5 Lists of 5 For No Reason in Particular

I hadn't posted in a while, so I thought I would. And why bother with a cohesive idea when I can just put together a bunch of lists? (Okay, so I guess I had reasons after all.)

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5 Things My 6-Year-Old Son Has Said Somewhat Recently

1. "He's a water jet. He can't go in the water."
   "Can't? If he can't go in water, shouldn't he be a non-water jet?"
   "Well, at the beginning there is a silent 'non'."
2. "I'm tired of sleeping."
3. "I was trying to speak to the chipmunk in bird language, since I don't know how to speak chipmunk."
4. "I fell in love with her the first day I met her... I'm trying to get to marry her, but she has a different teacher this year."
5. "When people love me, I just hug 'em."

5 Non-Traditional Ways to Defend Yourself Against Attack by Vampire

1. Stay inside your house all the time.
   And don't invite anyone in. I mean no one. Vampires can only come in if they're invited. Did your husband just bring out the trash? Chances are he's been turned. Lock him out.
2. Stay outside all the time.
   And keep heading east. Move with the sun. As long as that glorious ball of flame keeps shining overhead—and as long as you steer clear of the shade—you'll be safe.
3. Drink nothing but holy water.
   One taste, and your blood will burn that vamp from the inside out. A couple round battle scars on your neck are a small price to pay for victory. (Holy frijoles and/or guacamole are also fine ways to supplement your diet.)
4. An army of drone bodyguards just out of visual range. Armed with lasers.
   With lasers!
5. Clothing entirely covered with pointy wooden stakes.
   The latest in Milan fashion! And if that toothy character tries anything, just give him a great big hug.

5 Books I've Stopped Reading But Have Left Bookmarks In, and Why

1. The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon
   p. 236 of 411, 3 years ago
   I tend to slog through Chabon novels—I paused for 3 months 50 pages into Kavalier & Clay—but I still kind of want to know how it ends.
2. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Michael Pollan
   p. 106 of 205, 2 years ago
   When we moved, this ended up back on the bookshelf. I only remembered today, while making this list.
3. Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, Jeff Vandermeer
   p. 16 of 357, 1 year ago
   Opening chapters didn't keep my interest. Rather than read straight through, when I jump back in I'll skip around a bit.
4. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
   p. 232 of 402, 3 months ago
   Made it through book one, but apparently over-the-top Russian satire isn't really my thing. Maybe I'll go back to it?
5. The Nowhere Man, Gregg Hurwitz
   p. 84 of 358, 23 hours ago
   It was late, and I had work in the morning.

5 Ways Vampires Can Counteract Your Non-Traditional Defenses Against Them

1. Cut your power. Repeatedly.
   With your internet down and phone dead, eventually you won't be able to pay your landlord/mortgage/taxes, and soon you'll be out on your ass. Hey, good things come to those who wait.
2. Full-body prosthetics from top Hollywood makeup artists.
   They'll walk right up to you, with you none the wiser. They won't be on fire or nothin'. And then you'll be toast.
3. Two words: Food taster.
4. Three words: Trained attack bats.
   Possibly radio-controlled attack bats. Because, fun!
5. A Spider-Man style upside-down kiss. Of death.
   Alas, your dress made of stakes can't protect you against attacks from above. Try all you want, but you'll never quite touch that man's heart.

5 Reasons You Should Be Disappointed With This Post

1. I didn't include a single picture of my son with his curls and gap-toothed grin.
2. Two vampire-related lists, and no cracks about Twilight.
3. Not a single footnote. Not one.¹
4. There's no list of ways to counteract the vampires' counters. You're doomed.
5.  

¹ Nope. Sorry. Adding one after the fact doesn't count.

"When People Love Me, I Just Hug 'Em."

My son is now four and a half. I haven't been recording as many of his quotes and conversations lately, and the reasons are threefold: 1) many of them need context; 2) his stories go on forever; and 3) I forgot, okay? I forgot. I'm human. Leave me alone.

Anyway, here are a few of his from the past year...

Me: "I'll be right there. I just need a drink after all that work shoveling outside."
Him: "I need a drink, too, after all that watching Thomas at the Blue Mountain Quarry."

~~~~~

His cousin (7 months older) is explaining that girls don't have penises.
Him: "But my mom has a penis."
Cousin: "This book here says she doesn't."
(There was no book. They were simply standing there talking to each other.)

