/quizical, "More! More!"

Tiffany losing confidence in this excercise, "Please. Say more milk please."

Graeme, smug, "Okay."

Tiffany, pouring, "More milk please."

Graeme, very smug, "Okay."

Hey, he's only two and we're working on a new skill. This was quickly followed by:

Liam, sing-song looking at his brother, "Kacker, kacker, kacker."

Me, "Kacker?"

Tiffany, "Cracker."

Liam, insistent, "Kacker, kacker."

Tiffany confused, as there are no crackers on the table, in sight or part of the prior discussion, "What about a cracker?" I figure he's looking at his brother and he might be a little young for racial slurs, but the boy is PASTY white so fair call.

Liam, insistent and rocking in his seat excitedly, "Kacker, kacker."

Tiffany, confused, "You want a cracker?" This was not an offer it was an inquiry.

Liam, triumphant, "Okay!"

Tiffany exasperated, "No, we are not having crackers. We have casserole."

Sean, "I think we've been had."

Then a series of hilarious attempts to pronounce casserole broke out.

A Many Splendored Thingy

So, I’ve been traveling again, work’s been crazy, and the boys are cutting their two year molars. The most accurate term to describe the last few weeks is blast radius. Unfortunately, I’m starting to get the sense that it’s going to be like this until 2025 or I get a lobotomy. I always found my friends with children funny when they tried to use kids as their explanation/excuse for everything they didn’t get to. I mean, it’s not like no one else has ever had children. People have had children for thousands of years, they just didn’t have lives at the same time. Now I know.

[The following is a subliminal message to my friend Shy who claims to read the blog: send me a recent photo, I have a new coworker out here that could be a good match for you. She’s from Atlanta, so my plot to bring you home continues. Hair boy.]

That was my way of explaining why we haven’t had any new posts. Tiffany’s way of explaining is that it “takes too long.” Which is her way of saying that she hasn’t yet managed to sandwich it in between managing the boys and… well she really doesn’t need any more than that, but there is a long list. They are sleeping through the night again, mostly, and have gotten into a routine of falling asleep fairly reliably, except for last night. More about that in a minute. Three quick (I think) stories:

ONE – Who’s your digga?

Current fascinations include airplanes (still), cranes (new), and “diggers” (FAVORITE). Driving around Singapore we’ve now gone from yelling “BUS!!” and “DECKA BUS!!!” that’s a double decker bus to you and me, to digger hunting. Now, I’m under the impression that the “digger” is actually called a backhoe (The one time I said this Tiffany slapped me, so I’m not sure what she thought I meant. I think she knows less about excavation than I do.), but the boys call it a digger and I’ve learned not to push their vocabulary since the “parliamentary procedure” incident.

Now Singapore is a city under construction EVERYWHERE, so it’s a digger rich environment. We drive from place to place with the boys digger hunting. It sounds something like this.

Liam, “Where’s a digger, where’s a digger.” It’s Liam. Nothing can be said once.

Graeme, spotting his quarry, exclaims “DIGGA” and waves a fist pointing.

Shouts of “digger/digga” continue until we lose sight.

Liam, “Mo, more digger? Mo more digger?” Wait a decent interval and switch to the other question.

TWO – Or lose it!

Context is a powerful thing. When your children go from just saying words to saying them at the right time based on external events, it’s a bit shocking. When they use your wife’s diction and inflection, it’s hilarious. This is another driving story.

Graeme hates for the car to be stopped. He’s two. He points through the front windshield and whines, “gooooooooowwwww…” as though he were the last man out of Abu Ghraib. Under most circumstances we can accommodate him, but red lights are a pesky thing. Tiffany has taught him that we have to stop when we see the red lights and although he doesn’t like it he has accepted it. Through the weeks, he’s taken to yelling “Geen” at them and more recently “Geen go.” To which I usually reply, “Senor, I am not a gringo.”

The funniest though was a couple of weeks ago when we were pulling away as a light turned green. A car on a side street pulled out in front of me to which prompted me to ask, “What are you doing?” I don’t know if it was the frustration in my voice or the fact that we slowed down, but Graeme chimed right in behind me, “Come on, buddy. You move it!” We about died.

THREE – Let me count the ways

So we found these Duplo Diggers at Toys R Us and we had to buy them. They were expensive, but since certain grandmothers have purchased every other toy ever made I figured why deprive them of this one. I put them together Wednesday night, but Tiffany waited until I got home Thursday to give them to the boys. They loved them. We video taped.

