Dromomaniacs,

Apparently our website was hacked on February 21st. We use WordPress for our blog, and there must be some new exploit going around because apparently a lot of WordPress sites have had similar issues. The effect of the hack was to redirect users to malware sites, so please make sure your antivirus/anti-spyware software is up to date.

In the future we hope to avoid these problems by turning over website operations and maintenance to Everett. We have begun his Jedi training by introducing him to Star Wars and teaching him the ways of the Force (mostly learning to read at this point). He has also enlisted the help of an apprentice.

Everett does not seem to be a kid who needs much sleep these days. We usually put him down at 8pm and he spends an hour or two playing by himself in the igloo tent on his bed. Lately he has been waking up around 6:30am, which we know because he starts singing Oh My Darling, Clementine. We’re not sure where he first learned this song, perhaps it was from Gabby, but we do know that he loves to sing and expand his vocabulary. The other night we were watching the Oceans documentary and he asked “Is that the foamy brine?”, a phrase that we can safely guess he learned from Clementine. Similarly, we aren’t sure where he is learning the pronunciation of some words but we do know that it is something he feels strongly about. A few days ago Chris asked him if he wanted any apricots (ap-ri-kots) and he replied “They are apricots (ey-pri-kot)”. We are guessing he will enjoy Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation once he gets older.

We recently tried to incorporate his love of singing with some behavior modification. As he gets older we have been working more and more on cooperation, as well as the consequences of not cooperating. We even tried inventing a cooperation song to the tune of Conjunction Junction (though this has not really taken off yet). One time of day that has been a persistent problem for cooperation has been getting dressed. He claims that he doesn’t know how to get dressed, though we know this isn’t true because we have seen him do it and because he does it at school. And when Chris helps him get dressed he is often extremely squirmy. After being frustrated by this for a while we eventually concluded that he wasn’t trying to be uncooperative, he was just enjoying the physical contact, and so pajama wrestling was born. Basically it’s the new roughhousing: Chris tries to get Everett’s pajamas off and then wrangle him into his clean clothes, or vice versa at bedtime. We’ll try to post a video of this soon.

Everett has started sharing with us his opinion on many subjects. His comments are sometimes summarized with statements like “That’s silly!”, “That’s ridiculous!” or “That’s impossible!”. We note that we are not allowed to use certain words like “impossible” in his presence without being immediately informed “Hey, that’s my line!” Also, certain words like stupid are off limits for everyone, including strangers and movie characters, who are told “We don’t say stupid!”

On a related subject, Everett recently received some silly putty as a gift. We showed him some fun tricks you can do with it like sticking it to things or using it to pickup newsprint. As we have mentioned many times, he is a collector, and he began taking the silly putty everywhere with him. A few days later we discovered that he was leaving bits of silly putty behind as well, which is why on one recent afternoon Chris got some WD40, rubbing alcohol and dish soap in an attempt to remove silly putty that had been ground into several blankets, clothes and lamby. Lamby is one current member of the menagerie of “babies” that Everett carries around with him everywhere in the house. Other members are: the twin baby nightgowns (formerly Melissa’s); whale; ducky; piggy; an ornamental pillow from Gabby and Grandaddy’s house with a Buff over it (a Buff is sort of a tube shaped bandanna). Of these, piggy, ducky and lamby go with him to school most days and it’s always interesting to hear how their experience differs from his. Anyway, lamby has deep shag fur and was by far the most difficult silly putty removal. By the time Chris finished there was a small hole in lamby’s head, which Everett noticed immediately because, like his Mom, he is a “noticer”. So we got out a needle and thread, sewed lamby up, and now you can’t even tell he had silly putty or a soft tissue injury.

