Daylight Savings Time Prep

Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend. So it’s Fall. Which means we move the clock over to the window and throw it in the neighbor’s birdbath.

The HamannEggs team is a little scared about the impending time switch. Because Elijah has been waking up at 5am lately. So very shortly it will be Elijah waking up at 4am. And I flat out refuse to wake up earlier than our nation’s senior citizens. They deserve to have first dibs at the buffet tables.

So we’ve been trying to shake up Eli’s sleep schedule in an attempt to knock his wake up time back a few minutes. We’ve put him to bed early. We’ve put him to bed late. We’ve made him take extra naps, no naps, naps on Grover. But no luck. At 5am sharp every morning we hear the telltale, “Aaarrrghh,” from Eli’s crib.

And then we broke him.

Two nights ago, he punished us by not sleeping a wink. Not a moment from 7:30pm to 5am. So our house became two zones. Zone 1: Swear Zone. Zone 2: Helpful Parent Zone. Allow me to demonstrate.

There would be exactly 35 seconds of silence where Diana and I would pray a little pray that this would be the moment he would finally sleep. And then we’d hear, “Aaaarrrgh.” At which point we’d start with the swearing. “Why won’t he #%$@##%@% sleep? What the &^%? *(&^*&^%%$ damned (&*&%!”

But then we (Diana) would open our adjoining doors and walk into Zone 2. “Hey buddy. I’m so sorry you can’t sleepy. What can I do? Rock you? Here. Let me rock you. I love you.”

Zone 1 got progressively more sweary throughout the night.

At 5am, Diana decided enough was enough and took the child downstairs for Sesame Street. I came down later and tried to talk to Elijah.

“Hey man. Why didn’t you sleep last night? Don’t you know little guys need sleep?”

“Shoe.”

“Yes I see the shoe. But mommies need sleep. Babies need sleep too.”

“Shoe.”

“Ok, let’s put the shoe down.”

“Shoe.”

Chunk

I’ve gone on record as saying I don’t like Elijah’s long hair. For one thing, being as beautiful as he makes gender identification difficult enough for the general public as it is. Add in golden locks and we might as well have named him Elaine.

But whenever I complain about it, Diana uses her secret weapon. She simply says, “If you want him to have shorter hair, YOU cut it.” At which point I’d slink away, mumbling about how I get no respect I tells ya, and tugging at my tie. My laziness is my Achilles heel.

Well, last night I’d had enough of him looking like a cross between Brian Bosworth and Farah Faucet. So while I was in mid bath with Eli, I proclaimed loudly, “It's time! Woman, get me some scissors!” Diana yelled from the other room, “No no no no!” But I was adamant. She reluctantly handed me some shears and a plastic comb and sat perched on the end of the tub.

“Careful. He gets his power from his hair,” she said.

I ignored her and took a huge chunk out of our tiny Sampson’s hair. And then another and then another. Diana began to shake. “Give me those scissors, you butcher.”

We wrestled over the boy’s hair, snatching the scissors out of each other’s hands and attempting our own version of awesome. By the time he emerged from the bath he looked like someone had at his hair with a band saw and a spoon.

Luckily, Eli doesn’t seem to care about his looks. His mother, on the other hand, is mortified at his homespun do.

Today’s photo is all that Diana will allow the viewing public to see of his new haircut.

Bullies

Life is pretty easy for a beautiful baby. You essentially have to blink your big blue eyes and the world is your oyster. This morning Elijah got a tough life lesson in the form of his first bully.

If you’re gonna write a family sitcom, sooner or later you have to do the inevitable bully storyline. Remember when Bobby Brady punched out that kid who made fun of Cindy’s lisp and then gave the bully a lisp and he had to borrow Cindy’s “She Sells Sea Shells By The Seashore” book?

Now, why can I remember that but not remember to rinse off my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher? Oh yeah. The booze.

Eli was already off his game this morning because he woke me up at 5:15am and I spent the next two hours asking him why he enjoys torturing me. By the time Di woke up Elijah was sleepy and whiney and in a snit. So Diana went to her “go to” whenever he gets to be a sourpuss: The Library!

As I’ve said before, Elijah loves the library. Mostly because there is a giant stuffed bear and lots of spit-covered toys. But I secretly think he likes it because the other moms fawn over him and look at their own children like there are ogres compared to our curly blonde cutie pie.

But Elijah encountered a young, rolly polly Germany toddler who, unprovoked, stiff armed my son and knocked him to the ground. Apparently the only injury sustained was a crushing realization that not everyone is nice and cool and gives you kisses. And some people, some two-year-olds in fact, are actually future a-holes.

When Diana told me this story, I was fairly bummed out. I didn’t want him to learn some people are a-holes until he was well into his advertising career.

p.s. Today’s photo is a very blurry representation of Eli trying on his anti a-hole helmet.

Christening 2: Elijah’s Revenge

Last Sunday was Steve’s daughter Rory’s wedding. I mean christening. Diana had an out of town Wine Goddess thing, so it was just Elijah and me. I figured I’d put the kid in a cute outfit, we’d sit quietly in the pew, pray, and have a pizza party.

Right? Right?

Once we arrived at the church, Elijah caught a terrible case of the Terrible Twos. As soon as the priest started his routine, Eli recognized him as the guy who poured holy water on his head six months ago. His reaction was, “He aint getting me this time. I can run now.”

