Snakes and Frosting

Last weekend Arthur was introduced to gingerbread and frosting. It wasn't exactly my idea, and the increased intake of sugar contributed to Arthur learning the word "cookie!" in about ten seconds. For the record, I have photos of Mark and my Mom introducing Arthur to the world of art as food as sugar.

As we put Arthur into the car seat to go home, he did a high-energy gyration that only little kids hyped up on sugar can do. It wasn't quite a scene out of The Exorcist , but it was close. I think we could have used him for the car's gyroscope.

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Arthur has created his own sign for "snakes." We have a can of "Old Fashioned Peanut Brittle" that is -- you guessed it -- a can of springy snakes. Arthur has a fascination and a repulsion to it. He is always concerned that he knows where in the house the can of snakes is, and when he signs "more" for it and you ask him if you should open it (and launch the snakes) he quivers his head "no" and walks away at an oblique angle. Then he'll sign "more" again, and point to the can. If you do let the snakes fly, he becomes really excited and wants you to do it again.

It got worse when we re-issued a toddler's book of animals into the living room; it and a library book both have pictures of -- snakes! Simply turning to the page will elicit the "where is the can of snakes?" response.

I don't know where Arthur came up with this sign. It's not baby sign or ASL and if it were me, I'd simply pantomime a snake with my arm. No; Arthur has added "snakes" to his personal lexicon of made-up signs: he crosses his hands at the wrists and brings his fingers up to his throat as if both of his hands had been transformed into attack serpents. I'm slightly worried that he's going to give himself little hickeys (uh, no, doctor; he did that to himself...)

Pre-Holiday Post

Arthur woke up this morning at 6:15. He usually wakes up about ninety minutes later. I think this is a part of the latest teeth installation, as he's been sleeping for about two and a half hours during his naps. Today he was kind of "bonky," which is what I call the tendency to bonk into things like sinks, tables, chairs, the walls, the floor, or windows.

Speaking of bonking into windows, the other day at the mall, he walked right into a very clean plate glass window. Luckily, he wasn't going too quickly. Mark and I were bad parents and had to hide our faces behind our hands.

Arthur has a new script in his Master Thespian Schtick. He'll place his fists over his eyes; if he's really into it, he'll tilt his head a little and yawn. When you ask him "Are you sleepy?" several times, he'll whip his hands away from his face and bug his eyes out to look very awake. Then he'll smile and laugh.

Arthur has pretty much gotten over Halloween -- now he waits for Mark to come home from work and ring the doorbell. But he really wants the beeswax candle on the mantle to be lit. Almost as much as he wants to eat a bannana. A typical conversation goes something like this.

Arthur (just finishing a banana): "'Nana."
John: "You just had a banana."
Arthur: "'Nana!"
John: "You only get two bananas a day."
Arthur: "'Naanna!"
John: "Bananas tomorrow."
Arthur: "Dandol."
John: "Arthur."
Arthur: "Dandol."
John (realizing Arthur didn't say "Dad-o"): "Oh. Candles at five o'clock."
Arthur: "Cock." (Points at mantle clock)
John: "Yes. That's the clock."
Arthur: "Dandol."
John: "Candles at five."
Arthur: "'Nana."
John: "Bananas tomorrow."

Arthur's latest new words are, car, tea, out, up, down, off, on, and bop.

Actually, bop has been around for a few weeks, and we're trying to teach him the word gentle. Arthur's favorite things to bop are the windows and the walls. And our new floor lamp. Usually with the heavest toy he can find. He's already put some long scores into the front door.

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Let's see. After about five weeks, the bookshelves have been primed, painted and forced into position in our bedroom. There's scuff marks on the ceiling and my left index finger is still sore after five days from where I wholloped it with a hammer. Ninety-five percent of my books are in place. And I had to say to Mark, "Honey, you were as right as right can be; I have more books than I thought." So, there's an auxillary bookshelf in the opposite corner of our bedroom.

