Music Man

Occasionally I am reminded of how different growing up is now than it was when I was a wee one. Music and access thereto for instance. My siblings and I settled for rocking out to the Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt and the Disney album on our Fisher Price record player. For a brief period we even had a car that played 8 tracks. (No, I am not really that old. My parents are just late adopters.) I got my first CD player stereo thingy in middle school. I got my first CD about 4 months later. That same hunk of junk resides in my bedroom to this day.

OMG CALDER JUST DREW A PICTURE AND SAID IT WAS A BOAT. IT ALMOST LOOKED LIKE A BOAT.

So anyways. Calder will never know the pleasures of trying to guess where to place the needle in order to listen to the particular song you want to hear or the joy of wondering why no one else in you second grade class knows what an 8 track even is. These days it's all MP3s. Even my beloved (and still in my possession) CD player is considered passe. In the tradition of my upbringing you bet your ass Calder is familiar with this outmoded technology. Sometimes he'll get a CD and put in in the machine himself. He's even been exposed to cassette tapes before. Unlike my childhood however, I have not denied Calder access to the height of music technology. Not only does he listen to music using my ipod hooked up to speakers, he even knows how to use It himself. Ok so maybe it's like the oldest ipod currently in operation but it's still mostly current technology. Well, it's not TOTALLY obsolete. Yes, I know your house phone is smaller than it. Shut up, buy me a new one if you think it's so funny.

I am, like, really into my music.

Sometimes I just like to flip through my play lists and try think think of the least likely thing that anyone else would be listening to and then I play that.

Oh hi, I didn't notice you standing there. I was just so into this song.

What am I listening to? Oh you wouldn't know it. They are really only big in like, Berlin and if I tell you then everyone will find out about them and it just won't be the same.

Yeah, well, maybe another time. I gotta go plan my set for next week. You can come watch me DJ some time. Or not. It's not like I need the fans or anything.

The Big (Not)Sleep

Calder continues to not want to fall asleep in his crib at night. This is going on two weeks now. We are trying everything we can think of. Putting him to bed earlier, putting him to bed later, staying in the room with him, leaving and letting him cry it out in 10-15 minute intervals, huge doses of Benedryl... Ok, no Benedryl yet but I am getting there.

Last night we tried a combination of putting Calder to bed earlier and intervals of letting him cry, getting him out of bed, calming him down, and then trying to put him back to bed. It did not work well. It worked the opposite of well actually. Did you know if you scream long enough and hard enough you can make yourself vomit? No? Just my kid then? Super. After changing all the bedding and removing every single animal from his plushitorium, Bruce finally got Calder to sleep solidly enough on the couch that we were able to successfully transfer him to the now stripped down crib.

Until 3 a.m., that is, when Calder woke up. Screaming. Again. This time Bruce just brought him into bed with us. I feel we are developing some very bad habits in Calder now. I don't give a damn. I need my sleep, yo.

Things & Things

-According to the discussion I had with one of Calder's day care teachers this morning, he is doing much better there. We didn't really get in to specifics but I would assume this means he is no longer beating on all the other kids there. God, I hope so any way.

-Speaking of day care, Calder should be moving up to the toddler room in the near future. Of course, this should have happened a while ago except there's currently no room in there for him or the other 4 or 5 kids that are about the same age. See, the thing is, Calder started at Swift just as they had launched the infant program. Now they have all these kids that should be moving up together but if they did that, they would have one class with 15 kids and one class with less than three.

-I seriously think Calder may be red/green color blind. He's pretty consistent with knowing his colors except when it comes to red and green. He guesses purple more often than green and he barely seems to recall that the color red exists.

-Calder and I are going on a trip to Mass. in late September to hang with old college friends (mine, not Calder's-- he's not that smart), family and a few other East Coast friends. This should be a real child-ful trip. Not only will Calder be able to hang with his cousin Q, he'll also meet the newest Roo, Caroline. If all plans fall into place, Calder will also meet another baby girl, Olivia and the two-year-old daughter of one of my high school friends, Kala. Point of this story? The people I am friends with pick really cool names for their spawn. See also: Finnegan.

