Banished

The heat has finally broken and we've been able to move Finn back into his own room. It was only in the 80's today so I had to put on a sweater. And let me tell you, it's tough to type with mittens on.

But it wasn't the cooler temps that moved Finn out. We moved him out because he attacked me. Well, maybe he didn't attack me, but he broke my nose. Well, maybe he didn't break my nose, but he did headbutt me in the bridge of the nose - hard enough to make my nose bleed. And that's while we were snuggling.

See why we don't snuggle? Check out the carnage! I hope you haven't eaten recently...


One day I'm going to headbutt Finn in the nose and when looks at me with tears in his eyes and he asks "why?", I'm going to point to this blog post and tell him that we're even.

I'm just going to have to do it while he's still smaller than me.

Wanna see some slides of our last big trip back East?

The modern version of the uncomfortable vacation slideshow is presented for your viewing pleasure. Luckily for you, we can't tell when you turn it off to go do something more interesting, like anything.

I apologize for the length, but it's tough to trim down 45,674 pictures. I hope you enjoy the music - the computer put that one in all on its own. I don't think it knew that it would have to repeat the song 5 times.

Should you just want to view the pictures, or download a particularly attractive picture of yourself (in the unlikely event that there is one), you can do so here.

Thanks again to everyone for everything on Tick Tour 2009. Special thanks to Cousin Colin, who taught us all how to be nautical.

Hottest day ever. Seriously.

Wow, look at that picture of the pool in that last post. I sure do miss that pool.

Today is officially the hottest day on record in the City of Seattle. Ever. Here's what my little desktop weather widget says, at 3:40 PM:


The previous record was 100. They're now projecting that we'll hit 103 today.

EDIT: I must have passed out from the heat, because it's now 10 PM. It did indeed hit 103 today. In fact, it's still about 90 degrees in our house and Kitty and I are hiding out in the basement. In our underwear. Sitting on frozen peas. Here's a blurry pic of our thermostat from a few hours ago, just in case you think I'm fibbing.


Finn is upstairs in our room, the only room with air conditioning. It's been a long time since we've all shared a room. Last time he was right next to the bed. This time, he's in the closet.

Don't worry, it's a nice closet.

To try and escape the heat this past weekend, we headed out on Uncle Rob's & Aunt Holly's boat. It was awesome, as always, but we do get concerned about trying to keep Finn occupied out there on the water while we alternate between shotgunning beers and arguing maritime law. We're very nautical.

We considered bringing toys, but the big fear is that he'll just toss them overboard. Then Genius Mommy identified the perfect solution. We grabbed the boy and his sexy ducky life vest and hit the water, along with a bag of rocks.

And the rocks hit the spot. In fact, they hit lots of spots, but luckily most of those spots were in the water. We're definitely giving him mixed signals, scolding him for throwing rocks at home but encouraging him to throw rocks on the boat. But hey, there's beer to be shotgunned.

Here's the boy showing his nauticality with Mommy & Aunt Holly. As you can tell, a terrible time was had by all.

No whammies, no whammies... STOP!

Finn spent the majority of last week complaining that he hadn't been on a plane in 10 days and that his newly acquired frequent flier miles were already getting stale. In fact, he was so insistent that we immediately booked a ticket to Denver. Turns out, it just so happened to coincide with our friends Rob's & Aly's wedding in Vail. But just to show him who's boss, we didn't get him a seat and made him sit in our laps.

Not a smart move when your son is a Squirmasaurus, but given his track record we figured it was worth a shot.

Using baseball parlance (truthfully, the only kind of parlance other than drunk parlance in which I am familiar), Finn is batting around .750 on flights. There are some rough moments, but his slugging average is well over 1.000, since when he is good, he knocks it out of the park, routinely charming everyone on the plane. With his 5th flight in just over 15 months, we're starting to feel like we're pressing our luck.

At this point, we're familiar with the tools of the trade for flying with toddlers: snacks, toys, wrapped toys, wrapped snacks, toy snacks, wrapping paper without snacks or toys, Benadryl, vodka, Xanax... And that's just for us. However, with friends and family spread all over the country, we need to travel for reliable babysitting.

We were hesitant about getting on a plane so soon after Tick Tour, but with our friends Jen, Steve and little Wyatt Hooker offering a place to stay and some babysitting options for the wedding, it seemed like the thing to do. Look how happy they are to have us at the Hook Hotel!