An hour later when dinner time came you would have thought we were amputating their hands and feet from all the screaming and crying. It took forever to get Liam upstairs to wash his hands. He had a complete melt down that didn’t stop until he realized that someone had put a bowl full of spaghetti in front of him (there are odd parallels between our former dog Zoe and my sons). The rest of dinner, bath time and bed preparation went without incident and I thought we had escaped any further digger fall out.

Once the boys were in bed, I realized this was going to be an unusual night. Graeme was not settling down and falling asleep quickly like he usually does. Liam wasn’t getting out of bed as usual, but he did start his verbal inventory. I kept one ear on him for humor and I repeatedly settled Graeme back down. Liam didn’t disappoint.

Tiffany has been teaching them to say “I love you.” I love you mommy. I love you daddy. I love you Graeme (said by Liam). I love you Liam (said by Graeme). I love, " I love you Elmo".

That was not the one I heard at bed time though, well, not the last one. I put Graeme back on the bed, and looked up in time to see Liam with Elmo across his head and hear, “I love Elmo.” And then, “love the digger.” He fell asleep seconds later in record time. Graeme was up for another half hour.

To Sleep Perchance to Dream

I’ve been home for almost two solid weeks and that has dictated some changes in routine around the house. I used to help with bath time and tucking them in before leaving Tiffany to take over and manage the process of putting the boys back in bed repeatedly until they fell asleep. This process was taking anywhere from thirty minutes on a good night to an hour and a half when the boys felt like partying.

It’s kind of a frustrating process. They get up; you lay them down and cover them with a blanket. Rinse and then repeat, and repeat, and repeat. Per the Super Nanny method, after the first two times we say nothing and don’t make eye contact.

Combine this every night for a week or two with our wake up call, usually between 6 and 6:30 am, and some bizarre middle of the nigth screams and wake ups, and it makes for a very tired mommy with little time to do the things she wants or needs to around the house. So, I bravely volunteered to take bedtime duty. I have learned some very important things in the process:

1. The most time I’ve ever spent putting them down is 30 minutes. Apparently, I have not paid the required cover charge and as such do not get the special floor show that is presented for mommy. I’m not sure if I’m thankful or hurt. Mommy isn’t sure if she feels special or irritated.

2. Graeme has the sleep gene. He’s out in ten minutes, regardless of what his brother is doing.

3. Liam has the talk gene. He inventories his entire vocabulary and the day’s activities before finally screaming “mommy, mommy” and falling asleep. This has happened most nights for the week I’ve been putting them down.

Phrases I’ve heard during Liam’s routine:

“Bye-bye mommy, bye-bye Elmo, bye-bye daddy, bye-bye garbage truck.” At least I know where I stand. Somewhere between a three foot stuffed monster and the local sanitation team.

“Where’s the mommy, where’s the mommy, where’s the mommy…” Rinse and repeat.

“Mommy’s a sleepin’, mommy’s a sleepin’, mommy’s asleepin’.” This led to some controversy as I thought it was a great answer to Liam’s earlier question. Apparently mommy has used similar psychology and told them that they have to go to sleep because she can’t go to sleep until they do. Lesson learned early, coordinate your lies.

I can’t really explain this last one, but it happened two nights in a row. The first time I wasn’t sure I heard him right, but the next night I went and got his mother when it started and she has confirmed my translation.

“Elmo’s itchy butt.” I think he's just randomly putting together words he knows since there was a similar comment about mommy, but I was banned from blogging about that one.

On with the Potty Count...

Well, Liam is six for seven the past week using the mini potty before bath time. He's very pleased with himself because we let him flush it. He's appears to be preparing for an NFL career as he is perfecting his touch down dance. The only real problem is that his end zone celebration involves crouching and pointing excitedly to his handy work. He tries to get as close as he can when he points, up to and including splashing in it. This has only happened once so far, but needless to say Mommy and I are now on our guard.

We haven't seemed to find a similar window of opportunity with Graeme. We suspect he's taking care of business durning dinner time and unprepared to contribute further at bath time. Neither of them is really telling us when they need to go, so they're not ready for actual potty training yet, but getting them into the routine at this point probably isn't a bad idea.

Shake, Rattle and Roll…

Several people have asked, so I’m letting everyone know that the earthquake in central China was not felt in Singapore. I know it looks close on a map, but the flying time from Singapore to Hong Kong is about three and a half hours, so imagine people in Atlanta trying to feel an earthquake in Salt Lake City. No chance. No impact in our house. No aftershocks.

So we converted the cribs to toddler beds when Liam decided to try sky diving over the top rail (his mother caught him mid-air). The matching toddler bed rails we bought and brought to Singapore with us were the wrong model. Tiffany bought portable bed rails.