-So there's this thing, the Roboraptor. A few years ago we purchased one for a friend as a birthday/sorry your dad is really sick present. Although it didn't make her dad get any better, it sure did help to lift a few spirits. The thing is awesome and quite excellent at annoying fat ass cats. Well, like the good fake aunty she is, Cary brought Sherman (That's his name, Sherman) to live with us since her and her man don't really play with it much any more. Plus, the it doesn't scare the cats any more. I can tell you who it does scare though. That would be Calder. He is TERRIFIED of it. Kind of hilariously almost. Bruce missed Calder's initial introduction to it so when the child came screaming down the hall to leap into my arms in the kitchen, I started laughing because that exact same thing had happened about 20 minutes earlier the first time Sherman was turned on. If it wasn't tantamount to child cruelty, I would totally record Calder's horrified shrieks and post them here. I guess it will have to remain my own private entertainment for the time being.

-It's easy to tell which Noggin shows Calder likes best, he knows the names of the characters. One of his absolutes faves is Ni Hao, Kai Lan, one of those teach your child a second language with a perky little girl and some really irritating animal companions shows. Think Dora, but Asian. I hate this show. All they do is talk about lady bug festivals and feelings and be irritating. but I let Calder watch it anyways because I really, really want to be able to tell people my son speaks Chinese. I suppose if I am that determined I could avoid Kai Lan and still feel superior to other parents by buying him some books or tapes or something but TV is free dammit. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for the boy. I watch Dora these days just to brush up on my pitiful Spanish so I can stop having awkward staring contests with my downstairs neighbor whenever we meet over the laundry machines.

Vote! UPDATE

UPDATE: Of course I am going to make the costume myself, that's how I roll. To aid in the decision makling process I have added some photos of the sewing patterns that are competing for the title of Most Adorable Toddler of All Time (Halloween Edition).






I have added a poll to the right to decide what Calder's Halloween costume should be. If I had my druthers, he be a dinosaur every year until he graduates from high school. HOWEVA. People might think me weird so I'll leave it you you, the tens of people who read this crap, to decide. What should Calder be for Halloween?

Also, Miss Kathy quit day care but we don't have the heart to tell Calder what that means. Shhhhhhh!

Lullaby and Good Ni---

Can someone please tell me why every night this week we have put Calder to bed only to have him scream himself senseless for ten minutes? When we go get him and bring him out to the living room he passes out on top of one of us immediately. This has never happened before. Short of giving him Benedryl as part of the night night ritual, what the hell am I supposed to do?

Let the Children Play, Worries for Another Day

The visit by Bruce's parents has us somewhat inspired so we've been trying to make an effort to do more Chicago-y type things with Calder. So when Bruce suggested last weekend that we hit up the Air & Water Show my immediate response was, "Fuck that noise." The Chicago Air & Water Show is 2 million of your sweaty tank-top clad, best friends standing along the lake front pointing upward. I'd say about 100,000 of those friends don't wear enough deodorant. According to the Tribune, by 7 am, the closest parking spot to the lake was over a mile away. And I can only imagine what the buses were like. I can safely say that watching the planes practice from my office windows is the closest I will ever come to this spectacle until I own a boat. Or, alternately, befriend someone who does. Or, get invited to the post-championship party on a boat for the softball team I had helped to win three VERY IMPORTANT games. <pointed look>

However, if 2 million people are getting sun burns and destroying their hearing at the beach, that means that there is 2 million fewer people who could simultaneously decide that they want to be doing the same touristy type thing I am doing. Even better, if we go in the exact OPPOSITE direction of the planes, there will likely be even less people. As such, it was decided (by me) thta we were going to hop over to the Kohl Children's Museum in Glenview, IL. The fact that the entry fee is only $7.50 didn't hurt either. That's basically free by Chicago standards.

