Dispatches From the Ranch

Child Labor

2012-01-22T13:37:00.000-08:00

The game is played like this: 2 kids, 2 shovels, 1 cow pasture. Each player may stand no more than 10' from the other. When a player finds a fresh pile of cow manure, player must strike the pile with the back of the shovel and splatter opponent. After 1 hour, player covered in lesser amount of poop wins. Or this: 2 players, 2 bb-guns. Ok, you probably know what happens next, right, One-Eyed Mike? This is a small sampling of the games I played growing up. Not once did I sit for a game of Monopoly, but Rat-Batting? A little too much. Some "games" were thinly disguised ways of my parents getting free ranch-work. Castrating calves is fun if you save the fuzzy little scrotums for Evel Knievel action figure helmets! I bought it then, and now Dylan is all in on the concept, too.

I haven't sold her on the fuzzy helmet idea, yet; she still is a little freaked by the bawling and clatter of working cattle. Grady's the same, and I can't blame either. Cattle work is a messy, loud day. Grady, when he joins us in the corrals, simply yells at the cows (or me), then sobs. Dylan turns her head, draws dinosaurs on the back of vaccine boxes, finds a happy place -- then falls asleep. Sometimes, though, I'm able to get some work out of her. Remember the game "Pick up Sticks"? I don't either, but I told Dylan it was a game all kids played and it was easy to learn. I just put her in the feedlot and told her, "Go pick up sticks." We piled branches while her pink school-shoes and white tights got covered in "dirt" (remember, it's a feedlot). We had a blast. Dirty work that culminates in a giant bon-fire, what could be better?

Sometimes, especially if there's a very special episode of Team Umizoomi on, it's hard to get either kid out of the house to help me. I have to result to bribery, which I'm not above. With Dylan it's simple: clothes and candy. So, I stuff my vest pockets with Tootsie Pops, Regina packs a snack bag, and Dylan gets to wear a tiara and a tutu for her workwear. Nothing says "cowgirl" like a pair of Wranglers, a Carhartt jacket, and a pink tutu spattered in manure.

Grady's starting to work with me a lot more, but at his age, there's little I need to bribe him with more than, "You want to hang out with Dad? Come with me!" I'm sure I'll be packing a snack bag full of candy soon enough.

Until Dylan is big enough to swing a shovel or pack a bb-gun, we'll keep her in cowgirl-princess workwear and hopped up on candy. And I'll be getting the one thing that has kept agriculture alive in the U.S. for the last one-hundred years: free child-labor.

Nariz Naviblah

2012-01-01T19:57:00.000-08:00

This year for Christmas break, we went to Mazatlan. We made our grand entrance into the country with a plop. No, it wasn't the sound of our plane bouncing its wheels on the tarmac; it was the sound of the contents of Grady's full diaper spilling onto the floor as we were trying to get through customs. When Dylan was younger, the sounds of her crying would guarantee us a quick escort through customs without any hassles. Apparently, the smell of Grady's poo has the same effect. We breezed through, no problemo.

The morning we left home, it was 8 degrees. The week before, we'd had nothing but bone-chilling fog that wouldn't burn off until late afternoon. We needed a good thawing and spent our first day or two regaining the feeling in our extremities. Dylan and Grady gathered seashell ornaments for the little Christmas tree we brought. After our tree was decorated, we figured we should make an attempt at blending in with the locals by brushing up on our Spanish. "Un tequila y limon, por favor," Regina repeated, over and over. I'm not sure what it means, but it seemed to make her happy, so I'd add, "Yeah, sounds bueno," and Dylan would throw out her version of Merry Christmas by telling everyone we saw, "Nariz Naviblah."

We rented a car and spent afternoons exploring downtown Mazatlan. I thought we'd head north, out of town, for the Advanced Elusive Driving Techniques, Cartel Experience class that the resort offered, for that "real Mexican experience you'll never forget!", but Regina navigated us to the historical downtown instead. Dylan grabbed her purse full of pesos and searched for her perfect toy (at one point she tried to buy a stuffed kangaroo. Nothing says "Mexican vacation" like a kangaroo.), while Grady and I found a shop that made homemade salted caramel and coconut ice cream. I was pretty sure, at that point, that we'd never leave.

Christmas day was perfect. Santa came to our room and left presents, then Mexican Santa came by the pool that afternoon to dole out more gifts. Given Grady's Santaphobia, we let him skip sitting on this one's lap. Dylan was given a make-up kit, which she promptly applied liberally to her face. The yellow lip/neck gloss looked okay, but the purple unibrow was a little much.

Grady and I took a little afternoon snooze, then went back to the pool to find Regina and Dylan. They weren't in their usual places (Regina soaking up sun, Dylan leading a game of tag in the shallow pool), so we headed for the beach. We were distracted by shouts and screams and I assumed that an iguana had wandered into someone's pool bag. Instead, I found a big white dude wielding a club and beating the snot out of a pinata while a line of small kids, Dylan included, cheered him on. Regina told us that the little kids had gone through three rotations and couldn't crack it, so they called in some Jim Thome ringer to take a few swings. "I wish that was me," I jealously whispered. He spilled the pinata's contents with a few expert swings and the kids dove in.

There's nothing wrong with an uneventful vacation. Last trip, I got food poisoning from ceviche and pulled over by a cop -- two things I'll never forget. So, this trip, when nothing happened, we were relieved. We ate great seafood, we expertly lounged by the pool, we built terrible sandcastles -- all the things that should happen on vacation -- and it was perfect. Regina's tanner, I'm fatter (mmmm, flan), Grady's addicted to seafood, and Dylan keeps asking where her new make-up kit is.

A Very Callahan Christmas

2011-12-18T21:07:00.000-08:00

Aside from fugly sweater contests and eggnog shooters, the Callahan Grange Christmas Party is one of our favorite traditions. The Boliver crew puts together a terrific evening that's heavy on Christmas cheer: great food, tons of desserts, and a visit from Santa. The Santa visit is my favorite part, not because he lets me sit on his lap (Which he doesn't, anymore.), but because of the commotion he creates. The older kids start buzzing around like smacked tuning forks as soon as someone mentions that he's on his way. The mid-younger kids are the most fun, because they are the most confused. Santa is still just a big freaky stranger to them, but he's also the dude who doles out gifts. And the littlest kids really have no idea what's in store for them. One minute they're chilling with a sippy cup, the next minute someone plops them on a stranger's lap and tells them to smile for the picture. I'd be pissed, too, if that happened to me.

Because this is a Callahan event, we can always expect something unusual to happen. One year Santa seemed to be a sixteen year old boy. Jolly, yes, but chubby and hairy, no. Another year I think Santa had braids. But this year's Santa nailed it, right down to the genuine home-grown white beard and Mrs. Claus entourage. Dylan was in awe. Fortunately, she's quit asking Santa for random items (2009: a turtle), but now has a "go-to" toy whenever anyone puts her on the spot (2010, 2011: a dolly).

The fear of Santa torch was passed smoothly from Dylan to Grady and the boy did not disappoint. He didn't necessarily cry when we plopped him on St. Nick's lap, but rather howled and looked like a man fighting for his life. He squirmed, twisted, and fought like a cornered wolverine. Santa maintained composure and said, "Ho, ho! He's wiggly!" while he looked at me with eyes that begged, "Please help."

But, like I mentioned, it wouldn't be a Callahan Christmas without a twist, and we were treated to an extra-special one. This year, we ate upstairs in a building that probably was around when Jesus was born. Eating upstairs is a lot like getting stuck at the kids' table for Thanksgiving. There were a handful of adults who were "supervising," and a whirlwind of kids, all running around at full speed. I kept thinking, "Some kid's getting stitches tonight." I would have been right, I'm sure, but just when the energy peaked, the power went out. The room instantly turned dark as the inside of a cow (that's dark). Kid's screamed, parents scrambled, and soon everyone was rounded up and hurried downstairs.

Luckily, what Callahan lacks in population, it makes up for it in ingenuity. Candles, flashlights, and maybe even a flare, were lighted and the Grange transformed from a dark cave to a cozy Christmas. We stayed and the soft lights and power outage made everyone a little giddy. It felt like a real Christmas party; we didn't break into any spontaneous caroling or pause awkwardly under the mistletoe, but the kids got to visit with Santa and Regina and I got all the benefits of a great Christmas party without the nasty eggnog shooter hangover. Win-win. Merry Christmas.

Let the Games Begin!

2011-11-22T20:47:00.000-08:00

I came in from feeding cows last weekend and, as casually as a UC Davis campus cop pepper-spraying a crowd, Regina informed me: "It's begun."

I knew exactly what she meant. It really could only mean one thing: Potty Training. The thing about starting is that there's no turning back. It's a big commitment. Your brain pushes out all thoughts except for pee and poo and you turn into a parenting parrot, chirping, "Want to go pee-pee?" "Polly want a poo-poo?" It's not that we are in love with changing diapers, but to be honest, we're used to them. I don't gag anymore and sometimes changing a diaper can be cathartic. Plus, it's a hell of a lot cleaner than teaching a boy to crap on a toilet.

So now Grady's trucking around in his sister's old pink pull-ups and wondering why we incessantly ask if he has to go poopy. We started off with a grand-slam. Day 1, 1st Toilet Sitting -- Grady pooped! I acted excited and even gave him a few M&M's ("A Candy For A Dandy"), but I'd been burned too many times by Dylan when she was potty-training to really celebrate. Sure enough, Day 1, 2nd Toilet Sitting -- Grady peed on the floor before I could get him seated, splashed around his piss puddle with his hands, sat on the toilet and did nothing, then, when I took him off, peed more on his clothes. Sigh.

Potty-Training is Exhausting!

Regina and I are learning that potty-training in cold weather is no picnic. First, there's no peeing outside, which is what all country kids do. Dylan had a pee (and sometimes poo) tree designated for said purpose. You can spot it, it's the one with the vibrant green leaves and dead grass around its base. We could send Grady out in the rain and tell him to use the pee-tree, but the gale-force winds would probably topple him. Inside, when Grady stands tall, his weinus is still 6" lower than the rim of the toilet, so everything has to be done seated. And when little boys are seated, their little junk doesn't "dangle" down. When I sit in front of the little man and encourage him to push like we're in lamaze class, I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. If that thing goes off, I'll take a direct pee shot to the chest.

I made the mistake today of catching Grady mid-poo, taking off his pull-up, and putting him on the toilet. No, no, no. Bad idea. His legs, butt, the toilet seat, and a 3' radius around the toilet were smeared in his doody. All I could yell was, "Help!" as Regina ran in with a pack of wipes and a hazmat suit.

There's no turning back and we look forward to the day of skid-marked chonies rather than poop-filled diapers. With a little patience, and a whole lot of 409, we'll make it through this alive.

Mia Hamm-Bone

2011-11-06T20:33:00.000-08:00

Dylan's just completed her first ever organized sport: pee-wee soccer. Unlike t-ball, which is slow and painful to watch, pee-wee soccer is a fast-paced, nail-biting, painful sport to watch. At one point during the season, I thought wagering on the games would spice up the action. Apparently, it's frowned on as we "don't keep score" and doesn't promote "good sportsmanship." I had to be a little stealth about it, but I managed to offer Dylan five candy bars of her choosing if she scored a goal. Sure, some would call that "bad parenting," but you should have seen her hustle. One of the other dads heard my motivational strategy and doubled the offer for his son if he would, for once, "Just kick the damn ball." Both kids burned off a lot of energy trying, and both dads never had to pay up, so win-win.

This season, the league had seven teams. It seems like a lot, but consider there are only five players to a team. Pee-wee soccer often looks like a rugby scrum, with every single player, goalies included, roiling around a ball that no one seems to be looking for. Limit the number of players and you limit the size of the scrum -- it's good logic. The fun thing about our league is that if you have an extra kid, say, one that's too young to play yet, no one cares if the younger sibling throws on a jersey and plays for a while. We tried to keep a short leash on Grady, but he often wandered out onto the pitch, much like a streaker or lost cat, and disrupted the games a few times.

We started the season with just one practice. It began with no one listening to the coach's instructions and ended with everyone using the sideline cones as hats. Christina, the coach, has the patience of a saint. After that practice, she asked if we should try another before our first game. "Would it matter?" I asked. It wouldn't, so we didn't. What the Pacific Power Blue Jets lacked in talent and skill, they made up for it in lack of concentration and goofiness. We knew we were in for it when, upon arriving to our first game, I spied the other team running passing drills and stressing "teamwork." It was like playing against a German olympic squad. "Klaus, why are you not running? Stop crying! Teamwork!" "Nine, Dietra, stay in your zone." Needless to say, they kicked our butts. The Blue Jets spent the entire game picking the ball out of the back of our goal. That team soon became known around the league as The Team That No One Liked.

The Blue Jets only could get better from there, and they did. Dylan, as a forward, is a good player. She's aggressive, likes to run, and got to where she could dribble and run (for a while). The next game she even scored a goal (this was pre-candy bribe). But, when Dylan played anywhere but forward, her attention to the game fell apart. As a defender, she's indifferent and as a goalie, she's distracted. "What's going on over on that other field?" seems to be her only thought. I couldn't even offer a candy bar bribe that she'd buy into as a goalie, that's how little she liked the position.

The Blue Jets improved significantly as the season progressed. If our games were two, instead of four, quarters long, we'd of had a winning record. But, while other teams replenished electrolytes and talked game strategy at the breaks, our team took the cones and chased each other around the field, pretending they were unicorns. They were so exhausted by the third quarter that no one wanted to run anymore.

The last game ended with cupcakes, candy, and trophies. Dylan was awarded "Most Enthusiastic," which is coach-speak for The Kid Who Won't Stop Running. Dylan still sleeps with her trophy and talks about the goal she made, so the experience was a good one. The Blue Jets could care less what the final scores were or how they played. They had fun, they spazzed out, and now they're ready to hone their skills in the off-season so they can collect on those candy-bar bribes.

The Routine

2011-09-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

The calves are weaned, the hay is (nearly) in the barn, and our back porch smells like baby chicks (sounds cute, smells awful) ... it must be fall. It also means that the kids are back on The Routine. No more of this sleeping in until 6:30 -- no sir-ee. We are on the clock these days.

And by on the clock, I mean this: I try to to sleep in as long as possible, Regina wakes up at some horrible hour to run, and, usually when I just hit REM sleep, Grady starts yelling for milk. And The Routine begins. Grady gets his milk-fix, a banana, and a clean diaper (usually not in that order), then he's off on his own to go roll cigarettes or whittle. It doesn't matter, my attention is now on the girl. Dylan is pretty good at getting up, but pretty bad at getting going. She tells us she's going pee, then will spend ten minutes making faces in the mirror. All the while we just think she's constipated until Regina goes and checks on her. Then I ~~have~~ get to pick out her outfit for the day. I usually choose a skirt, then grab fourteen shirts that I think have the possibility of matching and show them to Regina while she's showering. Next, I do her hair.

My brothers used to have illustrated diagrams of the four hair styles they could pull off. Their girls would point at one (pig tails, pony tail, side pony, or top pony) and they'd oblige. I don't have a cool cheat-sheet, so every morning is a new adventure in hair styling. I try to get away with the easiest, the pony tail, but end up getting conned into something elaborate (for me) like a braid. Dylan keeps asking for a side pony, but I feel like I have to draw the line somewhere. I know, the 80s are cool again, but there are just a few styles that should have stayed there.

Dylan, now, is an old hand at pre-school. Her dad, however, isn't. She'll remind me for a week that show and tell is on Friday. Usually by Tuesday we'll put something she can share in her backpack. Then, come Friday, I have a trip to the bakery on my brain and the backpack gets left in the car. Dylan's been carrying around a shed lizard skin for three weeks now, just waiting for her time to shine.

She's also learning jokes, and so we've been perfecting her stand-up routine. Right now she has a solid fifteen minutes, but it falls flat after that. Well, right now she has a lot of "conceptual comedy." This means she understands the cadence of the set up, but doesn't think the joke clear through to the punchline. I get lots of: "Knock-knock." "Who's there?" "Giraffe." "Giraffe who?" Long pause, then laughter, "Giraffe carrying a monkey!" It isn't Richard Pryor, but I laugh anyway.

I'm learning things at pre-school, too. No, I'm pretty good with my colors (just not matching them), but I learn things that most parents never need to know. For example, last week the teacher told me that we had a dead calf in one of our pastures and it was starting to stink. Sure enough, I went down and checked and she was right. Pre-school: it's good for everyone.

Grady is back at the Greatest Place on Earth (daycare) and is loving the constant attention and hot toddler babes. The kids come home either energized or completely wiped out. If they want to party, Regina turns them loose with the chicks. Grady's gentle, but so was Lenny in Of Mice and Men. Regina now calls him King Kong because he wants to hold those cute little chick soooooo badly, but his grip goes from 0-10 without much in between. And while Grady tries to squeeze them, Dylan tries to keep them all bunched together, like Mick, Greg's Border Collie. If they're too exhausted, Grady gets a knife and a hunk of wood and Dylan works out a few Knock-Knock punchlines. By then, we're all exhausted and we go to bed, ready to try it all again in the morning.

3 Lake Challenge

2011-09-06T20:41:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, Regina and I decided that we'd go to a different lake in either the Trinity, Russian, or Marble Mountain Wilderness areas each summer. By the middle of August we hadn't done so much as a drive over Shasta Lake, and we knew we had to act quickly or we'd be hiking through snow drifts.

We have a few limitations: Despite my large ears and great ass, I'm not a mule and won't carry all the gear required to spend the night, so the lake has to be a day hike. I'm fat, so long hikes are out. We could ride horses in, but of the fourteen or so horses mooching off the Bench H gravy-train, I'm not sure we have three or four that could make it up a mountain trail. So we hike.

Lake 1:

After yet another failed attempt at getting to Paradise Lake, we quickly decided on Campbell Lake. I don't know if hiking makes Dylan nervous or excited, but something about it makes her chatty. Weird-chatty. She talked the ENTIRE hike. She talked to Regina and me, she talked to herself, she talked to her dolly (of course she brought a dolly), she talked to the few people we passed. It was over eight miles to the lake and back of this: "You want to hear a song? Here are your choices: alphabet, monkey in a tree, or butterfly."
"How about the monkey one," I'd say.
"I don't know that one. Here's the alphabet song. Sings... You know how to say alphabet in Spanish? It's Butterfly."
"I don't think that's right," I'd say between deep breaths.
"You know how to say butterfly in Spanish? It's Cabootyloo. Want to hear another song ..."
And on, and on. Regina finally snapped. "QUIET! You hear that? It's just the wind in the trees! Isn't that nice? And peaceful? Listen, just listen. Please!"
"Want to hear a song about trees?"

Lake 2:
This one doesn't really count because we go to Lake Siskiyou every year, but the following weekend we loaded up the nieces and nephew, and the kids, and went to Mt. Shasta. There's no hiking required to get there, and there are giant bouncy toys in the water that some old fat guy tried to bounce around on and instead looked like a bad audition tape for "Wipeout." And, man, it really wore me him out.

Lake 3:

Paradise Lake has been our golden ring -- only because every time we decide to go there, there's road construction blocking the road in. So we slipped past the loaders and backhoes and made it to the trailhead. It's half the distance to get to as Campbell, but twice as steep. So much so that Dylan was quiet the first mile in. Then her little legs warmed up and the rambling started. I packed Grady and he spent most of the hike removing my hat or dropping his in the trail behind us. As if the hike up weren't tough enough, hat-retrieving leg-bends with an iron weight on my back about did me in. Paradise Lake was aptly named -- at least I felt like I was in paradise when I took Grady out of his pack and scarfed down two burritos.

So there you have it, two new lakes, one summer. I'm not sure if that makes us exempt from hiking in 2012, but you can bet that we'll be gunning for a new lake anyway. Regina will study her maps and find something only lost PCT hikers have ever seen. I'll be in the round pen, trying to get a horse or two ready enough to ride.

Five Days of Fair

2011-08-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

The carnies have snubbed out their last cigarettes, the corndog grease has been carefully preserved for next year, and the chicken poop has been hosed out of the poultry barn -- the fair must be over. Fair time is always a little bittersweet: kids never want it to end, but, like holiday weekends in Amsterdam, if it lasted just one more day they'd probably end up in a gutter. On Saturday, I explained to Dylan that there was only one more day left of the fair. I should have kept my trap shut because it led to a twenty minute conversation on why we can't go to the fair every day of the year. The Amsterdam analogy didn't work so well on her either.

This year, we were fair-heros, at least to Dylan and Grady. We took them every day. We learned that Grady loves sprint cars, but hates the earplugs we made him wear. This made for him being happy-sad-happy-sad at fifteen second intervals. The cars would scream past us and he'd smile, but when they hit the back stretch he couldn't see them so he'd yank his ear plugs off and start to cry until they zoomed past again. Smile, cry, smile, fuss. Over and over. It was even exhausting for the strangers who sat near us.

Dylan got to sit front and center for the rodeo and, we thought, had the time of her life. Then Lefty the Rodeo Clown didn't throw her a trick rope and she missed her chance at getting a free t-shirt and suddenly the rodeo wasn't fun anymore. She told my sister the reasons as she counted them off on her fingers. "One, I didn't get a yellow rope. Two, I didn't get to throw the ball. Three, I didn't get a t-shirt, and, four, I didn't get a blue rope." She changed her tune when grandma gave her five bucks to buy the clown's "special trick rope" (four feet of cheap rope with a bead on the end), and now she wants to be a rodeo queen again. Although, she still won't Mutton Bust (to my relief). We asked her if she'd like to ride a sheep. "No," she replied, "I'll just ride a bus." Good enough.

Grady's at the awkward age and height where he can't go on too many carnival rides. By "too many" I mean he can't go on anything but the little train. While it was the only ride he could go on, it was the only ride I couldn't (too many corndogs in my belly), so we had to recruit friends, family, or random passersby to escort him. Dylan went on all sortsakinda rides (her words), and couldn't get enough of the Fun House, until she fell on her butt and had to be carried out. I was pleased that our spin on the Dizzy Dragons didn't make her as nauseous as it made me.

On the fair's last day, we packed in as many rides, fried foods, walks through the livestock barns, Smokey Bear hugs, and shaved ices as we could. And it worked. Grady fell asleep in his stroller (which he never does), and Dylan didn't protest at all when we told her it was time to go. We have spent the last two days getting the fair out of their systems. Fried fair food is fun to eat, and even more fun when it's released as a gas. Dylan and Grady's farts would knock a buzzard off a meat wagon. But, if that's the worst result from five days of debauchery, then we're doing alright. It's sure cheaper then sending them to Amsterdam for the weekend.

Nearly Home Alone

2011-08-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

Regina's plans were to take the kids to the Bay Area for the weekend. My plans were to stay home, cut hay, put hygiene on hold, and eat hot dogs. We'd both been planning for months. Regina packed, I Googled "hot dogs + bourbon" and found several dinner ideas. I put Red Dawn and Uncommon Valor on my Netflix queue. It was going to be a spectacular manly weekend. But sometimes life gets in the way and Regina, instead, went to Bakersfield and left me with the kids.

As she was walking toward the car, getting ready to leave, I started to panic. The stupid questions started flowing: Does Grady eat food? What if Dylan starts the chainsaw? Where are the hot dogs? "You can figure it out. You're a big boy," she told me. Exactly, I thought, the key word there being boy. Who leaves their kids with a boy?

We are fortunate to live near family, and even more fortunate to live near family members who still like our kids. So, while I worked, the monkeys spent time with their cousins, aunts, and grandparents. My only directions were to make Grady walk as much as possible and to never, ever feed Dylan after midnight.

Our first day without Regina started rough. Grady pooped his way through a pack of diapers and Dylan got in a MMA fight with a cat. I thought, "You're a big boy, you can handle it," as I changed the ump-teenth diaper and cleaned up Dylan's wounds. Luckily, it got better. Each evening, I'd hustle home from work, pick up the kids, and get them ready for dinner and bed. Grady would get his fraternity-shower (I'd rub a wet wash-cloth over him) and I'd put him down for bed. Then I'd spend the next 2 or 3 hours listening to him reflecting on the highlights of the day. Ah, hugging Nacho -- is there anything more fun? Man, those cookies Julie made are going to go straight to my hips! and, I wonder if Gramma even knows I snagged her Lego-man? He hollers, coos, sings, and yells until the party ends and he passes out.

