Christmas Reflections

During our post-Christmas debriefing, Regina and I were discussing our favorite part of this holiday season.  For me, it was the build-up.  Watching Dylan's Christmas excite-o-meter bump up another notch with each new open door on her chocolate filled advent calendar was the coolest part.  It was like watching someone blow up a balloon much bigger than you thought imaginable.  For Regina, it was Christmas morning.  When Grady received a gift he appreciated, he settled in and started playing, uninterested in the gifts, the toys, the chaos around him.  Dylan, on the other hand, tore open each gift -- I LOVE IT!!! NEXT!!! -- and watching the yin and yang of those two was the joy for Regina.

Let me rewind.  After our trip to Cabo, we returned and immediately jumped into super-holiday mode.  The first item on the list was the tree-cutting.  Often, that involves lots of peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate, dogs and dads roaming the woods like lost hunters, and a truckload of freezing kids.  This year, we braved it alone.  We slid and spun our way over backroads to get to the perfect super-secret tree spot.  We arrived with a triumphant chest pounding and I turned around to see both kids sound asleep in their car seats.  I slogged through the snow alone, found two good trees, and returned to a truckload of well rested children.

After tree and house decorating, the spirit of Santa really hit.  We had Christmas tunes playing on Pandora radio 24-7 (Regina's favorite, R&B Christmas.  Mine, "Little Drummer Boy" on loop).  Dylan got into the spirit of things by making up her own versions of Christmas carols.  Frosty the Snowman, apparently, is an Old Mermaid, and "Jingle Bells" has just one verse, and it's sung on repeat for hours on end.  Grady loves any music but bangs his head especially hard, like he's at a Def Leppard concert, whenever Christmas tunes come on.  At the Christmas Eve service, Grady crawled up to the alter and sat underneath the piano and danced while we all sang "O Come All Ye Faithful."  At church that night, he got to sit on Santa's lap.  He alternated between crying, because a thin Santa was holding him and not his Dad, and smiling, because, damn, that's a cool beard.  Dylan climbed on his lap and sat, stone-faced, for about five minutes; I think she was disappointed in his thinness.

And all this, of course, brings us to Christmas morning.  Santa had eaten the cookie, decorated with gummy bears and peppermints stuck into inch thick frosting, that we left out for him (oh, my gut), and had filled our stockings.  We shuffled out to the living room and Dylan realized that full stockings = Santa.  When we reminded her that Christmas is also Jesus's birthday, she nearly blew a gasket.  "It's Baby Jee-jus birthday? Yiiiii!!!!"  Grady found his perfect toy, a dump truck, and Dylan spun in a gift wrapped whirling dervish until bed time (mercifully, without any meltdowns -- another Christmas miracle!).  And when it was all said and done, Regina and I sat down and talked about the day.  It's too easy to race through Christmas without much reflection, especially with young kids in the house, and I was thankful that we could reminisce about the past month and put some perspective on the season.  And you thought our "debriefing" meant something else.   Shame on you.

Cruisin' Cabo

Our trips to Mexico have become so routine that we've established a few Mexico-holiday traditions.  Not "Mexican-holiday" traditions: we don't spend a day making tamales with our family, or watching luchadores hit each other with folding-chairs.  But, our traditions do revolve around food and folding-chairs, so it practically makes us local.

We generally bounce between the pool and the beach, then go out in the afternoon for an early dinner.  If Cabo had early-bird dinner specials, we'd shame the senior citizens with our prompt arrivals.  Then it's a stroll through town and off to bed.  When that routine happens year after year, it becomes tradition.

Grady's been to Mexico before, but not Cabo, and so he was initiated into the fraternity of gringos this trip. For starters, our Cabo-Thanksgiving tradition is eating at El Pollo de Oro.   Except for the taco-stand by the bus stop and the churro vendor on the corner, it's our favorite restaurant least likely to seat a gringo.  Meaning, it's awesome.  We forfeit the traditional turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie for mole' enchiladas, fish veracruz, ribs, and micheladas.  It's a great trade.

The expansion of our family has slightly changed or evolved our traditions.  Regina and I used to get barraged with requests to buy drugs and check out local strippers.  Add one child, those solicitations get cut by three-quarters, add another and they drop to zero.  Now we just turn down requests to see timeshare presentations or beach vendors selling fake silver jewelry.