The trip started inauspiciously since my GPS system thinks the museum is a grocery store in Evanston and for some reason steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the existence of Glenview whenever we try to get there. However, once we finally arrived it was well worth it. Every exhibit in the place is designed for kids of all ages, not just older ones unlike in Boston where there is one area set aside for toddlers and the rest of the place pretty much goes right over their heads. One issue though. That place is corporate sponsored up the wazoo. They have a scaled-down Dominick's where the kids can pretend to shop (maybe that's why the TomTom was so confused?) and a pint-sized Potbelly's at which the children may practice their future careers in the quick service food industry. So those were dumb. But there was a ton of fun stuff and of course I took pictures.

The car care room. Oddly not sponsored so it was not the Meineke Rustoleum Firestone Car Care Room. We returned to this room three more times.

Looking at slides of hideous parasites in the pet vet. I will dream about enormous ticks for the next few weeks. Thanks, learning!

Still at the pet vet, imprisoning the other kids.

Naturey-nature type stuff. The spoon actually serves a purpose, it's not just some low-budget "Our nature area doesn't have a sponsor" type bull crap.

Admiring dead things. Calder seemed a little disturbed that there was no actual turtle inside the shell. Still not creepier than the damn ticks though.

Talking to Daddy. There were a few of these phones dispersed throughout the exhibits. You could pick up the receiver, hit a button and be connected to some rando person somewhere else in the museum. Cool and yet maybe a little too stranger danger-ish.

If you look closely, you can see that this little boy is wearing a Blue Jays shirt. We can find Canadians ANYWHERE. They were even parked next to us. They must be able to small the poutine coming off of us.

Music Makers exhibit. Also known as, "Thanks, now I have a damn headache" Room.

Water room fun. Calder got soaked, y'all.Thankfully I brought extra clothes for him. Especially since watching him accidentally redirect a waterfall straight into his own face was HI-LARIOUS.

Oh right, the shit all over his face. Do-it-yourself face painting. Well, I did the heart but Calder took care of the rest. He even figured it out on his own, what with dipping the special crayons into the damp sponge before it worked. I would have been stabbing violently at my face for hours trying to figure that nonsense out. Good on you, smartypants now get a job so you can pay for the next museum.

Oh, Another Thing

I forgot to mention, another reason having your own yard is better than going to the park is that in your own yard, you don't have to explain to anybody why your child is wearing nothing but a down vest, smiley-face boots and Jeff Probst's hat.

No really. This is what Calder wore to the park before swimming (which is now over, sniff) a few weeks ago. Fortunately Bruce was able to wrestle him into some swim trunks and out of the vest and boots before class started.




I can tell already that as he gets older, getting Calder to dress like a normal person is going to be more and more difficult. The other day he hauled one of his dinosaur costumes from last Halloween out of the closet and demanded I put it on him. Hell, he even wore the head piece for a while, something that was unthinkable last October. Once Calder is able to put on his own pants and shirt any semblance of normality will be totally out the window.

The Great Outdoors

My arch nemeses, the people who live on the first floor of my building are leaving! Now, this family is perfectly nice and all. THey are really polite and the daughter is super cute. Plus, they never ever have loud obnoxious sex like my original downstairs neighbors nor do their dogs tattack Elby when they meet up outside like those belonging to the immediate predecessors. Their dogs are quite well behaved actually, minus a little barking. HOWEVER. These people almost never pick up after those perfectly well behaved dogs. Originally it was never never but we had the landlord speak to them after spending the winter inspecting Elby's paws after each time he came in from the back year. Ahmet may suck at dishwasher replacement but at least he can lay a fairly effective dog doo smack down. The spring and summer have been better ever since but it's still not good. Since both the doggies are fairly old and decrepit it's frequently waaaaaay less than good. On most afternoons, what paltry back yard we have is spattered with doggie detritus and the black flies that are drawn to it as colloquialisms dictate.