I did the right thing and put the hot dogs back in the refrigerator and fed Dylan healthier dinners. While we ate, she'd regale me with accounts of her day. I usually didn't really understand who or what she was talking about and it took me until the fourth day to realize that she was telling me about episodes of cartoons that she watched that day. She'd spend fifteen minutes watching "Olivia" somewhere, then spend the rest of the day playing outside, and all she wanted to talk about was Olivia's little brother who rode in a hot air balloon.

Currently, Regina is on a train heading north, and we can't wait to see her. "I miss Mommy," Dylan keeps telling me. And, instead of asking, "Really?" (which is what Regina said to me when I told her what Dylan said) I tell her that I miss her too. Grady has some cool new walking moves that he's excited to show off, Dylan is going to recreate all the Shark Week episodes we watched together, and me -- I'm just proud that the house stayed reasonably clean, I didn't leave anyone in the truck, and there are still hot dogs in the fridge, just waiting for my next bachelor weekend.

Frankenbaby

2011-06-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

As you may know, Grady spent last year in a funk. No, he wasn't touring with George Clinton, he just wasn't himself. Call it the winter-blues, or dark-times, but he wasn't too healthy (read: active). Consequently, the hold button on his development didn't click "off" until last fall. Since then, he's been progressing like a wild man and now, finally (big announcement music): he's walking.

I should say "walking." Grady A) is the most cautious baby ever, and B) knows how to manipulate his parents. We've received texts from daycare and family proclaiming, "Grady just walked across the living room!!!" "Grady's skipping rope!" and, "Grady just beat me in a foot race!" but when we get him home, he half-heartedly recreates his earlier feats. Maybe he's worn out from all his showing-off, but I suspect he realizes if he fake-cries for long enough Mom and Dad will either leave him alone or pick him up. We've caught him doing his Frankenbaby walk across our kitchen, but as soon as we acknowledge it, he drops to one knee. Walking? Me? Nope. Please hold me. I may have pooped myself.

Last week, at Julie's, we were eating our cowboy lunch and Grady was playing in the other room. As we were finishing up, we looked up from gorging ourselves and in strolled Grady. He was turning corners like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and walking like a man on a mission. Of course, we erupted in cheers and when he spotted me, a proud grin on his face, he tripped over a chair and took a header. We hoorayed and whistled and someone at the table threw their chonies. And from over the din, I heard one little voice -- Dylan's. She was just as excited as the rest of us and in her exuberance she quoted one of today's wisest and most thoughtful poets: Ke$ha. "Throw some glitter, make it rain," Dylan screamed.

I was so proud of them both.

Stretch Marks & Raisin Bran

2011-05-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

I sometimes forget that, for Dylan, literally everything is new. Child psychologists have compared young children to empty vessels who are waiting to be filled with knowledge; sponges, that absorb all that is around them; or, drunk, homeless men who shout at you for no reason. Okay, that last one's mine, I admit. But Dylan soaks up quite a bit. Dylan has been interested in (her words) "all sortsakinda things" lately. Here are a few examples:

Bones/dead things/the cemetery:
I have to blame my cousin Julie on this one, although it's not really her fault; she just happened to be in the car with Dylan when they drove past a cemetery. Dylan asked about it and, in the explanation Julie told her that we'll all die someday. "Julie?" Dylan asked, worried, "I kind of have a cold right now." "I think you'll be alright," Julie reassured her. Questions about dead people lead to questions about bones, and if you've ever been around a four-year old on a hot questioning streak, you'll understand that bone questions can last foreverrrrrrrrrrrrr. "Daddy, what's this bone?" "Uh, tibia? no, fibula. Maybe." "And this one?" "Skull." "This?" "Still skull." "How about this?" "Uh. Finger bone. And that's your eyeball bone. Go ask your mother."

Dreams:

For a few weeks, every morning Dylan would tell me about her dreams. You think dream stories are boring? Try made-up dream stories. Most of Dylan's involved princesses, snakes, rock slides, deer, horses, and me, killing one or all of the above with a sword. I'd get a full, detailed report on two or three of these dreams every morning. They really made no sense -- like real dreams -- and it took me a while to realize they were a cross between the bedtime story we'd read the night before and the latest Dora episode. So, for example, Ferdinand the bull might get covered by a rock slide and I'd have to come in -- with a sword, and maybe a princess -- to kill a deer that was trying to ... you get the picture.

Raisin Bran:

Every night, just after we read Dylan a story and say "I love you," Dylan wants to share a secret. I usually forget the secret portion of the ritual, so she has to get out of bed and come find me. The secret? It's always the same. "I want Raisin Bram in the morning," she whispers. Raisin Bram? Not the most exciting of secrets, or cereals, for that matter, but if she needs a little bran in her diet we'll gladly give it to her. She used to only eat Raisin Bread, and now I think she might be changing her cereal allegiance to strawberry mini-wheats. Whatever it is, it's a secret.

Stretch Marks: (*Names have been changed to protect the mothers)
Dylan came home from pre-school last week and announced, "Guess what, Peggy-Sue* has stretch marks. Her mommy does, too. Daddy, I wish I had stretch marks." How in the hell do I respond to that? Obviously, my first question was how does a kid in pre-school get stretch marks, and secondly, how does a kid in pre-school know about stretch marks? Then, the very next morning, over cartoons and secret cereal, right after a Barbie commercial, an ad for stretch mark removing cream came on the television. "Oh, I wish I had stretch marks," Dylan cried. Let the child psychologists sponge that up, I say.

The Five Steps of Grady Teething

2011-05-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been stuck at a railroad crossing as the world's longest train went by? First come the engines, about seventeen of them, then the box cars, the flat cars, the graffitied cars, the hobo cars, the circus cars, more engines, and, finally, the caboose. Done? No. After ten minutes of nothing except clanging warning bells and flashing lights, along comes the Bugs Bunny manual locomotion thing with the teeter totter handle. Get the picture? That's Grady teething.

Like most things Grady does, teething is a slow, multi-stepped process. So far, it's served him well. He has beautiful, straight, and nicely spaced teeth. His molars are the size of Chicklets. His eye teeth make Twilight fans jealous. He has a terrific smile. But, it's come at a price.

Step One: Giant Poop. A nurse finally told us that no one really knows why kids get the runs when they teethe, but one theory is that teething causes drooling, and when kids swallow drool, it gives 'em the looseys. Grady must drink drool by the bucket-load because phase 1 has us doing several loads of stinky laundry every day. Last fall, when Grady really started teething in earnest, we couldn't figure out the cause of his diaper-bursting bombs. We asked allergists, nurses, strangers at the supermarket, pediatricians, and veterinarians and no one could figure it out. We took him off dairy without any results and finally had a stool sample taken to test for Giardia. The results were, of course, negative. With hundreds of dollars invested into the poop-investigation, he mysteriously got better. And a week later he popped out two teeth.

Step Two: Drool. Grady drools like a Saint Bernard when he's teething. The upside is that Grady is also a flirt who likes to give kisses. Nothing funnier that watching people ask for a kiss, then try to back out when they see the drool coming. You're a bad person if you turn down kisses from a one-year old, even if they are disgusting drool-smooches.

Step Three: Rash. Constant drooling gives our G-man a rash around his lips. It makes him look like a gas-huffer. A small, baby huffer. I'm surprised his chest doesn't break out as well as much as it gets drool soaked.

Step Four: Fussy, Fussy, Fussy. Grady turns into a bear, doubled by the fact that we've taken away his pacifier. His angry yell is that of a drunk Yankees fan after Jeter gets called out on a close strike three.

And, Step Five: Teeth! Last fall and winter they came like animals on the ark: in twos. He was popping out rows of teeth weekly. We were on pace to have a full set by Valentines' Day. But, things slowed and now these last few remaining stragglers, late to the party, come in one at a time. The caboose is in sight as, by our best guess, he only has between one and five left to come (we'd make terrible dentists). It's been a slow and painful process *puts on sunglasses* kind of like pulling teeth.

Mazatlan Mayhem

2011-04-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

We went to Mazatlan last week and decided that renting a car would be a terrific way to scoot around. We even lugged Grady's car-seat throne with us. When I saw our rental, freshly washed, waiting for our arrival, the scratched bumper and smashed fender should have been an omen. I should have read it as a glowing beacon screaming, "Don't drive, gringo. Don't drive." But, my Spanish sucks and I thought it said, "Cool, you look local," and burned off toward the city.

The first thing wrong was the map. It was the standard freebie from the rental agency, and was drawn with all the accuracy and proportion of Columbus's map of the new world, if that map were drawn by a seven-year old. I expected to find only an arrow pointing north from the airport with the warning, "There Be Dragons." Our friendly agent penned in our route and drew in helpful landmarks that we'd pass along our way to the resort. His stoplights, bridges, cemetery crosses, statues, and supermarkets all looked exactly alike. "Do we go through three stoplights and turn left, or do we pass two cemeteries and loop around the third statue?" I asked my navigator. We were also turned around by road construction, so we winged it, and amazingly, found our way. The tally so far: one quick drive on a wrong way street ("Why is that car driving at me?" I think I asked just before Regina screamed), two drivers cut off (sorry, amigo), and one near side-swipe. My motto was: when lost, drive fast. It made no sense, but it got us there safely.

The next driving tour wasn't as fun. Last week was semana santa (which, in Spanish, means, "All citizens of Mexico, please go to Mazatlan now). We passed pickups with entire families --including first and second cousins -- crammed in the back. We passed 4-wheelers carrying a dozen teenagers. I passed one guy who was drinking a beer AND texting while he drove. So why I got pulled over, I cannot say. I was over my nervous speed-driving from the day before, and was obeying every law I understood. The cop wasn't as intimidating as the roving assault-trucks full of shotgun and machine-gun toting, black mask wearing, federales, but still, any Mexican cop is intimidating. He spoke to me so rapidly that halfway through his scolding, I stopped trying to concentrate on what he was saying and started thinking that he must be trying to show off on how awesome he is at really fast talking. I shrugged and looked at Regina. She got most of what he said and told him, sort-of politely, that we were going the speed limit. I "played" dumb, and pretty soon, after this went back and forth a few times, he gave up, told us to watch our speed, and sent us on our way. No bribe necessary.

I returned the car that day. Goodbye blanco caballo. The rest of our vacation was perfect (Except for the food poisoning I got. That was perfect chaos.). We did all the things we wanted to do ... walks on the beach (Dylan's officially terrified of crabs and Grady gets mesmerized by waves), yummy seafood (best shrimp taco ever at "El Fish Market." Bad name, great food), mornings at the pool, and evenings listening to the crashing waves. We took a taxi to the airport, thinking we'd shaken off our car demons. "I guess we should have taken the bus," came to mind as we watched our luggage sail off the taxi's roof rack and crash onto a straight stretch of Mexico hard top. We came home just in time for Dylan's birthday, and Easter, but that's another blog. Regina's a little tanner, Dylan's a little crazier, Grady's a little chubbier (beans, mmmm), and my confidence is finally back and I'm ready to get behind the wheel again.

Mother Truckers

2011-03-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

[Note: I'm only certain this blog has two readers: my mom and a high school sophomore, so I'll keep this as PG as possible.] It's no secret that I love to swear. Some argue that people swear because they can't think of any other, and possibly better, word to use, so they resort to blue-language. Screw them. I say that my background in English and my job as a rancher give me both the license and venue in which to curse. But, of course, there is a drawback and I knew my day would come: Dylan swearing.

I'm surprised Dylan swearing didn't come sooner, but, in my defense, I tried, sort of, not to swear in front of her. Like a Mormon, or Cate Blanchett in Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, who used "F" instead of, well, you know what it's instead of, I tried creative ways to avoid swear words. It didn't work so well. I can't get my head around using "fudge," or "frick," or even "frig," but I have adopted plain old "F" (thanks, Cate), or "Mother Trucker" when things really get out of hand.

But those are all substitutes for just one word. What about the others? I tried the Scottish "shite," but that's not a very good cover. And "darn" or "shoot"? Boo, I say. And there's really no way to hide my go to swear when I'm super-pissed off. It rhymes with "pit trucker," but using that really decreases its punch. For now, Dylan's swearing has been very tame and limited to "dammit." Pretty innocuous, I know. But dammit is a gateway swear word. It leads to "crap," and from there, it's open the flood-gates and before you know it she's talking like an Alaskan logger.

I really would rather she learned where and when it's appropriate to swear. School = No, Feeding Cows = Yes. I have to give her credit, she's used "dammit" in the correct situation every time she's used it. But this is also a three-year old with poor impulse control who still uses fifty squares of toilet paper to wipe with after she pees and only two squares after she poops, so learning proper swear-venues isn't something that's going to come naturally.

I know, in a couple of years I'll be having the same talks with Grady, and I'm hoping his big sister will be there by my side, helping me with that lecture. Until then, if you see me out and about and are confused about my tame language, just remember, today is brought to you by the letter "F" and my mother is a trucker.

Sacramento Highlights

2011-03-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, Regina had a conference in Sacramento and, like any good sugar-mama would do, she let her hillbilly hubby and rugrats tag along. Aside from feeding Grady chicken satay (peanut sauce -- he's allergic) and letting Dylan hang out with panhandlers, I'd say I did an alright job of guiding a couple of country-kids around the capital. The weekend was a blast, but each one of us had his or her own personal highlight.

We spent Saturday night with some friends in Folsom. Martin and Anna have two kids approximately our kids' age, so our suffering is nearly equal, and it gave us plenty to ~~drink~~ talk about. If I had been kidnapped by Russians (you know, when they were cool and kicked ass) and sent to the same facility where Ivan Drago trained in Rocky IV, I would, today, look a lot more like Martin. He's the Uber-Judd, and Grady fell in love. Grady would flee from my arms to go hang out with his BFF, Martin. Better looking? Check. More fun? Check. Grady learned that having two dads was waaaay better than one, and Martin seemed to really like Grady. Plus, they had a great bar, so neither of us wanted to leave. I was content sipping Guiness and Grady just wanted to drool on his new dad.

For Dylan, the highlights never ended. Just the fact that we got to stay in a "hotel-house" was pretty fun, but it also had an indoor pool. Yes! and Yes! Also, we stayed in Old Sac, which, in about three square blocks contains nothing but restaurants, tattoo parlors, and candy shops. Dylan learned quickly that, because of the intense competition between "Candy Heaven," "Sugar High," and "Hey Kid, Want Some Candy?", the shopkeepers were pretty liberal with their free samples. I retaliated every sample by leaving both kids unattended in their candy-packed stores until their highs wore off.

And Regina? She kind of geeks-out at conferences, so I'd say that sitting in a convention center with other like-minded educators was, for her, loads of fun. But, seeing friends and family, eating awesome Pho, and having a never-ending supply of dirty martinis made her weekend a long string of highlights. And I think the rest of us were just good enough to get to tag along for her next conference. Fallon, NV, look out 'cause here we come!

An Open Letter To February

2011-03-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

Dear February:

I don't understand you. We'll talk about the stupid way you spell your name and your measly twenty-eight days in a bit. But the mind games you play, the ups and the downs, let me address those now. You began beautifully. Sure, snow would have been nice, but you brought the sunshine. If I didn't know you so well I'd of thought you were March (or April. Meeeow!). You're blushing, but it's true. Blue skies, crisp mornings, sunny days, it was glorious. We hustled to our tractors and farmed like it was late spring. And we got a lot done, so thanks.

Then you had to go and hand out a round of RSV to both kids and a sinus/ear infection to Grady. And having Grady cut both eye-teeth at the same time? Come on! I'm sending you a bill for the chair legs he chewed up trying to ease the pain. Still, you let the monkeys off easier than last year (you were a real prick in '10), and we appreciate it, really. Grady's even named you "Kitty," and that's an honor only a step below "Mama."

But, I've got to admit, you sucker-punched us with our first school Valentine's Day party. Who knew candy was the new expression of love and friendship? Okay, I knew, but I didn't think that knowledge was mainstream yet. Dylan's still not over her sugar-high -- here she is at her worst:

Just when I thought you might be cool and we could hang out, you hit me with the never-ending flu. And you mocked me with it. You took all my sense of taste the day before Regina and I went to our favorite restaurant, then gave it back, for one night only, during dinner. You let me recover just enough to see Ryan Bingham in concert, then kicked me to the curb when I started bragging how much better I was feeling.

Nobody likes a complainer, so I'll be positive. You taught me a few things that I'll always carry with me. Things like: I can successfully blame fever-sweats on a faulty heating system in my classroom, or codine + Nyquil = crazy dreams, and most importantly, don't cough and pee at the same time.

So, goodbye, jerkface. And here's a little advice for next year. First, bring some snow, it's winter, remember? Next, buy a couple of extra days to fill the calendar like a real month and, finally, drop that stupid silent "r," it makes you seem pretentious. You just might fit in after all.

Sincerely,

The Eastside Gang

The Book of Dylan

2011-01-13T20:54:00.000-08:00

While the chances of Dylan joining the priesthood, or a nunnery, or holding any mid-level non-secular job seem as unlikely as the Seahawks making it to the ~~playoffs~~ Superbowl, she has been, lately, infatuated with Baby Jesus and God. I think the trifecta of Grady's baptism, Christmas, and a steady dose of religion from Grandma have piqued her interest.

Has Dylan reached a level of holiness that we cannot fathom? Is she the Golden Child? No. She still beats our pets with sticks and regularly throws tantrums that make the neighbors lock their doors. But, once she puts down her weapons and dries her eyes (and we unlock the door), she'll ask questions like, "Where's God?" If we respond with "Everywhere," she starts listing. "Our house?" "Yes." "The barn?" "Yes." "Julie's house?" and on, and on, and on.

Last weekend I took Dylan snowboarding. Since I usually go on Sundays, going to the mountain is often my church, and maybe that feeling rubbed off on Dylan. On the way there, she asked if Baby Jesus would be on Mt. Shasta. I told her that He would, but He'd probably be spending most of his time boarding the backcountry. He's hardcore like that.

Questions about God or Jesus come up all the time. For now, we can give her pretty much any answer and she's happy. But if she gets a little more biblical knowledge, Regina and I will have to brush up on our religion. Here's an example of a typical theological conversation between Regina and myself: So ... Moses. He's the guy with the whale, right? Maybe. Wasn't he the baby, floating down the river? And then a whale ate him? Yes? And that reminds me, we need to pump up our inner tubes so we can float the Scott River this weekend. Awesome.

Somewhere (Grandma's) Dylan learned that we shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain. When she's around, we can't say: Jesus Christ, Jesus H. Christ, Jesus, Jeeze, Young Jeezy, Cheese Whiz, or Chimichunga. If we utter any one of those, she'll reprimand us. I love it when our Catholic cousins slip with a "Gee." Dylan's right on top of it and scolds them. "It's not nice to say 'Jesus.'" It's like catching a Mormon saying "crap." A rare and treasured gift.

Dylan still gets time-out on the pew on our front porch for all sorts of bad behavior, so I'm pretty sure she isn't ready for the convent, yet. I'm trying to clean up my potty mouth and hopefully we'll strike a balance. And in the meantime? Go Seahawks.

Like A Cheese Stick

2011-01-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

When I asked Regina what she wanted for Christmas, just behind a Jaguar XJ and Dance Dance Revolution was, simply, a date. "What about our weekend in Portland?" I asked. I got The Look. "That was with Grady at OHSU." Okayyyy. "We just went went to Medford," I offered. I should have quit while I was only in a shallow hole. "Both kids, and, again, at a hospital." I knew I had to act.

It wasn't fancy, but we took New Year's Eve Day (the official holiday for parents of young children) and went to Ashland. After lunch we went ice skating in the park. That sounds romantic, right? It may be, but I'm a 200 pound gorilla flailing around on hockey skates, not Brian Boitano. Apparently, the only adult males who skate at this rink are all professionals. Except for me, of course. After an hour there, my New Year's Resolution was to do one of those cool ice-spray stops that hockey players do. I got as far as a slow stop, wall grab, and slip. We finally had to hang up our skates when Regina got taken out by a toddler pushing around a "learning aid" (read: walker).

We limped around town, enjoyed some wine and cheese, and watched True Grit. Our date may have continued indefinitely, but our parental responsibilities (read: guilt) kicked in and we came home to gather the kids, watch Dick Clark, and down some old champagne to welcome in 2011 (EST, of course).

For an encore, that Sunday we decided on a Family Date Day and took the monkeys sledding. Watching Dylan rip down an icy slope is as fun as watching old people dance: there's a chance for a wreck at any moment. Grady's not ready for high speed sledding, so he basically sat in the snow and cried.

On the way home, Grady fell asleep and I turned on the radio for some noise other than Dylan's requests for more hot chocolate. The Far East Movement's song "Like a G6" came on and, to my surprise, Dylan started singing along. I thought it was funny that she knew the lyrics to something other than the Avett Brothers' "I & Love & You," or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" until I really listened closely. For a three-year old, her rendition was perfect. "Now I'm feeling so fly like a Cheese Stick, like a Cheese Stick." What a great ending to my date-weekend. I felt so fly. Like a Cheese Stick.

Christmas Reflections

2010-12-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-03T11:29:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-18T21:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Therrible Threes

2010-07-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

Regina and I grew up in, quite literally, two different worlds. While I always think it's strange that she didn't grow up reading Cowboy Small and Ferdinand, or never really watched MASH and Three's Company, she thinks it's absurd that I didn't listen to Depeche Mode, have never played Monopoly or Scrabble, or have never read, or watched, Sybil.

Do you know about Sybil? I looked it up on Wikipedia and learned that it was a TV mini-series, based on a popular novel, about a woman who had thirteen different personalities. After skimming the paragraph Wikipedia devoted to the history of Sybil, I finally understood why Regina sometimes gives that nickname to our daughter.

The terrible twos? Please. The Therrible Threes are a force that BP couldn't even cap. On any given day, we see 8 - 11 of Sybil's, I mean Dylan's, personalities. The range runs from the sweet and cuddly girl who tells us she loves us and gives kisses, to the comedian who farts on our laps and makes up stories about blueberries, to the toddler-demon who screams non-stop for what feels like hours and throws punches at anyone who comes near.

Today, while I was cutting hay, I received a text: Do they make boarding schools for three year olds? At first I thought it was my old friend Kevin (see: Country Livin') seeking advice. It wasn't though, it was Regina suffering through pre- and post-swimming lesson tantrums.

Grady is easier to predict. If he's kept fed and rested, he's happy. Exceedingly happy. Tom Hanks in Castaway wasn't as happy with his first meal off the island as Grady is about just being fed, anytime. But, he's one, and easy to predict. We can limit the number of Dylan's personalities that we see on any given day with the same prescription as Grady: diet and rest. But miss a nap or throw a Jujube candy into the mix and her head spins completely around and we have to have yet another exorcism.

We hear from parenting veterans that the terrible twos are a myth perpetrated by grandparents to distract young parents from the real storm of a three-year old. The young parents get through the twos, are so proud of their awesome parenting skills that they pat themselves on the backs, and then those pats lead to a caress, and that caress leads to baby number two. All before the oldest turns into a three-year old. The grandparents laugh, knowing they just suckered their offspring into giving them another grandbaby to spoil. It's crazy logic, but it's crazy enough to work.

And here we are, in the middle of this gale and all we can do is lower the main, baton down the hatches, and ride it out. Dylan still shows enough of her good side that we feel like there could be a lull in the storm (someday), and we hope that by the time she's worked her way through these crazies, we'll have time to gear up for Grady's threes. Until then, I'll watch The Sound of Music (Regina even calls it un-American that I haven't seen that one), learn to play Scrabble, and put on my black eyeliner and listen to bad 80s electronic music.

Country Livin'

2010-07-16T08:37:00.001-07:00

Once, in my cut-off jeans and sunburned back, I hopped in my inner-tube and floated a river (like a modern day hobo) that was relatively close to a large city. So close that I could hit it with my empty Natural Light cans. Which I did. The point? Tubing rivers is rad. Also, and I'm not bragging, but since I've seen "the other side," I think that makes me kind of an expert on country living.

