Saturday, December 23, 2006

Veggietivity

Do any of these vegetables look familiar to you?


According to Sam, a couple of them should. To be specific:



Now do you see the resemblance? Perhaps this will help.




Yeah, I'm not sure I really see it either. But every time Sam plays with his Veggie Tale nativity set, he calls Larry the Cucumber (on left) "Dad" and Pa Grap (on right) "Mom." I realize that pregnancy hormones have changed my look over the past several months, but I was hoping the new handlebar mustache and purple nose weren't quite so noticable.

In any case, at least Sam treats his parents-in-effigy kindly. He finds them cozy beds in drawers and boxes, and often requests that Coach or I "talk to Sam" through our respective vegetable character. Sadly, Sam doesn't take the news that "it's time for bed" any better from a vegetable than a real live parent.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Lights off


(This was written a couple weeks ago now.)

Last night Sammy and I had the pleasure of playing games in the dark. At least, that was the positive spin I tried to put on our experience as we waited for all of our previously scheduled amusement (Christmas music, toys, xbox…) to resume if only the power would come back on.

Boss was out and I was on the cordless phone hurrying around to serve Sammy and me dinner when the lights went out. A 2-year-old’s shriek filled the previously lit space. “Light on!” he insisted as if I had deliberately sabotaged our dinner with darkness as one of my typically contrary daddy-type tricks. I explained several times that we couldn’t turn the lights on. I opened the door and gestured out to the neighborhood in total darkness. “See? Nobody has any lights right now because they are broken.” Not quite mollified, he silently endured the inconvenience of being carried around by me while I groped through the dark trying to find candles or flashlights. The flashlights had all been converted to toys (and the batteries were out), I couldn’t find any matches, and the 72-hour kit was in the garage shut behind an electronically sealed garage door. Finally I found some matches and a candle in the bathroom. I lit the candle and Sammy celebrated by singing a chorus of Happy Birthday and blowing it out. Shrieking ensued. Then explaining. Lighting. Singing. Blowing. Shrieking again.

After relenting to the futility of carrying him and the candle at once, I put him down and kept the candle out of his reach long enough to equip a flashlight with some fresh batteries. There we were in the dim light of 2 double A’s waiting for Mommy to come save us. Surely she could fix our dark problem, we thought.

Ultimately we had to improvise. Our pattern of relying on flashes of electric light for entertainment (in one incarnation or another) left us coming back to the flashlight again and again for amusement. We stared at its luminous end as if we were waiting for it to project a high definition movie on the ceiling. Finally we settled for swinging it in patterns to spell letters on the ceiling. Sammy seemed to like that, and in the absence of an Xbox, I found it passable as well.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Holidays





I like holidays and all the associated baked goods. Apparently, Sam does too.