Since we moved to Wisconsin we’ve made quite a few new friends. When we are getting introduced the subject of who does what eventually comes up. I tell people I am a biomedical engineer, and often they don’t know exactly what that means in terms of a job, but it has the word engineer in it, and that can form the basis of an initial guess. Then I tell them that Melissa is getting her PhD in bioethics. This usually leads to a stumbling question like “What does a…um…who are…uh…what does a person with a degree in bioethics do?” When Melissa isn’t around to answer the question this is what I say:

1. Melissa’s PhD is on pleiotropy. This is a word I had never heard until I married her. Pleiotropy is when a single genetic test can have multiple possible outcomes, and some of these may be unforeseen at the present time. I’m still not 100% sure this explanation is correct but I’m going to try to get it right by the time she defends her dissertation.

2. I’m not exactly sure what bioethicists do, but I have spent enough time around them to know that they like conceptual frameworks a lot. An engineer might wake up and think about what he is going to build, take apart or blow up that day. I’m guessing that bioethicists wake up and think about their conceptual framework for the day, and wonder how their framework overlaps with those being used by their colleagues.

With this in mind, here is our current conceptual framework: Melissa’s defense date is rapidly approaching, so I’m sending out this request to our friends and family all over the world to put on your tin foil hats and send some positive dissertation energy in the direction of Wisconsin. But if you don’t get around to it for a few weeks then please redirect your antennas to Cleveland, since that is where her defense is taking place.

The last few months have we have been pretty strange with regard to weather. We’re not sure exactly what to call it. Imitation Winter? Winter lite? Florida? To be honest it’s been a big disappointment so far – it’s almost mid February and we haven’t yet had enough snow to build our annual igloo. Sledding has turned out to be rare, at best. However, we were able to get a few runs in this morning before the snow melted in the sun. Note that due to the thin layer of snow it wasn’t possible for Chris to ride so Everett went solo.

This kind of weather has been rough for the troupe of doomsday weather reporters we have in Milwaukee. The worst that has happened so far is a couple of freezing rain storms which were a direct result of temperatures that hover around freezing. A couple months ago one of these storms literally covered everything outside with ice during the morning commute. Melissa wiped out on the driveway and hit her knee. Chris wiped out on the Bakfiets (Everett was not in it at the time), though the cargo box took the brunt of the impact. One question we get often about the Bakfiets is: do you ride in the snow? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that snow isn’t really the problem. Rather, the major problem with winter bike commuting is ice. The snow in this area is a heavy, maritime snow that easily turns to ice with as little pressure as a single footprint. Sometimes it turns to ice under its own weight. In addition, the temperatures have been hovering around freezing for months now, resulting an icy, sloppy mess. Many cyclists now have studded tires to handle the ice but still have to be vigilant about cars and trucks that don’t. Note that we don’t take E in the Bakfiets if the weather looks at all questionable.

If the winter keeps muddling along like this then we might be forced to take drastic measures like visiting New Zealand during the boreal summer.

The rate at which Everett is cataloging information is now so rapid we think it would be impossible to measure. We observe this in several ways. One is how he fearlessly adds new words and phrases to his vocabulary. Lately he has been hearing things in movies and at school and trying them out in everyday conversation:

“I told you kids, stay out of my butt!” He started saying this last week to the other kids when he arrived at preschool in the morning. It took us a day or two but we figured out that it’s a quote from Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 3.

“I’m stressed out at school.” He started saying this at dinner when we asked him how his day went. So far he has not been able to identify what he is stressed out about.

“There are funny kids at school but I am by far the funniest.” This was a self-observation at another dinner conversation. On a related subject, his teacher told us that he sometimes “holds court” at preschool. While the other children are seated he stands up and talks for 15 minutes at a time on a wide range of subjects.

Another way he is cataloging information is by figuring out how things in the world behave and fit together:

“Daddy, we don’t usually sit on tables”, when Chris was sitting on the coffee table in the living room.

“This is from the Sound of Music”, during a Barbara Streisand rendition of A Few of My Favorite Things. We have no idea how he knows this.

