Simian Farmer

The Easter Bunny cometh

Returning home from a car ride with Dad, the boys discover that the Easter Bunny has left evidence of his presence, starting on the front porch.

One is left to wonder what other treasures must await the boys inside the house?

Two tickets for the 7:15 shuttle, please

Saturday afternoon, over lunch, Declan was playing with the cordless phone at the kitchen table:

"Three!"

"Six!"

"Nine!"

"Two!"

"Five!"

"Eight!"

"One!"

"Four!"

"Seven!"

...

"ADMISSION!!"

Girls' weekend

As of this writing (10:30 PM-ish), my wife has been out of the house for about seven hours and both boys are fed, entertained, and in bed sleeping soundly.

Amy will be away until some time on Sunday, and I've had to use the backspace key at least two dozen times to write these first two sentences.  God help us all.

She's in Calgary, reuniting with three other gals who made up most of the female half of the participants in the trip to Cuba this past November.  (The other three gals are single, and Amy got invited because she's the sister of one of the other three; perhaps the others don't know what a bad influence my wife can be??  God help them all.)  They were going out to dinner at Red Lobster when she called to check in at about 8 PM or so, and I have no idea what the rest of their weekend entails.  Whenever Amy or I have a weekend away, alone, that's normally for the best.  Our marriage is stronger because, in part, of the "go away so I can miss you" aspect that should be a feature of every successful relationship.

Me, I'm flying solo this weekend.  Fed the boys full of a hearty dinner and we three chased each other around the basement for a good hour before I forced them into their pyjamas (post tickle-fest), read them a story, and tucked them into bed.  The run around the basement must have tired them out because Tavish only got out of bed twice before he stayed down for good.  Little bugger has been getting out at least a half dozen times most nights lately before he goes to sleep.  Amy and I have taken turns being the one to get him back into bed.  The standard caveat issued by the one NOT tucking him into bed for the Nth time has been, "Be nice..."  He's earned a couple swats on the back side.  So unlike his more docile, people-pleasing, older brother.

So, weekend plans:

Saturday morning, I think I'll call my co-worker, Dave, and wish him a happy 47th birthday, then take the boys grocery shopping.  Perhaps out for a coffee and bagel after that.  It snowed today, so my erstwhile plans to clean some of the freshly exposed dog crap out of the backyard may have been put on the back burner for now.  Instead, somehow, I'll just keep the boys entertained, finish the laundry that Amy started this morning, get the dishes done, and whatever else it takes to make it to the end of Saturday.  Sunday will take care of itself.

Friday is ending with a bit of a geek-out.  The boys and I went to Blockbuster right after we finished supper and rented a few movies.  They got to watch a Spider-Man cartoon after we got home, and I just finished watching The Bourne Ultimatum.  Let me say that, in a fit of slightly drunken exuberance, the Bourne movies all pretty much rock the casbah.  Even though I've never actually been in one.  A casbah, that is.  And now, after I hit the POST button, I'm going to watch Afro Samurai.  Some animated flick I heard a little about, whose main voice talents are provided by Samuel L. Mutherf@*kin' Jackson.  So that's bound to be a kick ass movie by default.

I'll get to bed by about 1 AM and Tavish will wake me up before 6 AM when he patters into the master bedroom and starts kicking me in the the soft places until I get up with him.

Ah yes... it will be a grand weekend indeed!  Especially after the third fairly stiff Ryan Coke I'm about to go pour myself...

He's officially a toddler

Pictures from the weekend that centred around Tavish's second birthday party.

If you click on them, they will look even bigger.

Priorities

"Here, Si.  When you go shopping this morning, here's most of the money you'll need for Tav's birthday cake.  I spent the rest on shooters for us Friday night."

Kid logic

Him: Dad, when is Tavish's birthday?

Me: It's on March the third.

Him: And my birthday is May the fourth?

Me: Yes it is.

Him: So, I'm almost 40 pounds, right?