~~~~~

"She's not a girl. She's a boy girl."
(After some delving, we managed to get a translation: She likes playing with trucks.)

~~~~~

He's playing with his back to us, and it sounds like he's saying, "You're a bitch" over and over. My sister-in-law and I share a look to confirm that, yes, that is indeed what he's saying. I ask what he's doing. He looks up and explains the truck is collecting you're-a-bitch. I mean, gar-bage.

~~~~~

I tell him he needs to go to bed, so he won't be too tired when his cousin wakes him up in the morning. Because his cousin is always up really early.
"Well, I'm up early and a half."

~~~~~

His cousins are already asleep on either side of him. His aunt is sitting nearby to make sure he doesn't wake them before he falls asleep.

Him (whispering): "Aunt Connie."
Connie: "You need to go to sleep."
(a few moments pass)
Him: "Aunt Connie."
Connie: "What?"
Him: "I have a new plan. First one to move gets to go downstairs and play with all the toys."

Stealing My Son's Soul

On Thanksgiving day, my son decided he no longer wanted any pictures taken of him. Of course, that didn't stop me from trying, but now the only good pictures come when he's having too much fun to remember he now hates photos.

Anyway, here's an assortment of Pre-Thanksgiving shots, for those who've been missing their Professorial fix.

My Son, the Segregationist

For Christmas, my son (age 4) received an abundance of gifts, including knights in a plastic castle, Rescue Bots (i.e. Transformers for the younger set), and Dinotrux (which are pretty much what they sound like).

They were not allowed to interact with each other.

Dinotrux couldn't be inside the castle. The knights were banned from the Rescue Bots' ship. Rescue Bots — even the two Dinobots — could not set foot in the Dinotrux home base. All Muslims were promptly returned to their country of origin.

Okay, not that last one. But still.

Whenever he wasn't looking, I'd place figures into a different playset. When he found them, he'd get angry and knock them to the floor. His older cousins would try to play with two types at once. Characters would be smacked aside.

"No mixing allowed!"

And then, on the fifth day, a miracle. I locked the Dinotrux's food — a piece of ore — in the castle. I suggested the Dinotrux and Dinobots should band together to get the ore back. And he said... "Yeah!"

They worked together and recaptured their ore. Then I sat back as they all sailed the Rescue Bots' ship to his cousin's Hot Wheels garage for a party.

See, America? If you make desegregation fun, people will embrace it. All you need is a little perseverance, and bigots will go the way of the dinosaur.

Which, based on toddler toy industry, means they'll become either half-robot or half-truck. That should be more than enough incentive for them to give up their racist, hateful ways. Right?

If not, we'll just have to throw in a giant Hot Wheels dance party.

"...So, I Get Ten Ninja Clowns"

Over the holidays, my son branched out. He's still enthralled with construction trucks, but now he's equally into Legos and games. And thanks to one of the latter, he's also getting good at telling stories (which never stay on plot, but always include a boy seeing a burning building).

Anyway, these aren't even the craziest things my son has said the past couple months. They're just the craziest ones I remembered to write down.

We're starting dinner, but he's still in the living room. I know nothing we're eating that night will entice him to stop playing, but there's also a bowl of fruit on the table. So I call out, "I'm eating one of your graaaapes."
From the living room: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO(now keep in mind he's never seen The Simpsons or Family Guy or anything like that)OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO(so we have no idea where he got this from)OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO(but he kept going for 8-10 seconds)OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

And then he comes to dinner. Five minutes later.
~~~~~
I have just left the room. My nephew turns to my son.
"We need to see Uncle Nat."
"No, he's gone forever."
~~~~~
"Why don't I have brothers or sisters?"
"Because Mommy and I haven't had any other kids yet. Do you want a brother or sister?"
"I want Nick and Alex [his cousins] to be my brother and sister. I want Nick to be my sister and Alex to be my brother."
~~~~~
I'm trying to explain the concept of English.
"We speak English."
"I don't."
"Sure you do. The language we speak is called English."
"No, I speak Normal."
~~~~~
"Can I PLEASE eat the head of Santa?"
~~~~~
He stands next to one cousin, who is 7" taller, and looks up at him.
"We're the same size!"
~~~~~
To a cousin, while in said cousin's house:
"Did you know you have toys in your basement?! Come on, I'll show you!"
~~~~~
Explaining the rules of a game we're "playing":
"...so, I get ten ninja clowns."

