We Heart Grandpa

A couple weeks ago, I took the boys down to my dad’s house for his birthday.  It was meant to be a surprise that all his grandkids were visiting.  But I blew it in a way that doesn’t portray me in the heroic light I am used to portraying myself in the blog. 

Anyway, I suggested to the boys that they choose their Grandpa’s birthday present.  I had visions of giant purple muumuus and Terminator sunglasses dancing in my head.

Luca immediately declared his pro-fire truck stance and would not budge.  Elijah was a bit more thoughtful.   He hemmed and hawed.  At one point I asked him to think about what kinds of things Grandpa liked and he replied, “Grandpa likes caring for people.” Solidifying a permanent place in my dad’s will.

The day before we left for Peoria, I gleefully announced we were going to Target and commence buying something useless slash hilarious. 

But Eli spoke up, “What if we bought Grandpa a shirt that says ‘Happy Birthday?’”

Wow.  Awesome idea.  It just so happens I have a friend who owns a T-Shirt screen printing company called “T-Shirt Deli.”  It’s styled like a real deli, with shirts in a meat case and they wrap their goods in butcher paper and it’s all very hip.

I immediately loaded the boys into the car and we sped off to the once ultra hip part of Chicago, Bucktown.  I used to live there when it was cool and you could get murdered and stuff.  But now it’s all gentrified, man.  With their Starbucks and dumb Dads shopping with their kids getting birthday presents for their grandparents. 

Anyhoo, while we were driving, I asked the guys what they wanted Grandpa’s shirt to say.

Eli said, “Happy birthday, Grandpa.  We love you.  Love, Dada, Mommy, Luca, Elijah and Grover.”

“Well, I’m not sure we’ll be able to fit all that on one shirt.  And I think they charge by the letter.  So let’s try a shorter message.”

“How about, ‘We love Grandpa?’”

I said, “Well.  See.  He’ll be wearing the shirt.  So it may look a little weird for him to be wearing a shirt that says ‘We love Grandpa’ when he’s Grandpa.  It’ll look like he loves himself…”

I looked in the rearview mirror and could tell Eli had no idea what I was talking about.  And the fractured logic added just enough purple muumuu-ness to make this another successful Eli and Luca present.

We arrived at the store and put the order in.  Extra large blue t-shirt with red letters.  Perfect for a retiree.  The very nice and ultra hip employee tried to point out that it didn’t make sense for us to give Grandpa a shirt that says he loves Grandpa…

I cut her off and said that’s the shirt we wanted.  We added a heart shape instead of the word “love” just because.

My dad loved it. 

p.s.  Today’s photos are of Luca’s first day at pre-school.  Diana didn’t give me any details aside from the fact that Luca cried a bit but was okay.  You gotta love that little chunk.

Mystery Toe Girl

This morning, I was taking my daily shower and marveling once again at my rapid expansion of body hair when Elijah called from the kitchen.

“Dad!  Mom says I have to get in the shower with you so I’ll be clean for school!”

“Climb aboard.”

Elijah gleefully jumped in and took over position under the water.

“Hey Dad.  Remember when we were in the shower that one time and we both peed?  I’m peeing now!”

“Great.  Say…how is Kindergarten going, man?”

“Great.”

“Are you having fun?”

“Yes.”

“Have you made any new friends?”

“Yes.”

“Who is your favorite friend?”

Eli lit up like a firecracker, “The girl with the broken toe!”

Oh yeah.  Her.  The only thing Elijah seems to have remembered from his first week of school is one of his classmates broke her toe and it was all twisty and bent and the nail looked gross.  And so forth.

I said, “Oh cool.  What’s her name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Your best friend at school is someone whose name you can’t remember?”

“She broke her toe!”

I mentioned that if he wanted this girl to stay his best friend, he may want to learn her actual name.  Elijah looked at me like I was nuts and we commenced washing his mop top.

First Day Of School

You just get one of these, don’t you?  And I’m happy and devastated I could be there for Elijah’s.

For some reason, Luca decided to sleep in this morning.  I think it was because he wanted me to dump my panic exclusively on Elijah.  And dump I did.  I paced around, unable to eat the pancake breakfast Diana had prepared.  A full hour before we had to be at school, I was declaring us late and the day ruined.

Diana smartly gave me simple, mind occupying tasks.  Take dog out.  Find shoes.  Brush boys’ teeth.  But I still couldn’t calm down.  What if he gets scared?  What if he has to go pee pee?  Or worse, poo poo?  We should have broken into the school over the weekend to practice walking to the gym. 

Elijah, on the other hand, was only concerned that Diana not put cheese on his turkey sandwich.  And as yin to my bowel clenched yang, Diana calmly gave Eli bits of first day advice. 

“If you see a kid who is by himself or scared, go over and introduce yourself.  Try to make them feel better.”