Some things have happened this summer that I'm sure wouldn't happen anywhere else but the country. The first is the ongoing issue of "The Potty." We have what could be construed as a liberal-potty-policy. No neighbors = no boundaries and when Dylan has to go and we are outside, or even inside but near a door, she uses the "potty-tree." Our "go wherever" attitude backfired last week in Ashland. We'd spent an afternoon in Lithia Park with the passed-out hippies, the creek splashing new-age crystal geeks, and the Tai Chi show-offs. Before we left, Regina took Dylan to the restroom while I held Grady. Suddenly, a lion attacked ... or that's what Dylan's shrieks sounded like. They continued, and reverberated nicely from inside the restroom where Dylan threw herself on the floor. The screaming continued as Regina dragged her back to where Grady and I waited. Had something horrible happened? No. Dylan just wanted to pee on a tree. Granted, we were in Ashland, home of the liberal potty policy, and would have been applauded for our forward-thinking parenting skills had we let her fertilize the oaks, but we decided that we have to draw the line somewhere.

Another great thing about living in rural America is the colorful characters we have. I know, they're everywhere; I've seen the San Francisco homeless population, but country-colorful is different. We have cowboys, hippies, loggers, cops, mountain men (and women), addicts, saints, thieves ... and that's just in the typical family. Take, for example, Kevin. Recently, Kev accidently sent me this series of texts:
3:21 PM "Hey this is my second phone u can call it so save it n now I can communicate again."
Then, at 5:05 PM, "Hey this is kevin tryn 2 tell ya I got a phone." I don't know Kev, and I don't like how he spells, so I ignored him. Mistake.
At 11:07 PM, I was in bed, but Kevin wasn't. "Hey did ya get those text its kev?"
From there, things went downhill rapidly. 11:37 PM, "U goin 2 respond or am i just the guy u hate or something." Yes, Kevin, since you keep waking me up with your texts, you are the guy I hate.
He continues. 2:18 AM, "So u wont say anything 2 me or wht it is kev i still want 2 talk or wht i guess u just thnk whtever or something u can have any1 so i guess do wht u want with who u want because u can have wht u want."
Two minutes later: "N btw i havent been around because u want our kids around my tweaker bro than u care about anything else besides ur freedom dnt ignore me i will blow up ur phone chick dont temp me." Apparently, ignoring stupid people tempts them.
Four minutes later: "so wht u got some1 else or something figures u alway had every1 u wanted instead of me i new u would never talk 2 me so f u 2 always prove ur worth never talk 2 me u dnt want me bac or otherwise u would talk n give a s@#* chick"
The next, seven minutes later, gets ugly. I'll paraphrase. Kevin goes insane when he's ignored and, as a cry for attention, threatens suicide. He does this again two minutes later when he texts that he's going to drown in the "stupid water" and "u dnt care ... lol." LOL? Kevin, come on. Finally, at 2:31 AM, he threatens suicide for the last time. I know, I should have called and talked him off the ledge, but by then Regina had turned off the phone and I was sleeping. He ends with, "... when u find this message i will b dead because ur dumb n will never look lol so whtever." Whatever indeed.
This seems sad, right? But there's a rainbow at the end. Kevin called my phone the next day and immediately realized he had the wrong number. Party on, Kevin, and stay away from your tweaker bro. Whatever. LOL. When I Googled his number, I found that he was from the Jersey Shore of Nor Cal: Redding. I'd of bet a crisp Ben Franklin on that fact.

But Kevin, with his excellent spelling and grammatical skills, doesn't hold a candle to the couple in the Raley's parking lot yesterday. He drove some Mad Max-style import with a giant fin and racing harness seatbelts. Cables held the hood down and I tried to guess the car's original color based on the small patches of paint between the primer and the places a grinder had hit. The cute couple (matching black wife-beater tank tops!) ran in for cigarettes, and when they returned they sat in the car and lit wooden matches on their teeth. Over and over. Then tossed the spend matches out the window. And I thought lighting matches on my fly was cool.

And finally, horses. I love the fact that my kids learn to ride horses before they learn to ride bikes. I love that Dylan gets excited about going for rides and named our newest foal Princess Banana. We try to show Dylan and Grady more than just ranch work and rodeos, so for the 4th of July, we went to Grant's Pass to the horse races. Races are everywhere, I know. But the GP Downs are country to the core. There are no fancy hats or juleps or even a well groomed infield. GP had corndogs and a dead grass infield that doubles as a high school football field in the fall. It's the only racetrack I know of where the odds of a horse finishing or breaking a leg are even. Second, the spectator area feels like a prison-yard. It's concrete and hot and weedy and surrounded by chain-link. I always expect to get shanked when I'm there, which really adds to the excitement.

This country life may be weird, but it's our weird and we love it. Dylan will teach Grady how to fertilize our trees and how to ride a horse, and the next time Kev texts, I'll send him your way. Who knows, you might just make a country friend.

Grady 360

2010-07-03T21:21:00.000-07:00

No, the Grady 360 isn't a cool new snowboard trick that I've invented on my private half-pipe (thanks to my sponsor, Red Bull) hidden in the Colorado mountains. Nor is it a sexy new dance move, created on my private dance floor (thanks to my sponsor, Southern Comfort) hidden in the basement of my parents' house.

The Grady 360 is ... drum roll, please ... the days it took for our little Meatball to pop out his first tooth. Not that we were nervous about having a ten-year old with falsies, but if you typed in the letter "T" in the Google search bar on our computer, the history would show repeated queries of: Teething, when does it begin? Tooths, anyone? and, Toddlers, can they wear a grill?

We were reassured by plenty of experts (our pediatrician), non-experts (parenting blogs), and strangers (the People of Wal-Mart) that some babies don't sprout teeth until as late as twenty-seven. Although, those babies were fed a steady diet of Pepsi and meth in utero.

So now, let the dominoes fall. Let the teeth grow like the dandelions in our yard, let crawling commence, and let his cooing and baby-Chewbacca speak turn into something we can comprehend.

I guess, sadly, this is Grady's first big step out of the baby-baby stage. It's been a slow step out (a baby step? Oh, clever), but now that threshold's been crossed, I guess the next big milestone will be this: click here

FFA (Food & FireArms)

2010-06-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

I'm always glad when our friends Paul and Amy tell us they're coming up from Oakland to visit the ranch because I know we'll be eating well, drinking plenty, and laughing so hard we'll all get the "Grady-laugh" (laughing with no sound). But my excitement for poop jokes and bourbon is nothing compared to Dylan's excitement to see her homie, Malcolm, Paul and Amy's four-year old. His arrival falls just short of Santa's in terms of pure thrill.

As soon as they pulled up to the house in their Bay-Area Monster Truck (Prius), Dylan and Malcolm started playing; you'd never have guessed they hadn't seen each other for a year. Dylan even gave him the country moniker: "Buddy." They make a scary pair -- he's wicked-smart (who else can name every player on the Giant's AAA Fresno squad?) and Dylan's a bit of a diva. They shared a bed, and would laugh and giggle, despite our pleas to get some sleep, until way past their bed times.

It was probably from lack of sleep, but, like all couples, by day three they hit a rough patch. Just before nap time, Dylan informed everyone that, "I don't want to sleep with my boyfriend anymore." Malcolm was a little hurt, but I gave her a high-five and told her to never, ever, forget that sentence.

Malcolm and Dylan weren't the only cute couple. Paul made a mint julep and, although it was a brief encounter, the tasty drink and I were inseparable for nearly fifteen minutes. Okay, that wasn't so cute, but you should have seen Paul with my .22. Adorable. We went out to shoot a few squirrels and I've never had more fun just watching someone shoot. His skills had improved so much since last year that I accused him of either finding another rancher friend with a ground squirrel problem or joining a gang. Since they live in Oakland, I suspect the latter. It was especially great when he'd get out the truck to re-create what, exactly, the squirrel did when he shot it. Regina and Amy weren't as amused as I was, but I just don't think they appreciate good improv.

The King and Queen of cute had to go to Grady and Amy. It was especially fun to see Grady become smitten. It was a full blown boy crush, complete with drool and lots of face grabbing. Amy didn't seem to mind the attention and I think the country fresh air and rejuvenating spa (air blasting through our lines exfoliates nearly as well as 80-grit sandpaper) made up for the oatmeal slobber stains and cheek scratches he gave her.

Dylan's already talking about the next time she sees Malcolm. She must like him because she's already learned who Madison Bumgarner is (left-handed pitcher for the Fresno Grizzlies). Grady gets a far-off look in his eyes when Amy's name gets mentioned and Regina and I are trying to work off all the food and drink we consumed. We'll see our friends again, but in the meantime, we're comforted by the knowledge that somewhere out there in the twilight, Paul is standing guard, .22 in hand. Waiting. Waiting.

Poo Juice

2010-05-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

I'd fully anticipated the title of this post to be something like, "Boy, Ten Months, Foregoes Crawling and Walking for Running!" or "Grady Jay and the Twenty Teeth." I mean, he's ten months, at some point here our odds have to be pretty good that he'll cut a tooth (4:1 odds in Vegas) or crawl (a longshot at 9:1) soon. Instead, he's perfectly content being toothless and stationary. We don't mind, Dylan's active enough for two and Grady makes for a really cute baby.

There are so many great things about having a baby around that they make the grueling stuff bearable. But, there are some thing I won't miss. There are the obvious things: changing poopy diapers, watching Grady rub food in his eyes and hair when he's both tired and hungry, remembering the diaper bag for every outing, and the 2:00 AM parties in his crib. I think, given some time, we'll even look back on those things with fondness, or will have scrubbed them from our memories altogether.

There are a few less obvious things that we won't miss. Babies are fun to hold, right? Yes, and Grady is a great hugger and snuggler, but when your baby weighs as much as a big sack of Costco rice, pretty soon your shoulders look like Serena Williams' and your back feels like the cobblestones in Pamplona. Also, it took some time, but I'm at a point where I really don't mind changing diapers. I don't crave it, and I still employ some great evasive techniques whenever I smell a big diaper bomb ("I'd better go check the... [hay, horses, still]"). But what I really won't miss, more than anything, is the Diaper Genie.

If you don't know, the Diaper Genie is a semi-air-tight garbage can for diapers. We use ours, primarily, for the poopy ones, so when it's full, it's literally a festering tube of rotting crap. It's horrible. Yesterday, I shoved an especially full diaper through the plastic jaws and into the tube, but it was full. The sensical thing would have been to open it up, remove the full plastic tube of diapers, tie off the plastic and start new. The country thing to do is forcefully shove the diaper into the full tube. You know what happens when you do that? Poo Juice. Yes. The solids and fluids inside those fermenting diapers leak, and when they get compresses, the fluids rise and you get poo juice on your hand.

It's the last remaining thing about infancy that gags me. But if that's all I can't handle, we'll let Grady stay a baby for as long as he likes. And if you're in Vegas, put a twenty down on a bottom tooth by July.

The First Weekend in May

2010-05-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

There aren't too many weekends that match the sports spectacle of the first weekend in May. The Kentucky Derby and the May Rodeo always fall on the first Saturday and Sunday, respectively, and they're both big events around here. I know, those can't match the hype of March Madness or the Super Bowl, or even the T20 World Cricket Finals, but they're even better. Trust me.

In 1973, I watched Secretariat win the Triple Crown, I was two and a half, and "Secretariat" became my favorite word. I've tried to continue the tradition and get Dylan excited about the Derby, but her short attention span can't last through the three hours of pre-race hype. Hell, my short attention span can't last that long. But, I did get her to watch Mind That Bird's 50:1 upset win last year and I bribed her to sit down, finally, as the horses entered the gate this year. Calvin Borel is our new hero -- although I'm worried that she'll yell, "Ride the rail, Borel" to any adult male who is under 5'3''.

The other tradition is the May Rodeo. It's the first local rodeo of the year and I grew up riding in its parade and getting bucked off by its calves. For months, Dylan has been telling us that she was going to ride a sheep. The thought seems harmless enough, riding a big fuzzy sheep is like sitting of a soft cloud. But I know the scary truth; I've been helping parents pry their children's fingers from the top rail of the chutes and putting them on the backs of pissed off lambs for the past ten years. Mutton Bustin' is like being a passenger on the back of a runaway dirt bike. Sooner, and not later, the kids fall off, face first, in the arena dirt. There are always tears, often blood, and not much reward except the Queen gives you a silver dollar, which, to little kids, might as well be a shiny stone.

Greg was always against his daughters riding sheep -- not for any kind of righteous-cattle-rancher reasons -- but for simply practical ones. I thought he was crazy. Mutton Bustin' is nuthin' but fun! Right? Then I started paying attention to what happened after the terrified kids left the chute, and then I had a daughter. I told Dylan she could ride a sheep, but I dragged my feet. Besides, I figured she'd chicken out once she saw the reality of it. So, I took her behind the chutes, and we stood on the catwalk and peered down into the bucking chutes at the lambs. Her confidence didn't waver and she still wanted to ride, so I had my friend set her on the back of one, just to get a feel for it. She still insisted that she was having fun, then the sheep moved. Just a little, but she knew it wasn't anything like sitting on the back of a horse and she wanted off. Viola! My plan worked.

The rest of the day was spent watching the show. I skipped out on my normal rodeo duties and enjoyed the rodeo from the back of a flat-bed. Dylan spent the day eating. When I asked about her favorite part of the rodeo, she said, "The dip."

Grady got passed around until he hit nap time, then, like a good cowboy, fell asleep on the front seat of the truck. Dylan wasn't too far behind. The dirt, snowcones, and excitement wore us all out, but I think Dylan's officially hooked on rodeos and now she can't wait until the last Saturday in July so she can Mutton Bust again, if only for a few seconds.

Milestones

2010-04-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

Lacy, my niece, just turned twenty. The fact, I think, bummed Greg out a little. You know, the whole "it all goes too fast, blink and they're twenty," thing. I started playing the numbers game in my head: Greg's fifty, Lacy's twenty. When Dylan's twenty, I'll be fifty-five. Fifty-five! I'll probably be wearing those gigantic side-flap sunglasses that old people get at the optometrist's office and peeing ten times a night by then.

Dylan just turned three. This fact didn't bum me out at all, although I couldn't quite match her enthusiasm for a birthday party. We decided to combine everything Dylan loves into one party: cupcakes, Easter eggs, and presents (basically: candy, candy, and presents). Her presents were a great representation of her very princess-girly side and her country-girl side. Along with a ton of dolly's and dresses, she also received a pair of chinks (Chaps, for you city-folks. Quit dialing the ACLU.) and a huge Lego set. The day after her party, I thought I'd step out the back door of the house and shoot a few squirrels. Dylan was still in full party mode and wearing, I think, her party dress from the day before. When I told her what I was doing, she wanted to come with me. "Let me get my dolly first, Daddy," Dylan told me. Dolly's and dead squirrels, together at last.

Grady, too, has hit a milestone. Sort of. I'd written about Dylan at nine months (75% in weight, 95% in height) and I remember her as a pretty big baby. Maybe big isn't right: solid is more fitting. She was often called a boy by strangers, and on several occasions, I got a, "Oh, he's going to be a good football player." Grady is just big. At his nine-month check-up last week, he was 95% in weight and 60% in height. Kind of a flip-flop of Dylan, and he's never been confused for a girl, but I do get, "Oh, he's going to be a football." I hope they mean football player, but he very well could be the football. He's shaped for it anyway. He's all hips, thighs, and smiles.

This morning, Regina and I watched Grady as he toppled over from a sitting positing, then struggled, like an upside down turtle, to get himself righted. He finally got himself in a comfortable position and grinned at us. "I love that he's staying a baby for so long," Regina told me. I hadn't thought of that. I'm always wondering, "What's next?" -- teeth, crawling, school, girlfriends, cars, graduation, twenty -- when I should be looking at what is now. Maybe I'll do that a little more often, as soon as I can find my giant side-flap sunglasses.

Zombie Raccoon

2010-04-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned the raccoon before -- it was one of the scattered animal remnants in our yard and the same vicious beast that attacked Chowder the day after Christmas (a result of coal in his stocking, I'm sure). This guy was certainly more tenacious dead than alive. He's been buried (twice), hit with a tractor and disc, run-over by traffic on our lane, dragged, stampeded, chewed up and barfed out, burned, and finally, bagged. He has been, needless to say, a lesson for Dylan in ... something. Probably something gruesome that will scar her.

"There's the raccoon that bit Chowder, Daddy," she'd tell me, every time we passed its bloated figure. "He's dead now, sis." "Yeah, you shot him." This was the conversation we had, almost daily, as we watched Mr. Raccoon stay perfectly preserved in the cold months of January and February. I should have tossed him in the dumpster then, but he made such a great conversation piece.

By March, I'd buried him in the alfalfa field, but the disc unearthed him and helped speed up the decaying process. The dogs decided, then, that he was sufficiently rotten and would make a fine meal. Dylan quit talking about him until the spoiled meat nearly killed Scout (Raccoon - 2, Dogs - 0). That's when I decided that a good old-fashioned witch burning was in order, not to exorcise any demons, but I figured cooked raccoon had to smell better than the decomposing one the dogs unearthed.

Dylan was stoked. "We're burning the aa-coon, Mommy!" Regina didn't ask any questions -- she's learned she's better off not knowing -- and Dylan and I set off up the lane with a gas jug and a lighter. We piled on the sticks for the cremation and watched the black smoke climb. For a week Dylan told everyone she met that she'd burned a raccoon. I shrugged like I had no idea what she was talking about.

Today, nearly four months after its demise, I found half of the raccoon in our yard. The fire hadn't done much for its looks or in cooking it; it stunk. Dylan was glad to have her old friend back, but I told her to stay away. This thing is not real. I'm at the end of my list for ways to dispose of dead varmints.

I have to look on the bright side: Dylan's learned about life-cycles, the meanness of cute wild animals, proper grilling techniques, and the perils of eating rotten meat. All valuable lessons for a country girl. The raccoon will offer one last lesson: plastic is better than paper for bagging up zombies.

Merry Easter

2010-04-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

Originally, this post was going to be titled "March Madness" (despite the ever-looming threat of a *gasp* copyright infringement lawsuit from the NCAA) and I was going to write about what a nutty month March was. By nutty, I mean plagued with illness. Dylan and Grady fought through fever, bronchiolitis, pneumonia, breathing treatments, ER visits, antibiotics, and giant boogers. I thought April would bring wellness to the Eastside gang, but apparently bronchiolitis follows the Aztec calendar and doesn't give a rat's ass about April.

So, instead of writing about the hilarious and wacky adventures of two tired parents with their sick kids, I thought I'd write about Easter.

I'd forgotten how fun Easter is for kids. It's a candy-fueled melee that ranks right up there with any holiday that overloads children on chocolate and attention. Our cousin Julie tried to explain to Dylan that Easter wasn't just about the Easter bunny and candy. She told Dylan about Jesus and the resurrection. Dylan listened, then said, "Julie, that's weird." I think the Jesus side of Easter finally stared to sink in on our way to the Thamer's for our Easter party. It started snowing pretty heavily and definitely looked more like Christmas than Easter. Dylan conveniently combined the two and sang, "Baby Jesus is Coming to Town" the whole way up. It felt like Ricky Bobby was serenading us from the back seat.

Dylan skipped any food that wouldn't give her a sugar-high. Regina and I kept waiting for the crash, but (Easter miracle) the meltdown never happened. She waded through mud and poop so she could pet a newborn lamb and didn't care that her shoes got mucky, she hunted Easter eggs in a blizzard and didn't freak out over her new frilly socks getting soaked, she actually had competition in hunting eggs this year and didn't care that every egg wasn't labeled "For Dylan Only," and she ate jellybeans instead of ham and didn't care ... okay, maybe that was the secret. Jellybeans to kids are like bourbon for adults, they make you not care.

We finally came home in our one-horse open sleigh and, now, despite that it's April and we were supposed to leave the bad voodoo of March behind, both kids are back on antibiotics, steroids, and breathing treatments for round two of bronchiolitis. But it's better this time around. We have baskets full of candy, a little sunshine has melted our April snow, and I won't have to worry about any copyright infringement lawsuits for using "April Madness" in a post.

Yard O' Death

2010-03-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I looked out our bedroom window and swore; I thought the dogs had scattered our garbage across the lawn again. I envisioned spending the morning picking up smelly diapers, coffee grounds, and old Lotto tickets. I even entertained the option of trying to mow up the garbage like it was fall leaves. It was early -- maybe 6:00 AM -- and my eyes were a little blurry and when I rubbed them clear I saw that the "garbage" was nothing more than the usual assortment of dead and decaying things that litter our lawn all winter.

It's disgusting, and quite possibly unhealthy, but we have four dogs that feel it's necessary to provide us with lawn ornaments. We'd settle for gnomes and flamingoes, but they prefer the macabre. Yesterday, as we all sat outside and soaked in a little afternoon sunshine, I heard Regina gasp. I looked up to see Chowder bringing in a fresh decoration. Horses, like dogs and good cats, are buried on our ranch, but somehow Chowder, or bears, or the wild neighbor boys, dug up one of our old faithfuls and exposed an entire foot for the dogs to bring in.

Currently on our lawn (and I just inventoried), we have parts of the raccoon that attacked Chowder the day after Christmas, a complete coyote skull, half a cow skull, an assortment of large bovine bones, twenty or thirty chewed up shed antlers, several freshly killed squirrels, the hoof, and a pile of feathers from some dim-witted bird (the cats felt like they needed to contribute as well). It's like a touch-and-feel Natural History Museum.

I have great promise for Dylan's soccer skills because she's A) 1/4 Brasilian, and B) has learned to run and weave around the bones like Pele through defenders. Aside from the smell of rotting flesh and the flies they attract, the upside is that our kids are getting terrific anatomy and skeletal lessons. Dylan can differentiate between coyote and cow teeth and Grady can tell you that magpie feathers taste very different from pigeon feathers.

I'll have the lawn mower ready soon, but if I want to save my blade, I'll need to clean up the bones first. It's amazing what a little spring-cleaning will do. The smell will go away and friends will feel that it's safe to visit again. I'll probably bury the bones and carcasses so they don't keep reappearing and someday, a thousand years from now, some robot-archeologist will excavate them and conclude that a horse-cow-coyote-bird-raccoon creature once ruled Hartstrand Gulch.

Boys Night In

2010-03-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

With Regina out of the house for the weekend, I did what any guy would do: I called up my friends for a guys night out. Sounds wild, right? And just a few years ago, it would have been "Fight For Your Right (to Party)" crazy. Things would have gotten broken, blood would have been spilled, feelings would have been hurt. Now, it means calling up your friends whose wives are also out of town and telling them to bring their boys over for pizza and Coors.

Immediately after the wolf-pack arrived (four boys, two dads), the power went out, which turned the party into a Man vs Wild survival-fest. Grady's food was warmed on the wood stove and our night out for pizza changed to a night in for crackers and cheese. We considered BBQing some road-kill or eating one of the horses, but when someone mentioned that Coors has the nutritional equivalent of a "pork chop in every can," we decided we'd leave the grill off.

Dylan passed around flashlights and I dug through our pretty-smelling candle and sharp-knife drawer until I found enough Christmas candles to illuminate a runway. Flashlights and open flames are the ultimate in fun for little boys, and it was easy to keep track of where they were playing (we'll include Dylan in with "the boys" henceforth). Finally, the batteries died on the last flashlight and one of the boys started singing "Happy Birthday" and blew out all the candles. We were in total darkness.

Our manly survival instincts kicked in as we found our way through the dark without running into walls, tripping over toys, or colliding with each other. The boys found their sleeping bags, Dylan found her princess bed (which instantly removed her from the wolf-pack club), and the adult-boys found the cooler for more Coors, or pork chops, whichever.

When our wives returned we had soot on our faces, awesome B.O., and beer breath. They regaled us with stories about pedicures and wine tastings and when we were asked about our evening, we just grunted as a reply, 'cause that's what wolves do.

Baby Olympics

2010-03-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-15T20:24:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-30T11:11:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-13T10:56:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

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.

