Melissa has been slowly introducing Everett to Star Wars, and Everett has started to make sense of the characters. From time to time he will ask questions like “Is Darth Vader bad or good?”, and we have tried to explain to him the changes that some of the characters go through in the course of several movies. After digesting these ideas for a while he said:
“For Halloween this year I want to be Darth Vader.”
“What do you like about Darth Vader?”
“I like his badness. This is what I want to wear:
Chicky hat,
Duck hands,
Dinosaur feet,
And the whole thing is Darth Vader!
And I will sing the nice Darth Vader song (to the tune of the Imperial March):
Da Da Da Duh Da Quack Duh Da Quack.”

This year we returned to the same house as last year for our annual beach trip to Rehoboth Beach. This is really two houses in one: a beach house for the parents and boys plus a smaller house behind it, also known as Noni’s playhouse or Noni’s little cottage. During the first couple days of the trip we got settled into the beach houses and into our traditional family roles. If Sean were a superhero he would be the Meddler, aka the person who provides “help” when no one (such as Chris) has specifically requested it per se. If Chris were a superhero be would be the Abater, aka Chief Abatement Officer, aka the person who makes sure no food goes to waste and that every last morsel of food is eaten before we leave the beach house. Everett slowly started acting like his normal self after being sick. His sleep schedule isn’t quite back to normal yet – he is taking two naps a day (which hasn’t happened for at least a couple years) and today (Sunday) he got up at 4:30am. Ouch. Fortunately he did feel well enough to go to the beach for a few hours. On Sunday night Sean cooked hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken on the grill and we ate dinner outside.

There are few remaining natural beaches on the Delmarva Peninsula. The stretch from Cape Henlopen State Park to the Ocean City Inlet is basically a sand bar with a few wide spots that separates the ocean from the inland bays and waterways. The position of the sand bars changes over time due to the forces of tides and storms. The problem is that people generally don’t want the sandbars to move after they have been endowed with billions of dollars in real estate. So the Army Corps of Engineers has a permanent job keeping the sand in one location, which is usually accomplished by pumping tons of it back onto the beaches during each winter. The result is that the beaches no longer have their normal shape. Chris remembers bodysurfing on beaches with very gentle slopes and waves that broke and rolled for a long time before reaching the shore. The reconstructed beaches have steep slopes with lots of shore break and no tide pools. To remedy this we build our own tide pools as the tide is coming in. This is something that we have done for so long that is almost instinctive. We sit near the waters edge and start digging a hole with walls around it. Soon the bottom fills with water and the hole grows in size until it’s big enough to fit the entire family. The boys and girls both young and old with sit in these pools for hours while playing and chatting. Today (Monday) we saw a pod of dolphins swim by.

On Monday night Melissa made dinner, which we ate in the living room. It was so delicious that many of us ate a little too much so we decided to go for a walk after dinner to Lake Gerar where we saw lots of large turtles and fed them bread scraps. By this time we had come up with a rough plan for the major events we wanted to fit into the week. We went to Funland immediately after the boys woke up from their naps on Tuesday. The boys were much bolder than last year about getting on rides, and the most popular ride this year was definitely the teacups!

We returned home around dinner time so that Sean and Kathy could have their date night. They went to see Snow White and the Huntsman followed by dinner at Crabby Dick’s. Chris and Melissa had date night on Thursday. They went to the Rehoboth Toy & Kite Company on the boardwalk where Chris picked up a Waboba. Then to Jake’s for happy hour (Sam Adams Summer Ale and steamed shrimp). Then to see Men In Black 3, and finally to Fins for dinner. Photos of the trip are here. Other thoughts and observations follow.

Puppets

We recently watched the movie Being Elmo, which is a documentary about Kevin Clash. Kevin is the puppeteer behind Elmo and several other Sesame Street characters. One observation that he made in the movie is that every character has a central theme or idea. For example: Miss Piggy is a truck driver who is pretending to be a lady; Fozzie Bear is a vaudeville comedian; Elmo’s purpose is to express love. Chris is not a puppeteer and is far from being a comedian but it is remarkably easy to be funny to Everett, Connor and Dillon. Chris picked up a sea scallop from Noni’s bag of puppets and within a couple minutes all three boys were sitting on his lap. The idea behind the sea scallop is that he would say “Ptoooey!” to any food or drink he was offered (the boys later morphed this into “Ptchooey!”) but he would pounce on anyone who said water. The boys thought this was hilarious!

Whine

On Thursday all three boys seemed to wake up grumpy, and the situation did not improve during the morning. There was a lot of crying and whining about everything from breakfast to picking out beach toys. The situation did not improve after we got to the beach and started playing in the sand. In an act of desperation Chris started mimicking the boys’ behavior. He sat down right next to Uncle Sean and started a barrage of questions:

“Can I sit there?

