Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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not the week for writing

It rained today, the first time since the summer’s heat.

Makes me think that Fall is truly coming.  Football is here; I’ve started thinking about Halloween; and we’ve got all our holiday travel booked.  Maybe Fall is truly coming.  Maybe that’s good, might give me something to write about.  I’ve had so many things to write about this week and absolutely no time to get them out.  Work again, as my primary foe, has proven resourceful this week at keeping me away from it.  Sometimes work should take a hike.

Cohen turns two months old next week.  I find this hard to believe even though I know it to be true.  He has gained more than two pounds from his birthweight, and while I don’t have measurements I can already see he’s so much “longer” than he used to be.  He’s still a perfect little newborn, sleeping most of the time but spending an increasing amount of time awake and “playful” post feeding.  He’s great at night, doesn’t fuss too much and, like Keaton, never spits up. Knowing what some people go through with babies, he’s been our second blessing in that regard.

It’s like 11pm and I’m stuck again.  Maybe just not the week for writing.  Goodnight.

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“tell cohen i love him infinity times…”

“… but explain it to him.”

This is what Keaton now says as the denouement to the most recent incarnation of her borderline-OCD bedtime routine.

How did we get here?  Well, a few months ago Keaton began wanting to tell mom, on night when I put her to bed, just how much she loved her.  She’d emphasize the reaaallly in her, “Tell her I really love her, OK dad?”  Over a few nights, this turned into multiple “reallys,” as in, “Tell mom I really really really love her, OK dad?”  One night I made the mistake of proclaiming a really-count after she’s conveyed the magnitude of her love for mom: “Wow, you love mom thirteen times!  That’s a lot!”  This, of course, turned into a “really” arms race… each night’s count bidding to outdo the night’s before.  For a while it was fun… until we got up into the 100+, 150+, and edging-at 200 marks.  By that time, I was tired of counting reallys… and I decided to figure a way out.

That’s when I decided to teach our four and a half year old daughter the concept of infinity.  Nevermind that she won’t be properly introduced to it until algebra, and even then won’t appreciate its peculiarities unless she takes a higher math like calculus or set theory or whatever.  I just explained it thusly, “You know Keaton, there is a thing called ‘infinity.’  It means the biggest number ever.  No number can be bigger than it.  It’s the most; always.”  And then, “So, if you reaaally want to tell mom how much you love her, and it’s reaallyy the most ever, you can just say you love her ‘infinity times’ and it’s the biggest, most, highest number of all.”  So what had become a multiple-minute string of “reallyreallyreallyreally” became a much more managable, “Tell mom I love her infinity times.”

Then came Cohen, and of course he got added to Keaton’s love-list.  But after a couple nights of, “Tell mom I love her infinity times, and tell Cohen I love him infinity times too,” she asked, “Dad, does Cohen know what ‘infinity times’ means like I do?  Does he know it’s the biggest, the most?”  I had to be straight with my little thinker, “No, he doesn’t.  He can’t understand that kind of thing right now… but he definitely knows you love him by the way you play with him and talk to him and treat him nice.”  (Not a bad answer, if I don’t say so myself).  And so she changed her wording to account for poor Cohen’s unenlightened mind:

“Tell mom I love her infinity times, and tell Cohen I love him infinity times but explain it to him, OK dad?”

To which I reply, “I will babe.”  And she’s not happy until I kiss her, leave the room, and she can hear me in the distance say, “Cohen, Keaton loves you infinity times, and that means she loves you the most anyone can ever love anyone.”

Awesome.

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some new pictures

By popular demand.  Did this at lunch, partly to aggressively defend my personal time and stave off the encroachment of work thereinto (that a word?).

Enjoy.

[nggallery id=44]

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grandkid-a-palooza

Back in California and it’s just as hot as Florida but with less humidity.  They told me the weekend here was “like Fall” though, so I’ve got my hopes up for more of that.

My brother and his wife had a daughter last week, Kenley, on Sharaun’s birthday.  It still feels strange to think that my kid brother is a father, but it’s been a fun thing to talk to him these past few days.  He texted me while were in Florida saying, “This is the hardest thing I have ever done.  It is completely exhausting.  How do you make it look so easy?”  To which I replied, after laughing, “It’s never easy, but it does get easier.  Welcome to selflessness.”  Later that day he wrote, “I broke down into tears.  She wouldn’t stop crying and I felt completely helpless.  It is so hard.”  Yes… yes it is.  Man… I remember breaking down into tears myself during a couple particularly difficult instances with Keaton.  I empathized with the whole feeling helpless thing, having been there many times and not being able to help the baby or my overworked wife.

For our part, we’ve settled fairly well into a “two kid” routine, although maybe it’s unfair to say having been traveling for a week.  Sharaun’s early breastfeeding woes have been erased by time and conditioning and we’re both used to the nighttime routine.  Luckily for us Keaton is a heavy sleeper and doesn’t wake up when Cohen cries to alert Sharaun that he’s hungry (lucky for us he’s not much of a crier to begin with).  Cohen’s been spending a little more time awake over the past week, not sure if it’s related to all the stimulation of Florida or just that he’s growing up (10lbs 3oz, as a matter of fact – most of it testicles, in the Davis tradition), but it’s nice to see his eyes and watch his aimless facial expressions.  I could (and have) stared down at him for an hour.