A fiesty 1.5-year-old can be pretty tough to keep happy at times. Not having an enjoyable yard makes entertaining an active toddler exponentially more difficult. Sometimes I feel like our lives would run that much more smoothly if I could just run Calder in a Habitrail for an hour or two every evening. It's not as though we are without options, true. As I've mentioned before we have our choice of parks and play lots in our neighborhood, an opportunity not available to many other city kids so we are luckier than some. But still. City parks, regardless of number and proximity, are not without their drawbacks. Often we get to one park only to find that it's already swarming with children. Since Calder is still a pretty little guy, he can often get lost in the mix or is easily knocked down and pushed out of the way. I am not nearly developed enough in my parental badassery to start yelling at other people's children for being assholes so we usually just drag him off to the next gymborama climbarooey thingy.

The next park might be totally empty. OR it might be littered with disaffected teenagers trying to hide their bottles of OE from the cops that periodically cruise through the park. Plus I don't really like having to kick piles ancient mulch over the abandoned condoms. At least the delinquents in my 'hood are using condoms. Yay?

Other issues with the city parks include limited lighting in the evening, equipment that has been questionably maintained (think slides that aren't all that slide-y), weather that won't cooperate for the walks there and back and the fact that I cannot sit in a lawn chair and drink a beer while watching my child frolic.

Wow, what a cranky bitch am I today. Actually, I thought we had it pretty good for city dwellers until this past weekend. Spending Saturday evening at a friend's house in the near 'burbs I learned that all we need to keep Calder amused for hours is a two-year-old, an enormous box and a large yard with it's own playset. Calder had an incredible amount of fun with his friend. Because of all the climbing and jumping and fort destructing, Calder didn't have a single meltdown even though we were there quite late. He even slept until nearly 10 the next day. That was heavenly. Watching Calder enjoy himself so mightily was quite the pleasure for me. Usually all his childlike romping is confined to weekdays while he's at daycare and I am at work. I guess I am kind of missing out in a way. Tussling with me and Bruce just doesn't produce quite the same effect. Sometime I think he is just humoring us. Like, Mom, nice try but you are way too old to be playing at velociraptors. It'd be nice to be surrounded by a passel of extra kids whose families we know and a large alcohol friendly area in which they can all play together.

Now, I am in no way ready to move outside city limits at this point. That would be pretty much death to what small social life we have left and we can't quite afford to live in the same town as the friend with the two-year-old, the box and the yard. But I must admit, I am a tad jealous and I am more than a little worried that we are depriving Calder of a certain amount childhood fun by keeping him pent up with only occasional trips outside the asylum. However, until I win the Mega Millions or someone gifts us with a couple thirty thousand, we will have to make do with what the Park District has provided. Children are like plants, the grow better outside. I guess that's the major challenge of being a parent, doing the best you can for your child while working within the constraints of what you have. Hopefully, I will be better at raising a kid than I am at keeping plants.

Pour one out for my homies parsley, basil and chives, y'all.

Lots o' Spots

Well the blotchies have gotten Calder sent home from day care once again. I think it is about time we get him to a pediatric allergist and get him tested already because this game is getting annoying. Is it peppers? Is it nutmeg? Is it pizza? Who knows! He is probably allergic to something ridiculous like garlic which means I will never have a decent meal ever again.

Sir Topham Hatt vs. The Dinosaurs

April showers bring May flowers and what do grandparents bring? Presents! Yes, I realize that makes no sense but tonight I am dealing with one pretty sick big baby and one moderately sick small baby. Bruce has a fever and Calder has an allergic rash and I haz a tired. Wait, what? Oh right. Presents. I am not sure how Bruce's parents made it across the border with all the stuff they had in the car with them. Ok, it wasn't that much but it sure seems like it since I am the one who has been trying to find a place for a handful of new books, a few toys and Calder's brand spanking new Thomas the Tank Engine set. Yippee.



