Do It All Fass

Updates on the boys.

1) At 3:00am this morning, the door to our bedroom slammed shut, waking me and Shelley from deep sleep. The "Fight or Flight" reflex triggered immediately in me as I jumped out of bed and, heart beating furiously, began walking to the door to see what manner of home invasion I would need to fend off. Shelley asked "what was that?" as I got to the door, and I answered "I have no idea". "Wait-" she said, "the baby's here." Her eyes had just focused enough to see that Braden was standing stealthily at her side of the bed. "Braden, what are you doing?" she asked. "Eh trying to get me" he answered, crawling on top of her with his ever-present blanket. "What tried to get you?" Shelley asked. "Duh monter," came Braden's sleepy reply. I opened the bedroom door, checked for monsters and returned to bed, where Braden was very nearly asleep already on Shelley's chest (and torso, and legs) as she soothed him with head stroking and whispered assurances that he was safe with us. My heart beat so hard as I got back in bed I whispered that the boy was trying to kill me. She chuckled softly as she carried him back to his room.

2) At bedtime, (which regular readers will know is about my favorite time of the day with the boys), one of Braden's two favorite books currently is "Busy, Buzzy Bees" (a gift from his Aunt Kerry). Last night at dinner, Braden began quoting parts of "Busy, Buzzy Bees" at the dinner table, cracking us all up. "Oink oink," said duh pig "do you wanna have some fun?" "Bzz bzzz," said bees "we duh make a sweet surprise!" The whole book consists of these questions and answers, with various farm animals asking the bees to play and the bees secretively hurrying off to work. Of course, the lines B recited didn't go together (the answers rhyme with the questions), but the way he mimicked the voices I use when I read it to him was priceless. The more Shelley and I laughed, the more he cracked up, too. "Woof woof," said duh dog "wanna chase duh butterflies..."

3) When we read his other favorite, the short Halloween classic "A Dark, Dark House" (a gift from his Grandma), he always asks me at the end to "do it all fass?" At his Bible study class, they had a few songs they sang that they got to sing and act out the hand motions to "all fast", (which he loved, of course). He has since expanded that experience to reading books and anything else he can think of. So I always re-read the "Dark, Dark House" 'all fass', causing us both to fall out in hysterics.

4) Needless to say, bedtime reading routines at our house now include a chapter or two of "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" with Austin. He was gone for a week with Shelley & B right after we got the book, so we have only made it to Chapter 7 or 8, but so far it has been funny and interesting, with only hints of the "kissy-kissy" stuff that makes Austin squeamish. Harry in mortal danger from the dark Lord Voldermort we can handle: his awkward teenage interest in girls tends to be a little too much!

5) Austin got to go shopping for school clothes in Ft. Worth last week with his "totally cool" Aunt Tiffany, former store manager of a hipster clothes store in a mall in Arlington. They made stops at the Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and other stores too fabulous for me to even know their names. His prize find is probably the shell necklace he wears constantly, or the Nike sneakers, or possibly the "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt styled after a similar offering in the strangely hilarious movie "Napoleon Dynamite". It all adds up to a wardrobe that has him looking more and more like a teenager and less and less like a little boy. Appropriate, I suppose, for his LAST YEAR OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL BEFORE STARTING JR. HIGH SCHOOL!

As long as he still wants to snuggle with me while I read to him at bedtime, I think I'll be ok. But the day is quickly approaching when he will become too big for that, and I will have to go into a period of great sadness for awhile when that happens. But not tonight - tonight Harry, Hermione, Ron and all the rest of the Hogwarts' students prepare for their return to their 6th year at school, amidst the increasingly dangerous civil war among the wizards and witches. Muggles beware!

Much Depends on Dinner

Families don't sit down to eat together anymore. Something has been lost.

BY CAMERON STRACHER
Friday, July 29, 2005

(The above article was printed in the Wall Street Journal today, and is available online via the link above. Here is my response, which I posted on the author's website Dinner With Dad as well as below.)

Enjoyed your commentary in Opinion Journal online. (Seriously, has someone really linked the decline in families dining together with the rise in illegal file sharing?)

I am fortunate in that my wife stays home with our two boys (10 and 3) and I work 45 minutes from home. Work days are rarely longer than 10 hours, so almost every night I am home for dinner.

Most nights my wife cooks our meals - some good, some not so much - and I cook, too, though not as well as her. There is a hole-in-the-wall mexican restaurant five minutes from our house with good, cheap fajitas and live music "Wednesdays with Juan" which is so awful it's fantastic. $5 pizza Mondays and a weekend stop at our favorite deli round out the majority of our evening meals together. Key word - together.