Santa Detector

2009-12-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

Dylan's first run-in with Santa came in the form of my Dad, who'd been cajoled into dressing in a fuzzy red suit, at daycare. Dylan was leary of sitting on the big guy's lap, and she didn't cry, but she didn't smile either.

What Dylan didn't know was that Santa almost didn't make it. I happened to be a little early to the daycare Christmas party and used the opportunity to drive on up the road to check out the snow that had been piling up all day. A little past Eileen's I spotted my dad's truck. I slowed and saw Dad, wearing the full Santa suit, trying to squeeze through the beer-can window of his truck. Most small children can't fit through a beer-can window, so all I saw was a big red-suited butt and black boots, flailing wildly as Dad tried to reach the keys he'd locked inside. I wish I'd had a camera.

We got the truck unlocked and made it to the party, but Santa had exerted himself breaking into his "sleigh," and Eileen had the fire roaring. Fortunately, the kids couldn't see the beads of sweat dripping beneath Santa's beard and thought he was out of breath because he just flew in from the North Pole.

Fast forward one year. Dylan vs. Santa was as epic as Ali vs. Frazier. At least Frazier took one from Ali. Dylan didn't stand a chance against Greg-Santa (horrifying!) or Callahan-Santa (new rule: anyone in a Santa suit must be over 30). So this year we strode into the holiday season carefully. Would there be tears? Fisticuffs? Arrests?

Dylan got an early dose of Santa at the Holiday Faire a few weeks ago. I had to admit, this was the best Santa I'd ever seen. He was the real deal and Dylan appreciated the effort this guy made to authenticate himself. She sat on his lap, with Grady, smiled, and told him she wanted a teddy-bear and a baby (of which she already has several hundred, apiece). We took lots of photos and high-fived: the Santa curse was over.

And then came Callahan. This year Santa was, at least, old enough to drive himself there. He was also big (check), jolly (check), and had a real white beard (check). But despite the promise of a stocking filled with toys, Dylan knew something was off. Maybe it was that the beard was really just a goatee, or that Santa had shoulder-length hair, or maybe it was the way he said, "Cool," when Dylan said she wanted a baby and a turtle. Whatever it was, Dylan went back to her skeptical ways. She didn't throw any punches, but she wouldn't sit on his lap, either.

Tomorrow, Dylan gets a final holiday shot at Santa. It'll be at Eileen's and Santa, this time, is Scott. We're hoping he's convincing because Dylan's Santa-impostor radar is going to be up. I've given Scott some tips to avoid detection: make sure you ask her name, don't call her by any of her nick-names, don't wear a long-haired wig or a goatee, don't say "dude," and, most importantly, bring a spare set of keys in case you lock yourself out of your truck.

Pee Time in Portland

2009-12-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

Along the infinite expanse that is Interstate 5, there is an overpass, somewhere north of Salem, Oregon, that is the perfect pull-over-and-pee stop. By "perfect" I don't mean a sparkling bathroom at the Eugene Marriott or a hidden and clean rest-stop. I mean it's a place to pull off onto the shoulder where you only feel marginally threatened by passing semi trucks and the hobos who probably sleep there.

The thing I've learned is that I have no idea which direction Dylan's pee will go, despite the fact that I take her to the potty several times a day. I should know, by now, the general direction the urine will fly, but girls don't have the "point and shoot" aim that boys have. My best bet is to get Dylan completely naked, then let her go on her own. Otherwise, things, i.e. pants, chonies, passing pets, me, low-flying birds, get soaked. Along I-5, getting buck naked isn't a safe option. So when Regina and Dylan got back into the car (while I kept a keen eye out for roaming hobos), Dylan was no longer wearing dry leggings and Regina had a great Rorschach ink blot test stain on her khakis.

Aside from multiple food, pee, and gas stops, we made the trip to Portland in eight easy hours (it normally takes six or less). Our friends, Marty and Jen, trekked down from Seattle with their two monkeys, Jasper and Skylar. Dylan and Jasper hit it off immediately and soon they were running amok in the lobby of our hotel and getting Christmas tree ornament glitter all over their faces. Four adults + four kids doesn't really allow for the usual shenanigans that Marty and I typically get into, but we were content taking our kids to the park and setting them loose on the the fat, lazy, city geese.

We hadn't met Jasper or Skylar yet, so it was fun to see them in person. Our kids are close to the same age and were basically on the same schedules and liked the same things. Dylan loved the Christmas DVDs Jasper brought, and Jasper loved the donuts we picked up at VooDoo. Grady just loves food and being tickled and Skylar loved milk. Watching Marty be gentle with a seven-week old baby girl is a lot like watching Lenny be gentle with rabbits. Jen would hand Skylar to Marty, he'd cradle her in his arms, usually knocking her head against his shoulder, she'd cry, and I would give Regina the, "See, I'm not the only one who does that" look.

One afternoon, while the kids napped, Marty and I decided to stroll around. He was looking for a specific store, so before we left, he asked the girl at the front desk if she knew where it was. "5th and Cooch," she told him. "Did you say, 'Cooch'?" he asked. She confirmed the address and we started walking, excited to find a street named Cooch. We were a little disappointed when we found the store, right on the corner of 5th and Couch.

Our Cooch adventure, the kids, and watching a fat man steal catsup from the breakfast bar gave us plenty of great things to laugh about. It's a good feeling when you have friends with kids who are the same age as your kids. It gives you a little hope that you'll still be able to hang with your old buddies and your kids will grow up at least knowing each other.

Sunday rolled around, Portland had an E. coli outbreak, and we had to go home. We made great time, despite the post-Thanksgiving traffic and fog. And when Dylan told us she had to go pee, I knew the perfect place on I-5 to pull over and watch as she soaked her leggings, chonies, and shoes.

Loud Noises!

2009-11-24T19:33:00.000-08:00

I woke up last night to the coolest sound. No, I didn't fart myself awake or hear St. Nick on the roof, but Grady woke us up with his singing. At first it didn't seem so cool. My first thought was that Dylan was hollering because she'd crashed out of bed. Then I thought one of the dogs was trying to pass the coyote he'd eaten off our front lawn earlier that day. Regina must have seen my perplexed look (and my 3:00 AM perplexed look is a real doozy), because she grumbled, "It's the boy," and fell back asleep; I got the impression she'd heard the little man do this before.

He's a pretty mellow kid, even his giggles are laid-back and dude-ish, so to hear him singing out like Pavarotti from his crib was like spotting a white buffalo or finding a manure-free truck on our ranch. I couldn't go back to sleep and I didn't really want to. Grady talked, whirred, cooed, and babbled and I just listened, his sleepy audience of one.

Dylan has been making a few odd noises lately, too. She'll growl at us, usually when she's about to get in trouble (so cute!) and she's learned this horribly obnoxious hacking noise that she spits out like a cat coughing up a giant hair ball. Her favorite place to make this tommy-gun noise is three inches from Grady's face. We holler, Grady smiles, and Dylan growls.

Dylan used to wake up, reliably, at 6:00 AM, every morning. I blame daylight savings, but now she won't get out of bed without an okay from us first. Not that she ever needed one before, but we get a repeated, "Hey! Hey!" like a drunk getting your attention. When that doesn't work, she yells, "I have to go pee-pee!" That gets our attention.

She's also starting to name things. Before, every doll was either Macy Grace (a baby from daycare), or, simply, Baby. Our bummer calf: Baby Calf. The puppy: Baby Puppy. You probably notice a pattern. Now, when we ask for a name she either A) makes up a word, like Kiddle-buuuu, or B) gives us a weird sequence of words. I asked her what was the name of the mole behind her ear (don't ask why). She didn't hesitate, "Baby White Out Aim," she told me.

Dylan must think we make strange noises, also. Or, at least, she must think we mumble. On the trip up to the pediatrician's today, she saw a bird. "Look, a seagull," (it wasn't) she exclaimed. "Mommy, can you say, 'Seagull'?" "Seagull," Regina replied. "Good job, Mommy." Dylan quizzed me next, to see if I could pronounce Seagull correctly. I got it on the third try.

At the pediatrician's office, both kids got shots, so we were treated to some high decibel noises. But the crying ended quickly and soon Grady was back to cooing and Dylan was congratulating us on our correct pronunciation of Kiddle-buuuu.

Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Pink

2009-11-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

When I met Regina in 1993, I was a sly Casanova who easily wooed her with tales of growing up in Scott Valley. She swooned when I whispered in her ear tales of rat-batting and jumping from bridges. But Regina was still unsure.

"Is he 'The One?'" she asked, accidently out loud.

"Who are you talking about?" I asked, then shrugged and continued, "You ever touch your friend's eye when he had pink eye, just so you'd get it too?"

"Marry me now," she replied.

Okay, it's amazing she married me. And, yes, pink eye was always the perfect excuse to get sent home from school. It's great; you're highly contagious and yet you feel fine. You aren't even allowed near a school and you can hang out with all of your friends who gave you pink eye in the first place.

The thought of dealing with her first case of pink eye freaked Regina out a little. So, when Dylan came home with gummy eyes last week, I wondered how she'd react. Like any good mother, she picked out the eye goobers, washed Dylan's face, and gave her eye drops. In a couple of days Dylan was back to being her usual bright-eyed self. Sort of ...

Dylan has a problem leaving our cats alone. She especially loves Alfonso, the fuzziest one. "Fonzie's" tolerance for being in a head-lock lasts a few seconds shorter than the other three cats', and he usually lets Dylan know by dropping the kitty hammer on her face. Last week Dylan had a perfect paw print, complete with claw punctures, on her left cheek. Then came the pink eye, then round 2 with Alfonso. Kitty: 2, Dylan: 0. He put a perfect puncture-constellation around her pinked-up right eye. She looked like the Big-Dipper landed on her face, or that she had a bad copy of Mike Tyson's face tattoo. The wound below her eye (the North Star in her constellation) was the worst one and even turned into a small bruise.

Dylan's brown eyes had turned pink, and then black. We woke up every morning giving ourselves eye-checks. Regina dreaded the possibility of pink eye. To her, it's one step above head lice. I worried about Grady -- but apparently a huge appetite and loud flatulence is the best defense against gooey eyes. And me, I still secretly wished I'd contracted it so I could stay home from work without really being sick.

Bountiful Harvest

2009-10-23T10:51:00.000-07:00

What's not to love about the Fall? You get woodsmoke, rain, candy corn, jerky, carmel apples, and baby calves. If I didn't have to rake leaves (worst yard job ever), if there were more snow (for snowboarding), and longer hours of sunshine (bikinis), it would be perfect.

The season officially begins around here with the opening day of buck season, which also usually coincides with my birthday. It's like having Christmas and Halloween on the same day. The wives of hunters call the time, "bachelorette season," and not because of the TV show. They form small, roving bands and meet in pubs to celebrate their six weeks of solitude.

Just to hammer out the point a little more, here are a couple examples of Fall's awsomeness: I went to my Callahan cousins' the other day to buck hunt and came home with apples, delicious wine they'd bottled, an amazing IPA homebrew, and some homemade goat cheese. Plus, they were brewing up some hard-cider, which I hope to try soon. Then, a couple of days later, I went to our neighbors' to see his day-old Blue Heeler puppies and get even more apples, which I used to make a killer pie. I mean, c'mon, puppies, pies, alcohol? How could you NOT like the Fall?

For Dylan, it was a little more difficult convincing her that she couldn't go to "Grandma Donna's" anymore to swim and that it's too cold for her little havaianas flip-flops. To help her with the seasonal transition, we ushered in her Fall with an early Halloween party.

Her day began with a little pre-nap, energy burning run around the backyard, just to warm up for the melee. It was still a little early, and the grass was wet, so she shed her leggings (yep, I've finally learned the difference between leggings and tights). Soon, her chonies were off, and somehow her shirt got lost in the fray. It was like Cabo Wabo during spring break. In her nudie, she chased the dogs, hurled acorns, and rolled around on the muddy grass until she was filthy and had grass stuck everywhere. During one of her tussles with Chowder, he popped her in the nose and it bled. Unfazed, she ran around the yard like a feral toddler, blood streaming down her face, laughing. I was impressed at how well she could take a punch and Regina was pleased that we wouldn't have to wash grass-blood-mud-acorn stains out of her clothes.

When the party began, she'd finally cleaned up and was transformed into a beautiful princess. Grady joined the party in his chicken suit, but he's such a sweaty boy that he overheated in the costume and we had to take it off. To make sure he didn't feel left out, I put a blonde afro wig on him. If you've never seen a baby in an afro wig, go buy 1) a wig, and 2) a baby. It's hilarious.

My favorite part of the party was when Dylan's friend, Ransom, found one of Chowder's newly-dead ground squirrels and mistook it for a stuffed toy. He proudly carried it to the backyard and parents scattered like he was holding a grenade. We got the varmint out of his grasp, loaded up all the kids on cupcakes and candy, then sent them home.

We finally had time to sit back and relax with our friends, Sean and Eden, and eat good lamb chops, enjoy some drinks, and have a few laughs. Sean and I made last minute adjustments to the hunt we had planned for the morning (the plans got more and more elaborate as the evening and drinks continued), while Regina and Eden just smiled, knowing they'd have us back soon to tackle all those chores we'd been neglecting.

We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Schedule

2009-10-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

When two Virgos meet, marry, and procreate you can pretty much guarantee that routines and schedules will be an integral part of familial happiness. You say "OCD," we say "organized." Even if those two Virgos have a little Taurus who wants to smash the schedule into shiny pieces that she can pick up and eat, the Virgos will hold their ground and remain calm; it's in their astrological makeup.

Dylan's schedule is pretty easy. She gets up early, naps everyday at 1:00, and goes to bed early. If one piece of that simple puzzle is messed with by, say, a chocolate fondue lunch or a sideways glance, then everyone suffers. Most days, we stay on track. Dylan's up by 6:00 whether we're hungover or not, drinks a glass of milk, pees, and watches Dora and Diego while we get ready.

Dora and Diego are slightly annoying children who live in jungles and rescue animals without being attacked and eaten by bigger, more aggressive animals. If Mogli, from "The Jungle Book," had a baby with a drill sergeant with a bad bowl haircut, the baby would be Dora. If Mogli then had an affair with a doe-eyed drag-queen, the baby would be Diego. Dylan doesn't seem to mind their constant high-pitched shouting, but I think I know why. There are no commercials during the shows, but one half-hour episode only lasts about twelve minutes (animal in peril, go through three obstacles, save animal), then the next eighteen minutes are devoted to commercials. And Dylan is infatuated. Damn the power of media.

Dylan sits, rapt, by commercials for toys and tampons (that's the early morning focus group). Regina and I hear, "I want that for my birthday," ten or fifteen times every morning. "What is it?" I'll ask, too sleepy or senile to guess what kind of product Nickelodeon is pushing. I'm not sure Dylan really knows either, but she makes some good guesses: baby? horsey? or, the honest, "I don't know."

Last week she told me she wanted a baby that pooped and peed. Trust me, you don't, I told her. "For my birthday," she pleaded. "First," I told her, "you already have a baby that does that. His name is Grady. Second, Mommy and Daddy aren't making you another one, so enjoy the one you got."

Grady's routine is a little more simple. It involves power-eating and food-coma naps. All the regularly-scheduled eating is really bulking him up. He's already eating a little cereal and his thighs are starting to look like an offensive lineman's. His belly looks like a college freshman's and he even has, what I proudly call, "side-belly." He was rolling over at four-weeks old, but I don't think he can do that anymore, although Regina swears he can. He eats, craps, naps, and grins, all on schedule.

I have to give all the credit to Regina. I'm not sure, okay, I'm positive, I wouldn't have been able to do such an amazing job with getting the kids organized and on a routine that we all can be happy with. I worry (Virgos are worriers too!) about the day that Regina decides she needs a vacation with "just the girls." I can imagine her face when she comes back and sees that the house resembles the suite in the movie "The Hangover," Grady has a bowl of dry cereal on his lap, and Dylan and I are parked in front of the TV, trying to see who can say, "I want that for my birthday," first.

Pistols and Poop

2009-09-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

When I was nine or ten, my cousin, Amy, and I made birthday wishes on just about any item we deemed "lucky." We'd blow dandelions in the wind and make a wish. First star of the night? Of course. We'd wish like crazy. Anything was fair game for wishing on, and sometimes we'd just close our eyes and wish without any prompts. My wish was always the same: a .22 pistol and chocolate cake.

A year or two later, I bought a pistol from my brother and cake was ... well, cake's what Amy always wished for, so I just added it to my wishes in case her wish didn't work. Nowadays, my wishes are a little less concrete. Health. Happiness. Pie. And, since I have those things, mostly, it's tough to answer people when they ask what I want for my birthday. This year I received two things I didn't even know I wanted: poop and and smile.

I know. Poop and a Smile sounds like a misguided ad campaign with Mean Joe Greene trading his sweat-stained jersey for a soda, or some poop. "Gee, thanks Mean Joe," I say as I snatch the jersey out of the air. "Thanks for the poop, kid," he says and walks through the stadium tunnel to the locker room. But I didn't get a cool Steelers jersey; Grady started smiling and Dylan spent some quality time on the toilet.

At our last pediatrician's appointment, the PA told us that she loves babies at two months because they're no longer parasites that just take, take, take. At two months they start to give back, usually starting with a smile. Grady has a terrific smile. It starts out a little crooked and goofy and blooms into a full mouthed beam. Even if you're looking at the back of his head, you know when he's grinning. Granted, his birthday gift came a little early, but I don't mind, he's terrible with dates and times right now.

Dylan, after seeing the smile from her brother, knew that she was going to have to come up big for her dad's birthday to top her bro. Her #2 time has been stagnant lately, which became even more problematic when she started wearing big-girl chonies. After threats, bribes, tears, and pleas, she finally decided that my birthday was the right time to unload her present (that's a pun, get it?). We cheered and loaded her with all the gifts we'd been promising so that, by the end of the day, she ended up with more presents than me.

If you hang out with parents of young children, you'll hear every possible scenario about feces that you could ever imagine. And, you'll hear these stories told by seemingly normal people who, apparently, have a passion for poop. I didn't want to be one of those parents, but being a parent and having serious scatalogical discussions is as unavoidable as beards at a folk-festival. At least Grady Jay's smile gave me something else to celebrate, but I think next year I'll go back to wishing for a .22 pistol and chocolate cake.

Timeout!

2009-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Whenever I see Willard Scott salute some hundred year-old grandpop, the next comment is invariably something about all of the wonderful inventions and advancements he's seen in his lifetime. Well, Mr. super-old guy, what about me? I've seen some pretty cool stuff in my day, without a Smuckers sendoff and a non-sequitur from Willard.

When I was just a wee-cowboy, computers were the size of Chevy vans (and not the new vans, no, the really cool vans with bubble windows and jacked-up rear tires and unicorn murals and disco balls twirling from the rear-view.), telephones were all tethered to their walls, the Raiders were great, and wooden spoons were strictly for spankings. Now, the vans are mini, the telephones have broken free from their binds, the Raiders are ... never mind, and the kids are all in timeout.

I remember when I first heard about the concept of timeout. I must have had some friend with new-age/hippie parents who put their rambunctious tyke in timeout. Awesome! I thought. You screw up, then get to go play somewhere other than the place you screwed up. The concept seemed so ridiculous that it was ridiculously great.

Spankings, it seems, have fallen out of fashion. Since Regina and I are on the cutting edge of fashion, we've taken to the timeout concept. We've tried different variations for Dylan: first, her room. Unfortunately, that turned out to be exactly how I envisioned timeout would be when I was ten. Dylan would be doing something awful and get sent to her room where she'd resume her awful behavior, now with immunity from more punishment. Obviously, that didn't work.

Our second attempt was the church pew on our font porch. That worked for a couple of weeks. The problem was that Dylan would rather be outside anyway, and learned that whenever she was sent to the bench, the dogs would come around and climb up to join the festivities. At first we thought the shrieks were ones of remorse. Nope. Just joy at getting licked by Chowder.

We're at a loss where the next timeout spot should be. The pasture with the bulls? A small cardboard box? I think Dylan would find something great about any option we try. I imagine when the temperature drops, the pew won't seem so fun. Now, when Dylan starts getting a little nutty, we go for diversion tactics. Hey! Do you need to potty? Could you take the mi-mi out of Grady's eye and put it away? Oh, look, a kitty! Anything. In the end, Regina and I have realized that the best timeout is the one imposed on each other. We send ourselves out of the room and Dylan watches, jealous of the kisses Chowder smothers us in.

Fall Weaning

2009-09-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

Big changes happen this time of year around the Valley: the kids are back in school, so our one-lane turns into a drag strip; the farmers are exhausted and can practically see that last bale of the season plopping out of their baler; the buck hunters start twitching whenever they drive by our house and see the bucks lazing in the shade, giving the camo-ed up drivers the finger; and the ranchers start weaning calves. Here on Hanna Bros. we are in category "E" (All of the Above). This means that our nights are spent wide awake, wishing the teenagers would stop knocking over the road signs (damn kids these days!), wondering why we live next to a feedlot, and listening to bawling calves.

Our days are blurs of activity. Regina's back at work, so Dylan and Grady are at Eileen's. Dylan is no longer the baby of the group and rolls with the big kids. She even made up a song about daycare today. I tried to have her sing it to a catchy Avett Brothers tune, but she got off track when she sang the chorus: "We're going to Eileen's and we're going to see Aiden, Shelby, Gavin, Abby, Jenna, and Maaaacy Grace." Granted, it needs work, but give her a break, Simon Cowell, she's only two. Grady just shook his head and went back to his nap.

We've also been chasing down yearling calves that have escaped the feedlot. They made a hole in the fence the size of a hoola-hoop and snuck out like Hogan's Heroes. We've found them six miles north, four miles south, and a couple miles west. The good news is that our eastern forces have been strengthened, just to keep the calves out of Nevada. You know, legal prostitution and gambling just wreaks havoc on impressionable young bovines.

Regina and I got into the spirit of the season and tried a little weaning of our own. No, we didn't leave a box of raisins and a gallon of milk on the floor and skip town, but we decided it was time to get rid of Dylan's mi-mi.

Okay, the decision was made for us, about five months ago at Dylan's two-year check up. We were cruising through the appointment, and getting the esteem boosting nods and "good" replies as we answered the doctor's questions. Then he had to ask about a pacifier. We could tell by his tone that we shouldn't still be using one. I think the question was something like: You're not still using a pacifier, are you? We looked at each other, panicked, expecting the other to lie. Finally the truth came out and we received a stern, yet gentle, reminder that "they" like to see toddlers give up the pacifier at eighteen months. We nearly fell over from laughing.

Strangely, Chowder, our puppy, got into Dylan's bedroom, the truck, and the car, singled out Dylan's mi-mi's, and ate them. At least that's the story we're telling Dylan. I feel bad for Chowder. Dylan's going to resent him for something he actually didn't chew up. She's been, more or less, fine without her mi-mi, and doesn't even ask for it at bedtime anymore, but we've reinforced our eastern line, just in cast she breaks for Nevada.

Fair Addiction

2009-08-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

There is this place, turn right past the McDonald's and drive under I-5, where you can first see the tall oblong mast of the Zipper and the swinging cars on the Ferris Wheel. You catch your first whiff of corndog and steer manure and keg beer and know, undoubtedly, that it's fair time. I'd forgotten about it, or forgotten about the feeling that I used to get at that place, even though I've driven past this spot a thousand times, until last Thursday when I took Dylan to the fair.

It was love at first sight. I heard her squeal, and when I checked the mirror I saw her absolutely ecstatic expression. I'm sure she had no idea what she was seeing, exactly, that was so thrilling. After all, she'd never ridden the Zipper or the Ferris Wheel, but carnival rides are like mall Santas, they ooze hope, excitement, promise, and pleasure.

We spent the next three days trying to decide if we wanted to ride the carousel horses just one more time, or take a bold step and try out the Dizzy Dragons. The final count was carousel horses - 11, Dizzy Dragons - 1. We tried other rides, too. Pink Pig Airplane was a second place favorite, just ahead of Pink Car and Pink Truck. When I'd ask what she wanted to ride next, "Pink," was always the first reply until I could narrow it down.