After I managed to fill the final portion of my five, eight-foot-long shelves with books, I got a sense of peace. The south wall of our bedroom is floor to ceiling books (except for the one two foot section that will become a desk). It reminds me of the old study in my parents house -- it had a bookshelf that was a eight foot wide, thirteen foot tall expanse of books (in fact, the planks in our house now are from that old shelf). I feel comforted knowing that I'm sleeping just three feet away from my large, consolidated library.

I think Mark's a little frightened.

Now the question becomes, what to put on the auxillary bookshelf -- Arthuriana, oversized fiction, or all those chatty little tomes by Dion Fortune?

Arthur's picked up some of our house decorating; last week we hung some photos. Arthur saw and now he wants to tape his his flash cards onto the walls. Mark let him.

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The other day Mark got a taste of the Mother Grizzly Treatment. He had given Arthur a paint brush to play with. I was talking on the phone at the time, so I was in one of those states where I was speaking to my Dad on the phone and watching events unfold in front of my eyes. Now that I know better, I will simply hang up and call folks back. But since this was the first time, I watched Arthur toddle around with a paint brush in his mouth while Mark walked away to do something else. Half of my brain predicted that Arthur would fall with a paint brush in his mouth while the other half was speaking to my Dad about tiles for a counter. When my prediction came true (apparently), my Dad got an earful.

Arthur fell down. In retrospect, I don't think he had the paint brush in his mouth, but from where I was sitting, it looked like he fell and jammed it into the back of his mouth. What my Dad heard was me saying, "Are you all right?" Arthur crying, and me telling Mark (in no uncertain terms) that giving Arthur a paint brush to play with was NOT a good idea.

Later that night I apollogized to Mark for yelling at him. In an odd way, Mark's OK with it. "Wow," he said, "I won't mess with your kid again," he said the next day.

Arthur is spontaneously identifying "E", "O", and the number "2" when we read to him. Mark is unnerved by this. "I don't wan't to raise an idiot/savant," he said. "I don't want to raise a savant/savant, either." I guess that he's afraid that Arthur will figure out how to drive the car next week.

Mark's worries about raising an idiot/savant don't prevent him from showing friends and co-workers how Arthur can identify an "E" or an "O", and the two of them have a routine.

Mark: (Making a "V" sign with his fingers) "Hey Arthur, how many fingers am I holding up?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: "Very good." (Brings his index fingers together.) "What's one plus one?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: "That's right! How many ears do you have?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: (Holding the "V" sign behind his head) "Wow, that's great; Now how many fingers am I holding up?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: "That's incredible; you're psychic."

Snow and Windshields

The weirdest thing happened to me this morning.

I was driving with Arthur to Scary Reading Hour at the public library. (For those of you who don't know, Scary Reading Hour is scary because A) the presenters are very nice people who are Very Enthusiastic and B) it's filled with twenty-something parents who wear low jeans and thongs.)

Last night it snowed about a half inch, but the roads and sidewalks were clear. I had to scrape the snow off of the car's windows to be able to see out, and I had the defrost cranked up. Anyway, to get parking at Scary Reading Hour, one has to get to the library about twenty minutes before it starts. So there I was driving down 11th Street when I heard a kind of popping noise. It wasn't a ding, or a ping, or George Micheal singing. No other cars were around us, and no gravel truck was in front of me, so I couldn't figure out what the noise was -- although in hindsight it sounded like shifting ice. As I drove along, wondering what the noise was and exactly where it had come from, a huge U-shaped crack appeared in my windshield. It was about two feet wide and a foot tall, and it was centered in the glass.

I figured the defrost, which was still cranked up, combined with a gravel ding from two years ago, stressed the glass enough to cause it to crack. It doesn't appear to be getting any larger, and we'll have to replace the windshield later this week. I tried to take a picture of the crack, but it only looks like a picture of someone's car in an underground parking lot.

Arthur and I got parking space number one and we sat in the Geriatric Parents Club section of Scary Reading Hour.

Oh. Yes. On the Arthur front, he's pushing some molars out or something. The result is that when he sleeps, it's random; when he's awake, he's easily frustrated and cranky, which makes him more likely to imitate a howler monkey. He's also very -- ahem -- congested, and I'm considering wearing a smock when I have to pick him up.

