leftovers

These are just a few of the random pics that escaped my notice during the holiday festivities. Mmmmm. . . turkey.



Ben wearing the suit that his beloved Mormor bestowed upon him. If you find yourself wondering why the suit looks like it was made in 1982, that's because it was. I think she said that the original owner was Ben's Uncle Jonathan who was forced to wear the suit when he was two years old. Needless to say, Ben had the jacket off as fast as he could because it prevented his ability to throw stuff at the other kids, and the vest didn't last much longer. The tie (oh dear God, the tie) has been burned to prevent its future use on some other unfortunate kid. [Editor's note: Anna does not necessarily agree with my assesment of the outfit, and I suppose I really don't either, but Mormor lives so far away north she couldn't possibly reach all the way down here to slap me into submission.]


Ben wearing the propeller beanie that his Uncle Dan wore the night before on his 30th birthday. I don't know who looks more childish with the hat on, but I can tell you for sure which one is the wrinkly old man.


Our Christmas card. Ben is laughing, Mom is loving, and Dad is. . . . big. Our dear friend Krystal of Bliss Photo took the shot and deserves all the credit in the world for making us look like a happy, loving family. I honestly don't remember her taking this specific shot. All I remember from that gray afternoon was Anna verbally abusing me and beating Benjamin with her purse. If you look closely at the picture you can almost hear Anna wispering into his ear: "If you don't smile for the God-blessed camera I swear to hell I'll lock you up in your crib until your skin rots and your legs fall off." She can be a scary woman, that Anna Marie. [Editor's note: This account of the afternoon is totally untrue. The afternoon of the photo-shoot was actually one of the rare exceptions when Anna is not beating someone with her purse.]

wheezing and sneezing

Ben has been sick for almost three straight months now. It started with a head-cold that turned into a cough, then that was followed by the stomach flu which ended just as he picked up another head-cold, followed by some viral pink-eye, then by a hacking cough combined with some seriously runny nose, which led to the croup, rubella, trypanosomiasis, the measles and then just this past week - trench-foot. This is beginning to get out of hand.

Anna and I accredit all of these various maladies to the other children at Ben’s part-time daycare, and in the trypanosomiasis case, I’m certain that creepy-looking Amazonian kid with the flies buzzing around his head is to blame. Daycare centers are like laboratory centers for disease control, where instead of trying to isolate the disease and contain it, the disease is spread as widely as possibly under the assumption that if everyone gets sick, then eventually no one will ever remember what it was like to be healthy and the new state of affliction will become the status quo (the principle of monogamy works the same way, but that’s a subject for another day).

If you plan on bringing your kid to daycare during the winter months, you might as well just inject the virus directly into their bloodstream and save yourself the stress of wondering whether or not they’ll catch it on their own. And then you can turn the dripping needle right around and inject it into your own arm, because there is no way in hell you’re going to come out of this winter as healthy as you went in.

Doctors will try and tell you that all of these viruses and bacteria floating around in your kid’s bloodstream are actually a good thing, as the kid's immunity for the diseases will be well established by the time they are school-aged. Don’t let them fool you. They have a vested interest in propagating disease. It keeps the business steady and the Maserati full of premium gas.

Ben has taken to his various diseases with surprising poise, except when it comes time to take his medicine. We’ve tried everything, believe me. Putting the cough syrup in his orange juice. Wrapping the chewable Tylenol with a gummy bear. Telling him that the liquid Motrin will give him wings and make him fly. Nothing works. If it’s liquid, he’ll spit it in your face. If it’s chewable, he’ll let it dribble out onto his shirt. It’s not because he doesn’t like the taste; in fact, I think he really likes the taste of the chewable tablets. The problem is he is a “little delight” entering his “first adolescence”. And when you combine that with itchy eyes, sleepless nights, and being stuck in the house all day long, you’ve got yourself one angry little tornado. It’s enough to make a daddy want to go back to the bar and enough to make a mommy want to remodel the kitchen with her fists.

I suppose the winter has to end at some point. In Chicago it only lasts for 5 months - that’s not even half the year! We should be so lucky! With only two months to go, how many more diseases can our little bug-catcher possibly get?

something wicked this way comes

Woah woah woah! Wait a minute there, buddy. Where did that come from?!

One minute he’s an adorable toddler who watches Sesame Street, trips over his own feet, dances without a care in the world, and repeats everything that you say with the cutest toddler-lisp. . . and then all of a sudden that sweet little thing has left the warehouse through the door marked 'EXIT HAPPY CHILD' and is replaced by an irritable, growling, bull-headed, menacing miniature tornado that came in through the door marked 'ENTER HOLY TERROR'. It’s an F5-class tornado. An F6, if there is such a thing.

