Play D’oh!

Elijah isn’t into toys. There. I said it. As someone who spent his entire childhood hording plastic action figures and most of his pre-marriage adulthood hoarding plastic action figures, this depresses me to no end. Part of why I agreed to have a baby, aside from the obvious chore relief, was so I could buy toys and pretend to give them to my offspring.

While other almost two year olds are obsessed with miniature cars or plastic dinosaurs or blocks, Eli prefers to use them as objects d’throwing. Every few months, we’ll arrive home from Target with a new batch of toy experiments.

Oversized Leggos? Meh. Sesame Street figurines? No thank you. Imported Porsche die cast cars? Nope. Crayons and markers? Only for wall drawing.

I was on my way out the door yesterday and saw a note on the fridge. “Play Dough.” I asked Diana, “Really? Play Dough? Isn’t that a bit, um, lame?” I remembered the only thing you can really make with the stuff is a snake/phallus. And the little bits irritate your mom when you grind them into the carpet.

But after watching Elijah pour out the contents of a Bucket ‘O Blocks only to use the bucket as a hat, I figured what the hey?

So I did a little experiment. I bought a small batch of Play Dough, plus a packet of plastic figures from his second favorite TV show, “Yo Gabba Gabba.”

No contest. While he played with the Gabba plastic stuff for as long as it took to huck them across the room, he LOVED the Play Dough. He spent the majority of the day on our kitchen floor saying, “Squishy,” over and over.

Diana sat with him and made beautiful lobsters. I rolled a red wiener and said, “Look! A pee pee!”

I was banished to the living room where I could play with my Yo Gabba Gabba toys in peace.

APTBWSS: 1 Eli: 0

I’m looking out the window of the office right now at the Adventure Playsets Trail Blazer Wooden Swing Set (APTBWSS). And it’s looking right back at me. It’s talking. I can’t hear it through the window, but I can see its lips move.

“I…couldn’t…get…you…but…I’ll…get…your…son.”

And the APTBWSS is well on its way, as evidenced by the two, count ‘em two gashes on Elijah’s face. According to Diana, Eli was innocently climbing the APTBWSS’s ladder when the APTBWSS shook him off. I imagine it laughed like Vincent Price. “Moooahahahah!” Eli also landed on his spine upon reaching the bottom of the slide several times. The APTBWSS shook with laughter. In my mind.

I think this is how kids get Scoliosis spines.

This afternoon, I dragged out my lawn mower’s gas can and a box of matches. “Hurt my son, will ya?” I shouted. As I was about to turn it into a funeral pyre, Eli gleefully climbed the ladder and slid down the slide giggling the whole time. Although he did land with a disturbing spine rattle.

I’ll let you live today, APTBWSS. But I have my eye on you.

Oh, and thanks to all the HamannEggs readers who inserted comments to my last post about no one reading the site. I clearly have loyal readers and a malfunctioning monitoring service.

And yes, I was fishing for compliments. Today, I’d like you to tell me how handsome I am in the comments section.

Who’s On First

My lovely wife Diana and my closer than close friend Patrick are both deaf in one ear. That, combined with my severe case of the mumbles reduces any conversation into a series of me repeating myself. And now it has trickled down to Elijah. Apparently, Elijah believes any and all questions must first be answered with either “What?” or “Huh? Which reduces our conversations to a Laurel and Hardy routine.

“Elijah, do you want some milkies?”

“Huh?”

“Do you want some milk?”

“What?”

“Do. You. Want. Milk?”

“Huh?”

“Milk. It comes from a cow. Do you want me to put it in a sippie cup?”

“What?”

“You can hear me.”

“What?”

“Keep it up and I’m not going to give you any milk ever again.”

“Huh?”

“Do you want me to beat you?”

“Huh?”

You may be thinking that Eli actually has a hearing problem and I am a terrible parent for making fun. But remember, if I am trying to sneak by him in the morning to make a 6am flight to Atlanta he can hear carpet strands bend under my feet and will wake up angry.

Out of curiosity, I signed up for a website monitoring service to see how many people read the blog. Yesterday’s total? Zero point zero. Not even Diana looked at the site.

Well, at least I still think I’m hilarious. And Grover does. But he can’t read. So he gets a pass.

The Standoff

The moment I entered the house last night I knew something was up. Grover didn’t leap on me. I found him on the couch hiding his face under his paws. I also knew something was up from the angry, angry howls emanating from the back of the house.

Diana casually entered the living room dressed in her robe. She began tidying up, apparently oblivious to the screeching. I asked Di if she put a rabid ferret into the tub with our son a la “The Big Lebowski.”

“We’re having a disagreement,” she said oh so casually.

Over the increasingly shrill screams from the bathroom, Diana explained. Apparently, the end of their bath routine is the ceremonial pulling of the plug. And last night, Elijah refused to pull the plug. And Diana refused to get him out of the tub until he pulled the plug.

Irresistible force meets immovable object.

Allow me to digress. Elijah gets his stubbornness 100% from his mother. I am a proud doormat. I prefer the French version of conflict resolution. You can have our country, but we get to keep all the wine we can hide.

So I did what I always do when people are fighting. I went upstairs and folded socks. Grover, also a doormat, followed me upstairs with his tail between his legs. I heard them downstairs.

“Aaarrgh! Mommy!”

“Pull the plug and I’ll come get you.”

“No!!!!! Up! Up! Mommy!”

And so on. Diana eventually came up and helped me fold clothes. I asked her if we were planning on leaving our son in the bath all night. Diana just smiled. I asked, and received permission, to act as intermediary.