As you might expect, the game has absolutely nothing to do with clowns, barely anything to do with ninjas, and he had just rolled a 6.
~~~~~
He holds up something built out of Duplo-style Lego blocks. It looks like a top-heavy tower.
"I made a pewer with a window."
"A what? You mean a tower?"
"No, a pewer."
"A pewer?"
"With a window."

It took another 20 seconds of back-and-forth before I figured out what a pewer is. (It's something that you point at people as you go "Pew! Pew! Pew!") (Duh.)

Webs for Other Bugs That are Good

My son will soon be three. He still loves animals and books, but he recently moved onto the gold standard for boys his age: construction vehicles. Most nights before bath time, he's more dirt than boy.

Here are some more tidbits from the past few months:

We're setting the table for dinner.
Him: "That's my barracuda!"
Me: "These are my salad tongs."
Him: "That's my barracuda!"
~~~~~
"I watched a beetle with Wyatt and Narayan. But not DJ and Arav and Lily. They were mad."
"They were mad at you? Why?"
"I had a hammer and hit the floor. They were mad. And I said 'No thank you!' to the kids who were mad at daycare."
~~~~~
"No, Daddy, you don't sing."
"Why not?"
"I'm going to sing better songs. You sing silly songs."
~~~~~
Along with many recognizable characters from Seuss, Disney, Henson, and Milne, there are other imaginary creatures my son talks about as if they're real and everyone knows what they are. A partial list: the Backson (from this), the Snatchabook (from this), the Gulper, Grabular, Undersnatch, Spiny-Backed Guzzler, and Saber-Toothed Yumper (all from this), and Santa Claus.

I'm kidding about that last one, of course. He never mentions Santa Claus.
~~~~~
He is looking at a drawing of two chipmunks.
"What are they doing?" he asks.
"They're playing croquet."
"No, they're playing hockey."
"They're playing croquet."
"No, they're playing hockey."
"Basketball?"
"Nooo, they're playing hockey."
"Soccer?"
"Noooo, they're playing hockey."
"Okay, they're playing hockey."
"I think they're playing chess."

We're on a walk, and I've been carrying him for a while. I ask if he'd like to walk some more.
"Are your arms tired, Daddy?"
"Yes, they are."
"That means you have to carry me all the way home."
~~~~~
"I want to eat bulgogi."
"We don't have any. We're having pasta tonight."
"Put it in the bowl, mix it up, it becomes bulgogi."

(Note: He's never tried bulgogi. He's only heard of it thanks to this book.)
~~~~~
"Spider-Man makes webs for other bugs that are good."

(Note: He's never watched any Spider-Man. He's only seen him on clothes. Oh, and on one refrigerator magnet.)
~~~~~
And what would a summary of a 2-year-old's activities be without a mention of poop?

Grandma: "Let's go change your diaper."
Him: "No. I didn't poop."
Grandma: "You stink. If it's not poop in your diaper, what is it?"
Him: "It's..." (pauses to think, then looks down at the furniture he's leaning on) "...stool."

He is so much smarter than he has any right to be.

And Then The Professor Got His Hands On A Duplicator

click to view this photo in its full glory (i.e. larger)

About a year ago, I shared some Calvin & Hobbes with my son. This included parts of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink", which has a duplicator on its cover. He was only 1½ years old at the time, so I assumed he wouldn't absorb any of it. Little did I know...

For most kids, Calvin & Hobbes is a fun comic about a boy and his stuffed tiger.

For my son, it's a How-To manual.

The Wit and Wisdom of The Professor

The Professor has no idea he's The Professor. No one has ever called him that in real life. He may never have even heard the word. Nevertheless, as his tireless student, I watch and listen, taking notes...

Denise and he are discussing which animals have tails. The last one she asks is...
"Does Daddy have a tail?"
(long pause)
"Probably not."
~~~~~
Denise points to a candy cane and asks what it is.
"A reindeer stalk."
~~~~~
Whenever someone asks, "How are you?" he will inevitably answer: "Two." Then he'll hold up that many fingers.
~~~~~
"Mommy, look what I made in the living room!"
"What did you make?"
"A mess!"

He comes into the kitchen and says, "I want some more milk please."
I also want him to eat some lunch, so I ask, "Would you like some cheese, or an apple?"
He walks over to me, and taps on my leg with each word, for emphasis. "I. Want. Some. More. Milk. Please."

Clearly I have a hearing problem.
~~~~~
Like many parents, we began the ritual of kissing a boo-boo to make it feel better. He did us one better: While running around the living room, he banged his knee against the table. He stopped, bent down to kiss his own knee, then got right back to running.
~~~~~
"Hey guys! Go in the kitchen!" He then takes off for the other side of the house. His 6-year-old cousins look at each other, then get up from what they were doing and follow. Within moments, he's chasing them in circles around the house, laughing his head off.

It's good to be the king.

"I'll be right back."
He'll say this sometimes. He could be going upstairs, or across the yard, or down the sidewalk. I start to follow.
"No, you stay here. I'll be right back."
~~~~~
He's sitting by the front door at his grandma's house. Denise asks what he's doing.
"I'm just sitting here."
~~~~~
While Denise is at Target and I'm home with him, he sees a loose thread in a pillow. So of course, this is his natural thought progression:
"I have to clip this...
I have to clip this at Target...
I have to clip this at Target tomorrow...
I have to go to Target tomorrow."
~~~~~
He'll refer to himself in the third person when using a puppet. For instance, last week I asked what he did at daycare. The alligator on his hand told me, "He drove a police car in the village, and Marty pushed him."