The mother who told you "it's just not fun to eat with them," referring to dinner with her kids, is right. She should also be ashamed for being so shallow and self-centered. My 3 year old spends most of the time at our dinner table crawling in and out of his chair and complaining that his food has "germs". My 10 year old, though better mannered, is a piddler, meaning his mother and I will be done with our meals just as he is getting going. Dinner with the boys is not (usually) fun, but it is too important to quit for the sake of something more amusing or satisfying.

I'm convinced dinner together is a comforting landmark in the terrain of our boys' busy, sometimes chaotic, lives. If sacrifices are required to provide them that sense of safety, or to impress upon them their place in a family, then so be it.

In a few years, peaceful dinners for my wife and me will common, and no doubt filled with conversations about when the boys will be home next, preferably with our grandchildren...

Best wishes.

The Calm Before the Storm

Quick update on Shelley and the boys.

They decided yesterday to check out this morning and drive back a day earlier than originally planned. When checking out this morning, a sign in the office indicated that officials had ordered a tourist evacuation of Destin ahead of Hurricane Dennis, (currently a Category 4 hurricane SSW of the Florida Keys).

Shelley and the boys went to the Taj to say goodbye, and were awed by how still the ocean was, with waves no bigger than you would see on a lake. This was especially striking after two days of rough water following Tropical Storm Cindy. They were equal parts glad to be going home and sad at missing being in such calm water on such a sunny, beautiful day.

As they left around 10:15am, they discovered that all gas stations on the island were either closed and boarded up, or had lines that were 25 or more cars deep to get the remaining gas. They crossed the mid-bay bridge into Niceville, and found a gas line with only about 12 cars in it. After waiting for 35 minutes, they ran out of Premium, the only type of gas that was left when Shelley got in line. Driving off, they found a gas station (with only Premium gas left) at I-10, and got the half tank of gas needed for a full tank.

While in line at the gas station they noticed that clouds had started making their way into the sky overhead, and Shelley and Jamie both got a case of the heebie-jeebies realizing they were in the literal "calm before the storm".

They are on Interstate Highway 10 now, heading West without any difficulties or heavy traffic. I expect them to be home around 10 or 11pm tonight.

Our prayers go out to those who must stay behind and face the wrath of this horrible storm.

UPDATE: 3:00pm, Friday - Shelley is in Biloxi, Mississippi. Traffic was heavy around Mobile, Alabama but has tapered off the further west they go. Gas stations are open and have regular gas.

Care for an Oreo?

Our family vacation to Destin, Florida with Sheryl's family was terrific, featuring white sand, blue water, fireworks and good food. We left for Destin with anxiety about sharks attacking just days before, and left Destin with anxiety about Hurricane Dennis arriving days later. It was an "Oreo" trip - time at the beach was the creamy white filling between two dark cookies (sharks and hurricanes) on either side. It was a Traditional Oreo for me, a Double-Stuf Oreo for Sheila and the boys, as I flew out of Destin Tuesday morning and everyone else is driving in tomorrow. Okay, enough with the cookie metaphors.

We drove 11 hours on Saturday to get to Destin around 8pm, and it was still light enough to see that the sand was whiter and the water bluer than anything we saw in Padre. The most interesting detail of the beach was the sand - it felt like brown sugar, bigger and "sturdier" than the sand in Padre. It's hard to describe but everyone commented on it. Sheryl's sister (Cande) rented a house on the beach for the week to help celebrate her husband Steve's 50th birthday. I immediately dubbed the house "The Taj Ma-Cande" because it was 3 stories tall, had 6 bedrooms, and easily (EASILY) cost $10,000 to rent for the week! We stayed in a very nice condo across the street from the Taj, which gave us access to a swimming pool as well as the beach. Good thing, too, because Braden and I were in the pool by 7:30am Sunday and Monday, giving everyone else a chance to get some more sleep as well as giving us some quality Father-Son time. His favorite things to do at the pool were dunking me under the water (no big surprise there) and throwing a rock into the pool, having me "fetch" it, and then letting him try to guess which hand it was in. I bet we played "fetch" for a good hour both mornings.

Cande and Steve had all three of their girls, with their husbands and their children (four in all) staying in the house with them, as well as members of Steve's family, and friends -- who can know how many there were? "Too many" would be the correct answer, and I think they started getting crabby with each other by about Saturday evening.