Thanksgiving Fun

Saturday night was a dark and stormy night. Actually, it was Arthur and he had a new molar pushing through his gums. The molar pushed mucus out of his sinuses. So now I'm writing this in the car on the trip back to Oregon, and Arthur is barely breathing through his nose. Don't ask how I know this. I'm hoping that being propped up in his baby seat will help him to drain.

Mark gets several awards for taking on the lion's share of child duty.

Luckily, the tooth waited until after Thanksgiving to push out, so Arthur was a model infant during the family gathering at my sister's and her new husband's house in Everett. Their funniest pastime is flinging objects at squirrels that raid the birdfeeder. I think my sister's favorite projectiles are asparagus butts. I suppose that that the Evil Brother award goes to me for snapping a photo of my sister's sister-in-law sleeping on the couch; it's not a flattering picture.

OK. And I confess. Through some combinations of events too involved to understand, there was old Tang in my sister's house. That meant I had to drink some.

There must be some principle that, unless it grew on a tree, orange food is probably bad for you. Tang. It's right up there with theatre popcorn, Cheetoes, Orange Crush, and Cheddar Goldfish. You know it's bad, you know you shouldn't drink it. But you also know that its forbidden horribleness enhances its chemical flavor and that a secret part of you has craved it since before last week.

I'm under no illusion that Tang is the preferred drink of astronauts -- the first and second ingredients are sugar and I think the third is citric acid. This was old Tang -- the expiration date was about three months ago -- and although the fourth ingredient was some nasty chemical added to it to prevent it from sticking to itself, the Tang had caked into a solid orange mass in the container. I boiled some water.

I got a one of my sister's elegant, sculptured spoons and started chiseling out enough loose Tang to take me back to my childhood days. An orange cloud of dust rose to the kitchen ceiling's lights. People stepped back in order to avoid any future brushes with Orange Lung Disease. I mined three teaspoons into a 12-ounce mug and poured in the water. The resulting mixture was steamy and orange and drinking it was like drinking liquid SweeTarts. In a Proustian moment, I remembered turning my tongue orange with straight Tang when I was ten.

I horrified my family by mixing a second cup twenty minutes later and wondering aloud if I could mix Tang and tequila into a hot drink called "Tang-quila."

Then we played fun word-games like Pictionary and Taboo.

Friday Mark, Arthur, Julie, Randy and I went to a municipality on the other side of the Boeing jet factory where Julie and Randy live to watch the ferries come in next to a lighthouse. It was windy and cold. The sound was pretty in a "nature vs. man" kind of way. Randy had fun faking out the pigeons with gravel (they thought it was bread crumbs). We didn't manage to make it to any other parks to hike (mostly because last week's rains washed out the roads). Julie and Randy went off to watch the Oregon civil war football game. We watched a lot of movies at my sister's. Arthur dosed through most of My Fair Lady, The Harvey Girls, and reruns of The Muppet Show.



Saturday, we spent a relaxing time at some Seattle friends house. While we were there, we went for obligatory noodles and then went shopping for floor lamps. I kept pointing to what I thought were likely candidates and Mark kept saying, "I don't want a bordello lamp." After about the fifth rejection, he said, "I don't want a bordello lamp with Art Neuveau curves." That actually helped.

We had a quiet evening taking pictures of Artur playing with Jean-Luc the cat. Mark bought some children's' medicine and that helped Arthur to sleep. "Helped" is a relative term, and it might as easily be said that it helped Arthur to wake up at 4 AM screaming.


Sunday we are back in Eugene. Tomorrow Mark will go to work and I'll be a full time dad. Arthur seems to have a bunch of molars coming in, so I'm guessing that tomorrow morning, as I'm stumbling around from lack of sleep, I'll be wishing that we had a secret stash of Tang. But we don't even have a secret stash of tequila.

Thank the goddess for chocolate.