He has wrapped his fork in his napkin.
"My fork doesn't like the cold."
~~~~~
"Let's go upstairs and I'll push Mommy's buttons!"
~~~~~
He has shown little interest in using the potty. Then one day he says what sounds like "Can I use the potty?"
Happy to hear it, I ask, "You want to use the potty?"
"No, you want to use the potty. I'll wait here."

Curses, foiled again.


...by the little man with the chocolate ice cream goatee.

By the way, clicking on any of the above images will fill me with immense joy (and allow you to see the picture larger). And if you're so inclined, you can view all of his latest photos on Flickr.

Not Getting the Full Experience

This is my 300th post (fact). And since I haven't shared anything about my son in over a year (exaggeration) I thought I'd do that now to start the year off right. Not only is he the smartest kid ever to wear diapers (hyperbole) and a half-decent negotiator, but come February he'll be the youngest U.S. Senator in history (outright lie).

He just turned two-and-a-half, loves animals and books and letters and Muppets and is so well-behaved my cousin remarked that as parents we're "not getting the full experience." No, we're not. And it is awesome. Here are a few snippets from recent months:

Conversation at dinner between 2-year-olds (who had spent all day together):
Him: "Hey, you have a robot on your shirt."
His cousin: "I have pizza." (pause) "I have pizza."
~~~~~
Reading an alphabet book to himself:
"J is for juggling. J-U-G-G-L-I-N-G. Juggling.
K is for kite. K-I-T-E. Kite.
L is for drink. L-E-M-O-N-A-D-E. Drink."
~~~~~
At some point he found a 2-foot piece of string. Every once in a while, he'll pick it up, hold it between his hands, and twirl it while jumping non-stop from room to room. As he says, "I'm jumping rope."
~~~~~
Talking into a toy phone:
"Hi, Grampa. Are you too busy? Okay, bye bye."

Our house contains several burrows' worth of stuffed rabbits. One morning, my son dug through a couple dozen of them and found the only non-bunny in the basket — a small stuffed bison — and immediately claimed it as his own. They were inseparable for a week, including at bedtime, so it became the first thing he slept with. The following week he added a lion cub to the mix. The week after that, a dog. Then Cookie Monster. Now his bed also holds a rubber skeleton, a bookmark with clownfish on it, a long-expired glow stick, an alligator puppet with hard rubber teeth, a seal, a small plastic Oscar the Grouch, and a little striped cat from IKEA. Every night and naptime he confirms each item is still there, gathers them all under the blanket, and hugs them tight.

If you ask him, he'll say he loves our cats Penny and Schrödinger. But not our dog, Sonya. Last time he told us this we asked, "Why not? Sonya loves you." The tears started flowing, and he wailed, "I don't want to love Sonya!!!"
~~~~~
He finally knows to say "I don't know," meaning we've reached the end of his Yeah Phase. What was the Yeah Phase? Let me demonstrate:
"Do you know what this is?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, what is it?"
"Yeah."
"What is it?"
"Yeah."
~~~~~
He wanted a cookie. We'd told him repeatedly he needed to eat his dinner first. He responded with, "No. Cookie first, then dinner." This went on all meal, and he ate one solitary bite of pasta. After Denise had finished and stepped into the kitchen, he handed me his plate and said, "Here. You eat it. I get a cookie." I tell you, the kid is quick. I didn't learn that gambit till I was six.

I often have his stuffed animals and puppets talk to him. Then one night, with a puppet in his hand, he asked me to read him his book. I pulled out the book with his picture on the cover (and photos of our family inside), but he said, "No, my book." He repeated this over and over, getting more and more agitated, until I finally realized he was speaking as the puppet (who has no mouth) and asking for its book. Namely, Where the Wild Things Are.

Now he regularly talks for his animals/puppets and has conversations with them. He even has a designated puppet voice, lower and more gravelly than his own.¹ And he uses his mittens as puppets.² Or, if he has no puppet or mittens, he simply talks with his hands.

¹ He's Batman.
² Lately, his left mitten is a shark, his right one a train. Because of this.