When we reached a fever pitch with the carnival, and I feared that Dylan would force me to unbolt a carousel horse and kidnap a carnie so she'd have them with her forever and ever and ever, we'd stop for a healthy snack of cotton candy, corndogs, and mini-donuts. Fortunately, Dylan was enamored by more than just the bells and lights of the carnival. She also got to see all of her friends. She'd run off with them and I'd suddenly have a couple of minutes to dash over to the beer garden.

I took Dylan to the "Extremely Amped Motocross Show," which was guys on dirt bikes doing crazy X-Games style jumps and a band playing Journey covers with a lead singer who dressed like, as Dylan put it, Barbie. Honestly, I expected her to get bored and anticipated leaving five minutes into it. Not so. Dylan loved the whine of the bikes and after every jump (even if they were mili-seconds apart) she'd tap her cousin Roxy on the shoulder and yell, "That was soooo cool!"

Every evening, the only way we could get Dylan to leave without dragging her and leaving little claw ma rks down the midway, was to promise that we'd be back. But then Sunday rolled around. We rode rides to the point of exhaustion, missed her nap, and, sadly, had to break the news that we had to go. It was hot, we'd just spent our last twenty dollar bill on corndogs and Dippin' Dots, and needed to go home and get some rest. Dylan cried, real tears, all the way to the car. "I want Fair," she sobbed. "Next year," we promised as we pulled out of the parking lot and crossed over that place, just past the I-5 overpass where we couldn't see it anymore, not even the Ferris Wheel.

Say Cheese!

2009-08-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

Grady just celebrated his big one-month birthday with a grande milk, a soy-formula fart, and a twenty-two hour nap. Man, that kid can party. During this first month, Regina worked tirelessly to get our little man on "the schedule." As far as I can tell, "the schedule" involves feeding, burping, diaper changes, and naps. It seems there are some subtleties to "the schedule" that I am missing. I sense the undercurrents of some sort of rigid plan, but I cannot figure out of what, exactly, the plan consists.

Whatever Regina's doing, she's doing it well, because Grady (usually) only wakes once during the night to be fed, can already roll over, and can down a big bottle of formula without barfing all over himself. I know this because my wife tracks his routines on a little notepad we keep by the microwave. It reads something like this: 9:45 PM, 6.5 oz. formula, stretches, change pee/poo. I add to it in my distinct penmanship to make it seem like I'm doing a lot to help out with "the schedule." I include things like: 2:00 AM, 32 oz. Mt. Dew, 75 push-ups, toilet trained. 4:30 PM, 1st shave, Japanese lessons,

rugby practice. 5:00 AM, finished training every unbroke horse on the ranch, ate a steak.

I'm probably a little subjective, but Grady's a pretty handsome little guy. He really resembled Dylan during his first few days, but now he's growing into something very different. He has finer features, lighter eyes, and a stronger chin. And while these features look beautiful in person, Grady isn't the most photogenic kid in the world. Sure, Regina has snapped some great shots of him, but we're used to Dylan, who, even on accident, always takes a great picture.

Grady is a pretty good sleeper. Even when he's awake, he looks like he just might drift off at any moment. It's a great quality, and a gift, especially with a sister who has an abundance of energy, but sleepiness doesn't always translate well to film (or pixels). With his eyes half-shut, Grady comes off looking like an extra on the Sopranos. He just needs a polyester track suit and a few gold chains. I expect every caption beneath his pictures to read, "Gimme the @!&% macaroni or I'll breaka your legs."

Case in point, our friend, Amber, who is a great photographer, came over and wanted to snap some shots of the the two of us. I'd just come in from work, so my dirty hands juxtaposed with the clean baby had the potential for some decent pictures. She took quite a few pictures and do you know how many turned out? One. And it was of Grady's feet. It seems that our little guy got at least one trait from his old man, the ability to wreck any photograph.

We're okay with it; he's a handsome devil and gets cuter by the day. We figure that he'll be as good looking in pictures as his sister soon enough (thank God for Regina's good genes). Until then, we'll keep snapping shots of our beautiful little Goomba who will be half-asleep, daydreaming about macaroni and milk.

Hanna, Party of Four

2009-08-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what we've forgotten about baby-raising in just two years. "We?" Regina asks, one eyebrow raised. "Do you have a mouse in your pocket?" Okay, it's amazing what I'VE forgotten, but, still, it's pretty amazing. I consider myself a nearly-average dad, but I'm embarrassed at my baby ineptitude -- especially since I've already gone through the sleepless nights, streams of poo, bottle warming, milk barfs, impossible toy-assembly, navel swabs, weird rashes, the car seat weight, awkward comments from strangers, and all of the other little grunts and oddities that come with babies. You'd think Grady was our first child and I was a sixteen year old father.

Grady brings some new things, too. Pee fountains. Like the ol' pull my finger trick, they get me every time. Regina reminds me to put the little pee-pee tee-pee over his boy-parts to prevent golden showers, but I get lazy. I also get lazy about putting the new diaper beneath the old one I'm changing, but that's just an issue I'll have to work out on my own. And, yes, things get messy. We met a hippie couple who were doing the whole No-Diaper thing with their newborn. I guess when you live in the forest, toilet training takes on a whole new meaning, but the mother confided in us that it could get pretty gross. I probably shouldn't use them as the benchmark in bodily function cleanliness, but I bring them and their messy baby up when Regina asks why I'm cleaning off the changing table again.

Grady also has Metatarsus Adductus. If you just met him, you'd think that was latin for extraordinarily handsome, wickedly smart, and well-hung. And while these attributes may be true, it's not what Metatarsus Adductus means. Simply put, he has little bean feet, probably from cozying them together in a tight womb. They will straighten on their own, but we help the process along with little stretches. Our doctor told us he'll probably grow up with a foot fetish (he told us twice, so we're taking it seriously). We're thinking the slight turn-in on his feet will make him a fast runner and there will, finally, be a fast Hanna.

Grady may have the foot-structure advantage, but Dylan will probably claim the Fastest Hanna title first. She can not walk. You're thinking, she's two, right? Shouldn't she? And, yes, she should, but Dylan thinks walking is for the old and infirm. Dylan runs. Everywhere. Barefooted, in flip-flops, cowboy boots, irrigation boots, sneakers, it doesn't matter; she is Charlie-Hustle around the yard. It's fun, and a scary, to watch because Chowder, her puppy, is usually running around -- or through -- her legs.

Very quickly we are learning that two young children can cause an energy vacuum, but, amazingly, with all of the craziness, we've also figured out that the little boogers also revive us. So, we'll keep watching Dylan do laps around the yard, training Grady to be World's Fastest Hanna, and he'll keep peeing on me (Doh! Not again!), and Regina will remain the voice of reason throughout it all, and the Eastside Gang will just keep on truckin'.

Like Father, Like Son

2009-07-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

Doctors often refer to my father as the "bionic man." It's an apt definition; he has more plastic, titanium, swine parts, silicone, alloys, and granite in his body than Lee Majors and Pamela Anderson combined. The surgeries he's undergone are, really, an extension of both his personality and his profession.

Despite the fact that we're both ranchers, I'd always thought that I was just a tiny-sliver more cautious than Dad. Dad hops on any horse, trained or not, and rides the buck out of him. I work with young horses for hours on the ground before I'm confident enough to climb aboard. Dad balances precariously on the back of a moving hay truck, one hand clinging to a little piece of twine that could snap at any second, the other hand pulling off hay for the cattle; I gingerly climb to the top and kick the hay off from the center of the load. Every nut Dad tries to loosen is a probable self-inflicted wound with a wrench; I spray WD-40 on rusted bolts until they shine like they've just been purchased at the hardware store.

But it's catching up with me, as the hazards of this job often do. When Regina was seven months pregnant with Dylan I took a horse to Anderson for surgery. On the way home I rolled the ranch truck on I-5. Fortunately Grant, who was with me, wasn't hurt, and we'd left the horse at the vet's, but my right ear was nearly torn off and for a few weeks it stuck straight out. Regina called me Shrek. I preferred "White Barack."

I'd made it eight and a half months through this pregnancy without incident. Then I decided enough of this stupid caution and got on a horse I'd been training. Apparently, this horse only likes people on the ground, admiring his towering beauty and feeding him grain. On his back, he thought, people weren't so cool. It wasn't getting bucked off that hurt (although it did), it was the little tap-dance he did on

my face that inflicted the most pain. If you can take your eyes off our beautiful baby boy's photos in Regina's Facebook account, you'll see that the white-legged goiter-necked freak holding Grady is not some deformed cousin from Chernobyl, but me, at the peak of swelling.

This, I realize, is no way to introduce you to our new baby (but you already knew we had a boy, right?), and it certainly isn't giving Grady Jay, or Regina, the props they deserve ... but more will come later. I promise.

It's what I think about, though: raising a son who will, most likely, be a little like me, whether he embraces it or not. And, despite the crooked shoulders, giant ear, and asymmetrical face, I keep telling myself, being a little like your old man, that's not really a bad thing.

The Final Countdown

2009-07-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

We can count the days until the baby comes on one hand, that is, if it's a five-fingered hand. If you've lost a digit in a terrible lawnmower accident, you can start counting down the days tomorrow. Regina is, of course, tired of the heat, tired of bumping her belly into everything, and tired of being tired (not that another baby is really going to help the latter). I'm frightened and thrilled, like most expectant fathers, and am really looking forward to our hospital stay (room service! chair-beds! mini-vacation!).

Dylan, for her part, is blissfully indifferent. She will acknowledge that, yes, Mommy is having a baby and that she will be a big sister soon, but any inquiries beyond, "Are you going to be a good big sister?" get ignored. When we ask Dylan the baby's name she responds, "Sister" (Hint: that's not his name).

Recently, we cleaned out Dylan's old room and made way for the baby. Dylan thought we were reincarnating all her old toys and reverted to playing with rattles and breast pump cups. It was hard explaining that her toys are no longer her toys. I'm sure that rationale will get easier to comprehend as the baby gets old enough to physically take her toys on his own. It'll be a hard lesson in sharing, that's for sure.

As we did when Regina was pregnant with Dylan, we are keeping the baby's name a secret. I'm not exactly sure why, except we've noticed that people -- friends, family, total strangers -- tend to have no qualms about offering opinions about the names you've chosen. If we were to say, "We're trying to decide between Adolph or Hiroshima. (Hint: we've chosen neither) We really like both and can't decide," the correct response is, "They're both great (or interesting, or fun, or ... names)." It's not a poll or an opportunity to tell us about the dog named Hiro that bit you when you were three. It's also not an appropriate time to make a face and say, "Yuk." Our theory is that once the baby is born, it's hard to say to his face that you had a classmate in jr. high with the same name who ate his boogers and couldn't operate his pants' zipper on his own. If you do, the baby can retaliate (vomit, poo throwing, hair pulling).

Our friends have told us that having two kids isn't twice as time consuming as one kid. It seems that there is some universally weird mathematical formula that adding one more child causes the hours in a day to shrink by 2/3s. We'll see. We're as ready as we can be, though. We have the baby's room set up, I have a fresh bottle of Bulleit Bourbon, and Dylan has hidden and put her name on all her toys.

How To: Potty Training

2009-06-10T17:41:00.000-07:00

In February we received the news ... Dylan had used the toilet! Regina and I high-fived, went home and threw away all our diapers. Easy-breezy! Piece of cake! All those whiney parents who complain that potty-training is hard and takes a lot of work and persistence obviously didn't have our natural parenting talents. All it takes, we reminded ourselves as we toasted our celebratory Crystal champagne, is positive thinking (as in, "Hey, Dylan, don't you think it'd be cool if you started using the big girl potty?") and Eileen, Dylan's daycare provider.

It's June, if you haven't checked your calendar or noticed all the farmers cutting hay, and Dylan is in, what I would call, the potty-training minor league system. Our dreams that Dylan would love using the toilet so much that she'd never soil another diaper have vanished. She'd be up the the big leagues now, but we aren't as disciplined as Eileen. At daycare, Dylan uses the toilet every 1/2 hour. At home, every other hour we ask, "You want to use the potty?" "No." "Okay."

To be fair, it's not entirely our fault that progress has been slow. Dylan likes a potty-party when she uses the toilet. The daycare kids have a parade every time one of the "trainees" needs to go. Here at home, Dylan's lucky to get Mom and Dad to watch. The first time Dylan used the potty here was when her grandparents came to visit and we crammed all five of us into the bathroom. Dylan loved it and went pee -- no problem.

There are signs of progress, though. Dylan frequently pees on the lawn (and sometimes poops), and -- if she's at Eileen's -- often uses the same pull-up all day long. Of course, Dylan's packing seven pounds of urine in it and it's disintegrating around her thighs, but, still, it's the OP (Original Pull-up). Okay, that's not true ... unless I'm watching her. When Dad's in charge, pull-up changes are like trains in Italy -- they come at infrequent intervals.

Dylan's also very curious about other people using the toilet. I assure you, it's uncomfortable to have your daughter stand in front of you and and hand over tiny pieces of toilet paper like a little, aggressive bathroom attendant. I just want a few minutes alone in the bathroom without someone checking in to make sure everything is working properly.

Our goal of having one out of diapers before the next one is in them probably won't happen (unless Dylan makes some big strides in four weeks. Yeah, four weeks. Wow!), but it'll be close. Dylan's progressing nicely. And, as long as I re-stock the pull-up supply, don't eat all her potty treats, and remember to have a potty parade every 1/2 hour, she should be diaper-free in no time. You won't believe how well fertilized our lawn will be.

I Love You. You Love Me.

2009-05-31T15:12:00.001-07:00

This morning, on our way to daycare, I tried to get Dylan pumped about her soon-to-be big sister status.

"Dylan, do you know Mommy has a baby in her tummy?"

"Mmm-hm," came the reply from the back seat.

"Is it a baby boy or baby girl?"

"Boy."

"Are you going to be a good big sister?"

"I love ..."

Dylan paused. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Finally! Dylan was officially excited about having a little brother. Until now, her reaction has been, at best, dismissive.

"Yes?" I asked.

"I love Barney."

Barney? Really? That stupid I-love-everyone dinosaur isn't even on TV anymore. Fortunately for Dylan, Grandma has a VCR and a pile of old movies.

For our part, we've been busy surrounding Dylan with babies and boys, just to get her prepped for July. Malcolm, her Oakland homey, visited last weekend and helped transition her to a house that's equal parts estrogen and testosterone, like a well-mixed Manhattan. For a much better recap of the weekend, check out: www.bigdaddypaulblog.blogspot.com. Malcolm's dad has better recall than I do and has awesome photos from their visit.

Malcolm, too, is an only child, and two of those playing together is usually more heated then Israeli-Palestine peace talks. Not this trip. The two got along terrifically and their toy-tug-of-wars always ended with hugs rather than slugs. Dylan even appropriately ignored the boy when he ran around the yard in his nudie and put on a little burlesque show with his mom's hat.

Last night, we took her to Derek and Shelly's wedding. It was a huge valley party and you couldn't walk ten feet without stepping on a small child. Parents don't like it when you step on their small children, but I say put lights on them and I'll see them. Anyway, it was another great opportunity for Dylan to meet babies -- maybe even baby boys -- and take another step toward acclimation. It turned out to be a great opportunity squandered. Dylan ran around the dance floor, pushed anyone off who tried to join her, and got shushed by old ladies. Regina and I pretended we didn't see her as we ate as quickly as we could. As we finished our meal, we realized that sharing the dance floor was as likely as sharing her toys with her brother, and we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. We finally caught her when she blew out her flip-flop and were able to load her in the truck.

While Dylan pretends that Mommy's pregnant tummy is hiding either puppies or kittens, we are getting excited. We've decided amicably on a name (hint: it rhymes with "silver angst") without resorting to a rock-paper-scissors tournament or Indian leg-wrestling. We've set up the crib, again, and even picked up a pack of diapers (one ought to do it, right? I've heard that boys to all their business outside).

I think we're ready. And who knows, maybe by the time Bilver Pangst (hint: not his real name) is old enough to be seduced by television, the big purple dinosaur will be back in fashion, and he and his big sister will snuggle up on the couch together and sing along with every song.

Horse-Crazy

2009-05-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

It was rodeo-time here in the Valley, unfortunately for Dylan, it was also nap time. So, after watching a few brave (or forced) mutton busters, she took off her pink cowgirl hat and decided she'd had enough. The rodeo puttered along without a hitch; it went so smoothly, in fact, that by the time Dylan and Mommy made it back in, the Lions' Club was discounting their Lion burgers and the performance was over.

As per customary rodeo tradition, we hung around with people whose coolers weren't quite empty and watched Dylan play in the dirt. She and her buddy Aiden found a pile of wheat (you know it's a good place for a rodeo when it's easy to find piles of wheat) and played the "pour wheat in your hair" game.

At one point, Dylan and I had to walk to our truck (our "friends" let their coolers get empty). As we passed behind the roping chutes she pointed to a pile and said, "Horsey poopy." It was a courteous gesture to warn her old man and I was impressed that she could differentiate between horse and "other" poop. But, what do you expect from a horse-crazy girl?

Yep, it's official: Dylan's crazy about horses. It's a lot better than being crazy about Saving You Money at Crazy Eddie's Furniture Gallery, or just, you know, plain ol' crazy. It helps that we have a new foal in our front yard (we've named her Sugar) and that the rest of the cavvy is in our back yard. We go on horse watching expeditions nearly every day and Dylan's new favorite word is "Penny," because that's the last horse she rode on a cattle drive.

I have a few horses here to start training, and I think Dylan will like having little rodeos right here at the house every night. Who knows, if the horses don't like me, I'll send in Dylan ... they'll surely like a horse-crazy girl with wheat in her hair.

Dylan Hanna & Parliament Funkadelic

2009-05-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

In 1994 Regina and I, along with a few friends, went to Lollapalooza. We left before the headliner, the Smashing Pumpkins, played because, well, it was the Smashing Pumpkins. But we did see A Tribe Called Quest, the Breeders, and the Beastie Boys. We also saw people who shouldn't have been topless and a fistfight in a bathroom. Between the Beasties and the Breeders was George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. I hadn't heard much about ol' George and for the first hour of his set I thought he was a roadie on stage setting up mics for the Beasties. When I realized the jamming/singing/growling coming through the speakers wasn't mood music or a sound test, and was, in fact, an actual guy singing, I thought, "Who in the hell is this big dude with rainbow dreads and giant sunglasses? And why is he freaking me out so much?"

Dylan's second birthday was last weekend and Regina and I had a Lollapalooza flashback, or a lolla-back, as the professionals call it. Dylan was pretty pumped up about her big day and when the first guests arrived, she grabbed a pink pair of sunglasses that were attached to her gift. When the next guests arrived, she swiped the curly-q ribbons off their gift and put them in her hair. She added a princess crown, platinum necklace (genuine Chinese plastic), and a ring that looked like something Run DMC wore in 1988. "Our little Funkadelic George," Regina said to me. "Yikes," I think I replied.

The party was pretty fun for Dylan. Last year she opened one gift, cried, then quit the party entirely. This year, she opened each gift carefully (sort of), added more ribbon to her birthday dreads, and gave appropriate ooohs and aaahs at every unwrapping.

Dylan is getting pretty good with forming sentences, but there are long sentences, even multi-syllabic words, that tongue-tie her a little. "Bicycle" comes out as "Factory yo-yo." "Greg" has three syllables. And the Gettysburg Address starts out great but gets off track ... "Four score and a blee-blooo dobbie do da."

It must have been right between roping cats and polishing off her fourth cupcake when Dylan's words failed her and she resorted to toddler-scatting. The babbling reminded us even more of George Clinton, and we knew our best bet would be to put her to bed. It took a while to come off the sugar-high, but she finally fell asleep, sunglasses askew and ribbon strewn around her room. Regina and I finally sat down, relaxed, and, since our little George had finished her set, waited for the Beastie Boys to come on stage.

Montezuma's Last Stand

2009-04-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

What a difference five months makes. That's how long it's been since Dylan's last visit to Mexico and our little chrysalis is now a Mexican butterfly. Can you believe that in November Dylan couldn't even order tequila con limon (she always said "con carne") or buy cheap Vicodin at the pharmacia? Amazing.

Okay, she still can't ... as far as we know, and we did clear customs, but her traveling skills (aka patience) have improved greatly. We no longer have to restrain her on the plane like it's Con Air. I'm actually writing this on the plane and Dylan is sitting quietly on her mother's ever-shrinking lap, watching Curious George. And while Dylan is being as good as possible, Regina's on the verge of vomiting because our seat-neighbor just put on patchouli lotion and now our row smells like the BO from a hundred burning-man hippies. Unfortunately, Dylan has filled every available barf-bag with her snack and toys, so I guess the next option is my lap. Dylan's bored, despite the monkey on the portable DVD, and wants to read (aka "tear apart") our foul smelling neighbor's book. She hasn't yet, and we're proud, but if the patchouli comes out again I'm turning her loose.

Aside from Dylan becoming a better traveler, Regina and I have become much better parents. We've learned the power of candy. Dylan, like her old man, has a complete row of sweet teeth and we take full advantage of it through bribery. Can't stand another second on a cramped bus? Try candy. Need to be quiet before we're asked to leave the restaurant? Candy. I know, the Baby Whisperer might call it bad parenting, but we say bully to her. Besides, they're just baby teeth, if they rot, she'll get new ones.

Puerto Vallarta was a great new city for us. Dylan was excited that our resort had feral cats, but didn't think too highly of the iguanas. We swam, walked the marina, and took little adventures on the butt-breaking local buses into town. Poolside, there were plenty of little Mexican boys for Dylan to oogle at, and I found a place nearby that made killer fish tacos, so everyone was content.

In the end, the trip was just a great, relaxing getaway. No crazy drug-gang shootouts (although the twice daily canon fire from the "pirate" ship kept us on our toes), no blistering sunburns (I always remembered to pass out beneath an umbrella), and no Montezuma's Revenge.

So Puerto Vallarta, keep your fish taco frying, your beer cold, and your pharmaceutical regulations loose, because the Eastside Gang will be coming back.

The (Eastside) Road

2009-03-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

If you've read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," you'll recall that it is about a father and son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and find "the good guys," all the while pushing a shopping cart full of their belongings. If you haven't read it, thank you for choosing my blog over, quite possibly, America's greatest writer.

We're reading it for class right now, so it's on my mind. The book says a lot about a father's love, cannibalism, and the best way to carry all your stuff in a cart. The familial love part is nice and meaningful, but Dylan, probably by listening to me yammer on about the novel, has learned how to fit her belongings not in a cumbersome shopping cart with a wonky wheel, but in her arms. She'd kick ass in post-apocalyptic America. Or in a McCarthy novel.

Trips in the car, walks around the yard, even moving from one room to another, all require a transfer of supplies that resemble a US military exit strategy. We call it "Operation Toy Grab." A ride in the truck requires, minimum, one pacifier (mi-mi), one small blanket (night-night), and often a book, pencil, small Diego toy, Diego's puma, and anything that resembles a kitty. Around the house, Dylan usually packs a small piano, her Leap Frog caterpillar, a recorder, and anything else that will fit into her arms.

Regina's started calling her the Bag Lady. I'd call her something from "The Road," but none of the characters are named. Dylan's greatest achievement in supply-carrying comes at bedtime. To sleep properly, we must have mi-mi, night-night, a stuffed cat she got in a trade with Malcolm, a dolly, Hello Kitty pillow, and in the tight grip of her hands, a Baby Barbie and a Hello Kitty ring. It's exhausting to even remember what she needs, but if I've forgotten just one item, I can't get to to the door without her calling out, "Daddy. Ring? Ring?"

Oh sure, you're wondering why we allow it, right? Or are you still wondering if we read Cormac McCarthy novels to Dylan before bedtime? We don't, yet. And to answer the first question, we've tried to "forget" some of her swag on road trips, and the hell unleashed from the back seat made us turn around for whatever trinket we'd left behind.

I hate pushing Dylan into growing up too quickly, but I won't miss having to run a mental checklist of everything required to travel/sleep/walk. I've gotten so good at remembering exactly what situation requires which toy that I usually forget A) my necessities (wallet), or B) Dylan's real necessities (diapers). And heck, when she's just a little taller I'm going down to the WalMart parking lot and swiping her a real cart of her own.