It’s my turn in this seat!

Are you using my shovel?

Can I have it?

Did you eat my snacks?

Uncle Sean isn’t sharing!”

Again, the boys thought this was hysterical, though they failed to see the irony in it.

Surrey

On Thrusday morning we went on a surrey ride. A surrey was originally a horse-drawn carriage, but in the modern version the horses have been replaced with pedals and a drivetrain. It has a single-speed and a hand brake. We rented one large enough to hold the three boys and four adults. Sean sang “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top”, originally from the play Oklahoma! but there was also a brief rendition in When Harry Met Sally.

Treats

The boys ate a lot of treats on this trip. This can probably be attributed to two major factors. First, we were at the beach and were surrounded by opportunities to get treats such as candy and custard. Second, Noni was with the boys a lot and had a plentiful supply of candy and cookies in her little cottage. One evening we celebrated Everett’s birthday with a pinata full of candy. Later that evening each boy was running around the house with a bag of chocolate in one hand, and bag of jelly beans in the other hand, and they were asking in if they could have dessert after dinner. I think you get the idea.

Sibling

As our readers know, Everett has been asking more and more earnestly for a sibling. We aren’t exactly sure why he wants a sibling but can make an educated guess that he would enjoy taking care of a younger brother or sister, as well as having someone in the house to play with. However, we feel certain that he hasn’t completely thought this through, particularly the facts that a second child would always be with us, that he or she would have their own independent will, and that Everett would have to share parental attention. He was briefly introduced to these ideas one day when he and Dad were roughhousing in bed. Connor heard the commotion, crawled into bed with us and said “I want to try that!” As soon as Connor said this Everett looked over his shoulder with an expression of surprise and extreme irritation. This was his special time with Dad, and it never occurred to him that he might have to include someone else or share Dad’s attention.

Transportation

We have stopped traveling with a stroller – Everett doesn’t use one anymore, and Chris carries him during the few times that he seems too tired to walk or just can’t keep up. This is quite a change from a couple years ago when we had a caravan of the Bob Stroller for Everett, the Phill and Teds double for Connor and Dillon, and the red wagon for all the beach stuff. Amazing, Everett and Dillon are now out of the stroller and hauling the wagon:

Thursday is Everett’s fourth birthday, which we are celebrating with family at Bethany Beach.

Happy Birthday Everett!!!

The day went something like this:

Everett got up about 7am and played kick-the-balloons and other games with Dillon and Connor for a few hours while the adults slowly got up, had coffee and prepared for the beach. For a breakfast treat we cooked up a batch of Scrapple, which is about as appetizing as it sounds (note: Scrapple is not as good as Goetta, a.k.a Cincinnati caviar).

We got to the beach about 11am for a couple hours more of playtime. It was a bit chilly compared to what we are used to – both the water temperature and air temperature were 69 degrees, combined with a stiff breeze. Eventually the boys got cold so we bundled them up and fed them lunch.

Then we came inside for Everett to open presents from Grandpa and Grandma Linda, followed by singing Happy Birthday with a Carvel ice cream cake. The cake had blue icing that seemed to stain everything it touched including skin, tongue, carpet, etc. This will come up again later.

The boys went down for a nap and we eventually woke Everett up around 5, but noted that he did not seem like his normal self. He was moving slowly and didn’t seem particularly interested in anything. The boys ate dinner, followed by the adults, and then we gathered around to sing Happy Birthday with cake #2 (devil’s food cake with buttercream icing and a picture of Everett on it).

Still, Everett was acting unusual, which became even more evident when he said he needed to lie down halfway through opening presents. He also mentioned that he didn’t feel good. So we put him in our bed with a large pot nearby just in case, which worked out well because he soon filled it with blue liquid from his stomach (recall the icing on cake #1). After this he bounced back to his normal self and played light saber with his cousins using glow sticks.

By about 10:30 Everett put himself to bed and fell asleep immediately, with his cousins a few minutes behind him. We thought that maybe his sickness was an isolated event, but it happened again around 3am and again around 10am. Ugh. He still wanted to go to the beach, so we slathered him with sunscreen and played for an hour or two until he threw up again, this time on Linda’s feet. It’s now Friday afternoon and he is resting on the couch while watching cartoons. Aside from throwing up we have two big signs that he isn’t feeling good: he isn’t talking much at all, and he told Chris he does not want to roughhouse.