“Ms. Erin, we don’t give wine to children.” Ms. Erin at preschool asked one of the girls if she wanted cheese with her whine, and was immediately admonished by Everett.

Lastly, Everett has demonstrated a remarkable memory:

A couple weeks ago Everett gave Dad four crayons to hold onto. Chris put them in the pocket of his jacket and that night threw them in the crayon bin at home. Several days later Everett asked for the crayons back, so Chris quickly grabbed four from the bin, put them in his pocket and them handed them to Everett. Everett glanced at them and said “Dad, those aren’t the right crayons.” Seriously?!?

In the last few days he has brought up story lines from books that we checked out of the library over a year ago including the book about Sam going to bed and the book about birthday for cow where he wants a turnip instead of a cake. Sorry but the titles escape me right now. There are many other examples we plan to add to this list. Unfortunately, our memory is not as good as Everett’s so it’s going to take us a while to recall them…

Wisconsinites have their own accent that seems distinct from other parts of the midwest. The accent in our neighboring state of Minnesoooota is probably well known because of Garrison Keillor. There haven’t been a lot of major celebrities or pop culture icons coming out of Wisconsin to promote the accent, though that changed recently when we became superbowl champions and when Miss Wisconsin was crowned Miss America (though Chris has no idea if any of these people have accents or not). Also, our governor has made national headlines for acting tyrannical and mildly deranged, but even on his worst days he just doesn’t seem as whackadoo as Jesse Ventura, so again we defer to the Gopher State.

We were unaware of the accent until we moved here, partly because it doesn’t seem well known and partly because we had never been to Milwaukee before Chris interviewed at MCW. So far there is no sign of it in Everett’s speech. However, he has shown a great affinity for bags, which are a good example of a pronunciation that seems peculiar to Wisconsin: groceries and other items are carried in a “bayg”. To pronounce this properly you need to expand your mouth from side to side, almost in a smiling motion. In a previous blog post we wrote about how Everett likes to gather treasures. Lately he has been putting them into baygs that he carries around for different purposes.

The red insulated bag is one he fills with plastic food, puts over his shoulder the same way Chris carries his computer bag, and says “I’m going to work”. The blue bag with yellow and red stars is for snacks and money, including a special portfolio of flattened pennies he has acquired from zoos and museums. The tie dye bag is actually a pillowcase he made at daycare one day recently and we aren’t really sure what is inside it because he keeps it closed with rubber bands and almost never opens it. Judging from how it feels we think it contains soft items like pillows and clothing along with harder items like tools, pens and books. It doesn’t seem have any unusual smells to indicate that perishable food is inside, which is great because he currently keeps it in bed.

Two other bags that are in common use are both white, heavy canvas totes with Everett’s name embroidered into the side. One of them is for preschool. Each morning we pack it with clothing, ducky and “made blanket” (Everett’s name for the blanket that Melissa knitted for him before he was born). And each evening we unpack it to find pieces of artwork from school that day, one example of which is an Abe Lincoln tophat and beard:

The other bag contains swimsuits and towels for Everett and Chris to take to swim lessons on Wednesday evenings. We took swim lessons about a year ago and signed up for them again starting this January. It is noteworthy that on the first night of swim lessons a few weeks ago Melissa lovingly packed all of our swim gear ahead of time into a large shiny pink bag. She claims that it isn’t pink or shiny, but Chris still decided it would not be appropriate for the mens locker room at the YMCA, so we switched to the comparatively boring canvas bag instead.