Sunday was beautiful, with the boys having a heyday on the beach, Shelley and I getting a private dinner at a wonderful restaurant with superb waitstaff, and me getting to go to bed early with the boys while Sheila, Jamie and the other family members from our generation went out to a club until ??am.

Monday was a repeat of Sunday's weather at the beach, followed by a catered birthday dinner at the Taj. The highlight was, of course, the fireworks, which proud Americans shot off up and down the beach as far as you could see in either direction. Austin led the discharge of the pyrotechnics in our party, (Steve Horst would have had a tear in his eye, and not just from the heavy smell of sulfur). I have to admit that the site of Austin in the moonlight with the waves crashing behind him and a burning punk clinched between his teeth made me a little emotional, too! Some of the fireworks had too loud a report for some in our party, but that didn't deter Austin from emptying our depot of all its treasure.

Tuesday morning I got up at 4:45am to make a 6:25 flight out of Ft. Walton Beach airport, with a scheduled arrival time in Houston (via DFW airport) of 10:30am. I saved $40 flying American Airlines through DFW as opposed to booking a direct flight on Continental into Houston. Here's how that worked out for me:

7:00am - Left FWB late due to rerouting and refueling to accommodate for weather in Central Texas;
9:15am - landed in Waco, TX while DFW was closed to ground traffic due to thunderstorms;
9:15 - 12:30pm - sat in the (small) plane on the tarmac in Waco because six AA planes had landed in Waco with us, creating a potential security problem if we all came into the terminal at the same time;
12:30pm - left Waco;
1:15pm - landed DFW;
2:15pm - pulled into a terminal at DFW after waiting an hour behind a dozen other planes which had landed ahead of us and waited for a terminal, too;
2:15 - 3:30pm - considered physically harming one or more human beings over the slightest provocation, as effective but ultimately counter-productive stress reliever;
3:30pm - left DFW;
4:50pm - arrived in Houston, nearly 11 hours after getting on the plane in FWB and at the EXACT SAME TIME I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THERE HAD I RENTED A CAR IN FLORIDA AND DRIVEN BACK!
Wednesday, 9:00am - turned in PTO request for missing work Tuesday, which cost us a wee bit more than the $40 dollars we "saved" by buying the cheaper airfare. (Note to self: fly non-stop whenever possible.) Oh, and by getting to the house after 6:00pm, I was unable to get Snoopy from the kennel Tuesday night, costing us an extra $15 insult. (Note to self: #%^/~*@!)

Shelley and the boys had a carefree day on Tuesday, followed by a rainy Wednesday and a gorgeous Thursday. Thursday was marred only by a brief "incident" at the pool. It seems Braden needed to go to the bathroom, so he got out of the pool, pulled down his trunks, and began to pee into the water. Guests at the pool were described as "mortified", none less so than Shelley, who immediately raced towards Braden directing him to stop. Witnesses describe what happened next as an "intentional aim adjustment", resulting in his peeing on his Mother's head, arms and hands, no doubt as she waved them in horror at this wet assault. As is so often the case in these matters, Shelley (after surfacing from the cleansing waters of the pool) took Braden away for appropriate discipline, while Austin, Jamie and others laughed unabashedly at our little angel's latest caper.

Concerns about "evacuation" plans being broadcast in Destin prompted them to leave a day early, on Friday morning instead of Saturday. Jamie will help Shelley with the driving and the boy-management, and will return home to her hubby Saturday or Sunday.

And that's how I spent my summer vacation. Except the summer is only half over!

Next up: the Harris posse comes to town...

South Padre - The Final Chapter

Our final day at the beach was spent mostly under the shade of the beach umbrella after spending the morning at the swimming pool. The pool occupied the space immediately to the west of the condos, so we swam and played and acted silly in the shade of the morning sun. When mid-day hit, we went inside for lunch, an SPF full-body treatment, and then on to the beach. Sheila, who hadn't been feeling well all morning, became increasingly sick to her stomach and miserable. She stayed very still in bed while Braden napped, allowing Austin and me to build a sandcastle.