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Everett seems to carefully think through the times when he is ready to expand his capabilities. Some time ago we wrote about how he decided one day to start using the toilet. Since then, one remaining challenge has been sleeping through the night without diapers. During one recent evening when we were getting ready for bed he said “I’m going to wear underwear tonight.” He did, and that was pretty much the end of diapers. On a similar subject, Chris has repeatedly been encouraging Everett to learn to ride a bicycle. Everett tried this briefly during our recent camping trip but otherwise hasn’t taken to it.

Instead, he has repeatedly said that he will start riding a bike once he turns four. We will report further on this in a couple weeks.

This weekend we made our annual visit to Clifty Falls, Indiana for a multi-family, multi-generational camping trip. This entails four of five days of camping for the Grandpas and three days of camping for the Grandmas, children and grandchildren. The main event for the weekend is to listen to the Indianapolis 500 on a 1980’s era streaming audio device.

This year was as fun as it has always been. It was also very hot. Daytime temperatures were in the mid to upper 90s. The temperature cooled off a bit at night, but barely enough to allow comfortable sleeping. By Sunday night we were all ready for some serious rest.

Usually we have an entire island of campsites to ourselves. However, this year this year we had to share the island with some interlopers. They seemed to be darn nice people who nonetheless will surely be vanquished in the next Battle of Clifty Falls Campsite Reservations, which takes place at midnight one night in November when the campsite reservation system opens for 2013. The campsite we lost in the island was replaced by another site across the street. This allowed good access to the water spigot, which provided hours of entertainment for everyone but especially for Everett and Bradyon. Highlights this year were the water balloon fight, the marshmallow fight, the water spigot and the pool. Photos and videos of the of the trip are here.

Today we sold our house in Cleveland. This has been a very long process but is now a huge weight off of our shoulders. Coinicidentally, this occurred the same week that Melissa graduated from Case Western. So we are celebrating two big milestones and getting use to the idea that we no longer have any formal ties to Cleveland. In the midst of this, Everett reminds us of his place in our lives, which began at almost exactly the time we moved from Cleveland to Wisconsin. One recent morning Everett woke up and lay down between us in bed:

“We have an Everett sandwich. You and Dadda are the bread.”

Melissa: “What are you?”

“I’m the good stuff.”

Indeed.

There are some activities that are so fun that they become instant traditions. Visiting the Great Wolf Lodge on Mother’s Day is one of them. We went for the first time last year and it was a high priority for everyone to return this year. So on Friday afternoon we packed the car and headed to Ella’s Deli in Madison for some delicious midwestern treats, mostly fried foods with cheese followed by ice cream. Everett has recently started categorizing foods by whether they are good for your tongue or your body or both For example, while eating an ice cream sundae at Ella’s:

“Is this good for my body?”

“No”

“Well, I think it’s good my tongue.”

Dinner at Ella’s was the first bump we encountered in an otherwise smooth trip when Everett realized that the carousel was running, but that he would have to wait until after dinner to ride it. Not happy about this.

This trip also came at a time when Everett’s bedtime is getting later and later. In an effort to increase sleep time at night we have been trying to make it through the day without a nap. It seemed like the time for this was right because while he still takes good naps, the time that he falls asleep at night is getting later and later. Bedtime is usually between 7:30 and 8:30 but he often doesn’t fall asleep until 9:30 or 10pm. Our first night at the Great Wolf Lodge we swam until almost 9pm and then tried to wind down, but Everett didn’t go to sleep until close to midnight, then got up at 4:30am and wanted to know if it was light outside yet, and finally slept a bit longer until 8:30. Rough night.

We spent the day on Saturday in the pools and on the water slides.

Everett can still ride with us on a couple slides but isn’t quite tall enough for the big boy slides, so those might have to wait until next year. By the time we were done swimming Everett’s lips were turning a tinge blue from the cold. When I mentioned this to Melissa he became alarmed. “Am I choking? Am I getting enough oxygen?” These questions arose because during his recent case of croup we had a rough night when he was having a lot of trouble breathing, which resulted in an explanation about respiration and the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. To alleviate his concern we explained to him that he was still a very rosy color and was getting enough oxygen and had nothing to worry about other than the need to get warm.

The lifeguards at the Great Wolf Lodge seem vigilant, perhaps even hypervigilant. Some of them quickly traced a set path like the polar bear at the zoo. This was quite a different experience than the lifeguards we grew up with who seemed more like a scene out of Caddyshack.

We had Mother’s Day Dinner on Saturday night at Moosejaw Pizza & Dells Brewing Company followed by storytime in the lodge.


To promote sleep we created a nest for Everett, which was moderately successful. On Sunday we swam in the morning and stopped at Subway for lunch before heading home.