John's Orycon Adventure

I've just returned from Orycon. It was the best con (out of four) I've attended. I never thought that a con would rejuvenate me. I'd gotten into a difficult place in terms of my writing, and visiting with other writers and editors allowed me to put various things into perspective.

This year, the scariest costume wasn't the Klingons, or even the latex gals. It was the person who gave me a stalker vibe. I'm not even going to write about what they were wearing.

Here's a quick break down of the panels. Go to a panel with a strong moderator -- a strong moderator will have some prepared questions for the rest of the group, will be able to shut up and let other panelists voice their opinions, and will keep the socially maladjusted know-it-all(s) in the audience from hijacking the panel. Go to a panel with panelists who actually know something about the topic (or who are good at asking questions).


Here's the long-play commentary on the panels that I went to:

Friday

Editing the Short Story -- the most interesting thing about this panel, which was made up of editors, was hearing the emotional side of purchasing short stories from the editor's point of view. The coolest quotes were from Ellen Datlow, who said, "We want to clear our desks [of piles of manuscripts]... and we want to love your work." And Eileen Gunn, who said, "The essence of SF is finding yourself [as the reader] in a weird, off-balance place, and then you figure it out."


Palaces and Prisons -- This was a disappointing panel because, A) I wanted the panel to discuss future cities from a science fiction writer's point of view and B) none of the panelists seemed familiar with the concept of arcology. Hello? You're on a panel about future city planning and the only thing you have to say about arcology is that it's ugly high rises for the rich? The panel turned into a "problems of population" discussion. Probably the most interesting idea, which came from an audience member (not me, I was too busy trying to steer the panel to say something about arcology), was the concept that the French Revolution is a metaphor for the dichotomy of the city as urban palace or prison.


What is Magic Realism? -- this was a useful panel, if only because my understanding of magical realism was that it was something like the urban fantasy of Charles de Lint. It's not. (I'm sorry -- even if I've seen "Kiss of the Spider Woman", I've never read "One Hundred Years of Solitude".) Magical Realism (and slip stream) is about taking an absurd idea (like waking up as a bug) and having everyone deal with it as if it were normal or every day. MR is an examination of the rational and the irrational and how they inform each other. As a result of this panel (OK, and I bought another copy of Polyphony), I have a better understanding of why my stories are getting rejected by Deborah Lane (sorry Deborah).


Friday Night: Although I vowed not to turn on the TV... I did and stumbled onto the very latest Dr. Who episode, complete with an old Sara Jane Smith (who now looks like the brunette Abba woman) and a retro-looking K-9. And a Doctor who looks just a little bit younger than me.

Saturday

We had a wonderful Wordos Breakfast. It was great seeing everyone there and getting a chance to hob-knob with Ellen Datlow. I also got a chance to speak with other Wordos who don't normally make it to Eugene about writing, writing strategies, and family life.


Ask Ellen Datlow -- This was fun and useful. I did get to introduce Ellen to the word "rejectomancy" (the divinatory art a writer uses to try to figure out what an editor really thought about a story by how many code phrases are in the boilerplate rejection letter, by the amount of time it took to get the rejection letter, and by any hand written notes in the margins). When Ellen writes, "I loved this story, but I can't use it for the [magazine or web site]" that that's what she means.


Turkey Readings (from Shimmer Magazine) -- this was the funniest panel. The panelists took turns reading rejections from the slush pile and from Planet 666. There were some pretty painful manuscripts ("Ow! Ow! Ow-ow-ow!"). They also read some accepted manuscripts to illustrate where they had worked with an author to polish a story. The only bad thing about this panel was that it was at the same time as the Endeavor Awards and I missed Jerry Oltion winning.


Ellen Datlow Interview -- Saturday was sort of Ellen Datlow Con. It was interesting to hear some of her stories of how she started out editing at Omni Magazine and to hear more about her editing process.


Juggling Jobs -- the most inspirational. Over the last half year, I've really been wound up about writing production, production, production and I'd lost sight of why I write. It's because I enjoy it. (And yeah, it would be great to make a living at it and to have Undying Fame.) I've been so production oriented that I've been locked up when I try to write. The moral of this panel was take regular time to write, and budget your writing time to balance with your family and your job. And it's OK to focus on your children's and parents' needs.