I went downstairs and found Eli laying in a 3/4 empty tub. He saw me and started shouting, “Up! Up! Dada!”

I said, “Mommy wants you to pull the plug. Can you do that?”

“No! No! No!”

I slapped myself in the face, knowing this conflict was the only thing standing between me and a delicious glass of red wine.
I said, “How about this. We’ll unplug it together. Ok?”

Eli thought for a moment and said, “Ok.”

I put my hand on the plug and he half heartedly laid a finger on my hand. Good enough for government work.

I took him upstairs and mother and son lovingly reunited as if nothing happened. Diana asked me if Eli unplugged the plug.

“He sure did,” I said. And then went back to my place in front of the door.

We did it!

And by “we” I mean “My Father-In-Law Don Jacklich.” For the last week, I’d been having nightly nightmares. I’d wake up, covered in sweat, desperately clutching my appendages while screaming, “No! Adventure Playsets Trail Blazer Wooden Swing Set!”

But I encountered two, count ‘em two miracles this week. One named Diana Hamann and one named Don Jacklich.

Through the marvel that is Craig’s List, Diana found the exact same Adventures Playsets Trail Blazer Wooden Swing Set (APTBWSS) in a nearby suburb. Already put together. All we’d have to do is break it down into manageable pieces and move it across the suburbosphere.

Enter Don Jacklich.

We cruised out to the APTBWSS in Diana’s brother’s truck. After listening to the previous owner describe how awful it was to construct the APTBWSS and how hard it is to re-attach thumbs, Don said, “Ricky, go fetch my tools.”

By the time I came back from the truck, the thing was completely dismantled. The previous owner stood there, ashen faced. He said, “There was a puff of smoke and a sharp crack of lightening and…and…” The man backed away from Don, frightened.

Don just dusted his hands and said, “Go call your wife. Tell her Union rules demand two chilled beers before we put this back together.”

We.

The re-construction was only slightly more difficult. Mostly because Elijah was so excited by the prospect of a swing set in the back yard that he cried hysterically. Don would sometimes allow me the honor of tightening a bolt. Much in the same way you let a child tap a hammer on a discarded two by four.

Needless to say, Eli loves the APTBWSS, And I get to keep all my appendages.

Nice

Well gang. It happened. The Terrible Twos have descended on us like the Huns. Diana called me yesterday and said they had to leave the grocery store because Eli was having a massive fit. While my poor wife was trying not to look like a parental cliché, an Asian woman approached. Di thought she was going to have to listen to a broken-English admonishment about our wriggly disturbance of the peace.

“How old he?” she said.

“Almost 2,” Di answered while attempting to prevent Eli from destroying the dairy section.

“It terrible! So bad!” The Asian lady pointed at her own cute, tiny monster. “I can’t control.” At least Di had company.

But I’d like to take you to a time before The Terrible Twos. Wednesday. I arrived home from work right before Eli went to bed. After getting my usual greatest welcome ever from Grover and Eli, Pam started to put her coat on.

I said, “Go hug aunty Pam.” Eli toddled over and gave her a hug.

He then walked over and started shoving me towards Pam. “Hug! Hug! Hug!”

“I believe hugging the sitter is what got Brad Pitt in trouble, son,” I said. I suggested he give her another hug himself. He walked over and hugged Pam again. She hugged him back.

Mid hug he said, “Nice.”

But it was the most hilarious “nice” ever. It was very cute, but also kind of creepily drawn out like, “Niiiiice.”

I believe my son has a crush. But unfortunately I don’t think it will work out. If they get married Pam will be my ex-sister-in-law-daughter-in-law.

Yeah, he better stick to smooching his stuffed animals.

p.s. Today’s photo is the sum total of our potty training results

These Are The Jokes

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Diana is the funniest woman I know. She’s like Lucille Ball mixed with Carol Burnett mixed with Phyllis Diller. But without being 157 years old.

But here’s the thing. She’s married to a non-laugher. I’ve spent so much of my career dissecting what’s funny and arguing over what’s funny and getting yelled at about what’s funny, it takes a ton of effort to turn on my laugh factory. So when Diana does something funny, instead of laugh I say, “That’s really funny.”

“If it’s funny, why don’t you simply laugh?” she’ll say.

I’ll point to my chest and say, “I’m laughing in here.”

She’ll then point to her head and say, “You’re making me crazy in here.”

Well, lately Elijah has been catching on to the concept of things being funny and not funny. If I’m doing my dance/hump with Grover, or Diana does her silly songs like “You Are a Poopy Pants Pants Pants,” Eli will point and say, “Funny.”

But he won't laugh. He just states the facts.

To which I’ll say, “You are correct, son. Your dada is very funny.”

Last Sunday, Eli was miserable and sick and, quite frankly, being kind of a jerk to everyone. We decided after 9 hours of him being whiney and clingy and throwing multiple tantrums, we all needed a break. So we made the executive decision of letting him watch TV. But just this once!

So we plopped him on the couch with a bag of Goldfish crackers. I went into the den to my Sisyphus task of turning 2008’s blogs into hardback when I heard Diana holler.

“No no no! Naughty Elijah! No! Do not do that.”

I reluctantly went into the living room. I found that Eli had dumped the entire contents of the Goldfish bag over his head. Little orange crackers were everywhere. In the couch, in his hair, in his clothes, you name it. Grover was excitedly eating the evidence.

Eli looked up from his mess and said, “Funny.”

I had to admit, it was a pretty good gag.

p.s. Today’s photo looks as though Eli and the rest of the pride just downed a gazelle.