Baby Olympics

Now that the winter olympics are over and I no longer have an excuse to check my trap-line for Johnny Weir's next costume or quit work at noon so I can catch the China v Sweden women's curling semi-finals, I've actually had to spend "quality" time with my family.  Realizing that I can only stand losing so many straight games of Candyland without having a breakdown, I've come up with the Baby Olympics.

Baby Olympics were inspired by Steve Holcomb, pilot of the US men's four-man bobsled team, which won a gold medal.  He looks like a meatball stuffed in a spandex body suit, with a beard.  In short, he looks like Grady in thirty years.  And I thought, if Steve can do it, so can we.

Actually, I haven't told my family about our olympic training regimen yet.  Right now, I'm scouting out the competition to see if we have a shot at the podium.  I joke, but parents do this all the time.  "Oh, your little Joey walked at five months?  Our Zeus walked at five weeks, then composed an original song about it."  I figured if parenting is always going to feel like a competition, why not get corporate sponsors and train for it?

As a baby, Dylan was always a heavy favorite for gold, or at least a strong contender.  She teethed, sat-up, crawled, walked, and spoke on or before the "normal" range.  She kicked a lot of diaper in most categories, but one friend of hers started walking at seven months old.  We had the IOC investigate and they found he was using performance enhancing formula and stripped him of his gold medal.  Dylan came out of the '08 Baby Olympics like Michael Phelps (with a lot of medals, not stoned).

Grady is another story.  He's the Uganda of slalom, the Jamaica of bobsled.  At eight months, he's toothless and can only sit up if you form his body into a tripod, and even then he topples.  Someone recently asked me if he was crawling and pulling himself up on things yet.  I just walked away.

Baby Olympics even extends to parenting.  I once read that Dave Grohl (see: Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures, etc.) could change a diaper in seven seconds.  "I can top that," I told Regina.  I can, but when I do the diaper is so loose that it leaks pee like a crab pot.  I'll have to be happy with the silver on this one (see: US men's/women's hockey).

The Eastside Gang might not make the podium every event, but we've got lots of grit and try.  If you come to visit and hear Dylan humming the National Anthem while Regina's mixing a bottle (another new competition), and I'm changing Grady out of his jammies and into his red, white, and blue spandex body suit, just put your hand over your heart and sing along, it'll be quite a show.

The Poop Card

Dylan has a new trick.  Whenever she's napping, or, rather, not napping, and needs an excuse to come out of her room, she plays her best card.  No, it's not the race card.  Telling us she can't nap because she's Scots-Irish-English-Brasilian-German really doesn't go to far with us.  Dylan, in a brilliant strategy, plays the poop card.  What can we do?  "I need to poop!" always works because A) we don't want to call her bluff and wind up with a turd in bed and, B) see A.

Normally, I'm working when Dylan goes down for a nap, so when Grady started running a fever last week and didn't go to daycare, Daddy took the call to stay home with the monkeys and witness, first hand, Dylan's nap avoidance techniques.  The other get-out-of-bed trick she uses is: The Random Question.  Usually, the question involves Santa, but sometimes it's, "What do you call your birthday?" (answer: April 24th), and is followed by the Mumbling Question, as in, "Where did Mommy mum mum uum...."

So, on the first sunny days of winter, I sat in the house with a crabby boy and a stir-crazy girl.  After the first day's stab at a nap, I decided Dylan needed a little outside time.  Alone.  "Daddy, I chewed on my sock," she told me as I tried to get her dressed.  Sure enough, in her bed, I found a soggy sock.  In the year's most obvious question, I asked, "You put this in your mouth?"  She looked at me like I'd just asked if she'd like cookies for breakfast.  "Save yourself," I said, "go play."

We spent our days with naps, poops, puzzles, coloring, chalk, and, when the fog would finally burn off, I'd send Dylan outside for a run around the lawn and a jump on the trampoline.  This only lasted two days, but the fog and Grady's fever kept us cooped up indoors for most of the time.  I completely understand why, in the far north of Canada when the snow melts in the spring, local authorities go door to door to see who's murdered whom over the dark, dark winter months.  No wonder Dylan's chalkboard illustrations of the family closely resembled police chalk outlines.

A fun as fevers, nap-tricks, and cabin fever are, my days with the monkeys wasn't all fun and games.  Grady's fever kept climbing and I finally took him to the clinic.  He had massive congestion and an ear infection.  Despite knowing what we were up against (and why we hadn't had a good night's sleep in a week), knowledge wasn't really power.