Little Dylan the Wrangler

2009-03-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last week, Regina and I went to a wine tasting party. I learned that I am very good at tasting lots of wines, yet horrible at determining the difference between, say, two-buck chuck and the host's wedding wine.

I also learned that I wrangle. Granted, I live on a ranch (wranch?), I wear Wranglers, and I know the words to the old western song, "Little Joe the Wrangler," but I'd always reserved the terms "wrangler" (as an occupation) and "wrangle" (as a verb) for summer-camps and dude ranches. But then I had this conversation with a wined-up party-goer:
SHE: What do you do?
ME: I'm a rancher.
SHE: Oh my God!
ME: (flinching) Yep.
SHE: What time do you wrangle?
ME: (confused) Um. Five?
SHE: Can I help wrangle? I'm .. blah ... horses ... wrangle ... blah ... horse ... blah ...
ME: Yep. We can wrangle.
REGINA: Stop calling it that!

A couple of weeks ago, Dylan and I did a little wrangling. A couple of weeks ago, I just called it "moving cattle," or, "a cattle drive," but now I have a cool word for it.

Dylan was, to my relief and joy, very excited about getting on a horse. She's only sat on a few of the older "kids'-horses" (okay, and a horse no one had yet ridden, but he is very gentle. I swear.), so when I put her on my saddle-horse and we took off after the cattle, I expected shrieks of terror and a quick return to mommy. Instead, she laughed at the uncomfortable trotting and yelled at the cows. "Move! Cow!"

I was impressed. Once the cows lined out and slowed down a little, and we no longer needed Sparky, my horse, to trot, bite, or push, Dylan finally got bored and wanted down. I thought about giving her the "cowgirls don't quit on the herd," lecture, but I thought better. Besides, Dylan had made it nearly three miles, sitting or bouncing on a saddle horn. I'd have called it quits long before that. The pain in her butt couldn't compare to her sheer unbridled (mind the pun) joy.

So now I have these two things: a daughter who loves horses and my very own little wrangler. I need to go to more wine tasting parties. It's amazing what I learn.

Photocopied Finger

2009-02-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

Regina and I went to the doctor's last week for our second sonogram (which is just the technical term for an ultrasound -- we asked -- and is not to be confused with a Sonicare or a mammogram, unless the technician is extra-thorough). After they dumped half a bottle of green slime on Regina's belly, the technician measured just about everything on our squirmy baby. (We remembered that Dylan, too, was a wiggly baby. I think Regina and I are in for it.)

The coolest thing about our tech was her "working voice." While she looked and clicked and measured, she told us exactly what she was doing in a lilting voice that was like a soft, pleasant song, like something from Sara McLachlan or The Cranberries. "Now I'm measuring baby's kidneys," she'd sing. "Encore!" Regina and would shout as we waved our arms and held up our lighters.

As we neared the end of our concert, I mean appointment, the technician asked if we still wanted to know the gender of our baby. Regina and I aren't into surprises, and we'd already made up our minds that we wanted to know as much as possible about the new roommate we were getting. I looked up at the monitor to see if I could tell before she told us. Every image she'd captured up until then looked nothing like a baby to me. "See the baby's nose," she'd point. "There?" "No, that's MY nose, but nice try," she'd reply. Other, more plausible, options that I saw on the ultrasound's screen were 1) the surface of the moon, or 2) leftover casserole. But a baby? No.

But this time, when she asked the gender question, I glanced up at the screen and saw something that looked like a photocopied finger. I'm no doctor, but I was pretty certain Baby Turtle was a boy. I was right.

With Dylan, we had decided on a boy's name (or, rather, a different name for a boy, since, let's face it, Dylan is kind of a boy's name), but were uncertain about a girl's names. For Turtle, the opposite is true. This means either giving our son a girl's name or that we have only four months to come up with a boy's name. The name negotiations will probably take longer than California budget negotiations, and ours involve thumb wrestling and Google searches.

Dylan, we think, will be happy to have a little brother. After all, there aren't too many girls who are her age around here, so she's used to boys. And, as Maddock pointed out, a little brother will come in handy for deterring young grinders when high school dances roll around (and I won't have to chaperone).

Until then, we'll keep our image of the photocopied finger on the refrigerator and try to convince Dylan that Mommy doesn't have a full tummy, rather, she's having a boieeeee.

Dancing: A Cautionary Tale

2009-02-13T14:02:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine recently chaperoned Etna High's homecoming dance. He was only slightly disturbed by the grinding on the dance floor, but was generally unimpressed. That is, until he noticed his daughter dancing, a recipient of the aforementioned grinding.

I've seen this guy completely dismantle men in fist fights, and, I suppose, his first reaction was to do the same to the young grinder. Instead, he calmly told the boy that if he danced like that with his daughter again, he'd break his arms off.

The story is both a cautionary tale (be careful with whom you choose to grind) and a beautiful story for fathers of daughters. I know I'll hang on to it for a long time and will retell it to Dylan before her first school dance.

But really, what it makes me think about is how soon that first dance will be. No, Dylan's daycare isn't holding a Spring Formal (good thing, the girls outnumber the boys 3:1), but, as the old cliche goes, she's growing up too fast.

It seems like yesterday Dylan was sticking her fingers up my nose and asking, "Booger?" Okay, maybe that was yesterday, but it'll be sooner rather than later when picking her father's nose, or even her father picking his own nose, in public will embarrass her.

It feels like overnight Dylan has gone from coo-ing and drooling to a little monkey who can climb into her dinner chair, answer questions (How old are you? "ONE!" Did you poop? "Mmmm-Hmm."), and count to ten (one. THREE! nine. TEN!). Time seems only speeds up exponentially. This is only good during the NBA season and bouts of the stomach flu, but it's too fast for parenting.

As the old joke goes: when boys start showing up like tom cats at our door, I only have to shoot the first one and word will get around. I know that only a father of a daughter could have written that, and soon I'll probably start seriously considering if that's a viable option. I'll know that it won't be, but the break-off-the-arms-thing, that just might work.

Super Baby

2009-02-05T20:34:00.001-08:00

We broke in the new addition last weekend with a Superbowl party. Dylan thinks any gathering of three or more people is a party for her, and she's usually right. And why wouldn't she be? People brought snack foods (her favorite) and most of the kids who came were boys (her other favorite -- until I teach her that boys are icky).

We had a table loaded with awesome treats: smoked salmon dip, chips, nacho cheese, smoked cheese, stuffed mushrooms, little smokies ... it was a dangerous gastronomical cocktail which gave me a food induced hangover. Well, that and the beer. But Dylan loved it; she parked herself next to the table like a stray dog begging for table scraps. "Chip?" she'd ask anyone who approached. Most thought that Dylan was a kind and thoughtful hostess, offering her guests chips.

We know better. "Chip?" as a question simply means For the Love of God, Give Me a Chip. Now. Once everyone caught on to her chip gathering scheme and her tummy was full of pressed corn goodness, she ventured outside to play with the boys.

She still says "boy" like Flavor Flav says it ... stretching out the Y at the end of boy, like it's a long i-eeeee. Flavor Flav isn't the best role model, he's not even good for language lessons, so we won't be getting her the giant clock medallion or a creepy show on VH1 any time soon. Although we would let her duet with Chuck D if he wanted to do a Public Enemy reunion tour (80s rap joke alert!).

Outside, Dylan accosted anyone who came out to the cooler for a beer. "Swing?" she'd ask the party guests who, by now, were a few beers in. They'd politely tell the persistent little urchin who was guarding the cooler that, no thank you, they'd rather not swing on a full stomach, and besides, halftime was about over, but thanks for asking. Little did they know that "Swing?" is neither a question nor an option -- it's a command. Much like "Chip?" is a demand.

Those unfortunate enough to deny Dylan her swing time found out the hard way that a five minute session pushing Dylan on the swing was a prerequisite for getting a beer from the cooler. Most of the guys started bringing in four or five beers at a time.

As the afternoon faded into evening, everyone came inside. Like a little Martha Stewart, Dylan roamed the party and made sure the guests were happy and didn't have any unwanted chips on their plates.

When bedtime finally rolled around, Dylan was hesitant to leave her party, but her snuggly jammies and warm milk trumped etiquette, so, with a wave and a loud, "Night-night" to everyone, and after several escapes from bed -- just to make sure everyone still missed her -- the queen of the party finally fell asleep.

Chickens in the Outfield

2009-01-15T19:38:00.000-08:00

Last spring, I was driving to my English class in Yreka and, as I passed the ball park in Ft. Jones, I saw that the JV baseball team was practicing. As I frequently do, I shifted my attention from the road for a while because something caught my eye. The boys has stopped practicing because there were chickens in the outfield. One poor kid, probably a freshman, was in charge of herding the chickens off the field. Herding chickens is akin to herding cats or small children and this guy was having a rough go at it.

I almost pulled over to watch. All I could do was think, "That's so country."

Regina points out the extra-country things that we witness in Siskiyou County and that I usually take for granted or think are perfectly normal. I can tell when her internal country-alarm sounds because it causes one eyebrow to raise and is followed by short, incredulous questions. Rat batting? Really? or, You need another gun ... because? or, A sleeveless Motley Crue shirt, and you're in the wedding?

When I think about Dylan growing up, I realize it'll be here, in this valley. Her childhood will be a lot like mine: she'll think that taking a trip "to town" means going to Etna, and that "the city" is any town, village, or actual city that is larger than Etna (pop. 781). She'll also think that every town outside of Siskiyou County is like Kingpin or Witness, where poor country folks get taken advantage of in big cities.

My latest "country" incident happened in the barber shop. Mind you, "The Palace" has deer, elk, and caribou mounts on the walls and is in itself pretty country. I was in the chair and Richard was working on my hair when a woman and her young son came in. They were familiar with both barbers and chatted about guns, ammunition, shooting guns, and Obama taking their guns. The woman wasn't young, but had a tiny diamond nose stud, which made her a little more attractive, or at least a little more unusual for Yreka.

The woman in the barber shop chatting about hunting didn't really strike me as out of the ordinary. What really struck me was the fact that this woman came to town for her son's haircut dressed head to toe in camo. Not even hunting camo, but a camo sweatsuit. One you'd lounge around the cabin in. Here was a modern woman with a nose stud, fully prepared to hide in a forested area, sitting in a barber shop and talking about the best places to buy ammo.

"That's pretty country," I thought.

As of now, Dylan only owns one item of camo clothing. Regina has some sort of one article of camo clothing per growth spurt rule. That's now, but the country is as much a part of Dylan as it is me. It's even sneaking into Regina, too. I can just imagine Dylan in a few years, dressed in her camo sweats, chasing the chickens off the field so soccer practice can start.

Two Strike Santa

2008-12-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

A year ago, Santa was a pretty cool dude, or at least Dylan tolerated his constant chuckling and peppermint breath. He was big, fuzzy, didn't seem to mind a little milk spit-up, and gave out treats that usually weren't allowed at home.

A year later, the "n" in Santa has moved inexplicably to the end of his name (a word puzzler!). He's now frightening and hostile, and, despite the candy and gifts, (hell, despite being her Uncle Greg), he's just downright scary.

It would be easier to drop a cat into a water trough than to set Dylan on St. Nick's lap. What do you mean you've never tried to drop a cat into a water trough? Let me tell you, it doesn't work. That much I know. Just as cats have the cartoon-like ability to run horizontally in mid-air and reattach (painfully) to the object which just released it (which is you, the bad person who thought Mr. Mittens needed a bath), Dylan has the same ability. You start to set her down on that big, red, fuzzy lap, and as soon as you let go, she's right back in your arms like a human yo-yo.

We've trimmed Dylan's nails, but I think she files them to sharp points on her bed posts at night. And whenever she hears, "Ho, ho, ho," those claws come out and grab hold. I've lost a nice shirt because of Santa; Regina's nose may have a permanent scar.

Like good parents who are full of the season's warm spirit, we tried Santa at a Grange Christmas party in Callahan. Great food, fun company, and a very speedy exit as soon as Santa appeared.

We were smart on Dylan's next Santa appointment: we were out of town and left the task to cousin Julie and her daughters. I think Regina mentioned, as we were leaving, that a photo of Dylan on Santa's lap would be nice. From what we read in the police blotter, the results were worse than in Callahan. I'll give the girls credit, they really tried, but in the end, Dylan had a lopsided victory over Santa. Sorry Greg, I mean Santa.

Despite her fear and maiming, we still think Dylan's made the "nice" list. We just hope that she's sound asleep when Santa comes down our chimney this year.

The 5 Days of Christmas

2008-12-13T20:19:00.000-08:00

Regina and I like to challenge people. No, not to arm wrestling or sudoku, but simply to be their best. For the holidays, we decided that the best gifts to give, besides an iPod Touch or jerky, would be to challenge those around us to make them better people. It's kind of like getting New Year's resolutions as gifts. You'll thank us later.

First of all, we decided that remodeling the house, again, and adding a couple of new rooms during the holidays would be a terrific challenge to our marriage. Remodeling is perfect for testing your patience. So far it has gone well, but next week the low temperature is expected to dip below double digits, I'll be in Las Vegas, and the construction crew will be tearing down an exterior wall. Hurray! We couldn't ask for a better challenge.

Also, I didn't want to make this project exciting only for us, so I decided to challenge the carpenters. I decided that our twelve foot Christmas tree, which is loaded with breakable ornaments, should be placed against the wall that will be removed. This way the crew can have the good feeling of Christmas as they try not to destroy our tree. I know these guys and I figured they'd appreciate a good challenge, especially in cold weather.

For my bride, I decided to hang the fun ornaments down low on the Christmas tree's branches. So the sock monkeys and rodeo Santas are all within reach of the surprisingly strong grasp of Dylan. We have bets on the condition of the tree and its decorations by the time Christmas rolls around. I figured, while I'm gone, playing "ornament saver" would be a fun challenge for her.

For my baby, I went with two challenges. She's at an important developmental stage and she can only benefit from the extra work. First, for a physical challenge, I brought home a Australian Shepherd/Border Collie puppy with very sharp teeth. While Dylan still can't outrun the pup, Floyd, she has learned that leg strength and staying upright during a puppy attack are critical.

Second, less a challenge than a plea, is for Dylan to stop calling me Mommy. I know she can say Daddy, she will if you ask her my name, but the rest of the time she looks up at me, stretches out her arms, and says, "Mommy!" It's a challenge for her to use the right words and a challenge for me to keep my self-esteem.

It wouldn't be fair to give these wonderful gifts without giving myself a challenge. I've decided that gagging less at poopy diapers and asking Regina, "Do these match?" every time I pick out an outfit for Dylan would be suitable self-improving challenges.

Oh yeah, I've also challenged myself to a Blackjack contest, this Sunday, in Vegas. I guess I'd better show up. If I don't do well, it may be a challenge just to get back home.

Dylan, Patrick Swayze, and Big Mexicans

2008-12-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

I have never seen a real wolverine. But, we have the Discovery Channel, which regularly airs shows called "World's Wildest Animals," and "Wolverines Gone Wild." Also, I've seen Red Dawn five times (1984. Patrick Swayze leads a group of high school football players against a full scale Soviet invasion. Frequently yells, "Wolverines!"). It's safe to say that I'm kind of an expert on the ferocious little critters. So when I say that flying to Cabo on a crowded plane with Dylan on my lap is exactly the same as flying to Cabo with a wolverine on my lap is no exaggeration.

We're used to it by now because the same thing always happens when we fly the friendly skies: finally the plane lands, the passengers clap, the stranger seated in the seat next to us dries his tears and takes the stickers out his his hair (Dylan loves stickers), and then -- Shazam! -- the wolverine on my lap magically turns back into an active nineteen month old baby.

Cabo is, quite possibly, the best place on earth for babies. The locals like you, the tourists like you, and the sidewalks are so bad that every ride in a stroller feels like 4x4-ing on a backroad logging track. Dylan even got over her fear of two things on this trip. First, the ocean. This time she spent hours watching me fill a pail with sand, pack it tight, and turn it upsidedown to make a sand "cake." Then she'd immediately destroy it, laugh, and run into the Pacific. Second, large men. She'd dash to every big Mexican dude that she saw with her arms open wide for a big hug. Cabbies, bouncers, restaurant owners, drunks, whomever, she loved them all, as long as they were A) Mexican, and B) big.

We quickly settled into a routine: up at 6:00 AM, Dylan and daddy would get started caking on the SPF 4,000, and at the pool or the beach by 8:00. I'd order a "Dirty Monkey" at happy hour (10:00), Regina would roll her eyes, then lunch, nap, and finally a stroll downtown past the chicklet vendors, and dinner. Dylan would do something to cause us to apologize to our waiter, we'd leave, get an ice cream, and off-road it home so we could get Dylan to bed. Lights out at 7:00 PM. Kind of like camp, but with more booze and stricter rules. We pretty much stuck to this routine, except for Thanksgiving, when I ran downtown to a restaurant that I'm sure didn't want us back and got take-out so we could stuff ourselves with a traditional Thanksgiving meal (ribs, chicken mole, and churros).

The day we flew home was probably the first day ever that Dylan didn't nap. So when the baby-to-wolverine transformation occurred, at least it was expected. Like a roughneck bar-brawler who apologizes before he kicks someone's ass, we could only say sorry to the unfortunate travelers who -- luck of the airline lotto -- drew a seat next to us.

After layovers and airport closures in every airport between Cabo and Seattle, we finally caught our final plane home. I watched the guy in the backwards Oregon Ducks cap who was seated in front of us cringe as Dylan let out an especially loud Swayze-esq, "Wolverines!" She kicked the seat, spilled our drinks, and thrashed around until ... Christmas miracle! ... she fell asleep. Regina and I were so shocked that we sat motionless for the entire flight.

When we finally made it back to the house, we didn't even care that our bags were in Eugene. It's always a nice feeling to be home after a vacation, and I stayed up past 7:00 PM so I could watch "World's Wildest Wolverines," on the Discovery Channel.

Baby High, Baby Low

2008-10-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

We've always known that our little Dylan can be a ham, but lately, she's taken it up a notch. Of course, she has to be feeling well, properly rested, and have an audience, but when that perfect storm hits, start the cameras. Her most recent act of super-ham-dom occurred at our friends', Mike and Erin, house.

Dylan rolled in looking tough in her #1 Halloween costume (there are 2), as a Bee. She was a little shy, until she spotted the bucks on the wall. They must have made her feel at home because she instantly pointed them out. "Buck," she said and stretched out the "k" for emphasis (or, because it's fun to say, "Buck" with a static-y K on the end). And from then on, all inhibitions were tossed aside.

She ran around their house like an escaped circus monkey. She climbed on the couches, the chairs, the coffee table, and the curtains. She made strange noises, feigned interest in books, then tried to tear them up. When dinner was served we sat her next to us at the table and fed her bites of ribs until Regina finally just handed her a rib bone. Dylan gnawed on it for a while until she thought it served better as a Flintstone phone. She held it up to her little ear. "Hello," she said into the rib.

She got such a laugh out of the rib-phone gag that she tried out other pieces of dinner. The avocado-phone was a close second for originality and creativity.

The rest of the evening was spent in her diaper, an hour past her bedtime, running around the living room. She was so entertaining that our friends offered to watch her any time we wanted to stay out late. We tried to take them up on their offer immediately, but everything on a Sunday night in Yreka closes at 9:00 PM, so we really had nowhere to go.

We just wish that our pediatrician's office resembled Mike and Erin's living room. No deer heads on the wall, no fun couches to scale, nothing but four walls, a table, and the smell of a thousand tears. Dylan recognized it the instant we set foot in the room.

The length and intensity of her scream-cry was truly amazing. I actually remember thinking, "Wow, this is truly amazing," and, "She's got to pass out soon," as her volume hit eleven on the dial. At first, we were confused about what she wanted. She kept pointing at the door, which had a "Don't Smoke When You're Pregnant" poster on it with a picture of a baby's crib full of cigarettes. I thought she liked the poster. No. She wanted me to open the door.

The room became so unbearably hot from Dylan's energy output that the nurse tried to crack the door open and let some air in. "Jailbreak," thought Dylan, as she dashed for freedom. No luck. We caught her and let her resume her screaming, crying, punching, and kicking until the nurses could inspect and jab needles into her. Our PA assured us that Dylan's terror was a sign of her intelligence. I couldn't hear the reasons why over Dylan's wails; I just nodded dumbly as Regina bear-hugged Dylan to avoid another left-hook to the chin. We couldn't leave fast enough.

By the time we got to the car, her tears had dried. She cracked a smile when we hit I-5 South, and when we crossed the Siskiyous, she put her shoe to her ear. "Hello?" she said and smiled.

Yard Invasion

2008-10-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

This Fall, our yard has turned into a sanctuary for deer. You'd think the antlers hanging in the woodshed and the smell of venison coming off the grill would deter our four legged friends from encroaching on our yard, but the macabre reminders of their fallen brothers only bolsters their confidence. Like bad house guests, they lie around all day, eat whenever they feel like it, and poop on the grass.

There are some benefits to this invasion, though. First, the four legal bucks (Deer season is now open) that hang out. Small, yes, but well-fed and will be tasty. Second, Dylan says, "Deer," like a Mexican soccer announcer yells, "Goal!!!" She stands at the back door, points, and yells, "Deeeeeeeeer!" I love it because it always makes me laugh and the yard-rats flee in terror, for a few minutes, at least.

Dylan is pretty thrilled about our wildlife preserve. Aside from the deer, we have horses, cattle, squirrels, cats, dogs, and raccoons, all within rock throwing distance. In fact, rock throwing is one way we keep the critters at bay. The cats are Dylan's favorite because they (well, one of the four) let her ride them. Dylan hops on like she's getting on a rodeo bull and Sergio (the tolerant one) lies flat while Dylan bounces up and down. "Kitty Rodeo" is a great warm-up before she begins Mutton Busting in a few years, and it burns off a little energy before bed time.

But let me get back to my point. It's about the deer and their refusal to leave. We've gone as far as borrowing a BB gun from Henry, our nephew. Which brings me to the third cool thing about having deer in our yard: Watching Regina wield a firearm. I'd tried to convince her to practice shooting before, but she never even wanted to touch the guns. Now she pops off shots like Annie Oakley. Dylan and I are her spotters and we cheer at every BB that finds its mark (on a doe's ass, mostly).

I guess that when we run out of BBs we'll have to resort to the fourth and final fun thing about our yard-deer, and that's watching Dylan chase them. She's not as agile as a Border Collie, but she's equally as persistant. Maybe she's trying to graduate from "Kitty Rodeo," to "Doe Rodeo."

Soon, the snow will start to fall and I expect that the deer will leave. We'll give the BB gun back to Henry and Dylan will have to settle on riding the cats. She'll stand at the door and quietly ask, "Deer?" while I take another bite of delicious buck steak.

Baby Einstein

2008-09-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

It has been a nightly ritual that, after I give Dylan her bath and towel her dry, I let her run naked around the house until Regina, disapproving, diapers and pajamas her. This has gone swimmingly until, about a week ago, Dylan added "pee on the rug" as part of her path from tub to Mommy.

At first I was bothered, mostly because I got the "I told you so" look from Regina and also because I had to clean it up. But then I realized that peeing like an old tom cat around our home is a fine example of the genius of our daughter.

Really? you ask. Yes, I shout. Why are you shouting? you ask. I don't remember, I say. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, how a urine soaked carpet equates to intellectual prowess. Here's the theory: Dylan is choosing to NOT soil her bathing/drinking water (we'll address drinking bath water later). Most kids pee in the tub. I did. You certainly did. But super-genius children pee on the rug, outside the tub.

Okay, I see you're still skeptical. Let me give you another example. Dylan can count. Well, we say, "One!" and she says, "Two," and then we say, "Three!" then Dylan says, "TWO!" Maybe I shouldn't brag about her counting, but she knows that two follows one. I'm not sure Stephen Hawking knew that at her age.

Here's my favorite example of her genius. Dylan pretends a metal banana is a phone. "Hello, Ju-ju," she says, cradling the phone, I mean banana, between her shoulder and ear. I'm not going to explain why we have a metal banana, but Dylan's sense of humor (the banana-phone is far more comically advanced than the "pull-finger-fart" trick) is clearly a sign of advanced critical thinking skills.

