Life in a Glass House

[Bonus points to any of my eleven readers who can submit the artists for the songs I've decided to begin using as titles for these posts for the indefinite future.]


The County Fair happened this weekend. We live in a fairly urban county, so the livestock that once defined this place has long become an illusion. Our County Fair now has crepes, kabobs and fire engines. Indeed, if there was a holy trilogy of our country fair, it would be those three. Oh, and carnies. Lots of carnies. As you can see, off all the fabulous horses and other animals available for Reid to ride on the carousel, he chose the chicken. He seemed to hold genuine affection for the gigantic poultry. No accounting for taste, I guess.

Last year, we went to a minor league baseball game out in Bowie, Maryland, and because they must to something other than play perfectly serviceable baseball to distract America's youth, there is a veritable amusement park of kiddieland activities, and the very same make and model of portable carnie-driven carousel was available there as was at the country fair. Now that I think about it, my sister took Reid on the carousel at the ball game and was unable to meet Reid's demand that he ride another non-horse animal, a somewhat menacing looking monkey. Her failure apparently stuck with her because later that weekend at the county fair, she spotted the monkey and offered to take Reid on the carousel. She bolted past the little kids and secured the monkey for Reid. I'm guessing he approached it from the wrong angle and noticed how scary-looking it was. He refused to ride on it, and instead rode a horse like everyone else.

Oh, Reid got a Spider-Man. We went to the fair as a family one night, and then K and Reid staged a guerrilla raid on the fairgrounds a few nights later. (Sania, unsurprisingly, made a cogent argument for why a four-month old who spends most of her time in a stroller close to the dirty ground doesn't need to go to the fair a second time.) We've been dealing with a slowly-growing excitement about superheroes, fueled somewhat by annoying cross-promotions of the new Superman movie (remember that?) and also by the fact that Reid inherited the 'read the comics while going potty' gene from yours truly. The "Amazing Spider-Man" by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber has caught his eye. As a former devotee of Spider-Man comic books, I feel comfortable calling the work of Lee and Lieber in daily strip form horrendous.

Nevertheless, Reid now loves superheroes, and Spider-Man, as well as the Batman and Superman are all big hits. This seems to be a natural outgrowth of his love of Buzz Lightyear, and I even saw Spider and Buzz working together to save Spider-Man's wife MJ yesterday. At least, that's what it sounded like. Seriously. And K and Reid were at the fair working solo, and Reid had been really good, riding rides and having a nice time of it. So K thought she would get him a Spider-Man from one of the lame carnie games. Perhaps it was "knock down the bottles with the filthy baseball" or "pop a balloon tacked to a wall with a poorly-weighted dart." I don't know, because I got the story secondhand and K is sleeping right now. Anyhow, she said, "How much is a play?" and the carnie told her it was $3 for one and 2 for $5, and you're guaranteed a win if you buy the two for five deal. She said, "I'll give you $3 for a Spider-Man." Thus she secured the stuffed superhero without touching a dart or baseball. Genius.

So isn't that picture of Sania with her blocks and Reid smiling behind her adorable? We thought so. K's been on a mission to tame the beast within Reid long enough to get a real beauty with the two of them together. I think most of the shots of the two of them are splendid, but she really wants a portrait-worthy affair. We'll see. Anyhow, I thought this was a nice shot. Now I'll show you what happened about four seconds later, and you can understand why such pleasant moments of relative peace are so rare.



Good times.

We are always dreaming up plans for our non-committed weekends (that is weekends without birthday parties or the like). Sometimes those plans are just "go to Target over and over again," but this past weekend, we thought of something really cool (we read about it in the paper). We went peach picking. Reid did really well, roaming about facing down tiny storm clouds of gnats and grabbing up peaches like it was his job. This way, we got an even mix of ripe peaches (picked by K and myself) and low peaches that may be ripe or hard as rocks. They're ripening in a brown bag on our kitchen counter. Reid had a super time, frankly, and he was great. He was really enjoying himself. It's nice to have a day out with the family and no obligations. So far, we have made peach cobbler, peach pork chops, peach smoothies and peach topping for our pancakes. Delicious. Next to watermelon, Reid loves him some peaches.

Sania is doing amazingly. Spending all this time with her as I'm doing this month, I'm really seeing her personality come out. At this age, Reid was dreadfully serious. Sania's a riot. She's all giggles and cheeky staring. She does little things that remind me of her mom, and other funny things that remind me of the zanier, jollier Reid that has really taken shape as his toddlerhood as marched on. Sania spends much of her time smiling and laughing, pushing herself up like an athlete and staring at what's going on all around her.

Her progress has been amazing. At her four month checkup last week, she was off the charts, weighing in at 15 and a half pounds and measuring 30 inches even. She wants so much to eat people food that she's grown tired of the little bouncy seat because it keeps her too far from the action while we eat. When she can get a clear shot at the table, she stares carefully at the mechanics of eating, tracing the path of the forks as they leave the plate and head toward our mouths. She wants to get her hands on some of this good stuff. But first, she'll have to live two more months on mother's milk, and then start off with that horrible rice cereal. Sorry, hon!

But look at that smile.

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.

Sania's On a Roll

Today at 4:49 pm, Sania rolled over for the first time. She's been threatening to roll over for about a week, mostly starting on her back and struggling mightily while shouting.

She mostly looks like this when she was trying it. This photo was taken yesterday while she was trying to turn over, and I was trying to negotiate a conference call.

Today, she and I were hanging out here at home after a trip to the Target. I put her down on the playmat which has ensured that otherwise cute photos of our children are marred by an orange butterfly pattern. She started to crank and squeak, so I went into the kitchen to heat her up a bottle.

(Fill mug halfway with water, place in microwave, key in two minutes, press start, check on baby.)

She looked like this.



And so it begins.