Don't Make Me Angry Mr. McGee

Reid is a strange little man. He's growing by leaps and bounds, of course, and we're routinely amazed to look over at this rapidly changing little man in our house and say, 'How did he get so big? What happened to our little boy?'



Tonight we had a special sort of moment. It was called a total meltdown.

Lately, Reid has been helping us cook. He will stand alongside K most of the time, or me some of the time, pretend to be doing something industrial and cooking-related. To plan for it, he says 'cook' over and over again. It's quite cute. So we put him in a chair and gave him a plastic butter knife and a half an apple. Now, he says 'cook' and pushes his chair over to the cutting board in his little spot and sets to work with all sorts of crazy technologies, collecting spare spices (usually lemon pepper or garlic powder) in one plastic container and pouring it into another, and who knows what else.

Tonight, we had a nice lemon pepper-garlic salt-sesame seed mixture going. He was pouring it from the half-cup measure to something else, quite occupied. I finished the dinner and declared it was time to move over to the table to eat the wonderful dinner Reid had made.

Meltdown.

Reid couldn't believe I was attempting to move to dinner. Truly astounding. He was pouring out the tears, snot was running down his face, his lungs were desperate of air. He couldn't believe that he was done cooking. I had clearly laid the groundwork for the shift from 'cook' to dinner. I made a big show of pretend adding his special mixture to the chicken I cooked. He became irate. I moved him to his booster chair and he continued to wail. I attempted to play through the pain, served him up some chicken, but it was too late. The entire system had completely unwound. We were at an impasse.

I ate some bites of food. Reid gulped helplessly for air.

This was an important moment in parenting.

I could have buckled, pushed him back to the butcher block, left him to perfect his recipe. But this would this have been a strategic parenting setback. I waited. Reid wailed. We went to the time-out chair.

The time-out chair has been employed sporadically since the epic early failure (in which we counted to ten and then Reid applauded), and we're getting pretty good at it by now.

I told him he would need to sit in the chair until I told him he could get up. I then ate in silence while the boy moaned in grief. Then he went quiet, too. A few minutes later, I went in and he was smiling. I asked him if he was ready to eat. We had a nice dinner together. He was chatting about his day, babbling and giggling. Who is this little man? Where was the wailing infant from five minutes ago?

Reid's Second Spring

It is extremely rare in the part of the country where we live for a real springtime to break over the land. More often than not, we are tempted/taunted by a handful of spring-like days in early April before the full onset of gruesome, suffocating mugginess. It's really quite a treat.

But this spring, for whatever reason, we have seen an unusually long and beautifully temperate spring. We planted grass and went to baseball games with sweatshirts on. Ok, we went to one baseball game.



Reid now loves almost all forms of ball-based sport. He comprehends exactly none of the actual point of any of these things. His version of football is when he throws the ball to me and then I chase him until I hand the ball to K, who wants to give it to him but has to catch him first. He throws a miniature football through a Little Tykes basketball goal. He rarely if ever puts the basketball through the goal. (Though Reid shorthand for going out to play this miasma of ball-games is a pugnacious "Hoop! Hoop!" Throughout dinner, as we head to the bath, in a rainstorm, it doesn't matter. "Hoop!")

In ancticipation of what will be a long spring and summer of using the yard, K has attempted to grow grass. She goes outside and looks at it. One day, Reid wondered what all the fuss was about.



Washington offers a cornucopia of sport options these days. The NBA team won its first playoff game in 18 years the other day. The new baseball team has taken up residence in the stadium the last one abandoned 33 years ago. The Washington Nationals are fairly middle of the pack early in the season, but with time, and more versatile merchandising, they could blossom into a real powerhouse.

In a drizzling rain, the three of us set off to take in a Nationals game, free tickets in hand, Reid sound asleep in the stroller. Our plan was this: Night game, let Reid take a late afternoon nap as long as the sleep will bear and then blitz him with baseball until he grows intolerant. Then we split.

It worked like a charm. Reid fell asleep about two minutes after we left home. We parked the car in downtown DC and headed over for dinner, Reid zonked in the stroller. We dined, took a Metro train to the stadium and pushed Reid about a third of a mile to RFK. Still asleep. Entered the stadium and started the long ramp-riven march to the cheapest of the cheap seats. We roll to a stop in front of a badly understaffed and under-supplied hat and t-shirt stand. Reid wakes up in time to accept his first Nationals hat.

He was an amazing fan. He couldn't see what was going on. (None of us could, really.) But when the crowd erupted in applause, he was right there. He figured out that there were balls being thrown somewhere in the vicinity and shouted "ball" whenever the mood struck. In short, he saw his first baseball game.

Nats beat the Metropolitans of the borough of Queens, city of New York, in 8 and a half rain-shortened innings 5-3. We left after a rain delay in the sixth, when the Nats' victory seemed secure. And we've got tickets to see the Nationals play the Pittsburgh Pirates some time later this summer.


Reid, his dad, and the Washington Nationals.