We tried to convince our neighbor, Jim, that we were living with a Super-Genius. We even showed him the counting thing. He wasn't convinced. And then he told us we didn't want a Super-Genius child. Because three's a crowd? I offered. No. How about social awkwardness, depression, obsession with Dungeons and Dragons, crushes on Carl Sagan, and wedgies? And that's just junior high.

Tonight, Dylan took her bath, drank the bath water, and held out her arms when she was ready to get out. Just before I pulled her from the tub, she peed. Not on the floor, but in the water, once her bath was done. Brilliant! No clean up for me, no slipping in a puddle of pee for her. She might be proving Jim wrong. "Good skills," I told Dylan. "Two!" she replied.

Poops and Boobs

2008-08-31T20:37:00.000-07:00

Lately, we've let Dylan run around in her nudie. She digs the sunshine and it beats changing diapers. But, without a diaper on, sometimes we get little stinky surprises. I came home from work last week and Regina told me, "Dylan pooped on the 4-wheeler," which, I thought, meant that Dylan pooped in her diaper while going for a Polaris ride. It actually meant that Dylan pooped on the 4-wheeler. We hosed it off before Greg needed it for irrigating.

The last "incident" involved our cat, Jesse. He walked a little to close to our baby-fountain and got a nice pee-bath on his head. The cat hated it, but the rest of us thought it was pretty funny.

Today we made sure Dylan's diaper was snug and went for a drive on a Siskiyou County backroad. We crossed over the Trinities and into Shasta Valley and ended up at Stewart Springs. It's a little enclave for hippies who want to swim in warm sulfur water, sleep in a tee-pee, and meditate, naked, next to a creek. Why it's so special, I have no idea.

We stopped there to let Dylan out of her carseat and give the dogs a pee break. Even though my wife and daughter were with me, I was excited at the prospect of seeing nude women. I had "Sirens" pictured in my mind (the movie where Elle Macpherson is naked in every scene). My heart raced as I caught a glimpse of naked flesh as we pulled in, but to be honest, I couldn't tell the men from the women. I pointed at one attractive specimen who sat in the lotus position on a large rock and asked Regina, "Is that a chick or a dude?" "Shhh," she said.

There were nudies meditating around the creek like sunbathing seals. Dylan ran and screamed and laughed and when I sneaked a peak back toward the creek (maybe this time I could distinguish between the vegan-men and the macro-biotic women) they'd scattered like a Great White shark had spawned upstream. I guess Dylan's whoops and hollers spooked them. I just shrugged as Boo and Scout marked the tires on every Prius around us.

As we drove away, I took one last hopeful look back. Bad move. All I saw was a very male nude body. I focused back on the road in front of me, Regina laughed, and I think Dylan wondered if the dude in his nudie was going to poop on the rocks.

Back to the Bay

2008-08-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

At nearly sixteen months old, we decided that Dylan was finally emotionally ready for a visit to her homeland. No, we didn't go to Ireland or Brasil, rather, we took her to Oakland to see the Raider Nation. And even though we didn't get her on the "Got a little Raider in you?" billboards, nor did Al Davis come through on his lunch meeting with her, I bravely scouted out McAfee Coliseum (okay, I went to an A's game with Maddock), for safe places to hide during a Raiders brawl, I mean game.

This was just a quick Bay trip, and we tried our best to see as many friends as we could in a few days. One of the highlights for Dylan was dinner out at our friends', Perry and Lisa, home. We turned their quiet neighborhood into a block party when I sent out an "all invited" email to everyone in my address book. Fortunately, the Monroes are too kind to turn away starving guests and the welcomed (and fed) a whole passel of our friends.

Every couple that came to dinner had a kid, none older than 2 1/2, with Dylan being the youngest. I got to really demonstrate my kick-ass father skills when I let my attention drift (oooh, pretty colors) and let Dylan roll down a flight of stairs. They were a short, carpeted flight of stairs, and my friend Matt assured me that, "babies are extremely limber and enjoy rolling down stairs," although I don't think Regina bought it.

When I wasn't diligently watching my daughter, I sat back and watched my friends, guys who used to have trouble remembering to wear underwear inside their pants, change poopy diapers with one hand and eat a cheeseburger with the other. I was impressed.

Our little monkeys played together extremely well. Maybe it was the spirit of the Olympics that overcame them, or maybe the Benadryl that we put in their ice cream, but no one got socked, shoved, or sent to the hospital. It's probably because we're all amazing people and we've instilled noble values into our children. Or luck.

We ended our trip with some friends who have two small boys. Dylan, of course, thought she was back in Scott Valley with her daycare homies and had a blast. Instead of going out for drinks and a nice meal (probably in that order), we had take out and hot chocolate and watched the Olympics.

The trip was over before we knew it. Dylan waved "bye-bye" to Malcom, Lauren, Jonah, Spencer, and Danny. We promised our friends that we'd come down more often and Dylan promised her new little buddies that she'd host the next North State Raider Nation BBQ and Stair Rolling Competition.

Fair Time, Fun Time

2008-08-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

My father served on the local fair board for thirteen decades, and, naturally, I grew up as a fair kid. As a director's son, I received all the perks. My VIP wristband let me into a world seen by few children. I knew the carnies by name (and prison number), I could select the finest corndog stand by smell alone, I'd pick the Grand Champion pen of rabbits then go backstage with Waylon Jennings and tell fair stories. All this before I turned twelve. I walked on air (or cotton candy clouds) during fair-time.

But, once those five days in August were through, I was back to being just another ranch kid and the VIP bracelet I still clung to was worn and faded and had usually given me a rash.

This year, Dylan got to experience the joy of being a director's daughter. We strapped on her VIP bracelet and ran to the first ride we could find. We laughed and waved from our circling carousel horses and were living the dream. Until the unimaginable happened -- the ride stopped. She held up her little arm and showed the carnie her red VIP band, but it was no use. We had to dismount our plastic steeds and go. That didn't go over well.

Once her tears dried, we gave the FFA barns a shot. "Cows?" Dylan asked, looking at me like I was stupid. "Please, I see cows every day. Ooh, Mooo. Give me a break."

The petting zoo was fun, but mostly because there was sawdust on the floor (and little round goat poops) and we could roll around like hamsters. The animals (goats and deer) were old hat. Same goes for the Budweiser Clydesdales. Regina and I were in awe of the massive horses; Dylan was just mad that her wristband didn't give her access to the inside of their stalls.

The only two things that held Dylan's attention were the sandbox in Kids' Town and the slightly freaky juggling, unicycling guy. She was really into his corny jokes and beanbag tossing skills, but I felt weird and awkward watching him, so we ran back to Kids' Town.

After two days of fair time, Dylan told us that while baby goats are very cute and corndogs are delicious, it was time to move on. She handed in her VIP bracelet and threw her dusty and snowcone stained clothes into the hamper. On the other hand, I can't let go. My bracelet is still on, but my wrist is really starting to itch.

Baywatch Baby

2008-07-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

The Eastside Gang just returned from their longest road trip, with baby, yet. After our last journey out of Scott Valley (six hours, constant screaming), we were, frankly, a little spooked about leaving. So, like Bill Murray in "What About Bob?", we travelled south in baby steps. Three days later, we arrived at Pismo Beach, intact and unscathed.

Speaking, or rather, writing, for Dylan, the highlight of the trip was, hands-down, the ocean. We spent one morning checking out downtown Pismo (the pier, Moondoggies) and when it really started to warm up, we took off Dylan's shoes and turned her loose on the beach. Pismo Beach is loaded with people BBQ-ing, kids playing, and dogs catching frisbees; Dylan thought she was at the best playground in the world. She beelined for the water, shedding her clothes faster than Pamela Anderson on "Baywatch."

Did I tell you that the Pacific Ocean, even in Southern California, is cold? It is. Very. Dylan hit the water, paused, weighed the fun vs. cold scales in her mind (fun is a rock, cold is a feather) and kept on going. I think she planned on pushing a few of the icebergs out of the way to tell the surfers in their 20mm wetsuits that, hey guys, careful, the water's cold. And awesome.

By the time I put her in a pretty dress and took her to the wedding, sitting in the sun and watching people stand in front of a preacher seemed like a big letdown, even if Mommy was one of those up there. So, like all weddings I go to now, I stood far enough away to let Dylan play on the grass, run wild, and splash in puddles. I chased her around until I sweated through my only nice shirt and had to take her up to the room for a deodorant re-application. The only thing that held her attention was a blue Tootsie Pop -- I know, bad idea. It turned her tongue, face, and dress bright blue, but got her to sit still long enough for my Mother-in-Law to scoop her up and take her to bed. I didn't even want to imagine the mayhem in our room once the sugar high kicked in.

We all survived and felt so good on Sunday that we tackled the drive home with vigor. Dylan, still blue, came off her sugar buzz and slept for nearly an hour (a record) in her car seat. And when we pulled into our home on Sunday evening, the ocean was just a memory as Dylan neighed and mooed at the horses and cows on the Hanna ranch, the best playground in the world.

Dreadford

2008-07-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Regina went to Las Vegas for a "bachelorette party." I put that in quotes because I think she used the girls weekend as a guise to play in the World Series of Poker, under the pseudonym "Brasilian Ice." Regardless, she didn't have to hitchhike home or get a weird Sammy Davis Jr. tribute tattoo, so I think her weekend was a good one.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Dylan and Daddy were partying hard. Okay, I was working, but Aunty Ju-Ju got two new kitties, and Dylan went bonkers over them. She learned that the pain threshold of cats is pretty high and they don't seem to mind being carried by their necks. She also learned that, in contrast, her pain threshold is much lower and that cats sometimes do mind being carried by their necks.

On Sunday, Dylan and I loaded the truck and went to Medford to pick up Mommy from the airport. I figured Dylan would take her afternoon nap on the drive up and be cute and refreshed when Regina flew in. Stupid Daddy. Of course she didn't nap.

Our first stop was Big R -- ranching supply headquarters. Dylan sat in the cart and waved at all the employees, who all waved back. She earned "good baby" points, so when I released her from the shopping cart -- just to stretch her legs -- no one got too upset when she ran around the women's clothing section (camo, John Deere), ripping off every tag she could get her hands on.

I learned my lesson and kept her in the cart at Costco. I did forget to bring in the ever-so important snack bag, and panicked until I remembered, duh, this is Costco: food sample capitol of the world. We dutifully lined in behind the old and crazy who think Costco is a Home Town Buffet and I filled Dylan up on little bites of taquitos, push-ups, salmon patties, and dried apples. A pretty balanced meal. She topped it off by eating the grocery list. I know this because a nervous looking woman approached me and said, "She has paper in her mouth." I smiled. She eats a lot of paper.

We had a little time to kill, so into Barnes and Noble we ventured. There are no shopping carts in bookstores, and that should have been enough to send us packing. Instead, I let Dylan run free. She bolted like a feral cat and I could only keep track of her by the trail of books and stuffed "Harry Potter" dolls she left in her wake. I put everything back in its rightful place (it's the OCD in me) while Dylan laughed and bothered the creepy readers in the magazine section. I finally caught up to her in the "quiet" section and scooped her up. She wailed and screamed and fought and you'd of thought I'd just ripped a huge fart at a funeral from the looks I got. Look, dorks, you're reading on a smelly couch in a chain bookstore, not a library. Go read at home.

We left before we were asked to leave and spent the last half hour parked at a bank, making sure the bookstore police didn't follow us. I was out of ideas, and Dylan was out of patience, so we both sat in silence, praying for a tailwind to push Regina's flight ahead of schedule.

When Dylan saw Mommy step out of Medford International, she was ecstatic. Sure, her Daddy time was cool, but, man, sometimes he's clueless.

Baby Hercules

2008-07-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

I started this entry yesterday, and was a page into it when I realized that it was all about weenies and boobies (those are technical terms). I got nervous that my blog might get "flagged," although I don't really know what "flagging" means; it very well could be a good thing. "Hey, dude, what'd you do last weekend?" "Man, I got flagged." "Sweet. That's flagging awesome."

So, for those of you who are dying to know what a weenie and booby blog would be about, I'll give you the Cliff Notes version: Dylan saw a ding-dong (mine) and thought it was a light switch chain. Dylan saw boobs (not mine) and her dad felt awkward. The end. No flagging necessary.

Now, on to the clean and mundane.

Lately, Dylan has been exhibiting super-strength. It started with breaking sticks in the yard. She'd pick up a fallen stick from our oaks (her favorite toy, by the way. It makes gift giving really easy.), then break it in half. If the stick was too big, her little arms would tremble and her eyes would bug out a little. I'd hold my breath in anticipation until the stick would snap.

Since the number of our backyard sticks has doubled (remember, she broke them all in half. It's math.), and are too small to break, she's moved on to toy-lifting. Dylan chooses the largest and most cumbersome, like the entire Old McDonald's Farm set, picks it up and carries it from room to room. She looks like an athlete on The World's Strongest Man competition who is trying to toss his ninth VW Bug over a wall. She staggers under the weight and Regina and I cheer her on like there is some imaginary finish line in our kitchen. It's fun to watch and has made the "toy corner" of our home obsolete. Now, we have toys in every room, like a FAO Schwarz.

I've got to say, with all this stick training and heavy lifting, Dylan is looking pretty ripped. And if anyone tries to flag this, I'll send over our little body-builder to settle the score.

Wild Bachelor Weekend!

2008-06-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

Last week, Regina asked me what I wanted to do for Fathers' Day. "Recover from a hangover," I replied. I was serious, and it seemed, at the time, like a practical idea.

You see, Momma and Baby Bear were going to Hell-A for a few days and Papa Bear was left alone. Sure, I had ranch work to do, but I wasn't intimidated. I had big plans: Thursday night at the pub (cancelled), Friday night at a The Devil Makes Three concert (two beers and home by midnight), and Saturday night ... well, Saturday night I had no plans, which I thought meant I could go anywhere on a whim and without a care. Instead, I stayed home and watched a Netflix movie.

I really have no excuse. The parties I imagined myself going to seemed terrific when they were a week away, but come game-time, my old, creaky bones just couldn't muster the strength to go out. Plus, I used to pride myself on being the only guy in Corrigan's bar with a full set of teeth, but I couldn't even be that cool anymore. I had to get a tooth pulled (a pipe meets chin injury) on the day before Regina and Dylan flew down south.

So, as a reward for being a weekend home-body, last Tuesday Regina and I dropped Dylan off with her grandparents and went to see Snoop Dogg in Medford. I could probably say we saw Elvis at the gym or Elton John on a tractor and that would sound more plausible. But it's true. Snoop-a-loop came to Medford. Regina and I were the second-oldest couple there. We stood next to the oldest couple -- two hardcore Raiders' fans who fought the entire time -- to make us look younger. It was a decidedly Southern Oregon crowd (white, drunk), but Snoop was unfazeable (so please don't try to faze me).

A few mamas at the show had their babies in little Bjorns and we wondered for a brief second if we should have brought Dylan to this cultural phenomenon ... until we choked on the stinky cannabis haze that lingered above the crowd like a coastal fog.

I did my part and drank all those beers that I'd skipped the previous weekend. Regina rolled her eyes and drove me home. I suffered through work on Wednesday, all the while piecing together every Snoop-a-licious moment so I could tell Dylan about the time the Dogg Father came to Medford.

2025

2008-06-08T21:17:00.000-07:00

On Friday, we had a niece and a cousin graduate from high school (Go Lions!), and I couldn't help but think that in seventeen short years Dylan will be doing the same. Regina and I will be on our hover-walkers, because we'll be too old to stand, and Dylan will be listening to (or giving) a cliched valedictorian's speech on the same football field where I, as a 140 pound offensive lineman, cheered on the mighty Lions from next to the Gatorade cooler.

It'll be the year 2025 (hence the hover-walker), so the theme will be "A Quarter-Century of Memories," and the key-note speaker will be someone who both understands the new technologies (x-ray vision goggles and rocket shoes!), but will remind the graduates that, cool as it is to fly around and see through clothes, they should never forget the friends they've made and always believe in their drea ... blahblahblah.

One of my more unusual habits (according to me) always percolates this time of year. Every May, while I'm out irrigating, I compose a graduation speech. It's usually very clever and meaningful and is one that will be remembered for years to come. It'll be much like 1991's commencement speaker, who wore a purple suit and sang, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" over and over, but without singing or crazy clothes.

Each evening, as I move swing-pipes around risers and roll wheellines sixty feet, I add a little more to my speech. In a week or two I have a full five minute presentation, complete with music and lasers. By the following week, usually a day or two before graduation, I've completely forgotten the inspiring wisdom I'd intended to impart.

Although a psychologist would probably argue otherwise, I absolutely do NOT want to give a speech at graduation. Ever. I do NOT have fantasies about replacing a laryngitis-struck speaker because graduation cannot proceed without an awesome speech from a pillar of the community. I make up speeches out of boredom and for the same reasons I think I can learn to play the harmonica or why I spend more time thinking about palindromes (my favorite: a slut nixes sex in Tulsa) than hay prices.

Whoever speaks at Dylan's graduation had better start thinking of an original and great speech now, and he or she better do a good job, because I'll be there, in my shiny silver space outfit, wearing x-ray goggles, hanging on every word.

Ivan the Entertaining

2008-05-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

We're at a funny stage right now with Dylan (usually funny-weird, sometimes funny ha-ha). She's walking, true, but changes in terrain, footwear, or climate drastically effect her mobility. On laminate flooring with bare feet, she's a whirling dervish. Sometimes she even breaks into a run. But throw some sandals on her or put out a throw rug and she becomes, literally, physical comedy.

Dylan is also expanding her vocabulary. That's not entirely true; she hasn't picked up any new words lately, but she makes some nice stabs at repeating what we say. It always comes out as gibberish, and she sounds remarkably like the Swedish Chef, which is really funny. She's also learned that loud grunts and squeals are a great way to give direction. If we turn the pages to Go, Dog, Go too slowly (e.g. in time to read every page), she'll let us know by grunting. If we skip pages or breeze through the book too quickly, she'll scream.

Aside from trying to mimic what we say, she also tries to copy what we do. I put up a swing for her and she immediately learned to climb to the first step on our foot stool. She loves grabbing the wheel if we're taking a short trip in the truck (no farther than Medford), and running the blinkers ... and the wiper fluid, and the wipers, and the radio .... She's also getting good at using a fork. By "good," I mean she holds a fork with one hand and feeds herself with the other.

This walking, babbling, curious stage reminds Regina and me of one thing: drunk people. Or, more precisely, living with Dylan is like having and old, Russian, drunk for a roommate. Cute and cuddly one minute (like all drunk Russians), belligerent and ornery the next. Dylan stumbles around, demands things by pointing and screaming (food, toys, books), and makes us guess what she wants, falls into joyful dance when we get it right, then farts and passes out in blissful slumber.

I guess the fun part is that her behavior reminds us of our college days, except when Dylan falls asleep, we don't write "smelly" across her forehead. Yet.

Baby Bonds

2008-05-20T19:54:00.000-07:00

When a nurse hands you a prescription for your baby's croup, and offhandedly mentions that, "The steroids might make her a little moody," take that to heart.

To be fair, it might not have entirely been the steroids that turned Dylan from a wild thing to an uber-wild thing. First, she is often outrageous in public settings. Attention in from strangers is her caffeine. Attention from waitresses in Thai restaurants is her Red Bull. Second, she may have been rejoicing the fact that she received a clean bill of health (minus the croup) for her ear infection. Or, third, she may have been a little giddy, having just been in her first automobile accident. Yeah, some dillweed pulled out in front of Regina and turned his Toyota pickup into a hood ornament for the Pilot. No one was hurt, thankfully, but the crash may have left Dylan feeling invincible.

But I think it was the 'roids.

I'm not trying to give steroids a bad rap. They're great for lots of things: hitting the long ball, sprinting faster than Big Brown, creating a mass between your head and shoulders that does not resemble a neck, or, shrinking those pesky giant testicles. And, they're also great for getting rid of the croup.

Dylan laughed and giggled and made her presence known to everyone at Ali's Thai Kitchen. At one point, I looked up from our chicken curry and asked, "Where's Dylan?" Then we heard the shrieks of delight from the kitchen and figured everything was okay. "Pass the Tom Yum," Regina said.

We only had to give three doses of the "juice," and, by the following day, Baby Godzilla had calmed down (relatively) and now is just a boogery, wild, ex-steroid user. Like Jose Canseco or Barry Bonds, but with less whining.

Hodeo Dodeo

2008-05-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the name of the rodeo grounds in Etna is the "Pleasure Park"? It's an unusual name, for sure, and I like to think that when the old rodeo arena drifted away in the big flood, the Board of Directors opened up the naming of the new facility to the local schools. And, after tallying up the votes, "Pleasure Park" narrowly beat out "Dirt Field," and "Rodeo Rotunda."

Kids always come up with the best names. When I was a director on the rodeo board, we'd hold an annual contest at the local elementary schools to name the rodeo parade's theme. My favorites: "Hodeo Dodeo, Let's Have A Rodeo," and, "Strawberry Dirt." I voted for them both, and they lost by a margin of 8:1.

This is just a long way of telling you that this last weekend was full of rodeos for the Eastside Gang. Lacy was in her final high school rodeo and the May Rodeo was on Sunday. We took Dylan to both. Remember, Dylan is no rodeo rookie; in fact, she spent a majority of her weekends last summer snuggled inside a Baby Bjorn, watching bucking bulls and fast horses. That did little to prepare us for the '08 rodeo season.

Now that Dylan is both mobile and in love with animals, the rodeo grounds were like a giant amusement park for her. We had to pry her tiny, but unusually strong, fingers from the fencing around the bucking horses. I think if we walked away, gone to the Lion's Club booth for a Lion Burger and a Coors, she still would have been clinging to the top rail of the fence, saying, "Hor-seee," when we returned. The bull pen was a little more problematic because once she saw the bulls -- "Mooooo," -- she wanted to crawl in there with them. Luckily, Donny, the bullfighter, brought his dog and that gave her something else to maul.

Between bulls, horses, dogs, a shiny crown on the queen, daycare buddies, and lots of dropped food to nibble on, Dylan was in Seventh Heaven at the Pleasure Park. She went to bed early on Sunday night and was asleep as soon as her head hit the crib, immediately dreaming of eight second rides and strawberry dirt.

Keeping Up With the Hannas

2008-04-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight, as I write this, Dylan is in her crib, wearily mumbling, "Hiiii Ah-ki," (translation: Hi, horse) too exhausted to sleep. It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks for our baby, starting with her first steps, followed by, but not related to, her first black eye, then her first birthday (and party), visits from grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and finally, today, her baptism (and party).

Needless to say, the Eastside gang are all a little rummy. In the past few days, I've tentatively stepped into Corrigan's for the first time in a year, stayed up past my bedtime on three consecutive nights, neglected my work on the ranch, been sunburned, learned that Bruce Jenner is the dad on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," and have stuffed myself with Brazilian food and light beer.

While her parents are a little frayed around the edges, Dylan has handled it all with grace. She actually smiled when the baptism water hit her head (and stuck out her tongue to catch a falling drop). She then waved to the congregation like a prom queen. She buttered up her grandparents with over the top cuteness, and opened all her gifts with just the right amounts of glee, appreciation, and surprise. And she still found the time to prepare for the 4 Meter Walk in Beijing this summer.

And now, finally, we've turned out the lights and the party's over. If I stay up another fifteen minutes, it'll make four late nights in a row (unheard of since my college days). Dylan is quiet in her bed now, getting her beauty rest and, most likely, fully expecting another huge family gathering in her honor by tomorrow afternoon. We'll keep working on pronouncing "horse," and will keep practicing walking. And if Bruce Jenner wants to leave trash-TV and make an Olympic comeback, Dylan will be there, in China, ready to beat his ass.

Portland Tour Guide

2008-04-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, the Eastside Gang packed up and took a trip to Portland. How nice, you might be thinking, Portland's lovely this time of year. And you'd be right: it is. But this weren't no Forced Family Fun -- this was business. Okay, Regina was in a bachelorette party, but that's business, right?