What a smart decision it was. Not only did I get to meet my blogging mentor for the first time, he bought me lots of beer in exchange for stories of my Star Wars van while we sat in the corner stroking each others' needy egos. Add in all of our other great friends, their ever-expanding brood, and the idyllic setting of Vail, Colorado and you have a recipe for an extremely (hazy) memorable weekend.

Plus, Finn took the opportunity to expand on his three word vocabulary by spontaneously doubling it with "hi", "ouch" and "Holly" (according to Aunt Holly) all in one extremely productive pool session.

But now it's back to reality and reality = NO MORE TRAVEL. Sorry Peter Tomarken, but we're done pressing our luck.

-------------------------------

Aside to the (good-natured) TSA guy in Denver who gave me a hard time for wearing my Yankees hat at DIA, forcing me to admit they were in second place on Monday morning: You're just lucky that I didn't come through security 5 hours later! Yeah, take that.

Spoon fed

While I continue to compile my extensive notes (read: pictures) from Tick Tour 2009, here's an update on Finn's latest milestones:

1. Kissing on command. Given that the Ninja spent his first 15-months wanting nothing to do with us in the way of affection, this is huge. He's been blowing kisses for a couple of months, but when he's doing that he just looks like he's punching himself in the face. His early kisses were all open mouthed, so that was a little weird and not the kind of thing you'd want to do in public. Now that he's starting to get the pucker down, we're asking for kisses every 15 seconds.
   


2. Feeding himself with a spoon. As Kitty likes to say, if it were up to me, Finn would be spoon fed until he was in college. It really cuts down on the hands and knees floor cleaning. But I suppose that would make dating awkward, so I've relented on allowing Kitty to teach him to use a spoon.
   

Kitty wanted to make sure that I share a little video of the latter accomplishment since the G'mas love the talking pictures.

Don't think that all of his self-managed feedings have gone this cleanly. Notice that I'm keeping a fair distance, hiding behind the laptop. And the final "uh-oh" means he knows what happens when a utensil gets dropped during a meal.

A delicious knuckle-sandwich dessert.

We're very strict.

Dijon circumcision

I'm sure you pervs are all dying to know how Finn's wiener is doing, so I apologize for the lack of update.

It's fine. It requires regular application of antibacterial goo and it looks kind of freaky, but everything went as smoothly as we could hope. Here's how Tuesday went down...

7 AM: Wake up Finn and rush him out the door, right through the kitchen, since he wasn't allowed to eat anything prior to the surgery. This was a dicey move, since breakfast is the boy's big meal and he regularly devours 4 oxen and a field of oats. It's how he maintains his svelte figure.

7:30 AM: Check-in with the doctors at Swedish Medical Center. They were all very nice and Finn got to put on a fancy gown. The gown is clearly made for a teenager, but that just makes it more adorable (as you can see). In order to keep him distracted from his hunger while checking his vitals, they gave him a cool little fan that lights up. He promptly ripped it in half. We quickly ran back to the playroom before they noticed.

9 AM: Meet with the doctor, who is an incredibly nice guy and clearly very excited about his job. The first time we met with him, he drew an unsettlingly accurate representation of what he was going to do right on the paper covering the examination table - Ron Jeremy sized. He clearly loves "freeing the penis", as he put it, and was excited to do Finn's "fancy circumcision". You would think this would seem weird, but it didn't at all. There's no one else in the world that I would rather trust with Finn's wiener than Dr. Happypenis.

9:15 AM: Meet with the anesthesiologist who will be working with Finn. She warns us about the typical response to anesthesia - a rolling back of the eyes accompanied by flailing and crying. They tell us that 90% of parents - male and female - come out of the experience crying. Kitty and I begin to get a little freaked out and play rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to get traumatized the most by accompanying Finn to the back. Kitty "wins" and gets to go back, but not before donning a "beekeeper meets lunchlady" spacesuit.

9:17 AM: Kitty returns. Apparently Finn is awesome at falling asleep under anesthesia. The doctors are amazed. We begin praying that he wakes up just as awesomely.

10:15 AM: The doctor comes and finds us in the waiting room and tells us that everything went well. We both exhale audibly. Finn's penis is now free of its tether. The doctor likens it to sun rays beaming down from the heavens and the angels singing. Seriously. Dr. Happypenis is very pleased, as are we. We begin waiting for Finn to wake up.