Calder is clearly waaaay more excited it about it than I am. He isn't quite as taken with it as his cousin, but he's certainly plays with it a lot. A lot a lot. Enough that it is still living on my coffee table since he won't let us put it away until the appropriate location is determined.



However, the arrival of Thomas and his friends coincided nicely with my discovery of the macro setting on my camera. I call this Sir Topham Hatt vs. the Dinosaurs.*

Friartuckasaurus spots his prey.

The target has been subdued and the feeding frenzy begins.

Make way for T-Rex!

*I will understand if you want to stop being friends with me. And yes, I know. This is totally without regard for herbivore vs. carnivore so don't correct me. For the love of god there is a neon orange triceratops, this is in no way historically accurate.

Chicagoing

I have finally figured out the purpose of public art. It is there to entertain toddlers on what would otherwise be extremely boring shopping/sightseeing excursions.On Friday afternoon I subjected the in-laws to the horrors of the Chicago public transportation system and made them take, not one, but TWO buses to go meet Bruce at his office on the Mag Mile. Mag Mile being short for Magnificent Mile aka the premier shopping area of Chicago.Since going to the mall is pretty much the only activity we engage in on our trips to visit them in Canada, this seemed like it would be right in their wheelhouse. Plus, Michigan Ave leads directly to Millennium and Grant Parks among many of Chicago's other architectural gems. With me playing tour guide, this endeavor couldn't have been much easier of cheaper. (Cheaper as long as you don't count Chicago's nearly 10% sales tax which, my mother-in-law pointed out, they get back at the border and is actually less than theirs to begin with. True, but then I pointed out they have free health care. So.)

After picking up Bruce and eating lunch, all of which Calder gloriously slept through, we began our trek down the Mile. Casually strolling down the street, pausing at store windows, occasionally going in... all accompanied by me saying things like, "We have lots of famous architecture" "This is where I work." "That's the water tower. No wait, that's the water tower and that's the pumping station. They are old." "Tribune Building, it's made of parts of other old buildings. At least, I think they are real." "You can see the Adventures in Babysitting building from here." "Mies van der Rohe popularized what is known as the International Style of architecture within the US. It is characterized as looking like a giant box." and "That's the Wrigley Building. It is Gothic?". So yeah, although it was kinda fun to play architecture docent, perhaps we should have shelled out the $30 each if they were looking for actual information.

Shockingly, Calder has about as much patience as I normally do for casual touristy meandering along busy sidewalks. (Wait, does this mean I now have to threaten to throw myself into the river? Oh right, we didn't have an American Girl bag so I can maintain my "Get out of my way, I live here, dammit" cred.) Despite being well napped, Calder may have had one of his patented public breakdowns if not for the city of Chicago's penchant for random acts of sculpture. The weirder the better. I am not kidding about this part either. By one downtown highway exit there is on such piece that is one circle busting out from within another circle whose broken edges are then curled back. It is titled "Being Born". In essence, one of the first things a weary highway traveler is greeted with upon arriving in Chicago is a steel representation of a bajingo. Super. The pieces that captivated Calder on our little adventure aren't nearly as strange as the Vageen o' Steel but they are still very interesting for adults and EXTREMELY entertaining for ankle biters.

So now, for those of you who have never seen the art and architecture of the City of Big Shoulders or those who live here and are just too lazy to go downtown and look at it, here's a quick run down of some of the more interesting bits. All conveniently located in Michigan Ave/Millennium Park vicinity.

Our first stop coincided neatly with one of my narrative points of interest ("This is where I work"). This piece is the Moose by John Kearney. Those in the know refer to the sculpture by it's much more amusing name, Anatomically Correct Moose. Not kidding there either, look closely. I told you Chicago art is weird. This guy has been camped in front of my office building for several years now, being shunted from location to location in order to accommodate various large, less well endowed pieces of art.