Alien 1st Contact -- the moderator's idea of moderating was to argue with the other panelists that aliens were here on earth now to eat us. I guess the most interesting idea was (from Jerry Oltion) that if humans and aliens don't have a formal agreement then no one has to apologize for anal probes or shooting flying saucers out of the sky.


Magic or Tech -- very disappointing because it seemed to want to turn into a bitch session and not explore new ways to look at magic, technology, and fictional societies. By this point at Orycon, I had learned enough to ask questions "as a writer" to try to focus the answers on the writing process. When asked why Mercedies Lacky (for example) writes Valdamar as a mediaeval world with magic instead of a tech world with magic, the discussion devolved into an observation that successful writers write less well then when they were less successful.


Shimmer Party -- Fun. Except for that stalker. (Note to self: there's a down side to the World's Most Fabulous Shirt).


Dance -- There's not too many places left in the world where I can free-form dance to cheesy 80's music.

SUNDAY

Archery -- really knowledgeable presenter and I wish that I had managed to get through checking out of my room in time to catch the beginning of the talk. As it was, there were some useful "this is what archers do and these are the mistakes writers and illustrators make depicting what archers do" points. Oh, and some cool bows.


Digging Into Cory Doctorow -- Probably not the best choice for me as getting the most out of this panel depended on reading most of Doctorow's work; I haven't read anything by him, and it sounds like I should. It sounds like he's a very smart technogeek writing slipstream.


Blogging for the Writer -- This panel challenged some of my ideas about blogs. I guess I've been "blogging" since 1990 or before, only back then it was called a mail list. The thing that I'd sort of forgotten about using a blog is that it's supposed to be fun. OK, and be careful, because the internet has collapsed people's social personas, so the boundaries between your work persona, your family persona, and your hobbies persona have gone away. There were other points -- like from a publicity standpoint it's better to be interesting than boring. And Cory Doctorow uses his blog like a wiki for what he's interested in... this is interesting to me because I use Voodoo Pad on the Macintosh as a notebook for keeping track of ideas and it would be nice to have just one database.


Beyond Llewelyn -- Well... someone had scheduled a filk fest in the Eugene Room before this panel and when some people get a guitar they lose all sense of time. After several people had mimed "time's up" at this person, we started chanting "Spam Spam Spam Spam" and they still kept on singing something that sounded marginally shorter (but just as cheesy) as "The Horsetamer's Daughter." Once the musicians had cleared out, we discovered that we had only one panelist and she wasn't the moderator. She did a great job trying to moderate, but after about twenty minutes of trying to engage the audience in more than "Llewelyn sucks if you want anything else but Wicca 101" observations, we all mutually agreed to end early. I did continue a conversation with two guys about gay paganism.


Immortality -- This one had a strong moderator. Even though the panel had a tendency to digress and interrupt each other, I got a lot of story setting ideas. I did wish the panel had agreed to talk about immortality instead of the failures of today's health system, and I wish they had agreed about what type of immortality they would talk about (biological or cyber). Someone suggested that the French Revolution... oh, wait... Actually, the most entertaining idea thrown out by an audience member was that The Medical System (which is profit driven) doesn't want to cure people, because if you cure someone, they go away and you only get to bill them once. What The Medical System has done in the past is give people treatments, which require multiple visitations and billings. However, The Medical System is in the process of switching to a "Wellness System", which means you get to preventively treat people before they get sick; so now you can bill healthy people (and there's more healthy people than sick people...).


Then we went home. I should say that Mark wins some sort of award for watching Arthur by himself all weekend and freeing me up to wear nice light-colored clothing without the fear of being used as a baby snot rag.

The Spider Fairy

The itsy-bitsy spider
went up the water spout
down came the rain
and washed the spider out
out came the sun
and dried out all the rain
and the itsy-bitsy spider
went up the spout again.