I think it’s time to go to bed.  It’s late and I want to go to the gym before work.  Goodnight.

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east coast morning writing

Writing from the early morning east coast time, something ungodly early in the west coast analog.  It’s right around the middle of our trip and the first time I’ve sat down to do any kind of writing – this feels right for a vacation.

Cohen was wonderful on the flight out, and we’re hoping for a repeat performance on the return flight.  Since being here he’s rarely left the crook of some family member’s arm.  Keaton, too, gets spoiled at Ami’s house.  Between the pool and the beach and the constant attention it’s no wonder she loves going to Florida.  Earlier in the week Uncle Tyler took us for an alligator-watching tour on the St. John in his new boat and she liked that too – must have seen 30+ of the pre-historic looking beasts.

The rest of the week is looking tight; filled to the cracks with birthdays and dinners and visiting, not to mention the hope at some solid do-nothing time in between all that (a common lament of mine when we come).  I already know we won’t be able to do it all.

And with that, it’s back to figuring out the activities of the day.  Writing remains secondary, so the blog may fester for a few more days… but it’s worth it.

See ya.

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the new “can i please watch a cartoon?”

Over the past few months Sharaun has more than once offhandedly mentioned to me that, during the days at home, she thinks about setting Keaton loose on the computer to play around. Keaton has an interest in the thing; how could she not? Her dad is practically tethered to one and her mom makes good use of the Facebook and the Tweeter on occasion as well. It’s only natural for her to desire to use this obviously magical machine herself.

So on Saturday I sat down and created a user account on the machine she could call her very own. For her user icon I used a box of crayons and the wallpaper is a huge spread of Princess Ariel (which she picked herself). I made the interface all magnified and simple thanks to the old-people options in Windows 7, and I got rid of all her desktop icons, notifications, and other distractions. She’s got one big icon in the middle of her desktop that launches Chrome and once inside I pre-loaded about ten or so bookmarks on the top ribbon for her to choose from. I installed AdThwart so she will see only content, and gave her a cursory lesson in mousing. And with that, she was off. Bouncing between bookmarks, she spends her time playing games on NickJr, PBS Kids, and a host of other edu-tainment centric kids’ sites.

Over the past few days she’s become quite good at navigating, and has picked up on the interface and controls surprisingly quickly (a child of a the technological age, I suppose). She knows how to repeatedly get to the same place consistently, figures out how to control games just by trial-and-error, and for the most part is self-taught. In fact, Sharaun and I have a rule that we’re not going to come to the call for “help” while using the computer. There are so many things she can do that will either take her away from where she wants to be or get her “stuck” or something that we told her up-front that if she feels like she needs help she can just click the ‘X’ in the top-right corner and start over. Hopefully that way she learns by herself and we don’t have to come running every thirty seconds (we learned fast that this should be our approach).

And now it’s all she wants to do. “Can I please watch a cartoon?” has gone by the wayside and, “Can I please get on my computer?” is the new hotness.

Hopefully we’ve done a good thing.  (Or at least a benign thing.)

Goodnight.

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pointless little pockets

Saturday morning Sharaun had a hair appointment and I was on my own with the brood.

The job is many-fold, and yet ultimately defined by one prime directive: take care of the children.  Sharaun should not come back to find them A) missing, B) broken, or C) disfigured in any way.  As an adult, my brain tells me there are multiple paths to success when it comes to the directive.  In fact, the engineer in me reckons that, statistically, it would be very hard for me to not accomplish my charge.  So I take a nonchalant attitude towards the whole thing.  I’m a two-time dad, father of a four and a half year old girl who I think is pretty OK, I got this.

Anyway, on this day I was successful yet again – maintaining my streak.  And one of the ways I “personalized” my road to success on that particular Saturday was to choose “cute” yet undeniably manly outfit in which to dress baby Cohen.  In the end I went with a solid blue one-piece thing on top and these teeny-tiny little frat-boy khaki pants on bottom.  Oh man did that kid look sharp for a three-week old.

And as I was pulling on Mr. Cohen’s miniature Sigma Chi specials I couldn’t help but notice the level of “real pants” details, right down to the diminutive little pockets.  I had a moment then, thinking for a minute while looking at those small pants how absurd those pointless little pockets were.  “What’s a baby going to keep in his pockets?,” I wondered.  A spare pacifier?  Mylicon for those bender days on the boob?  Change for the tollbooth?  Kid’s got pockets and no way to use ’em, let alone know they can be useful.  I felt like putting something in his little pockets, just to give them some purpose.  Maybe a baby girl’s phone number or a stick of gum for his perpetual case of morning breath (you try staying fresh sleeping twenty hours a day).

In the end I left it as a lark.  But I really do love those pants on him.  One day he’s going to be my big boy and in his pockets he’ll have stuff like guitar picks and firecrackers and ball markers for the links.  For now I’ll let them be empty, symbolic of all the concern he has in God’s wide world.

Goodnight.