Ear

When I arrive home each night from the office, the same thing happens. I head to the backyard with my bike and unlock the garage. I then look around to see if any of the neighbors are home to bask in my environmental commuting technique. I hang my bike and walk out of the garage. And then I’m greeted by Elijah standing on the back porch. Nude. Always nude.

It makes my heart proud that Eli has decided to continue his love of nakedness. But it does have its downside. Like getting peed in your ear.

Huh? What? You’re confused? Having your son pee in your ear doesn’t ring a bell? Well, it does for me.

The other night, both Eli and Luca were nude in our basement, engaged in an epic game of “Naked Crazies.”

Rather than calm things down, I decided to amp things up by turning into a Tickle Monster. Even though there were two of them, I was able to dominate them both with my superior strength and superior tickling ability.

Every time one child would attempt to escape, I’d grab him and resume the tickling. I should’ve known I was asking for trouble. After the third or fourth time Eli tried to escape, I pinned his arms to his body and tickled him violently.

And that’s when he peed on me. Or rather IN me. A perfect shot right into my ear. I reacted as though he stuck a red-hot poker into my ear canal. I screamed and recoiled and ran into the bathroom.

Which made both boys laugh even harder.

Tattoo Kisses

Luca loves kissing. His main non-human squeeze is the Curious George stuffed animal he acquired from Elijah (he threw in the Hand, Foot and Mouth disease at no extra charge). Luca also loves shoving that rotting monkey corpse in my face and saying, “Gorgie! Gorgie!” And then he expects me to kiss it. Yuck.

But luckily for us, Luca also likes getting his germs from humans. He even tries to kiss Eli, which usually results in getting shoved to the floor. With love.

The other night, we accepted a dinner invitation from a co-worker of mine. He and his lovely family live in a warehouse in a “colorful” par of Denver (next door to a marijuana grow house). The Hamanns were by far the nerdiest people in attendance. There were artists and pro skateboarders and lots and lots of tattoos. If I hadn’t already known how incredibly nice everyone was, I would’ve been a bit scared.

After some delicious homemade Vietnamese food and a glass of whisky (Why do I drink whisky now? I live among the cowboys. It’s the law) it was time to get Luca and Eli home.

It takes us a bit longer to say goodbye nowadays. I demand that Elijah give everyone in attendance a hug. It’s good for his socialization. And there were a couple hot chicks there and I figured he should get hugs from hot chicks now while it’s easy.

I then carted Luca around to say goodbye. Now, usually this involves him hiding in my neck folds and I have to apologize for his Stranger Danger. But this night, he treated everyone like they were rotting Curious Georges. He started kissing everyone. And I mean everyone: men, women, kids, the fridge, a half eaten eggroll, a bottle of whiskey…

But my favorite smooch was this dude I work with, Bryan Cavanaugh. He’s a dedicated bachelor. He wears black or gray every day. He’s covered in tattoos. And he has a more than striking resemblance to punk rock icon, Henry Rollins. When Luca went in for the kiss, I could actually see Bryan’s brain working

“Um. There is a baby who is trying to kiss me. And his mouth is open. What the hell do I do? Will I get arrested if I give him a kiss? Where do I put my hands? Is he going to make me gay? Do I say ‘thank you?’ Does this make me his godfather?”

In the end, they shared a very sweet kiss and neither one was permanently damaged.

Don and Ed

Don Jacklich and Ed Hamann, this post is in honor of you. Two awesome fathers, and more importantly for this blog, the two best grandfathers in the world.

Now on to the poop!

We’ve had our landlord come over two times, count ‘em, two times to fix stopped up toilets. He’s an ER doctor and has that dry, “Is he joking or not?” style of humor. After his last trip over this his trusty auger he looked me in the eye, and in all seriousness said, “In the industry, we call that a Code Brown.”

Elijah can do some damage.

The other day, Eli announced that he had to use the bathroom, as he always does. He proceeded to sit on the toilet with the door wide open so Diana could hear his play by play.

“Mommy! This is going to be a big one!”

A second or two passed.

“Oh, no. It’s not a big one. It’s lots of little ones!”

Another second passed.

“It’s a family of poops!”

“Uh-Oh! Here comes the Grandpa!”

Limp Poop

Alright gang, I have a back log of poop stories to get to. So let’s not waste time here and, um, jump right into poop story #1: Luca poop.

Last Saturday, we had our first official BBQ with our Denver friends. For some reason, I put wayyyy too much pressure on myself to make it perfect. I made a much too complicated dish when our friends would prefer burnt hotdogs. I forced Diana to make her most complicated, but delicious pasta salad and I spent most of the day running around like Jerk Chicken with its head cut off and dirtying every dish we owned.

After my fourth trip to the grocery store to pick up something I forgot, I noticed Luca was out of sorts. Not the usual, “Fill my food hole,” anger, but something a bit more whiney and meeehhh. Diana noticed it too. Luca seemed to be uncomfortable.

And then we noticed he was limping. We think. Kind of. Maybe. See, it’s tough to tell if a 15 month old is limping. Because he can barely walk. He tends to stroll like a combination of Frankenstein’s Monster and Peter Boyle. But there was a lot more falling and bitching than usual.