“What if Eli is the one who is scared or by himself?”  I shouted into my fist.  I checked and rechecked his backpack.  Luca, who was now awake, stayed close to the walls, trying to avoid eye contact.

We drove the 2 blocks to school because what if we were late?  What?  If?  We?  Were?  Late?

Our instructions were to line up in a special place at 9am sharp.  We found a mass of parents and kids milling around.  It took every ounce of self control I had to stop from screaming at everyone to get in line now or else we’d be in big trouble.

Eli immediately found his pal, Charlie and they held hands, which eliminated the last bits of anxiety they had.  I realized I was holding Diana’s hand in a vice grip without knowing.

The boys found some other of their pals, including Lincoln from down the street.  Lincoln was having a harder time with his first day of school and seemed to be pretty nervous.  I gave Lincoln a reassuring look that said, “I am panicking too, Lincoln.  It doesn’t get better with age.”

A bell sounded from inside the school and the doors swung open.  Instinctively, the kids lined up and the parents drifted away.  I bent down to Eli and whispered, “I love you, pal,” through tear blurred eyes.   

He took pity on me and said, “I love you too.”

 And then he was off. 

Mighty Morphin Cough

First Elijah had it.  Then he passed it on to Luca.  I’m not sure who had it before Eli.  But my guess is Satan.  But this cough has been mildly unpleasant. 

It’s the kind of cough that shakes Luca awake at night.  Many, many times.   That wake is always followed by crying.  The kind f crying that’s best soothed by the loving touch of a mom.  Unfortunately for both Luca and me, Diana can never hear it due to her not being able to hear stuff syndrome.

Now, Luca’s favorite TV show, by far, is “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.”  It’s a  1990’s kung fu show that Netflix resurrected.  Thanks for nothing, Netflix.  The show is just awful.  It’s essentially re-edited Japanese martial arts footage sliced with some of the worst American acting ever.  The spandex clad teen actors aren’t even cute enough to warrant me creepily watching.

Anyhoo, every night I lay down with Luca to rub his back and tell him he’s okay after he hacks up a fur ball.  Which is all well and good until he falls asleep.  Then he enters Mighty Morphin’ Mode.  Which involves flopping around, flailing his arms and legs into my face.   I have to place my arms in front of my face to prevent him from giving me an instant Jimmy Durante.  But even asleep he can sense when I crawl away, because when I do, he instantly coughs himself awake again and the whole kung fu thing starts again.

The other day, Luca seemed to be okay.  The worst of the coughing seemed to have passed.  But as soon as we put him down for bed, he erupted into an epic coughing fit.  When I checked on him, the whole front of his face was covered in blood.

I quickly wiped the gore from him and told Diana to call the doctor.

It wasn’t our awesome regular doctor on call. It was Dr Vague.  After hearing the symptoms, he said, “Well.  It could be nothing.  Or it could be something terrible and unthinkable.  Bye bye.”

So I decided to monitor him all night because, well, who is going to sleep after a diagnosis like that?  I placed one of our spare kid’s mattresses next to Luca’s bed, just out of Kung Fu reach.

But after an hour of sleeping, I woke up to Luca’s fist in my face, as he had rolled onto my makeshift bed.  He ended up fine.  But I have a split lip.

Kindergarten

Why oh why do these children keep growing up?  It was with great melancholy that I visited Elijah’s future kindergarten class last night.  By some lovely star alignment and just a little bit of me ignoring my German/Lutheran workaholic gene pool, I took off work early and met the gang in time to travel the 2.5 blocks to Eli’s school (by car).

We entered Washington School and walked down several brightly colored hallways lined with red and yellow lockers.  I managed to suppress the deep seeded childhood fears of the first day of school and put on a pretty casual front. 

“Oh hey.  This is all completely new and different.  No need to throw up in a drinking fountain.”

We eventually entered Eli’s kindergarten classroom.  I was instantly overcome by a single thought: “Is Eli’s teacher a hoarder?”

There was stuff piled everywhere.  Books stacked to the ceiling.  Pile after pile of abandoned telephones.  Crayons.  Stuffed animals.  And blocks.  Oh, there were so many blocks.

Eli and Luca immediately raced around the room, playing with everything they could get their hands on.  Luca was particularly excited by the teetering stack of plastic foreman hats.

Eli’s teacher strolled into the room.  A lovely older woman who spoke like a Sesame Street character.  Even to us, she was more animated than any human I’ve ever seen.  I found myself retreating into silent mode to compensate for her giddiness.

After a brief interview with Eli, she asked us if there was anything she should know about our son before the school year began.

I thought, “He’s the greatest 5 year old in the world.  Every thing that comes out of his mouth is brilliant, hilarious and breaks my heart.  He is polite and kind and genuinely cares about other people.  He loves the color pink and doesn’t care if it’s a girl color.  His laugh is what gets me out of bed in the morning.”

I said, “Nope.  Nothing.”