Mr. Happy and Mr. Grumpy
Originally uploaded by fujimoo.

Yin and yang...black and white...the dark side of the force and the light side...Mr. Happy and Mr. Grumpy (guess which is which...)

x2 the fun

This is just a fact of life:

No matter how hard you try, you absolutely, positively CAN NOT raise both kids the same way.

As far as I can tell, the lot of the second child is being relegated to travel tote for parent as he/she jets from one activity for child #1 to another. Naps? Good, healthy eating habits? CONSISTENCY? Ha-HAH! I laugh. To date, Alex has already, at the tender age of (almost) ten months:

- sucked on an In-N-Out french fry (I draw the line at McD's!!! Like that makes a difference...),
- still not established a regular nap schedule...bad Mommy...baaaaaad Mommy,
- learned how to use a straw (thankfully not with a frappuccino...like his brother) and had consumed almost a third of a Trader Joe's apple-grape juice box before Mommy realized that what he was doing.

I'm so much more lax about whatever he sticks into his mouth than with Michael (did it fall on the floor? Oh well...just rinse it at the drinking fountain) . With Michael, I was even late giving him baby food. With Alex, I didn't think that the Cheerio could *possibly* be a choking hazard, so I stuck some in his mouth at seven months. Those things would dissolve before the oxygen supply to his brain got dangerously low, right?

Alex, also, hasn't shown any inclination of crawling/moving/scooting/commando-crawling. He certainly shrieks/complains/yells/hollers a lot more though. Is this part of that "second child self-sufficiency and independence?" If nobody's going to pay attention, then gosh-darnit he's going to take matters into his own hands and make sure someone's going to pay attention? It's effective...but sure makes going out to eat a lot less likely.

Oh, and one other thing. If I had a nickel for every time Michael woke up his sleeping brother, I'd hire a frickin' nanny to deal with the two of them...

Grills just wanna have fun...

Just received word that my oh-so-very-when-are-you-gonna-go pregnant friend is feeling weird. I've gotta man the phones, in case she doesn't have anyone to watch her three year old if she goes into labor. We went to the outlets today to peruse whatever "Memorial Day sale specials" there were to be had before the crowds got there. Nada. My guess is her little girl-to-be thought, "Okay. Done with shopping. I can come out now..." I think my friend is ready. She's tired of the waddle.

Speaking of Memorial Day sales, we're going to finally go shopping for an outdoor grill! We must be the last people in Southern CA who don't own a grill. We have this wonderful backyard, we *do* enjoy the occasional hot dog and burger (and I like them ribs!!!), and we have beautiful weather. You would think that we'd have a grill by now. Evan claims that we won't use it. Well, it's kind of hard not to use if you don't have it to ignore in the first place. But he finally relented, deciding that this was going to be our Mother's/Father's day gift. Yay! I'm going to throw a teach-us-how-to-use-this-thing party for my BBQ-guru friends. I'll provide the raw meats and marinades, they show me how to not burn my eyebrows off.

We're probably going shopping for this thing on either the best or the worst time to go too...I mean, there's all these "Memorial Day specials," but if everyone else is in the market for a grill, wouldn't they get marked up more than usual? shrug...

I'll keep you posted if we actually make this purchase. I'll also keep you posted if we do the natural gas hookup wrong and our house blows up.

Shave and a haircut...

Phew!

It's been a while since I posted. That Hawaii trip last year must've been a doozy. Well, since then, we've been back again (better trip this time 'round although I've sworn off of redeye flights with small children forever), Alex has finally gotten six teeth out (four on top, two on bottom), Michael has been on and off with the naps, and is *still* not pooping in the toilet. Believe me, when he finally gets that, we'll be throwing a party up the wazoo.

Alex went for his first haircut yesterday. It wasn't the best job, but then again, what do you expect with a kid who's squirmy even *without* the shears next to his head? As usual, the second kid gets less respect and sympathy-- he was screaming and trying to get away from the poor woman and her clippers, and all I could do was laugh. With the first baby, I might have felt really bad or freaked out about all the screaming, but this time around it was just HI-larious. A friend came along to document the event...most of the photos are a blur of nine month old head movement, but here's one that you can actually see the anguish.

And in the end, resignation...he looks like he's just gone through a tornado. I've tried to comb it to the side to hide all the crooked edges, but no success. Oh well. Another picture to show the girlfriend when he's sixteen.

Speaking of pics to embarass Alex, how's this next one? The poor kid got some sort of virus from generous big brother, and had a horrible night. When I first uploaded this one, I thought, "I've felt like that before..." He looks like he's suffering from a hangover. The drool, I believe, is a side effect of the illness (throat related). He looks like he should be in one of those allergy commercials. All I need is a photo of his four butt cheeks (you know how some people have multiple chins? Well, Alex has multiple butts...) and I'm set in the embarassing-photo department...