Elise’s department had their annual retreat this weekend, at Wequasset Inn on Cape Cod. We went down as a family, and I got to spend a bunch of time with the kids (photographic evidence available in the gallery) while E was in session. In retrospect, this could have been a disastrous trip, but it went pretty well. The weather was typical New England spring: temps in the 50s, wind, and sullen skies threatening rain whenever they weren’t actually disgorging fat raindrops. Despite that we managed to spend a fair amount of time on the beach. We hooked up with my old boss and buddy PK on Saturday afternoon, got the kids some ice cream at the Hot Chocolate Sparrow and then hit Orleans beach at low tide. PK showed Andrew how to dig for clams while I kept Maggie from disappearing into the marshes.
We managed to make a few new friends with the other families on the retreat; in fact, Andrew developed a very five-year-old crush on one of the girls. He expressed his affection by variously beating her over the head with driftwood, punching her arms and the occasional pantomime “I’m cutting you in half!” Still, when I asked him to identify his favorite part of the weekend, he responded only with “Kaitlin!” I imagine he’s going to ask about her tomorrow, too.

Whew. We’re on vacation in Las Vegas right now, and I’m finally decompressing from work and getting the house ready to sell. Not to change the subject, but if you’re looking for a lovely 3-bedroom colonial in Milton, we’ve got one for you. Buy it, please.
Before we left we threw a small birthday party for Andrew. “Small” turned out to be eight kids aged five years or less, plus six adults, which made the house feel plenty full. I have a few not-particularly-birthday-ey pictures up in the gallery, and here’s the key moment from the party:

That’s a hammerhead shark cake, by the way. Andrew wanted a “haunted shark” – he’s not really into being scared, but we’ve been reading some Scooby-Doo stories featuring ghost-and-zombie-type bad guys. So we got some Scooby-Doo napkins and left it at that. He also wanted the shark to be eating an acorn, and I gotta admit I have no idea where that one came from (unless we misunderstood and he actually wanted a squirrel shark. We managed to talk him out of that.

“I saw cars” – so said Maggie to me today, the first full sentence I’ve heard from her. Actually, she saw Cars – Andrew got the DVD for Christmas, and Maggie begs right along with him for me to put on for the gazillionth + 1 time. As soon as it comes on she starts wiggling her little butt to the music. I can’t help laughing when she does that, and feeling a little wistful that it’s only going to last a week or so. Then she’ll be on to some equally cute but slightly more mature thing.
I don’t have the Christmas video ready yet but there are a few pictures up in the Gallery.

We came through the time change fairly well – A & M slept until almost 6am EST today, which is better than we’d feared considering the number of early awakenings we had this week. Of course, we carved pumpkins tonight. Maggie, ever hungry for new experiences, really enjoyed it, as you’ll see.

This week, Andrew has demonstrated he’s developing a keen sense of humor. And by “keen,” I mean “less funny than a booger in my broccoli.”

I was sorting the mail on Saturday when he bounced up behind me. “Daddy, you want to hear a silly joke?”

“Sure!” I put down this week’s sheaf of pre-election cries for attention from the empty shell that passes for a Republican party in Massachsetts and turned around.

“How does a squirrel brush his eyeballs?” Andrew clasped his hands in front of him and leaned forward on his toes.

“I dunno, how?”

“He doesn’t!” Andrew giggled and put his hand over his mouth. “Want to hear a funny joke?” By this point, he was bouncing from foot to foot.

“OK.”

“Butt!” He pushed past me and ran upstairs.

I know, I know, he’s only four and he’ll get it eventually. And if he doesn’t, he might have a successful career as a sitcom writer.

Maggie, on the other hand, piled on the vocab this week. “It’s OK, It’s OK” she said when Andrew wailed after bumping his head. “Siiiih…ook, ook” is how we know it’s time to read. And she’s climbing on positively everything. We had to hide the plastic trike from her, since she had taken to standing on the seat and wiggling around. She dragged the bathroom stepstool into the living room and danced on it for a while tonight. And of course she’s figured out that Andrew yelps when she pulls his hair.

No video this week, but there is a new gallery from Mike and Nancy’s recent visit. I regret that I couldn’t take time off of work to be with them more. However, the pictures reveal that they had plenty of fun without me.