It was Daddy-n-me time for Dylan and we did it right. Sort of. I took her to the zoo and Dylan got a nice look at the parking lot as we passed the hoards of people lined into the street. So we skipped the zoo and went downtown. I figured, I love Powell's Bookstore, Dylan might too. At least she could have fun pulling books from the shelves. So we parked behind the store and I waited while Dylan napped. And I waited, and waited, until finally I just felt like a bookstore stalker and left. So I decided to take Dylan swimming ... one of Bean's favorite activities. The sign read, "Pool Closed," but I didn't really believe it. We played on the the top step until we were informed that, yes, the pool really was closed because it had been shocked with a massive dose of chlorine. We left and took a nice clean water bath as I checked Dylan for chemical burns.

What does a good father do when everything he's tried has failed? I'll be sure to ask one when I meet him; instead, I took my daughter to Hooters.

I'll tell you this: bringing a baby to Hooters draws more attention than a puppy at the park. And the place was hopping -- hula hoops, loud music, wall to wall televisions, balloons, and maybe even a waitress or two. Dylan was in sensory heaven. The waitresses ogled over Dylan and passed me more napkins as I gorged myself on hot wings and Guiness. "She's a cutie," one hot-pantsed waitress exclaimed, "Where's her mommy?" Sensing an opportunity for some free hot wings, I wiped the bleu cheese from my chin and choked out, "There was a terrible fire ..."

Okay, I didn't say it, and the only thing any waitress said to me, aside from,"Here's another napkin," was, "Maybe she'll be a Hooters' girl someday." I looked at the sheer joy on Dylan's face as she tried to eat her balloon. Yes, girl who wrote her name on my napkin for no apparent reason, maybe she will.

Bo and Che

2008-04-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

Sometime during my fifth or sixth year of high school, I took a course called "CHE II." To this day, I have no idea what "CHE" means. Maybe I was in my revolutionary phase and mistakingly thought it was a course on Che Guevara, or maybe I thought the school secretary misspelled PE II, but for whatever reason, I took it. Obviously I'd passed CHE I and felt I needed a little more CHE-ing.

The two assignments I remember from the semester both reflect poorly on my parenting skills. The first was "Baby Egg." Modern high school students pack around realistic looking infants which can be programmed to be anything from colicky to constipated. In the late 80s, baby technology was still in its infancy and, for our parenting unit, we were supposed to care for a raw egg as if it were our own baby. I put mine in my jacket pocket and immediately broke it.

The second assignment was a letter to our first child, and mom kept this until the birth of Dylan. The outside of the coffee-stained envelope reads: "To my first child -- Bo Rowdy Hanna." It was written at the time when Bo Jackson was kicking-ass as a Raider, so I thought the name to be perfect. Obviously, I was expecting a boy.

I have the letter in front of me now and I'll share some pearls of wisdom from a seventeen year old. First, under no circumstances would I be strict. I decided that letting "you make your decisions on your own" would be wise and that I'd be around, somewhere, for support if little Bo needed it. Secondly, I wrote that I wouldn't set any expectations for Bo Rowdy. Even as a high school senior with a mushy brain, I saw the flaw in this thinking, so I changed it to, "I'm not going to set many expectations," because, I didn't want to "interfere a lot."

I think I'd envisioned fatherhood much like raising a kitten. Set out a little food, a dish of water, and a litter box, and next thing you know, little Bo is graduating from high school and we're all so proud. I ended the masterpiece with, "I better jam. See ya in a few years."

Fortunately, a few years turned into eighteen. Barely enough time to correct some of my flaws in fathering logic, but my ideas about a hands-off approach seem pretty stupid now. Although, I do still like the name "Bo-Rowdy."

Well, I'd better jam.

Mama Don't Let Your Cowgirl Grow Up To Be Winehouse

2008-03-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

Dylan's first Easter has come and gone and on the Parent Preparedness Scale, Regina and I scored about a 4. This means, basically, that we didn't do much more than put Dylan in a pretty dress and take her to the Pynes' Easter party. Once there Dylan entertained herself by playing in the plastic egg rubble left over from older kids breaking them open, pulling out cash or candy, and tossing them aside. Dylan loved the resulting mayhem and we loved that plastic eggs are too large to be ingested.

Dylan met a few more of her cousins and got a first-hand look at a large and chaotic Hanna family holiday party. We've talked her out of putting herself up for adoption, promising that we'll all be better behaved at the next function. The remainder of the day was spent crawling back and forth, back and forth on a step leading from the living to the family room. Great entertainment and now a step has been added to our remodel plans.

Since Easter, Dylan has discovered the music of Amy Winehouse. Regina picked up the CD recently and Dylan digs it. I don't know if it's the nod to 60s soul, or just songs about drinking and the effects thereafter that she likes, but every time Amy shuffles around on the hi-fi, Dylan goes into a little stand and crouch dance, and she waves her hands like she just don't care. We've dubbed her Baby Winehouse, despite the fact that she doesn't have the hair volume for a full beehive 'do -- yet. Frankly, I'd hoped she'd be more into Waylon Jennings or Willie Nelson. Man, the stuff kids listen to these days; I just don't get it. I blame Regina for singing Dylan to sleep to pop songs like "Umbrella," or "Rehab." Maybe I'll croon a little "Good Hearted Woman" during bath time to help expand her musical tastes. Until then, we'll just keep bobbing up and down in our goofy dance.

Yoplait and Rum, On the Rocks

2008-03-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

When Regina was pregnant, veteran parents warned us about the slew of bizarre and inappropriate questions we would be asked. We were thrilled. We made a game of who could come up with the best reply to a ridiculous inquiry. There is nothing worse than being caught off-guard when is stupid question is thrown your way. Like when some turd-bucket cuts you off in traffic, flips you the bird, and yells, "What are you, stupid?" and all you can say in your defense is, "No, you are." It's important to plan for such events.

One of our favorite questions that we were never asked was, upon seeing Dylan with a bottle and a cans of formula in our grocery cart, "Why aren't you breast feeding?" Regina won a round in our imagined scenario game when she came up with, "Because I have no nipples."

Another question we'd prepared for like we were collegiate debate team competitors came to us from a friend as an actual event. When she was very pregant, one day in the grocery store, she was chastised by a stranger for having a case of diet soda in her cart. Diet soda. I mean, come on. Regina would have rubbed her giant belly and shrugged, "Baby needs a little splash in her bourbon." We liked this one so much that we roamed around aimlessly in Raley's, meeting the eyes of anyone who looked our way, just hoping they'd comment on the forty-seven cases of RC Cola in our cart.

The one scenario we thought we'd be ready for, but really weren't, was the name game. We've had people, upon hearing Dylan's name and gender, insist that we must be mistaken. Maybe it's the Carhartt coveralls, but they can't get it straight that Dylan is a girl. "Really?" they ask. "We're pretty sure," we reply as we peek into her diaper. We still haven't come up with a snappy reply, but the tough cashier at the local market helped us out the last time we were scrutinized. "You think they'd dress a boy in that much pink?" she snapped at the nosey idiot in line behind us. Regina and I just nodded our approval.

The most recent account of nosey-ness has come in the form of a tongue-lashing for feeding Dylan yogurt. Not yogurt n' hot dogs; not yogurt and Skittles; just fruity Yoplait, neat. Apparently, one ingredient in the Devil's food is a type of dye made from crushed beetle wings, or something like that. "You wouldn't feed your baby bugs, would you?" Lady, Regina thought, you should see half the crap Dylan puts in her mouth. "And then there's the corn syrup," the ugly hag spewed. Fortunately for the wanna-be nutritionist, we were in a church. Regina smiled and walked away and told me we were leaving, now, before some Shrek-lady got a Brazilian beat down.

We drove home, thinking of the perfect response to the yogurt-haters and watched Dylan in the rearview, gumming on something she no doubt found stuck to the bottom of her car seat.

Steppin' Ahead

2008-03-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

One of the ancillary benefits of parenthood is the the mailbox jamming flow of catalogues we now receive. BD (Before-Dylan), it was a thrill and a joy to walk out to get the mail and find the Fall edition of Cabelas or, in Regina's case, this month's "Pretty Glamorous Wine House" magazine. Now we receive an avalanche of Baby! Baby! Baby! magazines and catalogues.

My favorite catalogue (now) is called "One Step Ahead" and generally features a fit guy on the cover who looks like he won best dressed in the psych ward. Our Spring Preview 2008 edition is loaded with gems and it reads, surprisingly, a lot like the Sky Mall you'll find in airplanes.

Along with cool gadgets like toddler-leashes and battery operated booger suckers, this season's issue has a few standouts. For example, the "Instant (cushy) Travel Crib." Sounds handy -- until you see that it's little more than mosquito netting over a frame that you place on top of your baby, like trapping a bug under a (breathable) jar. Great for trapping babies in the wild, but a little freaky in your own backyard.

Another favorite is, for $30, the "Baby B'Air," which connects your baby, through a vest and harness system, to your lap belt on an airplane. It claims to "hold baby safely on your lap during flight," but is, "not approved for taxi, takeoff, and landing." So, instead of just, you know, actually holding your baby with your arms during flight, you can strap your kid to your lap. This is useful for either people with no arms or for those who see air travel as their private cocktail hour and cannot be distracted from their gin and tonic.

My personal favorite, found on page 17, is the Wee Block. The heading reads, "Put a Lid on Li'l Squirts!" and is a product which looks like a colorful and miniature version of a catchers' cup. You place the block over your baby boy's weiner during diaper changes to prevent any kind of golden shower. It comes in "Li'l Squirt" or "Wee Wee Man," but I don't know the difference between the two styles. I assume it's a color difference, not an endowed difference.

Of course, all of you parents of boys might just be asking, "Where can I find the Wee Block?" As a father to a girl, pee-facials is one parenting joy I don't have to endure. And yes, I know, I've got it coming to me in about 12 years, but for now, I'm happy not getting peed on and I'm seriously checking out the "Spoon on a Spring" self feeder on page 35.

Internet Hero

2008-02-28T20:14:00.000-08:00

I recently read that the ratio of internet users to bloggers is roughly 1:1. Of course, once that happens, people look to other forms of entertaining themselves (monkeys!, knitting!) and the novelty wears off. I knew the end was near when I started this one, way back in '07, so I gave myself a little direction: never use the word "blog," don't make the focus me, and keep it about Dylan and the ranch. By doing those small things, I thought I could singlehandedly topple Facebook and MySpace and bring blogging back to its rightful place at the top of internet supremecy. And here I am, breaking all the rules.

There are worse things than struggling to come up with a fresh idea to write about. For example, toxic mushroom ingestion, bloody noses, and overflowing diapers -- all topics that can fill pages, but not exactly what one hopes to write about. This week, I've waited for an event ... a new tooth, first steps, an original musical score. Nothing. And it would be easy to assume that, in looking for the forest, I'm missing the trees. But trees here at casa de Eastside are spread pretty thin and I've realized that's what this "assignment" has provided: a chance to notice what I might otherwise have overlooked.

These last two weeks have been dull by Dylan's standards. No ER visits, no hallelujah moments. But they have been full of hungry Hulk growls and pee-you diaper giggles, three second hugs (a record!), and small snuggles. I've dwelled on these moments and tried to memorize them. Moments worth sharing? Hardly. They're pretty much standard fare in the canon of fatherhood, but they are the moments that matter and what make being a dad, even a clueless one, so cool.

Sunshine and Suck Soup

2008-02-11T21:38:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned lately, dear reader (that's you, Mom. Thanks.), that Dylan is now mobile. She crawls like she's being chased and if this were August, I'd put good money on her to win the diaper-derby at the fair. But, it's not fair-time and all of her crawling has been indoors. Until today.

Today we changed her training routine and thought it would be fun to see how she did on grass. Kind of like running an American Thoroughbred on a European track. It was the first sunny day we've had in weeks and not having to worry about Dylan crawling too close to the wood stove or eating hibernating flies seemed like a great idea. Outside was gorgeous: no clouds, the snow was nearly melted off the lawn, and even my sick wife crawled out of bed to soak up some sun. Perfect. Right up until we watched, but could not stop, as Dylan put a big piece of the weird mushroom that grows on our lawn into her mouth.

We cleared out what we could and I rinsed her mouth with enough water to violate a few treaties of the Geneva Conventions. When Poison Control told me that I should drive, just not too fast, to the hospital, I started to worry. And for the next five hours, all Regina and I could do was worry.

I'd hoped this entry would be about the dinner we had at an Italian restaurant last Friday. Dylan, even with a cold, was on her game. She brought the word, "Hi," back to her vocabulary from a two week hiatus and used it on anyone who looked our way. She commanded attention like a kind and cute Tony Soprano. Waiters and waitresses smiled and waved and Dylan smiled and waved back. She even earned us a free dessert. Awesome doesn't describe it.

Instead of contemplating how I'd write about our perfect dinner out, I listened to a doctor tell us he wanted to put a big syringe full of liquid charcoal (suck-soup, we named it) up Dylan's nose and into her stomach. Dylan, we learned, doesn't like things shoved up her nose and into her stomach. Who'd of thought? Even after two shots of animal tranquilizer (Regina recognized the name from her vet-office days), the tube would not go in. Dylan, we learned next, likes getting an IV in her hand less than a tube up her nose. But that was the only option left and we watched, pale and terrified, as our baby had a needle stuck into a vein and a big dose of sedative was administered. Then she got her beloved nose tube and a tummy full of liquid charcoal.

I know there is something to be learned here, more than, "don't let baby eat weird mushrooms," but this wound is still too fresh to contemplate. So, for now, I'll check in on her and make sure she's sleeping soundly. Tomorrow, I'll see what I can do to rid the yard of fungi and hopefully we'll avoid another serving of suck-soup.

The spawn of Ted Kennedy and Bob Burnquist

2008-02-05T19:39:00.000-08:00

I'm always amazed at the callousness in which veteran parents react to their children's bumps and scrapes. I once saw a child with some bleeding injury show her father the wound and the father, who happened to be a medical doctor, replied, "Maybe you should see a doctor." The child stormed off and the dad just shrugged and took another sip of his beer.

New parents don't have that thick skin yet and so when Dylan got her first scrape (and bloody nose) this week from doing a header off a bed, I think most expected our reaction to fall between a Drivers' Education instructor in Thanksgiving traffic and a Baptist in Amsterdam on the shocked scale.

Surprisingly, Regina and I were unfazed by the news. Probably because we're both still in disbelief that we actually have a real baby. "Is she okay?" we both asked. Yes, was the reply, she is now.
"Okay."
"Okay? She could have been really hurt."
"She's tough," I said. "But she wasn't hurt," said Regina (the better and more appropriate response I later learned).

At first, Dylan's nose looked a little like Ted Kennedy's: red and swollen. Currently, she's lost that alcoholic Senator's glow and looks like a typical fourth place finisher in any X-Games competition. It's just a nice scab and is healing well. She's also quickly learning not to pick scabs and how to say, "Owww."

Dylan came home today with a fresh wound on her head. Did I mention that she's standing? And falling? Hence the head wound. The word today was that she didn't even cry over this one. "She's tough," I beamed, just before Regina cuffed me on the back of the head.

Giant Baby

2008-01-29T21:17:00.000-08:00

Dylan just had her nine month check-up and was signed off with a clean bill of health. 75th percentile in weight, 95th percentile in height, and, like any poll or statistic, we've manipulated the numbers to mean much more than necessary. She's tall! and strong! She'll crush her foes (prospective boyfriends who are undeterred by her father's gun collection) and rule planet Earth someday!

But, while the appointments are all fine and good for our baby (except for the shots, of course), I always feel like I'm going in for a very important oral exam for which I have not studied. I don't mean to imply that our pediatrician's office is intimidating, in fact, it's quite the opposite. Our doctor is knowledgeable and athletic; the nurses are all kind and attractive. It's like a TV show doctor's office. (Our doctor's name: Don Johnson. Really.) I just know that if I'm screwing up as a father, they're going to call me on it. I quietly pray as Dylan is placed on the digital scale that she's gained the appropriate amount of weight and is not over or under-nourished. I cross my fingers as Dylan gets inspected, worried that they'll catch some "flaw" that is a direct result of something I did, or did not, do properly.

In college, my friend Matt and I took a "Film Appreciation" course from a quirky and brilliant professor. Dr. Diane Borden could analyze and dissect anything. We learned that the same archetypal symbols found in films are also in dreams, hence, she could, and often did, discuss what student's dreams meant. Matt vowed he'd never offer up a dream of his for analysis because, no matter what the dream was about (hunting, making out with chicks, splitting wood), he feared Dr. Borden would look up at him in the last row of the auditorium, scratch her chin, and say, "Well, you're gay."

I feel the same trepidation Matt felt. I'm offering up my baby for analysis and I'm terrified of the response. I keep expecting the nurse to look at me, scratch her chin, and say, "We'll keep her for a while until you get better at this." I keep looking for the hidden hotline button that will have CPS kicking down the door to the waiting room in under five minutes.

So far, things have gone well -- except for the pee-fountain that Dylan poured out on our first visit which sent Regina and I into helpless hysterics. Sharon, the nurse, calmly placed her hand over the geyser until it subsided (I didn't even know girls could pee in that direction) and cleaned off the walls with a handful of baby wipes. I thought I saw her marking something on her clipboard, and I'm sure I lost some valuable "father points."

Luckily, we've been able to keep Dylan after each check-up. When Dr. Johnson hands her over and tells us all the nice things people say about babies (she's beautiful, she's happy, she looks like her mother ...) and says he'll see us in three months, I quietly exhale a sigh of relief and run as fast as I can to the truck before CPS arrives.

What I've Learned

2008-01-24T20:12:00.000-08:00

Spring semester has started and my class is hard at work on their first essay, a narrative loosely based on Esquire magazine's "What I've Learned" feature. I've decided to lead the way for my fearless students and write my own "What I've Learned: The First Nine Months." Here goes:

1. To all those who told me that I won't mind the smell of baby shit after the first few hundred diapers -- you were 100% wrong. I do mind the smell; it gags me.

2. Babies can reach out and grab like little lightning fast ninjas. Dylan can give a titty-twister as hard as any full grown man. Not that I've had a full grown man twist my nipples lately, but the point is, they still hurt like a mother.

3. All the gross things parents do that I swore I'd never do? I do them all and actually enjoy snacking on mushy crackers that Dylan has used as teething rings. I use my spit-finger to clean off her boogers, then wipe said boogers on my own clean clothes. And I love getting baby kisses, even if they are from an open-mouthed, drooling, food-stained daughter.

4. Nothing is louder than the sound of your own child crying in a nice restaurant. Or really, any restaurant.

5. Any piece of clothing with at least three miniscule baby-buttons will be worn only when necessary. Jumpsuits with buttons than run from neck to toe will remain in the closet until they are too small to be worn. Conversely, clothing with snaps will be worn well past the recommended age limit, making Dylan look like an overstuffed sausage. Velcro would be ideal.

6. If I drop anything on the floor smaller than a quarter, Dylan will find it and eat it.

7. Don't make a baby laugh when she has a mouth full of chicken-vegetable-blueberry goulash. Also, don't tickle a baby as she's pulling herself up on a step-stool. She'll fall and you'll feel like a heel.

8. Sometimes, just putting pillows on the floor for landing pads as Dylan plays on the couch constitutes good parenting. As long as other parents don't catch you. Or Regina.

9. Babies bring out the songwriter in us all. Granted, it's usually the same song, with different verses to match the current activity. As of now, I have thirty different versions of the "We're Going To Eileen's" song, but they all begin the same way. You guessed it (sing along): "We're going to Eileen-y's, we're going to Eileen-y's." It's catchy and I can dance to it.

And, finally: 10. No matter what, a smile from Dylan always makes me feel like the best Dad in the world. Even if it's followed by a big, smelly poop.

Grizzly Girl

2008-01-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

It must have been a few weeks ago, but I have this vague recollection that I offered up some lame wisdom ... something about learning something new each day from your child. I think I'd just polished off an article in "Parenting" magazine and was feeling pretty cocky about my dad-ness abilities.

Well, now I've learned that I may have jumped the gun in offering up solid advice. I think (get out your pen and paper) that what I'm learning about myself and my daughter is trumped tenfold by what Dylan is learning about her parents. For example, just last weekend Dylan learned that screaming, loudly, every six or seven seconds while we are driving to Medford, will drive her parents into hysterics. She gets to watch her mother repeat, "I don't know what you want," over and over until she finally unbuckles her seatbelt, and crawls into the backseat of the the truck. And she gets to watch her father stare blankly ahead at Interstate 5 and wonder, out loud, about meaningless things passing by. "That car has a dent in it. Hello to you, family of four in your mini-van. Hey, a buzzard. Nice driving, motorcycle, ride on."

To carry her experiment one step further, Dylan tried to see if her screaming would product the same result in a store. The store in question was Big R -- our country-supply store. What she didn't know was that once inside Big R, her father runs around like a Meerkat on meth. Guns! Boots! Equine tranquilizers! Camo! So, while her experiment failed with her father, she learned that it's the enclosed confines of the truck that amplifies her shouts and have full effect on her mother. The acoustics aren't as good inside a warehouse store and Regina was able to put together some sentences. The most sensible was, I swear to God, "Can you believe they don't have rawhide dog treats? I tried to find one for Dylan to chew on, but they're out." I just shrugged and said, "I gotta find some rope."

The scream-experiment also failed because it gave her position away, so I could either hide in the saddle section, or retreat back to the stroller, depending on the time. Dylan continued the experiment in the Sportsman's Warehouse, Target, Barnes and Noble, and a Japanese Restaurant. It was in the restaurant that we learned something that was so profound, so mind-blowing, that we wrote it down on a legal pad and sent it in to "Parenting" magazine. It's revolutionary and will make "The Baby Whisperer," weep that she hadn't realized it first. We are fully expecting a "Parents of the Year Award" for this one.

Are you ready? Again, please have your pen and paper ready because I'll only say this once: While screaming may seem like an obvious way for your bored child to get attention, it may also mean that she's hungry. Yes, hungry. Feed her right away. So there, Dr. Spock, there's a new sheriff in town, and he's feeling pretty cocky.

Mouth Sweep

2008-01-08T20:08:00.000-08:00

By now, Dylan has excellent crawling skills (she's approved to crawl in most states), and, since nothing comes without a hitch, she's also broken her first tooth. So, instead of cutely crawling across the floor to get from toy A to toy B, she now feels compelled to put anything smaller than her head into her mouth. And so, when I write that this week Dylan really got a taste of what it's like to be a country girl, I, of course, mean that literally. Wood chips, snow, slow spiders, cat hair, something from the bottom of my boot, even Swedish Fish (I know, not too "country," but they are her dad's favorite food) have all found their way into her mouth. Last week, Regina found hay in her poop (Hay! I don't remember eating hay!).

I guess this is what all the cool babies are doing, but this stage makes us pang for the days of the toothless, stationary-baby (which was, I guess, just last Saturday). Now, along with bath, jammies, and bedtime book as nightly rituals, we've added "mouth sweep," and "diaper check." So far we've found a nearly cord of wood and a set of false teeth.

Just when we thought we couldn't be more vigilant, we've learned that the microscopic spec of a gnat's leg that we'd overlooked and the vacuum didn't suck up is fodder for Dylan. Her vision, especially at floor-level, must be 20/10 because she can spot a spec of dust from ten yards away, scamper over to it, and put it in her mouth before we can snatch an ankle and drag her back to her play toys. She'll also pick at dents in the flooring, mistaking the indentations for bits of dropped food. Our only solution for that is to cover the damaged spots with a throw rug.

I also learned, the hard way, that snow to Dylan is like the ocean or Santa Claus -- great for other kids, but suspicious as hell to her. Dylan wasn't too terrified when we put her on the snow disc and slid her around the backyard, and she didn't howl when I yanked it out from under her, and she didn't even squeal at three G's as I spun her in circles, but it was obvious that cold and snow are going to have to be an acquired taste. We'll wait until next year to unwrap that snowboard.

For now we'll keep scattering blueberries across the floor and hope that Dylan spots them before she finds the nest of spiders beneath the refrigerator or the pin I dropped but cannot find and remember to soak in every day, every moment, we have with our little bug.