Life and How to Live It

I think it's the prerogative of the Rizkerson.com editorial team to lamely quote songs from our childless past as headlines for this blog. We've been at it for more than three years, and we're running out of witticisms. I wish I could blame the drink, but it's really the laundry that's wearing us down.

Without further ado, unleash the cute!



Sania's arsenal of sweetness, cuteness and all-around lovability is expanding like the North Korean nuclear program. She giggles now. She catches your eye across the room and hits you with a ten-thousand megawatt smile that reels you in, helpless. She and I are hanging out this month at the house, catching up on stories from her first three months, watching Star Trek and Food Network, perfecting bottle-warming methodologies, you know, good times. She has an amazing sense of humor, and finds strange little things funny. She thinks you laughing is funny. She thinks you singing is hysterical. She thinks the sounds of phasers on Star Trek is a riot.

She has mastered the art of rolling from her back to her front. But her ultimate goal is to plant her feet firmly on whatever is beneath her and peer around like an ostrich. She deposits her legs with such authority that you're actually surprised she doesn't just hop off your lap and over to get a glass of milk from the fridge. The strength in these legs is really something.

She cannot, however, roll off her stomach. She knows how this will work; you can see it in her eyes. But she hasn't been able to coordinate all of the different moving parts to actually pull off such an operation. She is undeterred, of course.

Reid, meanwhile, grows more unique and amusing by the second. He is an expert user of modern toilet facilities now, with the unwelcome side effect that his natural desire to extend any attempted activity out to its greatest possible span of time manifests itself in hours whiled away on the can demanding comic pages and books about Bob the Builder. At bedtime, strictly because he knows it will forestall his mortal enemy sleep, he hits the potty a half-dozen times between 7:30 and 9:15. Yes, I said 9:15. That's how long it takes to get a yogurt eaten, a glass of water drunk, three books read, and a bath conducted.

But life with Reid is full of surprises. The photo on the left is a good example. For his birthday, he got a digital camera. (We reserve the right to buy things for Reid as if we're still first-time parents who haven't actually learned anything about raising children, such as 'don't buy such nice things for the boy, everything eventually gets used as a hammer.') One day (there's no rhyme or reason) he was wandering around snapping pictures when he came upon the Baby Bjorn front-end child-toting device. He put it on, and immediately demanded some kind of baby to put in it. Buzz Lightyear was drafted into service, and this moment happened.



The photo on the right is another instance of life with Reid, and an elaboration on the old parental saw that the box is always more interesting than the toy. Reid has mildly shown interest in superheroes (including Stan Lee's agonizing but still enjoyable daily Spider-Man strip in the Post). Various cross-marketing efforts surrounding the recent Superman picture have come into our orbit, including a box of Life cereal with a Superman Memory game on the back. Eight little stills from the movie, in four matching pairs were to be cut out by about one parent in one trillion and made into an extremely primitive version of "Memory." Reid had asked about the pictures every time we ate the cereal, and each time I had to exaggeratingly explain that if we cut the cereal box up before we finished all the cereal, all the cereal would come falling out of the box and onto the floor.

Finally, we finished the cereal and Reid implored me to 'make the game.' I carefully cut out the pieces, and laid out a round of Superman Memory. Reid was nonplussed. Then his eyes set on the cut-up box I had discarded. Bizarrely, Reid decided it was his cape, his Superman cape! He strapped it on (his waist, for some reason) and ran around the house yelling "my cate! my cate!" I finally figured it out about five minutes before K came home from wherever she was and I tried to explain this all. She just laughed and told me to take a picture.



The photo above is born entirely from K's desire -- because she is a stronger person than me -- to coordinate a photograph of both our children, in the same place, at the same time. K has yet to respond to my suggestion that we bring all our different car seats into the house and position them exactly as we want the children, then...well you can guess the rest. Reid doesn't let you plan for him. You can put Sania on the blanket and leave room for Reid, and if he deigns to join you for a photo session, you're in luck. But he probably won't. And if he does, he could make this face.