When Regina came in from work on Friday, she took one look at me and said, "Take me to bed or lose me forever."  Okay, she didn't, and I often confuse our life with Top Gun, but she was wise enough to tell me to get out of the house and go for a bike ride.  Instead, I played beach volleyball, then flew my fighter-jet super fast and made the fat guy in the control tower spill his coffee all over himself.

By tonight, Grady seems to be nearly over his fever and Dylan's been able to at least go outside and feed cows.  She even got to spend the afternoon (after another non-nap) with her cousins up the gulch and have a chocolate chip cookie dinner.  Watching your kids fight a fever (real or cabin) always sucks.  Grady just needed antibiotics, rest, and time, while Dylan just needed to figure out how to successfully play her Brasilian-Irish card.

Monster Truck Valentines

Valentine's Day is, by far, the most awkward of all holidays.  I'm never sure to what lengths I should go to impress my bride.  A chest waxing?  Private dinner at Chez Panisse?  A monster truck, suspended by a hot-air balloon, ride?  If I believe the media hype, nothing short of a twelve-carat diamond, twenty pair of frilly thong chonies, and a giant teddy bear holding a red heart submerged in Dove chocolate, will do.

My last non-awkward Valentine's Day was in 1993, just five days before I met Regina, and that nearly ended in a misdemeanor.  Since then, I've had mild panic attacks each February 13th.  Did I get enough?  Will the hot-air balloon hold the monster truck?  Is she still into Scott Baio lunch pails?  Will St. Valentine fill my stocking? (No, that's not intended to be innuendo.)  Of course, it always turns out fine ... small gifts, a great dinner-date, followed by food induced comas.  Ah, love.  But, honestly, the excitement of Valentine's Day is usually right up there with Arbor Day or carpet shopping.

This year, though, Dylan added a new and unexpected element to the day: she made it fun again.  It started with a Valentine exchange at daycare.  We spent the night before "making" cards for her buddies.  It made me think of the Valentine cards I used to make with my mom.  We'd spend hours glueing heart shaped doilies to red crepe paper, each personally decorated with glitter and crayon.  The memory depressed me, only because I sat with my daughter, taping M&M's to Walmart cards that she'd scribbled on.  We didn't even get to use yummy practical Elmer's Glue.

I got over my lack of Valentine's Day artisan skills as soon as I saw the loot Dylan collected.  Valentine's Day = Candy.  I did not know that, but it's good enough for me.  To reinforce the point, Regina brought home cupcakes that our neighbor -- a high school junior -- made and was selling at school.  If God laughed so hard that he shot milk out his nose, those milk drops would fall to earth in the form of those cupcakes.  That's how awesome they were.

Valentine's Day finally ended, after a four-day sugar bender, with a mommy and daddy night out.  Every Valentine's we go to New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro, one of our favorite restaurants, for some serious eating and excellent wine.  This year's meal was one of the best.  I won't go into the menu, mostly because I can't pronounce or spell half the things we ate.  I felt compelled to eat whatever Regina couldn't finish, so by the second course I had to loosen my belt, by the third I popped a belly button on my shirt, and by dessert the over-eating cramps started.  I could only say, "Oh, that was good .... Oooohhh, my stomach hurts," the whole drive home.

Now that I share my Valentine's Day with the two women of my life, I have a renewed sense of appreciation for the holiday.  Dylan and I get tons of sweets, Regina and I always renew our wedding vows (we don't, it just sounded sweet -- we do get a great meal though), and all without the dread of finding the perfect heart-shaped gift or the fear of a misdemeanor.

Ranch Diagnosis

We, like most ranchers, try hard to keep our cattle in the best health possible.  They're fed well, have clean water, are given salt and minerals to make up for anything lacking in their diet, and are vaccinated and dewormed regularly to prevent sickness.  If one happens to get sick, we try our best to treat it as quickly as possible.  There are some rare occasions when a cow or calf is sick and doesn't respond to treatments, or when one is unhealthy and we (or the vet) cannot determine the cause.  My uncle has two catch-all diagnoses for these animals.  If it's a calf, it must be an unclaimed twin.  If it's a cow, she's swallowed a wire.  Whether these two options are probable or not usually require further investigating, but at least they offer some kind of answer.

Grady has "swallowed a wire," or, in the non-cow diagnosis, he's teething.  Or so we thought.  He's been teething now for two months with no sign of a single tooth.  He started in December.  First, he broke his sleep-through-the-night rule, then he started drooling like a Labrador looking at a duck.  A tooth! we thought.  We ran our fingers across his gums every day, awaiting its arrival.  And we waited.  The drool piled up, our fingers got sore from Grady trying to eat them, and nothing.  It's nearly February and he's still as toothless as a crack-head.