Talk to me, Goose

UPDATE:

My apologies to the royal person who attempted to sign in to the chat this morning.  Below, in the comments, my wife points out my shortcomings (one of the many that plague me).  I am conducting a training session today (Feb 27) from 9 - 9.30 AM, and then will be away from the office between 11 AM and 1 PM for a blood donation.  I should otherwise be around today.

My bad.

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I just added a new feature to my sidebar, for anyone interested. 

There's a chat bubble that will hook you right up to chat with me live, if I happen to be signed in to my Gmail account.  (All the mail I get from simon AT simianfarmer DOT com - and it is copious, oh yes! - automatically gets shunted to my Gmail account.  Which was just an excuse to use the word 'shunt'.)  You don't even have to use Gmail yourself; the internet elves behind the scenes take care of all the niggly little logistics.  Just clink on the link that says Chat with Simon Fraser, and watch the magic happen, (as long as there's a green circle beside the name, meaning I'm online).

As Goldmember would say, "Isn't that weeeeeiiird?"

Since I have my Gmail open for most of the time I'm at work during the day (shhh...), I can now be contacted this way, should you so desire.

Pics from this week

As you may be able to deduce from the title, these few pictures were snapped just this week.  The very last one less than an hour ago (at the time of this posting) just after the boys got out of the bath.

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Tav and Dad.

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I sometimes wish I had my own sippy cup scaled up to my size.

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Fort Fraser as viewed from our living room window.  About a hundred square feet of highly defensible frozen fortifications right there, my friends.

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Tooth brushing time, fresh outta the bath.  Dex has on his bear towel, and Tav gets the dragon towel.  Those are both electric Shrek toothbrushes for the boys.  We spare no expense around our place, no sir.

As you can see, Tavish's drool containment still needs some work.

Fort Fraser

The long weekend (for us) just past gave us some much needed time to catch up on a smidge of domestic entropy that was growing dangerously close to breaching our ever-weakening containment shield, as well as some just as much needed spousal time.  We actually went to a fancy hotel for Sunday brunch (surprise for Amy) and then out to a movie.  'Twas awesome!

(Thanks to Granny and Grumpy for taking the boys for a day and a night.)

All the added time also allowed for us to do something with the vast amount of snow that was sitting (far too virginally) all over our front lawn.  It cried out for despoilment like a bride on her wedding night.  (Our front lawn specifically because we can be relatively sure, there, that there's nothing scatological about it.)

Thus, goaded by my wife, and aided by two of the enthusiastic neighbour kids (amid a handful of shovels), we cleared the beginnings of a front yard snow fort.

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Here, Tavish paws at the entrance corridor to the fort proper.  The Panama Canal was built in this sort of way.  Only with dirt instead of snow, it was much warmer there, and the relative volume of material moved was off by several orders of magnitude.  The child labour part totally matches though.

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In this picture (now in the fort courtyard), as in the one above, one can see how important a role duct tape plays in protecting toddlers from the encroachment of snow.  I cursed myself later on for not doing the same at his wrists after he took a bit of a spill and started to wail like his fingernails had just been ripped out. 

(They hadn't.)

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Declan, content mostly to supervise and remain relatively snow-free, piped up with the occasional comment like, "I don't think I like the cold very much."

You know, just in case we couldn't interpret his facial subtleties.

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Amy, shoring up the main outer defenses of the fort, has the courtyard cleared down to the grass.  In total, I think it measures about three metres (10') to a side with a short corridor connecting it to the driveway.  If the weather holds up (i.e., stays cold enough) we'll see if we can reinforce the battlements this coming weekend.  Not sure about the weather cooperating though: it's been positively tropical temperate here lately -- a couple degrees above freezing, even!  Stay tuned...

Awesome

I just put Tavish down for his afternoon nap.

Dex: "Hey Dad, do you wanna play something quiet?"

Me: "Like what, Son?"

Dex: "Well, Play-Doh is quiet, right?"