My brothers tell me that the same thing happened at their own houses when their charming little balls of joy left the building around the same age. This exodus of reason and innocence, I am told, marks the official start of the terrible-twos. They say that during the coming year you will expend more energy screaming phrases such as “no”, “stop that”, and “let that cat out of the toilet RIGHT NOW” than you will saying things like “Hey beer here!” or “Wassup”. Your vocabulary will be rife with words that your little tornado really shouldn't be exposed to, and of course those will be the only words your tornado will choose to repeat.

How about that? Awesome. Super.


I did some internet research when I happened upon Dr. Greene [www.drgreene.com] who has this to say about my problem:

It is unpleasant to have anyone passionately disagree with you. When this opposition comes from your own little delight, the situation is decidedly disagreeable. Many people call this important phase of development the "Terrible Twos." I prefer to call it "The First Adolescence."

I prefer to call it “This Sucks”. And I like the way he calls the tornado a “little delight”.

The hallmark of this stage is oppositional behavior. Our wonderful children instinctively want to do exactly the opposite of what we want. We have nice, reasonable expectations and they say, "NO!" or they simply dissolve into tears. Suppose you have some place to get to in a hurry. Your son has been in a great mood all day. . . until you say, "I need you to get into the car right now." He will, of course, want to do anything except get into the car.

Or, if it he is anything like my son, he will want to slap the car in the face and tell it “no” until the car just can’t take it anymore and runs away with his cat to hide in the basement and watch college basketball.

As if this weren't enough, children in this phase of development have a great deal of difficulty making the choices they so desperately want to make. You ask your child what he would like for dinner, and he says macaroni. You lovingly prepare it for him, and then as soon as it's made he says, "I don't want that!" It is perfectly normal for him to reverse a decision as soon as he has made it, because at this stage, he even disagrees with himself.

Oh, great. You’re telling me he won’t even agree with himself? What?! How is that possible? So, not only have our “little delights” left the building, but they’ve left us with a schizophrenic tornado with an inner struggle?

His task is to gain skill at making appropriate choices. To help him accomplish this, offer your son limited choices at every opportunity. Two or three options generally works best. Make sure the choices you offer fall within an appropriate agenda. Your son still needs the security of knowing that he's not calling all the shots. When it's time to eat, say something like, "Would you rather have a slice of apple or a banana?"

And what do I do when he chooses the apple, takes a bite out of it, spits it on the table and throws the remainder of the apple at the cat? Should I offer him to either: a) pick up the apple and put it in the garbage, b) take the banana instead, or c) throw the cat at the remainder of the apple.

I like to think of the process as similar to childbirth. Labor is a very intense experience. Pain, after pain, after pain eventually produces something beautiful-- a child is born. The episodes of oppositional behavior in "First Adolescence" are psychological labor pains -- one difficult situation, then another, and another, and as a result your son's own persona is being born psychologically. This is a beautiful (but difficult) time with a truly worthwhile result.

I thought the whole advantage with being a man was that we didn’t have to experience labor pains. I thought that was the trade-off women made at the beginning of time - they chose to have stunningly hot features and all sorts of cool biological gadgets in exchange for growing babies in their womb, while men chose a more streamlined version of the female model in exchange for superior mental capabilities.


I’m probably making Ben out to be the worst-behaved toddler on the block. He’s not. Probably not even close. I think Anna and I have been doing a decent job maintaining a happy, disciplined household so far. But when Ben starts rejecting even the fun little events that we used to enjoy together (saying “yo” and bumping fists, for instance), it makes you feel like you’re doing something wrong.

Maybe someone else besides the venerable Dr. Greene can help me out here. Is it okay to verbally abuse my child? What would be considered going too far? If I yell louder than my son, will he acquiesce? Will he respond to Twinkies and chocolate milk? Is it too soon to consider military school? Is there a way to de-program the word “no” from his mind? Is there a simple way we can board up the “HOLY TERROR” door and keep the crazies out? Surely someone must know.

reductio ad absurdum

I hate to keep writing about how big our little boy is growing, so from this point on I promise to suspend any comments that I might have concerning his fantastic size. Unless, of course, he starts to shrink.


For now there are enough subjects regarding Ben’s personality to discuss for weeks upon weeks, which coincidentally will probably be the next time I get around to posting in this blog. Of course since I just made that statement, Murphy’s cute little law has it that I will instead find myself posting here every day. Hrmph. Sometimes you win, sometimes you waste a lot of time at work writing a blog about your kid.

