Year: 2014

I Survived the Week!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Last week the kids were on spring break. Coincidentally, Sara was gone to a conference all week, which left me minding the store while she was gone. I was a little nervous about this (a weekend of solo parenting sounds bad enough, but a whole week??), but actually it was totally easy breasy.

I think that 99% of the parenting induced stress in my life comes from having to get the kids to school on time. During spring break, with nowhere in particular to be, all of that come-on-kids-we-have-to-get-out-the-door stuff is just on the back burner. It also probably helps that, with no one to hang out with in the evening, I was pretty well rested (and a special thanks to my extremely early riser, who chose to occupy herself in the morning and let daddy sleep in).

We tried to make spring break something special, including a pajama party with friends (and pancakes for lunch!), a visit to daddy’s work (including a hike), a couple of play dates, a trip to a water park, and an “unplanned” visit to Aunt Rachael’s house.

I wanted the trip to be a surprise, so I didn’t mention it to the kids until it was time to leave. I just dropped it in casually: “Hey guys, you want to do something crazy? Let’s go visit Aunt Rachael!”

Evie was immediately suspicious.

“Did you call Aunt Rachael?”, “Does Mama know about this?”, and “You can’t just show up at someone’s house”. I don’t know how much of it is her personality and how much of it is her knowing *my* personality, but she just absolutely couldn’t believe that we were doing something spontaneous. As we were walking out the door, she said, “What day is it?” and then checked the calendar. “What does I-N-D-Y spell?” she asked.

She would seemingly forget about it for hours at a time, but you better believe she never stopped thinking about it for a second. As soon as we walked in the door: “Did you know we were coming? What does I-N-D-Y spell?” Everybody was playing along, but you simply cannot trick her. Rachael and I were putting away dishes in the kitchen and Rachael said, “When you called last night, I was…” and Evie immediately popped her head into the kitchen. “Daddy called last night, huh? I knew it!” Rachael had some snappy comeback like, “Did I say he called last night?”

While we were there, we had a cold and rainy trip to the zoo that was kind of awesome. We basically had the zoo to ourselves, and the animals were feeling particularly frisky. We had a lion roar at us, seals barking like mad, a walrus spitting fish skin at us (repeatedly), and we reported an umbrella in the cheetah enclosure and got to watch the zookeepers go in and get it with only sticks to protect themselves. We also got to pet some sharks, and even though I knew it had to be safe or else they wouldn’t let you do it, I still felt pretty nervous sticking my hand in there.

Unfortunately, I had a WICKED cold the entire time and felt absolutely miserable. On the other hand, it was much better to be sick at Rachael’s house where someone could occupy the kids then at home where I would have had to deal with them by myself while sick.

Despite all that, I managed to keep the house clean, and the dishes, laundry, and baking current, of which I was unreasonably smug.

So smug, in fact, that I wrote an entire blog post to brag about it.

Quote Monday plays word games

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Ollie: “Can we have a snack?”
Me: “Not right this second.”
Ollie: “Can we have a snack?”
Me: “Not right this second, Ollie.”
Ollie: “Well, it’s a different second.”

Ollie: “I’m firsty.”
Me: “Firsty?”
Ollie: “No, fffffffirsty.”
Me: “Do you mean thhhhhirsty?”
Ollie: “I’m drinkful.”

Ollie: “Pigs have a manny bank.”

::Drinking smoothies::
Ollie: “Shiver me timbers, I’m cold!”

Now that’s a sign of a kid who’s raised right.

Ollie and the Water Slide

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We recently bought a Groupon for a night at one of the indoor waterparks in Wisconsin (Timber Ridge). We’ve been meaning to check one of these places out as a sort of reward to Evie for doing so well at swim class, and Timber Ridge was sort of the perfect place for us.

I would say it is definitely geared towards a younger audience, which was just perfect. It was small enough that it wasn’t overwhelming, but big enough that we didn’t get bored. Sara and I would split up with the kids quite a bit, and it was never difficult to find each other. You can go to the water park before you check in and after you check out, so one night was really the most we needed to do. Any more than that and maybe we would have gotten bored with it. The room was perfect too, because it had a separate bedroom (so we didn’t have to go to bed when the kids went to bed) and a kitchen (so we could bring all of our food and not eat out the whole time).

Our kids are just not the kind of kids who like to jump in the water and splash. They are both pretty adverse to getting their faces wet. Thanks to swim class Evie has come a long way, but it’s just time to admit that she’s never going to be a water rat like me. So I kind of figured they’d stay in the kiddie area, maybe just sort of sit around. Like I said, they’re pretty calm in the water, and they especially don’t like to be around people who are splashing. Evie mostly just likes the lazy river. (“It’s so much calmer over here,” she confided with a sigh.)

Almost as soon as we stepped in the door Ollie pointed to the big green slide up near the ceiling and said, “I want to go on that.”

(Hard to see, but it’s the one on the right)

On one hand, I was thrilled. There is nothing I love more than a good waterslide, and it didn’t much seem like the kids were ever going to want to go to Noah’s Ark with me. On the other hand, I was a little nervous for him. This is a pretty big slide. Ollie’s such an easy going, shy little guy; neither of the kids are really risk takers. But he insisted, so up we went.