10:20 AM: He wakes up, but he is not awesome. It's all we can do to hold onto him as he squirms and cries hysterically with an IV in his hand and a monitor attached to his foot. He guzzles two bottles of sugar water and is not sated. Over the nurses' objections, we begin shoveling applesauce into his face. That slows him down enough for us to move him to the recovery room. We know our boy.

10:30 AM: We shovel more applesauce into his face. He is now settling down.

10:40 AM: He falls asleep on my shoulder. It's the best feeling in the world. Kitty looks longingly at me, her eyes begging me to hold him. I pretend I don't see her.

11:20 AM: We receive instruction regarding post-surgery care, including penis goo and codeine application directions, and are discharged along with a little teddy bear wearing a doctor's uniform. I'm not really sure how comforting that particular brand of teddy bear is, but Finn gives it his seal of approval: he puts his head on it, holds it for 5 seconds then throws it to the ground.

11:45 AM: We return home and give Finn his first dose of codeine. It's hilarious, proving the age-old adage: drugged up kids are funny. With the painkillers flowing through his veins, the boy immediately returns to normal, pointing out all of the wa-wa's (flowers) and caws (cars).

Three days in, he's off the codeine and back to his normal manic self. His wiener still looks a little raw, but I'll spare you those pictures. I'm sure I've already done enough psychological damage to his teenage self by transcribing this little adventure.

Plus, this isn't that kind of blog.

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Tick Tour postscript: turns out we weren't entirely unsuccessful in acquiring Lyme. G'ma Parker did indeed pick up a tick and is now on antibiotics. Victory!

Sharin' in the Groove

We have safely returned home from Tick Tour 2009, and not a minute too soon. Despite our best efforts, we didn't actually score any new Lyme ticks, however with all of the family attention over the last week and a half, Finn's head has swelled to dangerous levels -- even after the hair removal. With all of the Grandparent/Aunt/Uncle/Cousin doting, I'm afraid we may never again be able to fit that amazing sun hat on his little noggin.

As such, this is likely the last picture of him wearing his exceptional headgear, taken on Weekapaug Beach in RI, the site of Mommy & Daddy's wedding.


I'd say that Finn looks just like his Daddy without his shirt on, but we all know that he's got way more muscles than me. Even if we do share the same beer gut.

Fact: pale, skinny, fat guys pull wicked chicks.

As always, the trip back east was far too short. Big thanks to G'ma and G'pa Parker, Mema Finn and Grandpa Finn. Even though our travels took us across 3 states in 11 days, this was by far the most relaxing vacation that we've taken as a family and it was extremely sad to come home. It got far less sad once Finn started crying the minute we got on the plane in Newark; then it was just painful. But the crying was short-lived, the sleep was long (from 8 pm EDT until 7 am PDT) and we're now back to normal.

Just in time for Finn's wiener surgery tomorrow.

Now that I'm back on a real computer, I'll try to give a more complete rundown of what's going on/has recently gone on with the Ninja over the next couple of weeks. Anything to take my mind off of what I'm putting my son through tomorrow.

Dear future Finn: Don't hate us for making you go through with this procedure. We're doing this for you and your future girlfriends/ex-wives. Trust me, you'll all thank us for this some day.

Waterbaby

Proving that he's definitely his mother's child, Finn has spent every minute that it hasn't been storming here - all 3 of them - in the pool.

In anticipation of this, his Grandma Parker got him this fancy pool float.



Notice how well it matches that exceptionally masculine sun hat. What a stud. He's got all the Grandmas by the pool swooning, first in NY and now in CT.

We leave for Rhode Island tomorrow, but there's no pool there. I wonder if that thing is seaworthy.

-- Post From The Windward Side

Finny's first haircut

Turns out that mobile blogging causes thumb fatigue, which cripples my online poker career so I apologize for not letting y'all know that we survived the rest of the flight in. And in solid shape, all things considered.

We're all in one piece, though some of us are slightly smaller than we started in the golden flowing locks department. It took Mema's steady hands to finally remove the wings from our little featherhead. We were too worried that we'd shear off his ears.

Just when you thought he couldn't get any cuter...



-- Post From Mema's Barber Shop