~~~~~

Well, that's my son. Click on any of the above photos to see them larger. Or, if you're inclined, you can view all of his latest photos on Flickr.

Give Her the Ol' Freudian Slip

I have nothing substantial enough to warrant a full post, but here are some various odds and ends (mostly odds).

~~~~~

Fact #1: The Professor (age: 21 mos.) is a quick study. Repeat something a couple times and he's got it.
Fact #2: I got bored with animal sounds.

Translation: He has no idea what a pirate is, but whenever he hears the word he enthusiastically responds with "Arrrrrrr!" (Also, when Denise warned his daycare teacher of another one he'd learned, this was her reaction: "Ah, that explains nap time yesterday. Everyone else had fallen asleep, but I hear this little voice, and he's there saying 'nombie brains nombie brains nombie brains.'")

~~~~~

In my new office, not far from my desk, there are signs directing people to the "Imagination Conference Room" and the "Possibilities Room." I'd make a wisecrack about having such things in an insurance company, but I'm too busy daydreaming of Epcot.*

* Okay, so I may have also printed out signs to post beside them, pointing to the Conference Room of Tomorrow. I only have so much willpower, people.

~~~~~

Times The Professor has said the following phrases without being prompted:
"I love Mommy" — 0
"I love Daddy" — 0
"I love TRASH!" — 123 (and counting)

~~~~~

Here's a bumper sticker for the psychology major in your life. You're welcome.*

* Note: not an actual bumper sticker. Technically, it's just a jpeg. To make it a bumper sticker you'll need to glue your smartphone to your bumper.

~~~~~

One of my fellow web designers recently received this feedback on a mockup:
Use more color. (Add more "white space," but not white space.)*

* Yeah, I have no idea what it means, either. All I know is she could have avoided the whole situation if she'd only asked for feedback, but not "feedback."

~~~~~

Also, I'm not sure if you'd call this a meme, a parody of a meme, a tasteless pie chart, or just a waste of twelve seconds of your life, but here's another image I created recently:

~~~~~

So, that's what I've been up to. How about you?

The Professor's Alphabet

The Professor turned 18 months old last week, and somehow he just keeps getting cuter.¹

One of his favorite things² is animal sounds. He knows all the standards, and then some.³ What I find interesting, however, is he identifies some animals by either name or sound (e.g. puppy, kitty, piggy, ducky, bear, owl, frog) but others only by their sound (e.g. moo, baa, neigh). He'll roar when asked about lions, tigers, and bears, but he makes a different sound for dinosaur every time I ask.⁴

Likewise, he's not consistent with his numbers. When he first started repeating them after us, he would say "two" after 1 and 3, but repeat the rest of the numbers as expected. He's since consolidated to solely "two" (for 1-3), "bive" (4-5), and "nine" (6-9). Unless he's subtly trying to get me to invest for his future in a 529 plan, I'm not sure what this means.

And then there's the alphabet. For this, I shall use a chart:

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K
A	B	Ar! Ar!5	D	F	(silence)6	G	nine7	I	J	Meow!

After K/itty, he's completely unoriginal, although he sometimes points at himself for U and gives up entirely at W.

But enough talk. You came here for pictures. And I shall not disappoint.

¹ I might be biased, but I know it's true because I've gotten independent verification from multiple external sources. For I am a scientist. By which I mean I once watched Nova.
² Apart from shrieking so the cats flee, and eating fruit and cheese and crackers and tomatoes (which are technically fruit but you shut up) and bread and peas and holy hell we're out of food again. Son of a—
³ Including crow, donkey, monkey, and moose ("Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!")
⁴ Which, I suppose, isn't wrong, since I never specify which dinosaur, and we're rather short on eye witnesses from the Triassic period.
⁵ This is what I get for branching off to non-standard animals. Even though he's fully aware C is for Cookie — that the only song he's wanted to hear the past two weeks — for him the alphabet starts A-B-Seal.
⁶ He's already said F, so why should he say it again? F that.
⁷ He sometimes does say H, but H times out of 9 he doesn't.