Our pool traditions, too, have morphed from how many Dirty Monkeys is it possible to order during Happy Hour, to watching Grady cruise the pool chairs and seeing how high I can toss Dylan in the air (while we're in the pool, of course).  And, instead of Cabo Wabo for dinner and music, the Giggling Marlin for upside down tequila shots, and El Squid Roe for ... I forget, now it's Ni How Kai Lan in Spanish and reading in bed.

This isn't by any means a compliant.  I love watching Grady do laps in his lounge-chair playpen and seeing Dylan's confidence in the water expand to the point I get nervous.  And I'd trade a good mole' sauce and a caramel churro for jello shots any day (But the bacon-wrapped hot dogs from the street- stand? Not as good as it sounds.  I'd opt for a jello shot over those again).  And who knows, once Grady is able to swim around on his own, he may just fold up a pool chair and crack it over my head, just like a real luchador.  Now that would be a Cabo tradition worth starting.

And Now, Bad Poetry

I was cutting hay last summer,
Starting to go insane
From trying to beat the storm clouds
And getting My, My, My Poker Face out of my brain.

When I caught a glimpse of something
From the corner of my eye,
I had to do a double-take:
It was a bird that could not fly.

No, not an owl with a busted wing,
Or a lark run down while day-dreaming,
But an emu, yes, an emu,
And I instantly started scheming.

I'd catch that feral flightless bird
We'd have a unique pet
I'd take it for long walks on Sundays
And teach it to fetch and set.

So, I chased it with a 4-wheeler,
But it refused to be caught
It would not go into the corral
It occurred to me, "Emu's are dumber than I thought."

The emu?  Well, it disappeared.
It bested me in battle,
But then it showed up two months later
Living happily amongst our cattle.

This time I tried a new approach
I flanked it with my car
And Regina ran behind it
To ensure it couldn't go far.

Captured!  I put it in a trailer;
It loaded a lot easier than I thought
And I drove it to our house
Hoping I wouldn't get caught

For emu-rustling, is that a crime?
Could I go to the clink?
I started having second thoughts
Besides, what do emus eat and drink?

But I couldn't let it loose again,
I felt bad for the wing-ed freak,
And my kids think it is such great fun
To have a pet with a giant beak.

If you've never been up close and personal
To a prehistoric beast
Come by our house, but time's running out

The emu's center of our Thanksgiving feast.

Butt-births and Bears

Sometimes I take my job for granted.  An innocent, "It'll be fun for Dylan to go feed cows with me," turns into a week of fielding questions about butt-births and dead-piles.  I don't usually answer the tough questions well under pressure; I stammer out my answers and feel like Christine O'Donnell trying to explain Wicca.  So when Dylan's pre-school teachers ask me about our dead-pile, I usually just start talking about the BCS ranking system or what a great poem "Gunga Din" is.

As you may have guessed, Dylan saw her first live calf birth last week.  Dad, Dylan, and I were feeding the last herd of the day and we spotted a heifer that we thought might be getting ready to calve.  Our years and years of cattle-handling experience told us that we should keep an eye on her.  Oh, and the calf's front feet were Superman-ing out from beneath the heifer's tail.  Another sure sign that she was calving.

We pointed her out to Dylan, who didn't seem interested, and kept feeding.  The heifer hadn't calved when we finished, so I started knotting a make-shift calf-puller from some baling twine.  As I tied my last knot, a little, slimy black calf came shooting out.  Dylan's screams didn't spook the heifer and we waited as the calf shook off some of the goo and the mama licked it clean.

Miracle of Life!  Hooray!  And, on to the next chore.  But not for Dylan, she couldn't stop talking about it.  Now, she'll tell anyone who'll listen about the calf that came from its mommy's butt and it was covered in a plastic bag.  For a three-year old, she's pretty close, and for me, I see no reason to correct her.  If she turns thirty and still thinks that babies come from your butt, we may have to have "the talk," but not yet.