We took him in for his six-month check-up yesterday.  You know those Test Your Strength: Swing the Huge Mallet as Hard as You Can and See How High the Ball Rises games at the fair?  That's like weighing Grady.  "How high do those scales go?" I finally asked.  Turns out, they go high enough, but Grady's a weight-savant.  97% in weight (and that's as high as our doctor's chart went).  If he were twice his age, he'd still be average weight.

No one at the pediatrician's office seemed concerned about his chubby-toothlessness, but Grady must have developed a little complex from all of the fat-jokes.  He spent most of the night, and morning, throwing-up like an actress getting ready for the award season.  Poor little buckaroo.  He's resting now, but it sucks to see your kids sick.  Unless, of course, barfing is symptomatic of teething.  If that's the case, welcome chompers!  Probably, though, he's just swallowed a wire.

G-Love

When my cousin, Scott, first moved to the ranch we gave him Lucky, his first horse. Like many Appaloosa horses, Lucky was night-blind. Unfortunately, he was also a little day-blind too. He had little cow-sense but was broke, sound, and willing to go. He turned out to be a good horse for Scott and a decent metaphor for the "new guy"; neither knew a lot about cows but both were willing to try.

Once, we were gathering cattle out of one of the alfalfa fields and a young cow bolted. Scott turned Lucky loose and the Appy, amazingly, spotted the cow and followed in hot pursuit. Greg and Grant trailed behind and when the cow ducked under a wheelline pipe, they eased up. Not Lucky. He pinned his ears back, leaped, and cleared the wheelline like he was in steeplechase. My brothers were shamed into spurring their horses on to do the same. When they all had landed safely on the other side and had the cow pointed back to the herd, my brothers looked at Scott like he was nuts. He didn't know that most eighteen-year old, blind Appys can't leap over small sticks, let alone a wheelline, and Lucky didn't know that Scott wasn't some old top-hand from the Rio Grande. The joke around the ranch was the neither knew any better. Scott was Lucky; Lucky was Scott.

Grady is the same way. He thinks that his big sister is the coolest thing since pee-pee tee-pees. We think it's because he doesn't know any better. Dylan pokes, smothers, head-butts, and smacks the little man around, but from the look on his face, you'd think she'd just offered a tub of applesauce and a warm bottle.

I was "in charge" of the rug-rats one day while Regina was out and turned my attention away for only a few minutes (I swear). When I turned back around, Dylan had stacked several large books on Grady's face, a giant, smothering pillow on top of that, and a blanket, which covered Grady's entire body, topped it off. My heart raced faster with each layer I pulled off. When I finally cleared the last, and largest, book from Grady's face, he was grinning ear to ear. Attention from my sister, his look told me, I love it!

This morning, Regina set Grady in his bouncy chair. Dylan was keeping him entertained and things were going well until Regina caught Dylan pulling the bouncy chair all the way to the floor, then boooiiiing, letting loose and using Grady as a human catapult. Fortunately, he's too heavy to really fly and he thought what his big sis was doing was the funniest thing in the world.

This mauling will continue, I'm sure, until he's old enough to retaliate. As long as he's happy with it, though, it's hard to get too angry with Dylan. She gets occupied with entertaining her brother, Grady's happy at being knocked around, and we get a few minutes of uninterrupted time to do things like use the bathroom or cook dinner. Besides, Dylan hasn't hurt him, yet. Maybe Grady is just lucky. Or, Lucky is Grady.

Stinky Pork Chops

As if naming your children isn't difficult enough, we've discovered the process of nicknaming to be equally as difficult. We've tried the shotgun approach, where we have them shoot a shotgun, then record the first word that comes out of their mouths when the recoil hits. Grady's was "Whaaaa," and so was Dylan's. No, wait, that's the wrong shotgun approach; what we've done is just try out a whole bunch of nicknames on our kids, and see which one sticks.

Dylan's nicknames started before she was born. We were in Mexico, Regina was pregnant, and the thing in her belly wouldn't stop flipping, jumping, and bouncing around. "Like a little jumping bean," I said, and viola, Dylan's first nickname, Bean, was born.

Just ask Dylan, and she'll give you the complete run-down on who-calls-her-what. "Mommy calls me Boo Boo or Stinky (I'm really hoping the latter one doesn't stick), Daddy calls me Sis, Eileen calls me Beanie-Weenie, Grandma calls me Dilly, and Julie calls me Bean." Whew. It's a lot to remember, and now Dylan's become so inundated with nicknames that she answers to just about anything.