It appears that one part of Everett’s identity is that he fixes things. He has been interested in tools for some time, mainly Dad’s but sometimes he will use his own, and he is keenly interested when Dad is performing repairs. One day recently at preschool a girl’s headband broke and he said “GIve it to me. I’ll take it home, fix it and bring it back in the morning.” His teacher seemed skeptical but this was something he took seriously. On the way home that night Everett told Dad not to tell Mom about the headband. And when we got home he didn’t ask Dad’s help to fix it. He sat down with Mom at his table, glued it back together and returned it the next morning. For this he received a Good Deed Alert at school:

A couple days after this we found a dead squirrel in our yard. Based on the position we think it fell out of our neighbor’s giant oak tree. When we showed the squirrel to Everett he immediately asked “Can we fix him?”. After we explained no he asked “Can we see his insides?”, a question that likely stems from his previous experience with a decomposed squirrel body. Again we said no but explained that we were going to bury him in the backyard. We dug a hole and then picked up the squirrel to move him, to which Everett commented “If I was a squirrel and I got dead I would want to take a ride on a shovel.”

He hasn’t performed any more repairs in the last couple days. However, there are many times where we can watch him and sense the gears turning in his head as he processes new experiences. We feel confident that questions about what can and cannot be fixed are going to come up again soon.

Everett has started to take a great interest in forts. For some time now he has gone outside to sit in a nook in the tree next to the garage. That was the original “fort”. Since then we have moved on to forts that require more construction and less imaginative power to see, although we note that forts of any kind seem to encourage lots of imagination as in one of the books he currently likes called King Jack and the Dragon. Anyway, we recently built a fort from scrap lumber in the backyard, and have been building forts in the house made of Straws and Connectors (a Christmas gift), as well as pillows and blankets:

He wants to sleep inside his pillow forts, which causes some consternation for his parents who want to make sure he can still breath. So we told him that if he wants to be in a fort while sleeping it has to be the igloo tent, and when he asked for an explanation (apparently our parental desires don’t carry much weight without reasoning that is deemed acceptable to a three year old) we told him that we are worried that he won’t be able to breath. Now the pillow forts are called “no breathing hole” forts. He tells us that he wants a fort to protect his babies (ducky, lamb and baby nightgown) and so that no one can see him while he is sleeping. Of course, he knows that he has a lot a freedom during the night. When he is doing something he isn’t supposed to do during the day he will say to us “Look the other way for a long time.” But at night he can rearrange his room and we may not find out for quite a while, so all we can do is limit the amount of fort construction materials in his room and keep trying to teach him good sense.

We’re not sure if forts are a factor, but recently it has become somewhat difficult to get Everett to sleep. The fact that it is also difficult to get him to eat  suggests that something else is going on. We think he is avoiding these activities because they reduce the time available for talking, which is something he expends considerable energy on. A few nights ago Everett got up at 4:30am and didn’t go back to sleep (and neither did anyone else). He took a normal length nap and went to bed late that night, so apparently those hours of sleep are lost forever. With regard to eating, we have been encouraging him to try a variety of foods including black eyed peas on New Year’s Day:

and have explained to him the need to eat to get big and strong. He likes this idea and will show us his muscles

but any parent knows it is quite difficult to get a child to eat if they don’t want to. Fortunately the cut on his forehead is healing, so that’s a good sign, and his pediatrician isn’t concerned about his weight or size. Therefore his diet is currently in a category titled “Things that parents fret over but seemingly no one else is worried about”. Conversations we have had with friends and neighbors suggest that this list can get rather lengthy.

As children Melissa and Chris both used to watch a cartoon series on TV called Schoolhouse Rock. To our knowledge these are no longer broadcast but fortunately we were able to get the entire collection on DVD. Our favorites are all in the Grammar Rock collection: Conjunction Junction, Unpack Your Adjectives and A Noun Is A Person Place or Thing. Everett’s favorite is Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla.Rufus, along with his sister Rafaella Gabriela Sarsaparilla and their friend Albert Andreas Armadillo (no relation to the Sarsaparillas), teaches viewers about pronouns:

This is how the word sarsaparilla entered Everett’s vocabulary. Apparently he has not yet realized the primary message of the song: pronouns allow you avoid repeating lengthy nouns. Or maybe sarsaparilla is just fun to say over and over?