About My Pants

I have to say, we didn't spend as much time this summer outside as we thought we would. About every five years, Washington has a deadly-hot summer, and this was one of them. It wasn't the kind of hot that you write about in the newspaper, but people are always talking about how hot it is here. The summer before I started dating K was like this. Going to work in 1994 was like swimming through pea soup. Wandering the streets of Washington, your feet would sink in the hot tar and objects in the distance would take on a fantastic air from the mirage-distortion of the heat rising off the pavement.

This summer has been like the summer of 1994. Mostly pool-less, and with our beach-vacation front-loaded in early June (a lifetime ago!), we have been limited to amusing ourselves in the backyard (see the post below) or scrounging access to a friend's pool. Based on his watery acumen, though, by next year, Reid will be a regular swimmer and we'll probably need to get ourselves from Arlington County kiddy-pool action.

Anyhow, Reid doesn't let the heat get to him. He just takes off his pants.

A few months ago, Reid received a hand-made Reid-size apron from his Grammy to make his cooking even more exciting. Soon after, his Nonni got him a kid-sized kitchen with all sorts of cooking implements. He has tremendously good times cooking away over there, sometimes while K is cooking actual food, sometimes when we're just in the other room wondering what's going on in there.

We've got weird traditions. Reid's habits of deferring and delaying are well documented. One of the most bizarre is his fear of going to daycare. Things are still rough in this department, even though he clearly enjoys the school (and sometimes pulls the delay and defer maneuver to avoid leaving a place he wept about going to eight hours earlier). But I made the mistake one day of leaving the house a little early and stopping for coffee on the way. I needed some.

So now, Reid wonders about getting coffee more often than is healthy for a two year old. It's a new wrinkle in the defer-tactic routine: "Coffee?" he asks as we return from walking Dixie. Again in the car, "Coffee?" I don't need, nor do I have the time to luxuriously get coffee every morning before heading to work. I should be reducing my coffee intake, anyhow.

This has spilled over into Reid's mini-kitchen ministrations. He has these tiny little primary colored plastic coffee-cups (toddler demitasse!) and he will bring you one after filling it with imaginary coffee. Like a waiter he asks, 'Coffee?' and then bids you to drink the air in the cup and sit patiently for eleven hundred more cups. This is all the more difficult to handle when he is not wearing pants.

If Anyone Needs Anything Washed, Reid's Your Man

So this weekend, it was about a million degrees in Washington. (We're fortunate that the weather has broken slightly today.) The great thing about toddlers is that they don't know that they aren't at a waterpark or a nice pool or a lake or something. They couldn't care less. We have a hose and a sandbox and Reid thinks he's at Coney Island.

So we played in the water. My mom was visiting, and was taken back to her childhood summer afternoons in her own backyard. So her and Reid were doing little toddler tasks in the yard, slowly transferring sand toys from water to sand to water again.

Then Reid started to clean up.

It's a strange thing about our boy. He's always had a thing about wiping things. During a long car ride you can buy a half-hour of silence by giving him a handy-wipe. He'll hold it against his cheek and smile like a first class passenger enjoying a hot towel on the red eye. So he's been known to clean things up from time to time.

He started by washing his Little Tykes car.

Then we washed our dump truck.





Then we washed a lawn chair.



Then we washed a slide.

Good times.

Dance Fever/Movie Madness

We've been digging through the vault and captured this amazing video of Reid dancing to his favorite Wiggles tune. Also, note the background dancing mommy!


(Click the play button to start the video.)

Delay, Defer and Redirect

Reid may have a future as a Washington spinmeister. He has a real talent for the regular duties of a press secretary/damage control professional. He works the room masterfully, his eyes constantly darting around for an exit strategy from whatever unsavory option is currently under consideration-- most often bedtime.