Speaking of work. . . the child is entering a new phase in his pursuit of a greater vocabulary, and it sure doesn’t make mommy and daddy’s vocal lifestyle any easier. Suddenly, without warning of any kind, Ben is really getting into repeating things. Now, he’s been repeating things for months, but it used to be that we had to ask him.

“Benjamin, can you say: boo-ya?”

“Ah-Boo!”

“Good! Can you say: daddy?”

“Da-deeee! Ga ah-mung men!”

But now he repeats the last word of every sentence you speak. It usually sounds something like an Abbott and Costello routine, or a really bad TV sitcom:

“Hey Ben, let’s go upstairs and wake up mommy.”

“Ma-mee?”

“Yes, mommy. Let’s go wake her up. She’s had enough rest.”

“Esst?”

“Rest. Sleep. You know, night-night.”

“Neye-neye?”

“No, buddy, not for you. For mommy. She needs to wake up from her night-night.”

“Neye-neye.” [he lays down on the floor and feigns snoring]

“Okay, big guy. C’mon, let’s get up now.”

“Now.”

“Yes now. Let’s go get mommy. She needs to make us some dinner. I’m hungry.”

“Uh-gee.”

“You’re hungry too? Okay, let’s get mommy’s lazy butt out of bed so she can make us some dinner.”

“Uh-gee.”

“Right. I know, I know. Me too, buddy. C’mon, let’s go wake up mommy.”

“Ma-mee!”

“Yes. . . mommy. Let’s go already. Mommy’s slept too much.”

“Muh-sh”.

[frustrated] “Hey, Ben – can you say ‘magnetohydrodynamic’?”



[long pause]



“Ma-mee!”



For the record, I believe I can honestly say that it was Anna who first broke the most essential of those rules that your friends pass on to you when your kid gets to be about 18 months old, and that is: watch your f*cking mouth! This morning our innocent little creature uttered his first semi-obscenity - “jerk”. And it was his mother, not his father, who planted it in his pliable little mind. I just hope Anna remembers that moment when we’re getting lectured in the principals office about our son calling his 3rd-grade teacher a dirty whore (you would never believe how much Anna throws that term around).

I’m sure I’ll have plenty of things to add to his slum-vocabulary over the next several years; I’m far from innocent. But I wasn’t the first.


In an unrelated story, several weeks ago The Ben was naming all the farm animals in a book of his, and when we got to the picture of a pig, he emphatically yelled “mama!” Now, something tells me the blush in Anna’s cheeks wasn’t exactly a symptom of her inherent bashfulness, and she took the erroneous insult with surprising poise (she ripped the book into seventeen pieces). In his defense, the book was actually attempting to demonstrate the relationship between various different farm animals and their mothers, so the pig was indeed being portrayed as a “mama” pig.

Ben more than made up for his indiscretion a week or two later when I held up the latest edition of the Victoria’s Secret catalog (God bless Victoria’s Secret), pointed to the model on the cover and asked, “Ben, who’s that?”

“Ma-mee!”

Good dog.

Told you so. . .

For those who ever doubted Ben's size, here is a pic from a typical day at the Red Wagon daycare. See if you can pick out the 20-month-old kid amongst all the other four- and five-year-olds.

Hint: it's not the one with the fake beard, who is staring at my photographer wife a little too strangely, instead of helping that poor little girl learn how to read. I'm watching you, buddy. . .


Okay, if you still haven't figured it out, he's the one that the kid in the orange shirt is sneering at because Ben is about to steal his girlfriend (the Asian girl who just can't take her eyes off Ben).

christmastime was here. . .

. . . and it was a good season for Benjamin. Here's the recap:

Reading with his mama on Christmas Eve. I think the book was titled, I Don't Wanna Sleep, I Just Don't Wanna, and I Swear To Buddha That I'll Cry Until Your Ears Bleed If You Put Me In That Friggen Crib.



Ben's loot was enough to fill our entire living room. The TPC (Toys Per Capita) of our household is probably greater than that of most small European countries. Anna bought him the train set; I was the lucky one who got to put it together.

Our virtuoso. He's played alongside the masters but sadly, it has been three weeks since Christmas, and the shelf life for such performances just isn't what it used to be.

Here he is (in the same pajamas) waiting to open presents on Christmas night at Grandma and Grandpa Bonick's house. The Opening was a massacre of biblical proportions (and why biblical, you ask? Because Jesus would've wanted it that way).


This last one is a quick shot of Ben assisting Anna while putting together some strange new toy. Ah, Christmas.