The Hannas are notorious nickname givers. As is the case with most made up names, the nicknames we make up aren't always the recipient's first choice. I have friends who are hesitant to join us for our "cowboy lunch" because they don't want to learn what name we've given them. Like scientists naming new species of bacteria, we try to fair, clear, and concise. No one will confuse Spooky with Doodle or Andre with Mouse.

Grady, at six months, has already earned a few nicknames. Like Dylan, he received his first while he was still in the oven and we were in Mexico. Unlike is sister, who used the womb as her personal trampoline, Grady was a little more subdued (hell, cornered wolverines are more subdued), and, because of his easy nature and because Regina's belly was so perfectly round, we started calling him Turtle.

It was a cute pre-birth name, but hasn't really held. Now, he gets called Snorkel, Bubby, Pork Chop, Baby Brother, or Beef Cake. I don't really think any of those will stick, unless he never grows out of his baby fat, then Pork Chop might last.

I grew up being called Buzzard because I'd misheard the lyrics to a song and thought "Well, Mister," was "Well, Buzzard." An easy mistake, and I didn't mind the name. When you're seven, Buzzards are pretty cool. I was also called Juddy, which isn't really a nickname; almost every boy gets the "y" added on to his name, then he outgrows it. I outgrew Juddy in high school, then I turned thirty and it came back like a bad case of athlete's foot. Now, to most people in the Valley, I'm Juddy. Regina changed it Jubby when she saw how I wrote my name when I was five. I'll take Jubby any day, and I'm just glad that as I get older and fatter Pork Chop and Stinky are already taken.

Fat Babies

I hate to generalize, as all generalizations are stupid (Oh God, the English dork humor, make it stop), but it's true: Mexicans love babies. You can walk down any street in Any Town, Mexico, and everyone, especially the timeshare hawkers, will tell you how bonita or guapo your kids are. But what we learned last week is the only thing Mexicans love more than babies is fat babies. Hence, Grady loves Mexico. He spent last week getting pinched, adored, and squeezed by every tourist and local in Mazatlan.

Dylan, too, loves Mexico. Iguanas! Frijoles! Sand Snowmen! We stayed at a place that had loads of kids her age and we learned that children have secret signals they give each other. It took some super-decoding, but here's what we came up with: 1 cautious wave means "Can you ditch you parents and play?" 2 little waves means "Meet me at the kiddie pool in half an hour," and a shy look from between your father's legs means "Hey, you're not a child, you're a midget. I ain't fooled."

Dylan, through secret waves and bribery, made a few friends around the pool, despite only knowing Dora-Spanish. She'd ask, in Spanish, if they knew of any animals that needed rescuing, or if they had a backpack that turned into a kayak, receive blank looks, then jump on their backs for horsey rides. If only meeting adults were that easy. Then again, that's how I met Regina.

Our vacation wasn't spent, entirely, eating and swimming. Mazatlan is famous for its Pulmonias, which are just convertible taxis that look like a VW Thing and a Bumper Car had an illegitimate child. We took one downtown and cruised the Malecon like teenagers on a Saturday night (even if it was a Tuesday morning). We then pushed the stroller over bumpy sidewalks and down three foot curbs around the Old Town. There's an open air market there that's been around forever. The thing about open air markets is they are, literally, out in the open air. This means that the pinatas, sugar cane candy, pirated DVDs, and serapes are all out there. And so is the meat. Hog heads, livers, chicken feet, fish eyes ... sure, they're all on ice, but they attract the open air flies. We have a corner on the ranch where we drag all of our dead animals; even in July, it doesn't smell as bad as that market. We hightailed it home and made it back to the pool in time for the end of happy hour.

We were there for New Year's, which, if you have two children, means absolutely nothing. The best part was getting little wistful over breakfast on New Year's Day as we watched the vomit-stained party-goers make their walks-of-shame back to their hotels. To be young! we thought. As we were eating, a young, attractive couple came in and sat down. They'd obviously been out all night, but really didn't look any worse for wear. The guy asked Regina if we were just getting in from a night of partying as well. His girlfriend looked at him like he'd asked us if our children were for sale. She pointed at Grady in his car seat, "They have babies," she told him. Nevertheless, we chose to take it as a compliment that young people still look at us and think, "They might be able to go out and party all night," and not as an insult that we looked so disheveled people assumed we'd just been on an all night bender with our kids.

Life, or at least our week, in Mazatlan was great. Dylan and Grady got in plenty of swimming and telenovelas, and Regina and I got complimented on our ability to make "big babies." We ate like the apocalypse was coming, napped like we were retired, swam like the polar ice caps had all melted, and spent evenings in our underwear, watching the tangerine sun drop into the ocean. We're definitely going back, and if Grady continues his mashed-foods intake, he'll be the most loved baby in all of Mexico.