When we got to the top and I could see the first steep hill, I was saying things like, “Now buddy, remember that this might be a little scary, but everything’s okay and daddy will be with you…” I needn’t have worried. “Let’s do that again!” he said as soon as we got to the bottom.

This boy was relentless. Up and down, as fast as he could climb the stairs. Sara and I alternated with him, and we counted that he went 15 times the first day. That’s over 1,000 stairs! And he would have kept going too, even though he was so tired he could hardly walk.

Evie, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the slide. Even Ollie having such a great time couldn’t convince her. Finally, Sara offered enough of a bribe to convince her (“You can stay up until 7:15 tonight!”) and she gave it a go.

She was shaking pretty bad when she got to the top of the slide but, to her credit, she didn’t say anything about it or try to back out at the last minute. And of course, after the first time she had the time of her life and insisted on going down as many times as Ollie after that. By the end she was even putting her hands up the whole time and asking the guy at the top to give us a push so we could go faster.

I only really have one complaint to level at Timber Ridge and that is there weren’t enough kiddie rafts. Some of the rafts had a seat in the front instead of a second hole, and with so many kids under 6 there, these rafts were worth more than gold. Ollie really couldn’t go down the slide without one, and sometimes we had to wait for a long, long time trying to get one of the few rafts with a seat. And once you did manage to land one you felt pretty bad since everybody kept asking you, “Are you still using that?” It all worked out in the end, but a significant portion of our day was spent in search of one of these rafts (we kept giving them up since so many people were trying to get one).

Anyway, we all had a great time. When we finally got ready to go home the next day, Ollie asked me, “Can we live here?”

I’ll call that a successful trip.

 

 

Quote Monday is why we can’t have nice things

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sara: “If you spilled your wine on the [new] rug…I would…have a sob fest.”
Sara: “I toned it down when I remembered I scraped the [new] car on the fence the other day.”

Evie: “Ollie, I have $4.27 and even *I* don’t have enough money to buy a car.”

Evie: “Daddy, it looks like someone drew a pencil drawing on the ceiling.”
Me: “You’re right, it looks like someone did a naughty thing.”
Evie: “Well, it wasn’t me, I would have done a better job.”

Ollie: “His mama must be a doctor, because he lives in a wooden house.”

That’s Chicago living for you. (And by the way, his mama is a doctor).

So what’s going to be our “look”?

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I was talking with my sister the other day about how seeing a picture from the ’70’s or ’80’s just immediately tells you the time period based on the hairstyles or the clothing. This is not really news, but it’s just interesting to me that every single guy in the ’70’s simultaneously decided, “You know what looks good? A moustache.” In the ’80’s, not a single person looked around and went, “You guys, we’re all dressed like buffoons.” How did the flannel industry keep up with demand in the ’90s?

It stands to reason that 20 years from now, people will look back on our pictures with the same mixture of hilarity and revulsion as I do when I look back on old pictures. I assume there will be certain hairstyles or clothing that will just scream “2000”, and schools will have “aught” day where everybody will dress appropriately. But what will that look like?

I think I’m probably too close to it to see what the patterns are.  I mean, I mostly wear jeans and a tee shirt. Will the people of the future look back and go, “Ha ha, jeans and a tee shirt, they didn’t even wear shiny metallic clothes back then! Losers!” People just dress…regular, you know? On the other hand, just like the people with teased hair and leotards in the ’80’s, I’m probably not the one who gets to decide what is going to look ridiculous. It’s like how everybody locks in on whatever music was popular when they were in high school, and then just continues to think all the music that comes after for the next 60 years is crap.

So what is the “look” of the aughts? Rachael and I came up with a few ideas:

The Barbwire Bicep Tattoo

I feel like the barbwire tattoo was the immediate successor to the famed “tramp stamp” period in the late ’90s. There are probably millions of these things out there, which certainly makes for a trend.

Nouveau Goth

I think this is the closest we come to a hairstyle of the aughts, but remember when suddenly every band was like a glittery hair band throwback?

Skinny Jeans

Is there any question that these are the modern day equivalent of bell bottoms?

Sagging

I don’t know exactly when this started, but I know it still continues today, so it’s outlasted quite a few other trends. How this continues to be a thing is beyond me, but so are all the rest of these.

Hipsters

I’m talking about the evolution of grunge combined with old timey moustaches. The big, thick nerd glasses, and the hair like you just woke up. And maybe a scarf (you know, for irony).

My sister pointed out that you know this is an epidemic when school teachers are using “I moustache you a question” on bulletin boards at school.

The Guido

Or “dudebro” if you prefer. That special combination of hair, tan, and muscle shirts brought to the forefront by the Jersey Shore. Sad but true, we may be judged by those idiots. I suspect there is strong overlap between this group and the bicep tattoo group.

Duckface

Really a subset of the above group, but referring more to the actual pose of picture taking. There are so many “duckface” pictures floating around on the Internet, that it’s a virtual certainty that future generations are going to think this is just what people looked like back then.

So, what did I miss? Hairstyles? Shoes? Anything else?