Maniac, maniac on the couch

Let me state for the record that we did not dress him in this outfit. This is how he returned from daycare. Given how his head has sprouted little blond wings, I'm not surprised they're getting confused about his gender. You can't see his socks, but they're yellow with Southwest designs.

My boy Tim would not approve.


Since this picture won't be embarrassing enough for the future Yankee shortstop*, check out his dance moves in this outfit. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Finnifer Beals in "Couchdance".

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* No pressure.

Bacon!

Look who loves him some bacon.

Back in the before time, when I was getting psyched up for the Ninja's arrival, there were two activities that occupied the majority of my time:

1. Getting drunk.
2. Deciding which of my numerous obsessions to pass on to the boy.

Number 1 was easy. Just ask Kitty. Number 2 was a little trickier, since the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't really care if his preferences matched mine. For instance, I didn't really care if he was a Yankees fan, provided he pretended to be one while around me by wearing a Yankee hat, praising John Sterling's play-by-play and reverently rubbing the piece of Babe Ruth's jersey in the Yankee shrine in the basement. The same would have applied to bacon worship.

Of course, it's better when things work out for real.

Not that it's that surprising that he would be into bacon. After all, he's not a commie.

Bruiser

The alert Fussy Ninja readers (Hi Mom!) have no doubt picked up on the new additions here on the blog. For those of you reading the email updates, the Ninja has sold out and we now have ads. That future Adderall addiction isn't going to pay for itself. Of course, the ads only make money if people visit the site and that's just not going to happen if I'm only posting once every 10-days.

Since it's been so long, I've actually got stuff to report. First off, the fever I alluded to way back when turned out to have been the result of an ear infection that we let fester in the little guy's skull for days without treating. It turns out that he's only fussy for non-important stuff. If a disease is eating away his ear canal, it just makes him a little sleepy. We didn't want to get the "first-time parent" side-eye from the doctor, so we just kept him home until he eventually stopped eating. That'll learn us. Now I'm the only one in the family not on antibiotics. I feel so left out.

Grandma Parker also stopped by to spend a week with us. In addition to helping with the cooking, cleaning and daycare she decided to toughen up Finny and gave him his first black eye. If you look closely at the picture above, you can barely make out the remnants of it over his right eye. He's the one on the left.

Truthfully, it wasn't G'ma's fault. We had been talking up how good Finn was at going down stairs and how cautious he is in general. In fact, he's so cautious that he's been known to walk downhill backwards and he'll get on his knees and turn around to descend a 3-in. step. I take no credit for this - it's all Kitty's doing. If it were up to me, the only skills we'd be practicing would be couch jumping, Ninja tossing and CSI-watching. Mommy, however, chose to focus on the productive skills and as such, Finn can almost be trusted around open staircases completely unassisted.

Almost.

Turns out that his depth perception still isn't that great, particularly when the stairs out behind our house are all painted the same color and there are lots of things to distract him. Turn your back for one second and he's introducing his eyebrows to each step as he rolls down.

I think G'ma was more traumatized than Finn. To make up for it, she continued making dinner and providing free daycare for the remainder of the week.

I think Finn and I are going to have to practice this fall down the stairs thing some more before MeMa Finn gets here in August.

Happy Mother's Day!

The Ninja would like to give a big fussy shout-out to all the Moms out there on the interwebs. Moms are the ones that fix us up when we're broke. They're the first smile in the morning and the last kiss at night.

And they're really, really good at cleaning up poopy diapers.

So Happy Mother's Day, Moms! May you all enjoy one poopy-diaper-free day! *

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* Except for you, Kitty. Your Mother's Day doesn't really start until I get home from Portland, so there will likely be at least one diaper bomb with your name on it.

Sorry. I owe you (another) one.

Follow-up

I need to follow-up the last post with a couple of late-breaking items:

1. Finn has been running a fever for the past 5 days (more on that later). For the most part, it hasn't affected him and he's been his normal cheery self. The other night, though, he woke up crying and didn't go back to sleep like he normally does. Kitty quietly got a dropper of Tylenol and sneaked it into his open cry-hole. Though half-asleep and crying from a 103 degree fever in a pitch black room, Finn still mustered the energy to reward her with an "aaaaah".

2. A comment on the post from Shana:

"You know, I grew up thinking (via Kris) that if you took a drink without saying "ahhh" you would die... Finn is just surviving!"

Since Finn is working so hard at surviving, we figured we'd do our part too and got him some protective head gear. He is now impervious to wet pasta and boiled vegetables, though he can still get very wet.

Choice of a New Generation

We can't get Finn to use baby sign language to tell us why he's crying. We can't get him to wave bye-bye. We can't get him to high-five, low-five, fist bump or blow it up. But we can get him to channel Michael J Fox, circa 1985.

Doesn't he make that spoonful of fish oil look delicious? That takes skills, because fish oil is most decidedly not delicious.

He's so good at the "aaah" move that he'll bust it out in the middle of dinner while he's furiously spitting something green out of his mouth. He'll go from full-on bawling to a smiling "aaah" (if we can get his sippy cup in there) then right back to bawling.

Turns out it's really hard to force the veggie issue when faced with that level of cuteness. The little jerk knows exactly what he's doing.

I wonder what the baby sign is for "manipulation".

West Seattle Derby

Here's a riddle for you: what has 47 screws, hundreds of staples, a 50-lb. shipping pallet, four 4-in. bolts, two 2x4's, six sheets of particle board, six pieces of Styrofoam and several yards of shrink wrap?

If you guessed the shipping container for one of Finn's birthday presents, you'd be exactly right. The picture to the right was emailed to us with no explanation as to what was contained within. I'm about a month overdue in posting this, but it's taken me that long just to get inside the box.

Given my laziness and the effort that I anticipated would be required in opening it, I was content to leave the crate as-is and present Finn with a big wooden box from his Grandpa Finn, Aunt Kelly and cousins Caroline & Sam. However, Kitty was dying to know what was inside so off I went to find some power tools, a crowbar, some day laborers and an acetylene cutting torch.

After seven days of work, including multiple requests for city demolition permits, I finally got it open. Cracking the seal felt like opening the Ark of the Covenant - except instead of my face melting off, I was presented with this:


It's a Victorian rocking horse. With real horse hair. And a leather saddle.

Beautiful? Yes. Startling when you catch it out of the corner of your eye in a dark room? A little.

Extracting this thing from the crate was more difficult than extracting Kitty and Finn from the house. I hired a crane and a team of draft elephants to hoist it up and into the house. It was finally unwrapped and presented to the "birthday boy" yesterday.

He immediately took off galloping around the basement chasing the cats. I think he needs some help with his riding form. Hopefully his cousin Caroline will be able to give him some pointers this summer.