The itsy-bitsy spider
went up the water spout
down came
              the fairy and this is what she said:

Itsty-bitsy spider,
I am getting tired
of singing all these silly songs
and wiggling my hands.
I'll sing this song three more times,
and then I'm outta here.

October Rites

OK, OK, so I haven't posted in a while. Let's see.

Arthur now says, "up" when he wants us to carry him. Which is a lot of the time. He also makes a clicking sound with his mouth when he wants to snap, which is part of the sign for "dog". Arthur recognizes the moon, and he will point to it and say, "moon."

Two weeks age some friends from Seattle visited. Eugene was pretty, it was seventy-something degrees and all the leaves were turning. We did a few traditional things, mostly surrounding eating establishments. We went to a farm where apples were being pressed into cider and where the Pearwood Pipers sang a few songs. And we discussed the lighting treatment for the house.

As part of an early Samhain celebration, I lead a ritual at the UU church. It went pretty well, considering I hadn't quite gotten it through my head that over half of the participants would be teens and pre-teens. I've decided that ritual for this age group is kind of like ritual for cats. From what I've been told, the kids enjoyed it, though (and so did the adults).

Last week Arthur caught a stomach flu, which I caught the next day (thankfully after the ritual, otherwise it's quite likely I would have been invoking the powers of "eeuuw-ack"), and Mark a few hours later. Arthur was pretty much over the flu in a day, so he was running around and aware while it was busily taking over the dads' g.i. tracks. I don't know how Arthur managed to stay relatively grumpy-free, as both Mark and I had the chills and needed to sleep most of last Sunday. Luckily, our friends the Wilds watched Arthur for most of the day. Mark shook off the flu quickly, but I had it for an extra day. I'm pretty sure that I killed most of the flora in my intestines, so I've been eating a lot of yogurt.

Halloween was very fun for Arthur. He did not go out, but he had a great time answering the door and giving out little candy bars (I think it helped that he didn't know that he was handing out waxy Hershey's chocolate). He was interested in all the costumes, and we were surprised at how many two year olds were out working the streets with their parents. We did have one scary moment that was straight out of a David Sedaris Santaland Diary, and I'll leave it at that.

Arthur now demands that I light the candle next to the gargoyle on the mantle and the ceramic jack-o-lantern every night.

This week we're continuing the Great Shelving Project (which was interrupted by the flu). The ultimate goal is to get all of my books out of the boxes in the garage.

Playing Favorites

Arthur is playing favorites. Although he will answer questions like, "What does a cat say?" with "'ow'', when I ask them (and "aw aw" for crows and "wack wack" for ducks), he will not say (and sign) when he's "All Done" with a meal. Which he will for Mark. He also seems to be eating more for Mark in the evenings.

WIcked baby.

Arthur does like to wrestle with me, and continues to ask me to catch him as he falls backwards.

He's also expressing so much interest in the Macintosh that today we checked out the book, "Arthur's Computer Disaster" from the library. For a library encore, Arthur climbed three flights of stairs.

In the physical development department, we've started measuring him and he's grown about a half inch in the last week. I'll have official numbers for his height and weight after the next wellness doctor visit, which isn't for a month or so.

And the award goes to...

Help! I'm raising a thespian!

Today, my finger got caught in the gap between a table top and its hinged leaf. Since this is the table with the electric keyboard on it that Arthur can play with, I wanted to show him that he could pontentially pinch his fingers. I pointed to the gap, put my finger between the wood planks, and said, "ouch."

Arthur upstaged me. After copying me and saying ouch, he moved to placing his fingers in the space between the tabletop and the table leaf and then holding up his finger and wailing like it had really pinched him. At first, I thought it had (until he smiled a 'got you' smile).

I guess I should learn not to mime.

On the color front, Arthur managed to correctly identify a white and a red bunny toy at Scarey Reading Hour. I was throroughly surprised, because given yesterday's performance, I expected him to shrug 'jenne se qua.' I held up the plastic toys and said, "Arthur, this is the red one and this is the white one; this is the red one and this is the white one. Which one is the red one?" He managed to choose the correct color three times before he got bored and went over to play with the Library's network sockets. Choosing the correct colors counts double, because he did it in front of other parents of 1 to 2 year olds.