After everyone left (I’d give my grilling a 7.5 out of 10), I bathed the boys while Diana loaded the dishwasher (we discovered it was broken an hour later which led to me hand washing every dish in our house).

After toweling off Luca, I decided to properly observe his limp. Now, why I decided to observe his limp while he was nude, I’ll never know. Well, strike that. I do know. I love watching him pee on the carpet. He LOVES to wiz on the carpet. He does it with such gusto that I can’t yell at him. He looks exactly like that famous peeing cherub fountain. He grabs his unit. leans back and wheeee!

But that night he played the trump card. The doo doo card. I didn’t actually see it happen. I was dealing with an Elijah bath emergency. I came back to the TV room to find a MASSIVE poop, which I attributed to Grover. Whilst yelling at him, I noticed a poopy footprint path across the room, ending in Luca’s butt.

By the way, he wasn’t limping.

Okay

Aside from the millions of dollars in advertising dollars the blog brings in, the point of HamannEggs is to collect stories. Yes, stories about me kicking doors in (see yesterday’s post). But also stories about the unbelievable cute things my sons and wife do.

This is usually accomplished through the typing of words. However, there is the occasional cuteness that can’t be described with words. And I’m struggling right now with one such cutness.

It’s the way Luca says “Okay.”

Despite his huge vocabulary, there are tons of things he wants that he can’t articulate. So he’s usually reduced to crying. Which triggers a rapid 20 questions from Di or me:

“Do you want uppie? Do you want a car? Do you want cheese? Do you want Star Wars guys? Do you want your bear? Do you want a second term for Obama? Or you want to eat sand? Do you want your shoes on? Do you want your shoes off? Do you want your brother to stop pushing you? Do you want to listen to Wu-Tang Clan? Do you want to stick our hand in the fireplace? Do you want a BB Gun? Do you want a haircut?”

Luca usually listens intensely to his choices over the sound of his own crying. When he hears something that matches his need at that second, he immediately stops crying and says his magic word.

“Okay.”

There are definitely two sections to his pronunciation. He hits the “O” part with a delightful lilt. But he pronounces it as a “Ho!”

Then it’s time for the “Kay.” He says it with an accent that’s a mixture of Southern, Canadian and East Indian. He draws out the “Y” impossibly long. In fact, I think he’s still saying, “yyyyyy,” from his 7am yogurt request.

So for you keeping score, it’s “Ho-kayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.”

Yeah. Sorry readers. You have to be there.

Fixing a door

I’m beginning to wonder if Elijah keeps a secret list of stuff that drives me nuts. And he just goes down the list item by item in an attempt to make me lose it. Because me freaking out is kind of hilarious.

But yesterday I made a pact with myself that I would not yell. No matter what he did, I would be Mr. Rogers. He started off at 6am by attempting to shove his brother off the daybed onto his head. I grabbed him by the arm and shouted, “NO PUSHING YOUR BROTHER!!!”

Damn it. I played a Mulligan and started over.

I made it through a kicking fit at the park. I made it through a refusal to eat lunch combined with a “I’m starving” whining bout an hour later. I made it through 1,000 requests to watch TV, play on the computer or watch TV on the computer. I made it through at least 12 pushes of his brother to the floor.

But then Diana asked me to put together a picnic table in the back yard. With Eli. I knew this would be a test like no other. I plastered on a smile and went to work. I tried to keep him busy with meaningless tasks like sorting screws and washers (there were, literally, over a hundred of each for the picnic table).

3 vital screws and 2 vital washers immediately went permanently missing in the grass. My fault. My fault. Don’t let a 3 year old sort building equipment. I took a deep, deep breath and asked him to collect the packing plastic. In the process, he stepping in every Grover poop in the yard. My fault. My fault. Should have given the dog to gypsies before we started.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in as calm a voice as I could saying, “Please don’t hang on that please don’t take that please don’t push your brother please don’t touch the Grover poop please don’t touch that please don’t poke your brother with that.”

As the sun set, I actually completed the picnic table, minus one bench that required the vital screws and vital washers. And I also managed to do it without screaming at my son. Diana handed me a well deserved beer and I sat on my creation while she got the kids ready for bed.

I walked downstairs, feeling like I was actually a good dad. I heard Diana say, “There’s your dada. Maybe he can help.”

It turns out, Eli had locked our bedroom door and closed it. A lock that was unpickable.


I could hear a spring pop lose in my head. I put on a pair of hiking boots and kicked our door in. I screamed that birthdays were off in this house. No one would ever get a birthday present ever ever ever because we had to buy a new door.

Later that night, I crawled into bed with Eli and said I was sorry for being so mad. His birthday would, in fact, happen and I loved him very much. It was just that sometimes he does stuff that just gets me really wound up.

He looked at me with genuine curiosity and said, “Stuff like what?”