This week has been quite a rollercoaster for me, and when I say “rollercoaster” I mean mostly the downhill part with the crushing G forces at the bottom. I shouldn’t go into detail here, but something happened this week to remind me how lucky I am to have two healthy kids, and that I shouldn’t take them for granted. In fact, you should go hug your kids right now. G’head, I’ll wait.
Andrew has become more aware of music over the last couple of weeks. A few months ago he didn’t want to sing at all, I think because he could tell he wasn’t very good at it. Lately he’s become less self-conscious and has started enjoying music again. One barometer of this is what we call the Jammy Song. As long as I can remember (which really means “Since at least last Thursday”), Elise has sung a mashup of Queen’s “Another Bites the Dust” and MC Hammer’s “Hammer Time” to signal bedtime, with the lyrics “Jammy Time!” used in place of Hammer Time. As a baby, Andrew would clap along. As a three-year-old, he didn’t even want us to sing it. Now, he’s singing along with us. I also bought him They Might Be Giants’ Here Come the ABCs DVD/CD combination, and after a single listening I caught him singing snippets of the lyrics to himself. His favorite seems to be “E Eats Everything”, although he’s doing a fair job with “Alphabet of Nations” as well.
I hate to mention this, for fear of jinxing it, but Maggie has slept through the night for the past three days. We seem to be past the worst of the teething – molars, for all their utility, are no fun to grow – and the stuffy nose that moved in a couple of weeks ago has packed up and moved on. In fact, we’re starting to get into the Halloween spirit. As you’ll see in the video below, the kitchen was possessed for a while on Saturday.

Yesterday was Elise’s birthday, and we managed to sneak out for a romantic night of seafood and light shopping at the local temple to consumerism. Of course, the kids provided the major topic of conversation at dinner. As all you parents out there know, we can’t wait to get away from the kids so we can spend a couple hours talking about how lucky we are to have them.
Andrew did provide some entertainment in the form of an urgent phone call from the babysitter just as I had tucked into my mahi mahi. Andrew had begged a juice box, and of course Maggie wanted the same (she’s now saying “ooooou” for juice), and Andrew casually mentioned that “she might be allergic.” She’s not, of course.
Maggie was a tour de force of nap avoidance techniques yesterday – she giggled, she writhed, she took her clothes off. I spend half an hour trying to get her down, until Elise finally rescued me and stuck her in the car. She was much easier today, and when I came out I noticed that Andrew was playing quietly in his room. He had taped a small plastic bag to the outside of the door. I wondered who he had in there – hey, at least it wasn’t a tie on the doorknob – and when asked he told me that “that’s what I put on the door when I want to play by myself.” I turned to leave and he stopped me with “Daddy, let’s plant some grapes.” Never mind the bag, and never mind that he hates grapes. Just make with the plow.
Mags is heavily into assault by book this week; we can’t turn around without her shoving a Clifford or Thomas book at our knees. Even Andrew is getting into the act…

Tonight we went over to a family’s house for dinner. Mags pointed at the cat and said “ow,” which is her current version of meow.
I tell you, we are so hosed.

So in the million years since I’ve written about them, here’s what the kids have been doing:
Andrew tried riding his bike without training wheels. We went out to the park and I held him by the saddle and pushed a little while he leaned left and right and said “whoooooa!” a lot. He took one good fall but got back on, but I think he was glad to have the outriggers back on for the ride home. So was my back.
He’s also getting really good at writing his name – today was the first time I saw him write it with the letters more-or-less the same size and in a straight line. They’ve been working on this consistently at pre-school and he’s pretty much 100% with getting the “N” going the right way now.
In terms of toddler cuteness, Maggie is peaking right about now. Soon she’ll be a raging two-year-old; the other day she was just practicing saying “no” to me over and over again for no particular reason. At least she was smiling while she did it. But she’s got the dimples, and a valence of wild, slightly curly auburn hair, and I can tell she’s going to be a master manipulator of good ol’ dad.
Anyway, in addition to “yes” and “no,” she can say “duck” (just about every kind of bird is a duck, as well as dogs and other four-legged animals), “doooooown” and of course “mommy” and “dada.” She very much likes reading books; she made me read one of Andrew’s Cars books about five times last night. And she goes to bed a whole lot easier than Andrew did at her age, but I wish she’d stop signaling that she’s done with dinner by dumping her plate on the floor.
Someday, I’ll probably think back on this and think it was easy. Future James, get over it; you might have it hard in 2018, worrying about Andrew’s first date in the hovercar and what kind of self-portrait holograms Maggie’s posting on the Internet, but this ain’t easy either.

So this is a bit belated but as good an excuse as any to try out YouTube:

Conversation overheard between Andrew and Elise a few days ago:
E: “Andrew, you learned a couple of new words today. What do we call how a snake moves?”
A: “Um….slither!”
E: “Right! And what do we call it when the sailors on a boat put the captain off on an island and do whatever they want to do?”
A: “Um…calf roping!”
Perhaps a bit of explanation is in order: We’ve recently likened changing Maggie’s diaper to calf roping, since she really doesn’t like to lay still on the changing table. So that’s probably where he got it. Still, I think Calf Roping on the Bounty has a certain ring to it…