Arthur Update

I can see that I need to re-read the books I have on child development. I continue to be confounded at things like

• why Arthur can point to a picture of a cat in the middle of a bunch of other animals, but he shrugs his shoulders (the sign for "I don't know") when I ask him which of two blocks is the red one
• why Arthur's favorite key on the electronic keyboard is the one that turns the red power LED on and off (and on and off and on and off and on and off...)
• Why Arthur will got close to an electrical socket, say "no," shake his head, and then touch the socket anyway
• why lights, which presumably he's never touched, are 'hotch', which places them in the same category as stoves, fires, pictures of fires, and freshly prepared oatmeal.

Jenn, a Montessori teacher, explained to me that differentiating colors is an advanced concept. I had already used colors in the fractions flashcards I made for Arthur.

At least I understand why Arthur smacked the lap harp with a colored block from a musical toy -- the musical toy makes music when you smack blocks into it, so all musical instruments must be played that way. Luckily, Arthur hasn't smacked my Dad's baby grand piano with a colored block (yet).

I've also learned (a little too late) that I shouldn't have started a pushing game with Arthur. He'd stand, I'd have one arm behind him, and then I'd push him backwards. Then he'd arch his back and look at everything upside down. He thought this was the funniest thing ever and I think I must have initiated theatrical faints for about twenty minutes. Now when he comes up to us we have to be ready for him to collapse backwards.

Oh, and I guess it's time to start the therapy fund. At one point in our house's past, someone drilled small holes into the floor and snaked coaxial cable into the living room, probably for cable TV. For the past month, Arthur has gone over to where the cables were hidden, pushed aside the furniture hiding them, and stuck the cable terminal into his mouth. I'm pretty sure The Fearful Parent Magazine would have something to say about that. I usually say, "Not for Arthur" and make him put the furniture back.

Anyway, yesterday evening Mark, Arthur and I were arranging living room furniture so that it had less of that warehouse feel. Arthur started playing with the cables. I went to the toolbox, got some tin snips, and -- snip! -- no more cables. Just little empty holes in the floors. The look of betrayal wasn't quite as bad as the one last year when Arthur realized the fries on my plate were going to go over his head and into my mouth -- but it was close. This evening he was still looking for the missing cables.

Smit h an d Hawke n

Scene: The Back Patio. John and Arthur are taking a break from using trowels to dig out dirt for a step.

Arthur: Uhhn! (Points and reaches for garden shears that John has moved about three times already).

John: No, Arthur. Those aren't for you. (Thinks about ways to explain why that don't involve pantomiming a severed finger.) See? (picks up safety locked shears; squeezes handle so the blade wiggles impotently against the anvil; runs index finger over the side of the blade.) Ouch. See, this part can cut you. Ouch.

Arthur: (Eyes go wide and he giggles) Ouch! (Reaches for shears.)

John: (Mentally slapping forehead) Ugh. You're not supposed to like it.

-- L A T E R --

Mark: What have you been teaching the child? He keeps pointing at things and saying 'ouch ouch.'

Three is a Dish Washer

I've been watching the scrub jays in are yard for the last few months, and wishing that we had more crows visiting. We had a lot of crows around the old house, but I had no idea that scrub jays lived in Eugene until we moved to the new house.

So today, the day of the new moon and the autumnal equinox, there were three crows in our back yard. (Insert spooky "oooh" here.) It had taken them about a week to locate the bird feeder in the ornimental cherry tree. Arthur and I got a pretty good look at them while an installation guy installed a new dishwasher. So I guess we'll have to re-write that old crow rhyme to include kitchen appliances.

Yes. It's true. We have a dish washer. It's wonderful, and already I don't know how I lived without it. Really. (Thank you Mom and Dad.)

Equinox Eve

Happy Equinox; I can't beleive it's only been a quarter of a year since we signed the papers on our new house. We're mostly in and living out of boxes. Not all of the paint is done and we still have some trim to finish. The old place still has some minor things in it that we'll have to taxi over to the new house.

