Two Luca Stories

Luca’s official birthday party went off without a hitch. It was great and hilarious and filled with friends and cousins and cake and pizza and probably the greatest fire truck in the world (thanks Iris). But you know what the problem with a perfect birthday party is? It ain’t blog worthy. Filling this page with a detailed account of how well behaved everyone was is b-o-r-i-n-g.

So I’ll give you 2 short Luca stories to make up for it. One involving poop.

ONE:
Diana says it best: On time for a Hamann is ten minutes early. I need to be on time. Ask anyone who works with or is married to me. On. Time. Unluckily for me, no one in my direct family takes after me. On Thanksgiving, our goal was to hit the road in the morning. And well after noon no one was ready to go but me and I was a little testy about it.

I gathered up a sopping wet pile of clothes from the bathroom and huffed up the stairs. Half way up, I smelled something…evil. Logically and illogically, I placed my nose into the wet clothes in my hands to find the source of the stink. Nope, just garden variety urine. Three quarters up the stairs I found it: a perfect poop. It was really flawless. If I asked you to draw me a piece of poop, this would be it.

Naturally, I blamed Grover. I balled up my fist (in my mind) and searched him out. But at the top of the stairs I found Luca, naked, standing over another perfect poop.

He said, “I made a poop, Dad!”

“I can see that,” I said, trying to act angry.

Luca said, “I sit on the steps?” (For those of you who are new to the blog, you wrong me? You sit on the steps).

I said, “Sit? You’re one letter off, pal.”

TWO:
As I alluded to on Luca’s birthday post, we are digging out our basement. Our current basement was built in 1890, apparently when people only grew to be 4’5” tall. So I have to duck whenever I want to sneak beers in peace.

Anyhoo, Diana got the idea to dig out our basement to make it normal person sized and eventually make a kick ass playroom to sneak beers in. Digging out our basement is the awesome Tim, from Windy City Unlimited Concrete. Tim could not be more Chicago if he was constructed from parts of Mike Ditka and Dorothy Hamill (She’s way more Chicago than Capone).

Anyway, as a pure Chicago man, he feels the need to come over every once and a while to make sure as the man of the house I’m okay with his work. He’ll come over and pound on our door, crush my hand in his paw and use words I have never heard like “underpinning” and “manual labor.”

The other night, Tim was standing in our basement explaining again how this procedure will not destroy our house when Elijah came running in. I shooed him out saying, “No no no. Men talking here. Besides, it’s dirty down here. And double besides, you need to be upstairs watching Luca.”

As if on cue, Luca entered the filthy basement having freshly removed every bit of clothing I had recently applied. Luca then began a very authentic impersonation of a home inspector. Looking in corners, kicking cement, knocking on pipes. Tim didn’t miss a beat except to say, “Kids are funny,” and continued speaking contractor-ese to me.

p.s. My brother Steve wanted me to advertise his new art blog to all seven of my readers: stevehamann.blogspot.com.