Actually, saying what Austin and I built was a sandcastle is really a bit misleading. What we did was dig a square hole about 6'x 6' around the base of the umbrella, leaving a 1' square in the center where the umbrella remained firmly anchored in the sand. "Umbrellaville", as Austin came to call it, was about 18" deep, or exactly the depth to which you had to dig to get to the tarry, black layer of petrochemical residue. To call Umbrellaville "quaint" or "charming" would be plain wrong. It would not be wrong, however, to call it a democracy. You see, Austin soon began to designate the larger shells we dug up as members of Umbrellaville's city council, which operated out of the 1' square in the center of "town". As duly elected guardians of the city, they were responsible for overseeing construction, as well as composing a pledge of allegiance, (with our help). We spent several hours working on the development of U-ville, only to witness it's massive devastation at the hands of - who else - Braden. In fairness to B's already sullied reputation, he was invited to help destroy our work with the help of his older brother.

After washing up, and with Shelley feeling slightly better, we went to our favorite place to eat in Padre - Louie's Back Porch. The food was so bad, even I had a hard time eating it, and their are cast iron skillets jealous of how solid my stomach is. To add to our misery, it was still unbelievably hot, we sat out in the sun on the patio (felt odd wearing sunglasses at dinner), our table was dirty and sticky, the cold foods were warm and the hot foods were warm, too. And NONE of it tasted good. All of this was no good for Shelley's belly, to say the least. The only bright spot, (besides the reflection of the sun off my ever-expanding forehead), was Austin's recollection of the time at Louie's that a sea gull flew overhead and pooped on Dad's face and glasses. I'm sure Dad remembers the incident with much less fondness than we did that night, but the memory of it still cracks Austin up pretty good.

After "dinner", we went back to the beach with our flashlights and proceeded to unleash the force of nature that is Braden on the unsuspecting sand crabs which foolishly wandered out of their underground safe havens into our path. It was dusk, so flashlights were required to see the crabs, but once they were spotted, Braden dropped to his knees and began scurrying about after them with surprising quickness. He actually caught a few before the toll his "handling" was having on the local crab population began to alarm his mother and me. Sheila then demonstrated the compassionate way to "catch and release" sand crabs, and Braden remained fascinated by the little guys until it became too dark to spot them, even with flashlights.

Back at the condo, there were more chocolate chip cookies to bake, more ice cream to eat, and more games to play before it was off to sleep.

The next morning we spent a little time in the pool before cleaning up, packing and shaking the sand off of our garmets (literally and figuratively) as we left town to return to humbler but happier confines.

The trip home took FOREVER, but there were a few highlights. We stopped at a roadside fruit stand north of Harlingen and bought three large jugs with which we intend to build a fountain/pond once the weather cools off a little. We cracked ourselves up at a Border Guard checkpoint several miles further up from Harlingen, "worrying" that they might ask us some awkward questions about why three sunburned Anglos would be travelling away from the Mexico border with a brown-skinned toddler onboard.

And, at Austin's pleading, we took a slight detour to pass through Goliad, site of the Presidio de La Bahia, the oldest, fully intact fort dating from the Texas Revolution. Here Austin recounted for us, with remarkable detail, the story of the Goliad Massacre. It was just outside this fort where General James Fannin and 342 of his men were executed by the ruthless Mexican General Santa Anna in violation of the terms of surrender they negotiated. It was a very interesting place with an incredible history, originally built by the Spanish to protect their territory against the pesky French wandering about from their Lousiana Territories. And I did not know it until this visit, but the battle cry of the Texas Revolutionaries at San Jacinto, (site of Santa Anna's defeat at the hands of a much smaller army), was 'Remember the Alamo, Remember La Bahia'.***

But the best part of our tour was Austin's demeanor, which was equal parts fascination and reverence. He became outraged - I'm using the word outraged here - at the site of some ketchup which someone had spilled at the base of the Fannin memorial, because it showed such a lack of understanding about the seriousness and importance of the ground on which we were standing. He was as respectful and solemn as a veteran the whole time we were at the fort and we absolutely love that about him.

Of course, the mood was completely lost when, on the walkway back to the parking lot, Braden stopped, pulled down his shorts and began peeing on the grass before any of us noticed he had fallen behind. Mercifully, no state employees nor fellow visitors happened to see his misdemeanor defacing of an historical site. It also goes without saying that NO ONE wanted to hear me discourse on Oklahoma state history, leaving my question 'who can name for me the five civilized tribes' unanswered and without an expression of interest in knowing the answer.

That was our trip. Glad I got that written so I can move on to July 4th at Destin, Florida. That's next time.


*** For those of you reading this who were taught Oklahoma state history (so therefore don't know much about Texas state history), and are furthermore inclined to believe that I would just as soon lie as tell the truth, I recommend to you this site, which will verify that what I have written above is, in fact, the truth. And shame on you, by the way...