On the Arthur front...

Arthur can walk -- sort of -- have I mentioned that yet? The last three weeks are sort of a blur. In any case, Arthur and I have a game where I'll help him stand, and then I'll say, "Ready? Three, Two, One!" and let go. He'll take a few steps and then more or less fling himself forward for me to catch. Sometimes I don't always get there in time and he tumbles onto the grass.

We also take walks to the local stores. Arthur can push his stroller about the length of a block. He's also acting like a boy; he really likes trucks and today he was very excited to find a tether-ball. And while he likes birds, airplanes seem to be better. He's climbing everything he can get to -- like the chase lounge, and most recently, the kitchen table chairs.

He's also quite the computer geek. He really wanted to play with the computer at the doctor's examining room, and he was very happy when he got a chance to bang on the keys of a Eugene Library Computer. He was very dissapointed that a spare monitor that was on the bedroom floor wasn't plugged in.

Oh, yes. At fifteen and a half months, he's figured out that electrical appliances don't work unless you plug them in first -- we have a select comfort bed and Mark says that Arthur plugged in the little air pump so he could hear it wheeze as it inflates our bed to rock hardness.

The cat is here in the new house, and she's been using her powers of gravity control for evil. I don't know how an eight pound cat can sound like a herd of elephants at 3 AM, and I suspect that she's figured out where the most resonant spots of the house are. That, and she continues to take delight in stepping on our heads. I slept much better the week she was still at the old house, and I've come to the conclusion that a good half of the bumps in the night that used to wake me up in the old house convinced that raccoons, tramps or theives were trying to get into the house were in fact Muriell.

As if that wasn't enough, I'm pretty sure that she's been teaching Arthur how to whine. We've been working on that one. When Arthur points and grunts at something -- usually food -- instead of just giving it to him we ask him if he would like more of whatever it is and we use the sign language for it. I think we're having pretty good luck using Skinnerian opperant conditioning to reward him with what he wants when he signs for it.

When Arthur isn't whining, he's saying some words. Probably his favorite word is 'no.' When he's just saying no to say no, I do try to turn it into a game by saying 'yes', and it usually goes back and forth with no and yes for a few rounds and then we switch to 'Daaad' and 'Arthur.' Arthur also says the word 'hot', which he combines with 'ouch' -- so he sounds a little Scottish and says, 'hoouch'. I've been playing a lot of Rex Harrison singing 'Why Can't The English Teach Their Children How to Speak;' we'll see if that has any effect.

The latest word I've been trying to teach Arthur is 'Gollum'; he thinks it's about as funny as I do.

Finished -- I think

Almost everything is out of the old house and in the new one. Or at least the new garage.

Almost nothing is out of boxes except for Arthur's toys and some clothing.

And we still haven't finished with the paint job.

And our internet connection isn't up yet at the new house.

At least the weather has been decent -- not too much rain and a reasonable temperature.

The Plan (No Promises)

Here's the plan for this weekend as I understand it. Since none of this has been written down in the Book of Big Decisions, it could all change (except for the U-Hall rental).

• FRIDAY
• Pack (as Arthur allows)
• Construct Boxes
• Pack books, plates, toys, laundry, past issues of Dragon Magazine, and embarrassing items...
• Paint
  • Walls and cabinetry in Kitchen
  • Window trim in Dining Area
  • Window trim in Living Room
  • Floor trim everywhere
• SATURDAY -- at the new house
• Pack (as Arthur allows)
• Construct More Boxes
• Pack anything Arthur picks up and thrusts at us
• Paint
  • Walls and cabinetry in Kitchen
  • Window trim in Dining Area
  • Window trim in Living Room
  • Floor trim everywhere
• SUNDAY -- at the old house
• Pack (convince Arthur packing means putting things into boxes)
• Pack piles of paper, computer stuff, even more toys, dirty laundry, past issues of The Space Gamer, and eye the dumpsters...
• MONDAY -- U-Hall Day
• Move The Big Stuff