Tonight at 7:45 (as with most nights at 7:45), Reid was told it's bedtime. He acted amazed, at first (no watch), but then immediately went into this delay, defer and redirect routine. He holds up his Little People taxi and asks, innocently, 'Car?' I suggest that something with less potential for rust is a better option. 'Hecoper?' Reid asks holding a helicopter up. I agree. Reid quickly grabs two little people, though the hecoper's capacity is but one little person. I attempt to negotiate, which is a disastrous move on my part. Reid agrees that he should in fact be allowed to bring the helicopter, taxi, both little people and another vehicle of his choice. I suggest we go back to one aircraft and two little people, and that we hug mommy and go take a bath. Reid manages to both be scanning the toybox while continuing to draw me into a conversation about the relative merits of different Little People forms of air transporation and somehow (with his third hand?) produces a tow truck, which must be brought to the bathtub since it appears that the taxi has had some engine trouble.

It is at this moment that I realize I've been completely played by a two year old.

I scoop Reid up (playing the North Korea-type trump card) and end the negotiation session. Reid weeps. I tell Katrena over the wailing, "This seems familiar to me...I think I spent a good bit of my childhood negotiating with parents, changing the deal at the last minute and sobbing when things didn't go my way...it's all an act."

Katrena doesn't seem to believe me. I pivot Reid, who continues to sob out of direct sight on my shoulder, so she can look at his face. His crying is clearly fake and upon making eye contact with Katrena, he cracks up.

We took a bath with a helicopter and two little people. And a submarine. And a fish.

I Think, At Long Last, These Are the Final Birthday Photos

I think this, more than a month after Reid's actual second birthday, is the final installment of the birthday photos. My mom hosted a party for all of Reid's family and friends up in my hometown. It was a nice weekend, because in addition to the party, we hung out at a neighbors's pool and generally goofed off.

The party was inspired because it featured a "Wiggles" themed cake, which Reid was very pleased with, as much as that is possible before he moved onto a completely new topic, like repeating the nonsense-word 'filby' over and over again while hitting things with a plastic spoon.

Every day features a wealth of new Reid findings. Living with him is like living at the birth of some great scientific era, when amazing advances are being made every day. Reid's talking is growing by leaps and bounds, and continues to shock his mother and I. You say a word and he says it back, uses it in context, comes across something similar to it but not the same an hour later and reminds you that these two things are very much alike. Sometimes we just stare.

School continues to be difficult. Reid wants to like it, I can tell, and definitely likes it while he's there as long as I haven't just dropped him off. But that drop-off continues to be problematic. He cries. A lot. It kills me. But as soon as that storm subsides, according to the nice ladies at the school, Reid jumps in with both feet and has a nice time when he's there.

Interestingly, there is a reverse-effect of this, a mirror of his hysteria-upon-arrival. In the hour before we leave in the morning, he acts strangely schizophrenic about school. We tell him that Mommy is going to work, like she has every day since we started the new school, and he asks, half-hesitant, if that means he's going to school. Well, he points to himself and asks, 'cool?' And we say 'yes, of course, we're going to work and you're going to school and we are going to come and get you after school and everything will be wonderful and doesn't that sound great?'

He looks away and tinkers with some playthings laugh-muttering 'cool...Reid cool...cool.'

Then the wheels begin to turn. And he begins to construct tasks to slow the progress of the trip to school. "Walk Dixie!" he shouts enthusiastically. We walk Dixie, who welcomes her newfound involvement in Ried's delay, defer and obstruct agenda. Then he orders me to find Bob the Builder. Then he runs away from his shoes. Then he notices something interesting in another room. Then he wants yogurt. Then a banana. Then he wants to carefully transfer all of my footwear from one room in our house to another. Then he wants to (apparently) interview each of mommy's shoes, which are unresponsive.

Finally, I overcome all of his gambits and get him in the car. "Inside," he begs as I start the engine. "Reid," I finally say, firmly. "We are going to school."

"Reid cool," he laughs, inexplicably happy now that we've exhausted all possible other things to do. "Reid cool."

Well, he is cool.

Let's See If I Can Back This Thing Up...

Today was the Friendship Firehouse Festival in Old Town Alexandria. On the first Saturday in August, the area's oldest fire company (founded by George Washington in 1774) holds a nice little shindig with food booths and most important fire trucks. Reid had a blast.



The new layout really lets you enjoy the pictures, doesn't it?