I harbor an enormous amount of affection for the Moose. He is made of car bumpers and other parts and can bring almost any troglodyte around to the case for modern art. Calder however was only minorly impressed. Granted he had just woken up from his nap, was full of piss and vinegar and was on the ground in downtown Chicago with thousands of other people for the first time ever. The Moose got only a cursory once over before he bolted down the sidewalk because, man, Calder had shit to do.

We progressed down Michigan Avenue, stopping by a few stores, gawping at the tall buildings and exclaiming at all the weirdos on the streets until we hit once of the city's much more acclaimed pieces of art, Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor, known in the local parlance as The Bean. The Bean was much derided when it first appeared on the scene in 2005 the people of Chicago were quite shocked to find out their tax dollars had gone to purchasing an enormous representation of a Tiffany's Charm.



However, history will prove that the residents of Chicago are no fun because when you get up close and personal with it, the bean is awesome. Exhibit A. It is about 15 degrees coolers under the Bean's arch than it is in the plaza.



Exhibit B. It makes you look wicked skinny when you take pictures o f your reflection like every other dorkus malorkus tourist. That would be Grandma and Grandpa T. in the picture with me there, in case you thought I was making all this shit up.



Exhibit C. It makes everything look like a really well-cared for fun house mirror. Calder caught on the to the game right away and would lay down at various points under the arch to see how his reflection changed.



Sometimes he would lay down all by himself and other times he would join other groups of visitors trying to take a picture of their reflections. I have a feeling Calder is in a lot of other people's pictures from that day. He could just not keep himself away from a line up.

Chicago, I think you owe the Bean an apology.

Third art stop: the Burnham Pavilions in Millennium Park, celebrating the centennial of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, Daniel Burnham and William Bennett's re-imaging of Chicago. The Burnham Plan, filled with wide avenues and vast expanses of public green space, while never fully realized put Chicago on the road to being the city it is today.

The Pavilions don't have any kind of cutesy nickname because I am pretty sure no one in Chicago even knows these are here. In fact, if you follow the link, the second half of the Pavilion that is shown is not even finished yet. It's just a large metal skeleton covered by a construction tent. The UNStudio portion of the Pavilion is the completed one and it is pretty fun for the 3 ft. tall set.



It has lots of room for running and the swoopy sides make for fun sliding opportunities.



And it's uh, great for whatever this is supposed to be. Actually the Burnham Pavilions provided a with a very nice, relatively quiet, shaded space for us have a much needed sit down while Calder burned off the middle third of his energy. Out last major tourist stop (OK, last stop that was not the LEGO Store) was the Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa. Right now even the old timey-est Chicagoans are going, "huh?".



It's the Face Fountain, morons. Comprised of two 50-foot glass brick edifices at either end of a shallow reflecting/wading pool, the Crown Fountain is probably one of Chicago's most noticeable acts of public art. The glass blocks contain LED screens that project giant images taken of people around Chicago, making faces and every 15 minutes or so, spitting out water into huge streams under which dozens of kids gather to shriek and giggle.



The reflecting pool is great for dunking your sun toasted head as well. It is also great for soaking wicked tired feet as I can attest.



This is probably Calder's newest favorite thing in Chicago outside of Miss Kathy.



Calder got really into the fountain fun, whipping his shirt around like they were giving away Toddlers Gone Wild t-shirts or something. Good thing I had brought an entire extra set of clothing for him.



Stomp stomp stomp. Splash splash splash. See, I was really on this trip and got to play in t he fountain as well. I only got sort of soaked though.

Well this is long enough already, so I suppose I won't bother to get into our last little bits of wandering and shopping. You don't really want to hear about my mother-in-law's epic struggle to find a store that had the exact Chicago skyline picture that she wanted in stock, do you? Didn't think so. Suffice it to say, it was a very long but extremely fun day hanging with Calder and the family and a learned a whole crap-ton about the city I have lived in for the past seven years.