Year: 2008

The Three Magic Squirrels

Dave

I have written before in these annals of my revelation that, when called upon, I was unable to think of song lyrics to sing to my lullaby-needy child. Turns out this phenomenon extends to story telling as well. When I was a wee lad, my father would tell me stories about Little P and his friends Finn McCool the Leprechaun, and Clavnis Rafferstan, the Rabbit with the Removable Ears. In fact, last weekend he told Conrad the story of how the three of them took a ride in a flying garbage truck. He had a roomful of adults captivated, almost as much as Conrad.

I tend to think of myself as a fairly imaginative person, but as in so many things in life, the real test is how well you manage at 4 o’clock in the morning.

Here’s the story I told Conrad at 4 o’clock this morning:

The Three Magic Squirrels

Once upon a time there were three magic squirrels, and their names were Magic Squirrel 1, Magic Squirrel 2 and Magic Squirrel 3. Magic Squirrel 1 said to the other magic squirrels, “I have to go to the DMV. Do you guys want to come with?”

“I do,” said Magic Squirrel 2, “because I’d like to go to the Family Dollar store that is near the DMV.”

“Okay,” declared Magic Squirrel 1. “Do you want to drive, or do you want me to drive?”

“I want you to drive,” replied Magic Squirrel 2, “for I have a bunch of stuff in my back seat.”

And Magic Squirrel 3 said, “I am a magic squirrel.”

The End.

Coming soon: The Three Magic Squirrels go to Radio Shack

Happy Birthday!

Dave

Today, Conrad is one month old. It’s hard to believe how quickly this time has flown by. One of our neighbors wisely said that with a baby, the days are long but the time goes by quickly. This seems to be a perfect statement of how it feels.

Dave is shepherding Conrad through the fussy hours while I write this. While my parents were visiting, Conrad seemed to have read all of the baby books we have lying around and developed a fussy period between 6 and 10pm. The last two evenings have been much calmer, but I think it’s due to our strategy of a long walk at 6pm, cluster feedings every 1 1/2 to 2 hours, swaddling and shushing. And, of course, lots of holding.

I’m sure more experienced parents will laugh at the thought that I can control our lovely little boy at such a tender young age. But it makes me feel better to at least have a plan.

Speaking of which, the other day I actually said to Conrad, ‘Resistance is futile’. And then I realized that I might as well have been speaking to myself. It’s quite a switch of mindset to realize that the true commander of our household arrived last month. We are merely pawns in his game.

If you look closely, you can see the puff of smoke from the grassy knoll.

Dave

After we posted photos of Conrad rolling over at 22 days, several readers asked to see video of the event. I mean, come on. Would I really include my own newborn son in a hoax with no hope of financial gain? Anyway, here he is doing it again tonight, although he’s facing away from the camera at the start, which doesn’t rule out the possibility that there were tiny mechanical assist devices concealed by his onesie, or perhaps a long stick prodding him from just offscreen. And since you can’t see his face very well, I can’t prove this isn’t a stunt little person, or in fact a mechanical baby. And why is there no audio?

A complete set

Dave

All four grandparents in the same place, plus baby. That’s pretty cool. In addition to having a lot in common, they all share the opinion that they have a pretty adorable grandson. But what would you expect from a gathering of grandparents? A frank and objective discussion of his flaws?

You can’t sit around for three hours talking exclusively about how cute the grandson is, so they found other topics of conversation, including cars, which led to this classic grandparently utterance:

“I don’t think I dated you when you had a Studebaker.”

Tell Conrad that story in 15 years and he’ll be convinced we were all wearing homespun clothes and eating hardtack.

Lots of photos added to his Flickr page today, by the way, including this one, which cracks me up for some reason:

Bounce, Grammy, bounce!

Dave

Grammy’s been a real trouper while she’s been here, and has taken her share of bouncing duty during the fussy periods when that seems to be the only thing that calms him down. She got a workout, too, and went through her whole travel stash of ibuprofen. Feel the burn, Grammy.