When she isn't talking about the mysterious butt-births at Hanna Bros., she's talking about our dead-pile. The dead-pile is exactly as it sounds: it's a place where our dead animals go.  A ranch cemetery, minus the headstones and manicured lawns.  Unfortunately, we had to take a calf there last week (not the same one we saw being born).  It's not uncommon to visit the dead-pile this time of year, but I guess Dylan hadn't really ever been there.  I told her that all sorts of dead things go there: cows, deer, once, a llama, and horses.  My mistake.  I should have left out the horse part.  I dug a deeper hole (no pun there, nothing at the dead-pile gets buried), when I told her that Olivia saw a bear at the dead-pile.  Now everyone, including her pre-school teachers, has heard the story of the dead bear (it wasn't), the dead baby calf, and the dead horses that inhabit our dead-pile.

Births, deaths ... they're normal conversations for ranchers.  But when I see the question on people's faces when Dylan brings these topics up, I realize most three-year olds -- hell, most adults -- don't see new life and death on a daily basis.  At least, when the time comes, and I'm asked to sign the pink sex-ed permission slip, I'll have nothing to worry about; it'll all be old news to my kids.

*#$! My Daughter Says

People say weird things.  Want proof?  There are television shows dedicated to weird things fathers say (*#$! My Dad Says), books dedicated to weird things kids write (Mortified), and people sing about weird topics (Rock Me Amadeus/Safety Dance).

Dylan is no exception.  She spouts out random things like a homeless drunk.  Yesterday, she named our couches.  Our living room couches are Kylie and Dalton ... our friends' children.  Fair enough.  She must have run out of friend ideas, because the other couch got tagged with the name Nibeelyoutz.

This morning we put on a new shirt for pre-school.  I cut off the tag and she wanted to keep it.  It read "Fun Clothes For Cool Girls."  Dylan took one look at it told me it was written by God.  She'll also tell me that any gift for her was from "Baby Jeejus."  That one might be my fault for watching too much "Talladega Nights."

I figured I needed to start writing her deep, zen-like comments down when she looked up at me one day and asked, "Daddy, how you got all those hairs in your nose?"  Such an angel.

When my nieces started school, the teacher told the parents that she'd only believe half the things their children told her about their parents if they only believed half the things the children said about the teacher.  Great advice, and so far, in pre-school, Dylan hasn't come home with anything scandalous.  Although, I went to pick her up last week and the teacher asked what happened to our fish.  We don't have a fish, and I told her so.  Apparently, Dylan told the class that her fish ran away from home.  I figured the fish story was fine, especially since she'd just told a stranger in McDonald's that she went to school in Africa.

The best, or worst, happened when my cousin Kerri came up for a visit.  Kerri was wearing a shirt I'd call "puffy," but I think my wife would say "peasant top."  It was a new shirt (are girl shirts called blouses?  I'm never sure.) and, I think, Kerri kind of liked it.  Until Dylan told her, "Pretty soon you're going to have a baby."  Thankfully, Kerri has a sense of humor.  She swore she'd never wear that shirt again and thanked Dylan for her honesty.  I'm sure she won't be back to visit until Dylan's out of the house.

I'm going to keep writing down all the weird stuff Dylan says, just let me trim my unsightly nose hairs first.

Siskiyou Golden Goodness

I can't believe this year's fair is already over.  I still have corndog catsup stains on all my good shirts, and Dylan is reeling from the shaved-ice sugar implosion that she mainlined every day she went.  Grady even joined the fun and had his first corndog ... although that may have been a bit too much for him, considering the two days of diaper-bursting doo-doo we suffered through.  He was a brave little cowboy, though, and didn't complain a bit that he had to miss the diaper derby.

Regina and I have our fun, too.  Not back-in-the-day, stay out late and sleep in the back of a pickup fun, but, instead, responsible parents of two, home by ten fun.  But Dylan, a few inches taller than last year, was privy to an entirely new set of rides, and, consequently, a whole new realm of fun.  I'd always thought she was brave, but she really tested her mettle at the carnival.  We'd hit the super-slides, then run to the Dizzy Dragons, slow down a bit with a spin on the carousel horses, two more slide trips, grab a big kid for a bone-crushing ride on the Bumper Cars, then hop over to the Dragon Roller-Coaster.  She was riding the latter one hot afternoon with her friend Zeppy.  I ran to the truck to grab some water and when I returned I noticed the operator had stopped the ride to tell Dylan something.  I asked Sean, Zeppy's dad, what was up and he told me that Dylan had been standing on the ride.  I cringed.  Sure enough, the dragons took off and as soon as the tail hit the corner, Dylan popped up in her seat.  She looked like those crazies who stand on the wings of airplanes: forward lean, hair blowing in the wind, eyes squinting.