These were not designed with crib mattresses or my sons in mind. The weight of the mattress is what holds the rail in place, IF the child is laying on the mattress. The rail becomes quite mobile when the child bucks his hips and drives both heels into the rail while in mid air (Liam). It also moves easily when the child is jumping up and down on the mattress while holding on to the remaining full sized crib rail (Graeme). Tiffany gave up when they tried to ride "choo-choo rail" (more about choo-choo variants when Tiffany finally blogs) by sitting on them and managed to fall out of the bed with the rail underneath them and the mattress landing on top. No one was injured; no one under three feet tall anyway.

We now have cool Dr. Seuss looking furniture from the IKEA Mamut series.

This should last the boys until we return to the US. Keeping them in the these beds (and frankly the converted cribs with a rail) is a matter of either standing in a corner of the room and putting them back in bed every time the get out or begin "shenanigans," or standing just outside the cracked door and peering through the gap and doing the same thing. This process used to take an hour or two. Now it’s getting down to ten to fifteen minutes for Graeme and half an hour before Liam gives up. Mommy deserves a medal (another one).

They are smart and have learned what combinations of their limited vocabulary will be ignored and which will result in attention. Winners include:

1. “Poop, poop, poop.” This was not a bluff the last two nights.
2. “Dink uh wadder, dink uh wadder.” This is an old standby and almost always a fake.
3. “Huts, mouff huts,” alternately “hed hutts” this is accompanied by rubbing the appropriate body part. Cause and effect are at issue here. Of course your head hurts you were just banging it against the headboard.
4. “Medisen, medisen.” This is a hold over from their teething and recent illnesses, sometimes their like little crack addicts.
5. “Boogas, wear da boogas?” Oddly the answer to this is not in your nose. Liam is struggling with the “k” in books. He also is unwilling to allow for the possibility of a lone book, it is always “boogas” plural.

The other fun trick is that when they wake up in the middle of the night there is now nothing to stop them from getting out of bed and coming to visit, whine, demand vodka water, or a fresh diaper. Since the toddler beds arrived each night has brought a different permutation of this at about 4 am, with Graeme getting put back down falling dead asleep and then springing awake like some electrified puppet five minutes later and repeating the cycle. Last night though, was different. I heard a squeak at about 3:30 that sounded like someone being restless. So I went to look and head off the intruder before he could wake his mother and get us both in trouble.

As I cracked the door I realized that our Ikea purchases were a waste of money. Both toddler beds stood empty. The comforters and pillows were on the floor next to them (crash mats for sleeping rolls) were also unoccupied. May be it was an aftershock from the China earthquake, but Liam was two feet from his bed asleep on the bare floor and Graeme was three feet from his asleep on the rug. I’ll probably get some grandma scolding for this, but I left them alone (I was too tired to take a picture and I know I’ll get grandpa scolding for that). Putting them back in bed would only have been an invitation for them to wake up. Besides, they came and saw us on their own three hours later. I always thought the phrase pitter patter of little feet was cute… not so much.

It Happened ONE Night

Based on the earlier post, you can imagine we’ve been reading lots of potty training books. Yes this is going to be one of those posts; those not interested can link out here or here (if you’re looking for Gable and Colbert).

Reading lots of books and sitting on the portable mini potties. At bath time on Thursday (which was Labor Day national holiday in Singapore) we were stripping the lads down and wiping them off, when I noticed Liam head for his special corner and turn his back. He then looked down and stuck his hips forward, and I screamed “get the potty.” The hilarity of tripping, fumbling, falling and shouting that followed defies words, but suffice it to say that it was enough to create a shy bladder for Liam.

In any case, we got him naked and then let him sit down before proceeding to torture brush his brother’s teeth. I was running the bath water and Tiffany was brushing teeth when I glanced over at Liam, who was grinning like a fool. I raised a skeptical eyebrow and then spotted the little yellow puddle in the potty beneath him. I was so shocked that it took me a minute to say, “Honey, he did it.” She was so shocked it took another minute for her to understand what I was saying. Once she did, our immediate focus became getting him to stop reaching into to bowl and investigating what he had done.

After the applause stopped Liam looked so startled that I was afraid he might never do it again. So far I’ve been right.

Weighing In

In this corner…

Weighing in at 13 kilos (28.6 pounds for you Americans) and towering at 88 centimeters (2 feet 10.6 inches) in the red Elmo trunks and “panda like” eyes… Liam returns from his two year check up.

In the other corner…

Weighing in at 12.6 kilos (27.7 pounds) and building a mowhawk to catch his brother at 87 centimeters (2 feet 10.3 inches) in the blue Monkey trunks (I know monkeys don’t have trunks – elephants do) with a burning desire to clean… Graeme also gets back from the doctor.