Thug Brains

Alright, I’ll admit it. I want Luca to be a thug. Part of it is his Godfather name. He just seems like he should be breaking other baby’s thumbs. Part of it is his looks. Don’t get me wrong, the kid is adorable. Just ask every single grocery check out person in the greater Denver area. But there’s just something so…soccer hooligan about him. Whenever he stumbles into the room, I expect him to do that “Oy!” thing and then give you that obscene gesture where they stick their two fingers up in a V shape. I want him to be a blunt object. All muscle and no brains. I think it’s because I have a long list of people I’d like him to beat up.

But, like all of my sick, pathetic wishes for my boys, it isn’t going to happen.

I think Luca is a genius.

At his check up yesterday, his speaking ability shocked the “I’ve seen everything” Pediatrician. The kid has actual two word sentences. “Dada hoooome” is my current favorite. Partly because it’s about me and partly because it’s a dead on E.T. impersonation.

Here’s another example. A little while ago, Diana and the boys were at the Denver library. One of the librarians was reading some kind of kids book and Luca toddled up to her and said, “Bon Bear Bon Bear.” The librarian looked at him like he was an alien (E.T.). Why? Because the book she was reading was not the classic “Brown Bear,” but another book by the same ILLUSTRATOR as “Brown Bear.”

I mean, really? Identifying an illustrator at age 15 months? Why do I have to be the dumb one in the house? I was kind of hoping Luca would be the one who I spend my Saturdays with, drooling and rubbing margarine on our stomachs.

Maybe Luca will end up being a genius thug. Maybe he’ll say, “I plan on lacerating your cerebral cortex,” when he’s giving a guy the business.

But based on his recent addiction to smoochies, I don’t think I’m even going to get that.

Choked Up

And now…a cautionary tale.

This morning, Diana was out running (you sign a contract stating you will exercise in Colorado. It’s the law) and Elijah and I were ignoring each other and playing on our respective computers. I heard Luca engaged in his post nap cackle over the baby monitor and I went down to retrieve him.

Luca and I returned upstairs stairs and I found Eli standing on our dining room window sill. About 2 feet off the ground. The fact that he was standing on the window sill didn’t horrify me. Nor did the fact that he was nude.

It was the fact that he had the curtain cord wrapped around his neck. He had a delightful, “Ain’t I a little stinker?” look on his face.

The words “Get that f*cking cord off your neck” didn’t quite exit my mouth before Eli lost his balance and fell of the sill. He bashed his head and proceeded to hang himself for the .25 seconds it took me to race across the house.

Now, I don’t know why God decided to let me off the hook today. But he did. And I thank him for it. Eli was unhurt. Completely freaked out, bawling hysterically with a nice rope burn around his neck, but unhurt.

In the next two minutes, I set off on a raving lunatic rant that encompassed the following:

-I loved him very, very much.
-He was an idiot.

I’m not sure why we didn’t put all our curtain cords out of reach. Before they let you out of the hospital with your newborn born they make sure that: a) your house is not currently on fire, and b) you don’t have any cords dangling that can choke them.

Eventually we all calmed down about the dodged bullet. But Diana and I took turns the rest of the day making Elijah promise us he would never climb on window sills and never, never wrap something around his neck.

It got to the point where when Di or I asked him a non cord question he’d robotically answer, “I will never wrap anything around my neck.”

A little while ago I explained that I had, in fact, saved his life. And by Wookie law, he owed me a Life Debt. Which meant when one of my kidneys goes out, I’m coming knocking on his door.

And parents. Secure. Your. Curtains.

Smash

Poor, poor Luca. Being the smallest being in our house has its disadvantages. Mainly, getting knocked on your ass 50 times a day.

I can see past the Grover body checks. First off, he’s a dog and doesn’t have the brain capacity to understand the physics of 25lb baby + 75lb dog going 30mph. To add insult to injury, Grover’s tail is at perfect height to whack Luca in the eyeball whenever that giant mop goes swish swish swishing around.

Elijah is a little more diabolical. He takes great delight in knocking Luca to the ground. But he is smart enough to do it when his easily angered parents are not in the room. We’ll typically come running to the sound of Luca howling and find Eli standing over his crumpled body. When an explanation is demanded, his reply is always, “I don’t know what happened. He just…fell.”

And then it’s off to the stairs for a time out.

Luca is constantly covered with bumps and bruises and scars. It’s a good thing he has a short memory or else I’m sure he’d refuse to leave his crib.

This is usually the part where I regale you with a story about how I did the very thing I described in the first half of the blog.

On Saturday, Diana was out watching a movie. I think it was called “Get Me The Heck Away From These Children.” I was in the bathroom making a number one. Luca was standing in the doorway watching me with great interest and giving his usual commentary.

“Pee pee.”

I finished and in all likelihood washed my hands. I swung the door and it wouldn’t close all the way. “Hmmm,” I thought, “This door usually closes with a pleasing slam sound.” So I swung the door again. And again.

Then I looked down.

Luca was standing just below me. With his fingers in the door jamb. I was doing my best to sever his fingers off at the knuckles. The reason I couldn’t hear him was he was engaged in a silent scream.

Bad dad, Bad dad. I scooped him up and tried to soothe his now very vocal screams. Thankfully, his fingers were still attached, but they had huge gouges in each and every one.

Grover and Elijah looked at me like I was a monster.