Everett recently asked Melissa if we could please try harder to have another baby so that we could all have some wedding cake. We have explained to him that we are, which he confirms from time to time with questions like “Are you sure you are still trying?”, making it clear that he wants a brother or sister. In the meantime he has started taking more conscientious care of his animals. Chick came with us on this trip and needed a nap during he day on Saturday. So Everett put socks, pajamas and slippers on him, and then put him in bed.




Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Moms in our lives!

Everett has recently started talking about his body as though it is something distinct from the rest of him. A few examples:

“My body just changed it’s mind. I want someone to come upstairs with me.”

After his bedtime: “My body wants to be in your bed.”

“My body wants to play frisbee”

“My body really wants to go to the Great Wolf Lodge”.

“Sometimes after I have one cookie my body tells me it wants another one.”

This is not the first time we have noted that his body seems to like sweets. Recently he started holding his hand in the shape of a circle against his stomach and saying “Even when I’m full, I have a little more room in the shape of a circle for a cookie.” And if that leaves any doubt then here is a picture of the dessert we gave him for his first birthday. We have since been informed that this is a “medium-sized cupcake”.

Everett recently learned about static electricity. Or, as he calls it, ecstatic electricity. As in:

• “Ecstatic electricity!”, after one of us goes down the plastic slide at the playground and then shocks the other family members.
• “My hair is ecstatic-y.”

It’s surprising that Chris has never heard of ecstatic electricity before, especially considering his education in electrical engineering, and that he has spent a significant portion of his life around engineers who have an unbelievably nerdy sense of humor.

Strangely enough, static electricity came up recently in one of Everett’s books, Amazing Cows, which has a story about Violet the cow, Morton the pig, Baxter the very loud chicken and Wendell the very confusing duck. At one point Wendell is singing a slow, sad song about static electricity that goes like this:

You used to cling to me,

Give a zing to me,

Tell me, my laundry,

What went wrong?

Oh, the static electricity’s gone…

Lastly, here are a couple things that make Everett, if not ecstatic, happy at the very least: licking the cookie dough off the KitchenAid mixer and tromping through mud puddles.

This video was taken on Sunday afternoon during a trip that Everett and Chris took to Lakefront State Park. The park is mostly an artificial island in Lake Michigan that is a haven for birds and people looking for a nice walk with a great view of downtown. Interestingly, in the span of about an hour there we collected several small crab claws. We have never seen crabs there and thought they might have been left by humans, but these are too small for people to eat and they were scattered across a large area, suggesting that they were left by birds or some other animal. Also interesting was the fact that we never saw any other crab body parts, just the claws.

Yesterday Everett and George went to the Milwaukee Art Museum. In a rare moment of stillness they sat down to draw.

Everett usually prefers to paint rather than draw, but George was drawing a pirate ship so Everett got into the spirit and soon afterward introduced Melissa to the syncapotenuse, which is a white-colored animal that lives in the ocean. It is the only animal of its kind and it eats fish. Even though the name sounds whimsical, like a cousin of the hypotenuse, Everett is very consistent about the name. This is what it looks like:

The nominations for the shark name were:

-Bruce (after the shark in Finding Nemo)

-Fin (which could mean a shark fin, or it could be from the French word for “end”, an allusion to what might happen if you meet a shark)

-Sherman (after the shark in Sherman’s Lagoon).

We presented Everett with these choices and asked what name he would like to give the shark.

“Momma.”

“Momma the shark?”

“Yes.”

“Is that because the shark reminds you of Momma or because you like the name?”

“I like the name.”

So Momma the Shark is the newest member of the household.

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Other recent quotes and events:

-“I love you 150 lbs”

-It is sometimes disconcerting to hear a three year shout commands like: “Keep your slimy webbed phalanges off my boots!” or “Stay out of my peripheral vision!” However, Everett loves to memorize movie quotes, and that’s how they say it in Rango.

-At times Everett’s communication is so forthright it leaves no room for interpretation. A couple weeks ago we were encouraging him to eat dinner by trying to feed him with a spoon and he said “I’m not a baby any more so stop treating me like one!” Noted.

-A girl at the playground recently asked if she could talk to Kyra, Everett replied “She’s not talkable.”

-There are times when Everett is difficult to discipline because he is irresistible. The other night it was about 9:30, and hour and half after his bedtime, and he was still wide awake in bed looking at books. I (Chris) put my head in his room to see what he was up to. He patted the pillow next to him and said “Dada do you want to snuggle with me? I have a snuggly spot right here!” As a parent I should have told him it was way past his bedtime and time to go to sleep. Instead I lay down next to him and “rested” for a while, which consisted primarily of low-key roughhousing until it was two hours past his bedtime and he was no closer to sleep. Then I gave him the proper parental response.