Zeppy wanted in on the daredevil action, so he tried a barrel-roll on the super-slide.  The skreeeeech of skin on hot slide sent shivers down my spine and he wound up with blistered fingers for his cool trick.

Regina and I sing, to Dylan, the only line we know from the late '80s rap song by L'Trimm: "We like the cars, the cars that go boom."  It's an awful song, but Dylan likes the line and has fun playing with the lyrics.  "I like, I like, the kitties in the room."  "I like, I like, the bucks that go boom."  And so on.  This is mostly irrelevant, except it helps explain Dylan's favorite ride in the carnival.  I don't even know the name, we just called it, "The Cars That Go Boom."  It was a pretty simple ride: colorful cars going around in a circle, except they had crazy hydraulics that made them bounce like Dr. Dre's Impala.

Once Dylan got on, it was hard, even for the hardened carnies, to get her off.  Once, after her second-straight ride, she hopped down, grabbed a giant stuffed monkey from the carnie's stash of giant stuffed monkeys, and climbed back in the cars.  She buckled in her monkey and took off, talking to the monkey for the entire ride like they were out for a Sunday drive in their hooptie.

After five straight days (with a few two-a-days thrown in), we'd done all we could do at the fair.  There were a few rides that Dylan was just a few inches too short for this year, and Grady's belly ought to be corndog-ready by next August, so we have plenty to look forward to.  We'll be there, in our shaved-ice stained shirts, riding in the cars, the cars that go boom.

A Dylan Day

We had a few thunderstorms this week and it slowed our super-spectacular farming operation down a bit.  The rain took me off the swather -- and away from my Harlequin Romance books on tape, damn you, rain! -- so I went to town to watch Dylan's swim lessons.

Regina picked a nice shady spot on the lawn for Grady to crawl roll around on and we watched, from a safe distance, as about ten little tadpoles floundered around in the shallow end.  As Etna's is a country-pool, the city feels that any water temperature above that of a high mountain glacier-melt lake would do the children a disservice.  Most of the kids in the lesson just shivered, or whined that they wanted out.  Dylan just bounced ... the entire time.  We could power a Lady Gaga concert with the energy she creates during swim lessons.  And it's a good thing she burns energy with her bouncing because she doesn't burn much listening to the teacher or practicing the actual things she should be doing, you know, like swimming.

Because of her short attention span and the Arctic temperatures, Dylan (and most of the class) wanted out of the pool.  I thought she was organizing a mutiny, instead she was wrestling with her buddy, Ashton, when she was supposed to be listening.  I started writing apology notes to all her future teachers.  Regina and I kept our distance from the lesson and just watched through binoculars, otherwise we'd get bombarded with, "I have to go to the bathroom," or, "I think I left something in the oven," or, my favorite, "Those Cumulonimbus clouds in the distance look ominous.  There will probably be lightning soon; we should leave now, just to be on the safe side."

As a treat, we decided that a lunch at Dotty's was in order.  Now, Dylan, like most three-year olds, says some pretty random things.  She'll ask me if I know how to pronounce words like, "daddy," or "Dylan." "Daddy, can you say 'Daddy'?  Say Daaa ... deee.  Good.  Now say, 'Dylan'."  Our friend, Wayne, came in for a burger and joined us at our booth.  Just as Wayne took a big bite of Cowboy Burger, Dylan said, apropos of nothing, "My Mommy has really big ...."  I'll stop right there.  Dylan didn't stop right there, and I shot ice-tea out of my nose I was laughing so hard.  Regina turned red and Wayne, ever the gentleman, swallowed and politely said that he wasn't going to agree or disagree with that.

The day was topped off with Dotty's soft-serve cones and Grady got his first taste of ice cream.  He liked it a little too much and I think the magical powers of it helped sprout his third tooth and has him (nearly) crawling.

I can't say that I was happy that we had so much hay get wet, but the little respite from counting how many squirrels I'd pureed that day while listening to bad crime fiction was nice.  The clouds all blew away and I've been hauling, baling, and cutting hay since, but I'm already planing on my next lunch at Dotty's, and if it's with Dylan, and friends are present, I'll be sure to get take-out.