And no amount of looking through the hymnal would appease him. He started shrieking and I realized I was fast becoming known as the Guy Who Ruined The Christening.

So I snatched the squirming screaming boy and ran out of the church’s side door. Eli instantly calmed down and started sniffing the church flowers.

But it was 55 degrees and Eli was jacketless. I thought the only worse then ruining the christening was ruining my son. So I carried him back inside the church. I was able to watch the priest pour holy water over Rory’s head. She barely blinked. She had this awesome “Oh, well I guess I’m Catholic now” expression.

Eli began shrieking again and I worried the priest would drop the next baby into the bath. So I spent the rest of the time bouncing inside and outside based on Eli’s shivering and shrieking.

The pizza party was a bit better. Elijah was able to chase various children around. But the moment I put him in a highchair to eat delicious pizza, he pitched his head back and started howling. I decided this was the perfect time to buy everyone in the party a beer on me.

I got Eli home and found the angriest poo I’ve ever seen in his diaper. Maybe that was causing his troubles.

p.s. Today’s photo is of Rory and Jabba The Hut. I’m sure she’ll be totally cool with that shot when she’s 16.

Fool Me Three Times, Shame On Everybody

I’m tempted to just type “So, Diana was in the tub with Elijah…” and let everyone just fill in their own scatological story. But this one is too good to pass up.

I was in the office reading up on Huffington Post, the world’s most liberal website. Did you know Republicans are evil? Anyhoo, I heard Diana shout, “Rick! Get in here!” from the bathroom.

I strolled over knowing full well what awaited me: An angry mommy, an oblivious baby and a floating poopie. I was right on all accounts. As I lifted the slightly lighter Eli out of the tub, Diana gave me the details.

Apparently, in the midst of squirting each other with plastic bath toys, Eli suddenly stood up and said, “Pooh…”

Diana, seeing no poo, thought he did a #1 in the tub. Gross enough, but she corrected him in an attempt to lay the groundwork for future potty training. “No, pee!”

“Pooh,” Elijah said.

“Pee,” Diana said.

“Pooh,” Elijah said.

“Pee,” Diana said.

And then Eli made his point. A horrible, horrible hilarious point.

Since that poo story is a little, um, light, I’ll give you a two-fer today. Eli loves the alphabet. Thank you Sesame Street. But he still hasn’t gotten the hang of all 26 letters. In fact, he really only knows E, C, D, and Z. But he knows the cadence of the alphabet song. So feel free to sing along with Eli as he recites the alphabet:

E C DD E C D, EE, DD EE D, CC DD EE C, CC DD and Z.

CSI Sesame Street

I rushed home last night to watch the presidential debate. Luckily, Elijah was still awake and finishing up Naked Crazies upstairs. So I rushed up to force him into kissing me. I popped into our bedroom to change clothes and I stopped short.

Laying on our bed, was a gutted, dismembered corpse of the Sesame Street character Elmo. All that was left was a head and red-furred skin. As shocked as I was about the viciousness of the attack, I was more traumatized by the killer’s need to display the body on our marital bed. The eyes. They wouldn’t stop looking at me.

Eli stumbled into the room and I said in a whisper, “Honey…did…did you kill Elmo?” Eli laughed and ran back to his toys.

I began to panic. Surely a beloved Muppet like Elmo would be missed. And since Elijah is Elmo’s #1 fan, he’d be at the top of the police’s list of suspects.

I had to make a plan. I had to get the body out of the house without the neighbors seeing, or Oscar The Grouch (it was trash day, after all).

But as I collected the body, I realized it was a Halloween costume.

So he’s going as Elmo this year, everybody! Set your cameras for cute. Based on his general hatred of having anything on his head, I’m guessing he will be in the Elmo corpse costume for about 25 seconds.

p.s. I keep forgetting. Eli now dips towels into Grover’s water dish and tries to suck on the dog water. We have to put up a baby gate to prevent him from being the grossest baby in the history of the world. That has nothing to do with today's post, but I'm sure I'll want to remember this tidbit of gross years from now.

Young Man And The Sea

We took Elijah and Grover to the beach Sunday to celebrate the last day of Indian Summer before the hammer of winter rubs our face into snow drifts and shoves snow down our jackets and hits us with a snowball I’m SURE has stones in it.

As usual, Grover was intent on chasing his tennis ball until either his heart exploded or my arm fell off. Diana was intent on keeping an eye on our wandering Catholic.

About 3,000 tennis ball throws in, Eli turned on a dime and went walking away from us. Diana gave me a look like, “Let’s see where this goes,” and we followed the child. Eli started walking towards the lake, which was a good three football fields away.

Never once did he turn around to see if we were watching him, following him or preventing him from being kidnapped by Northwestern Unversity students bent on forcing him into their sick world of study groups and Birkenstocks.

Eli continued on and into the lake. Way into the lake. He did not stop until a wave knocked him backwards. And luckily into the arms of his mother. He snapped out of his trance and said, “Up up up!”

Once Diana put him down again, he started off for the lake and got soaked and knocked over again. Diana grabbed him and we started for the car with Eli wailing and pointing back to the lake.

I began to wonder if Eli was really our baby. Maybe he was an alien from planet Lake Michigan, who was being called home a la E.T. That would suck. I really like Eli.