Craftwerk

At any given moment in our house, there are at least 4 screens dedicated to the game “Minecraft.” While double-checking the spelling of “Minecraft,” I briefly went down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia about it and I still have no idea what the game is about.

“Minecraft allows players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D procedurally generated world.” What? Just reading that makes me want to shake my cane at these kids today.

Luca is currently building a massive mansion in his Minecraft world. It’s actually a stunning glass structure that brings to mind I.M. Pei. If I.M. Pei liked to surround his buildings with lava and roughly 2,000 pigs.

Within the assumingly stifling house, Luca constantly adds bedrooms for people he likes. Each is equipped with a single Spartan twin bed and if you are lucky, a window. My room does not have a window. Eli has a room. Cousins Rory and Finn have rooms. I may be mistaken, but I think Diana has her own room. Which speaks more to how much Luca loves her than it does my chronic snoring.

Anyway, last Friday night I invited a work pal over for our weekly basement meeting of the nerds. Me must have had some Star Wars trivia questions gnawing at him that needed answered.

You know how cats can sense when you are allergic to them? And then they get all in your business? Elijah and Luca have a sixth sense for people who don’t have kids. They immediately lay on the charm so you’ll fall in love with them and rush home to make babies with your spouse. That’s how they increase their friend population. Oddly, it’s a lot easier than asking kids to play at the park.

My work pal gave as good as he got, however. He is the former editor in chief of a well-known video game culture website and regaled my sons with his knowledge of things they love.  He even boasted an in person meeting with the creator of Minecraft. I’m sure Eli and Luca thought was talking about the blocky main character of Minecraft, Steve.

The next morning, I found Luca hard at work on his digital masterpiece. As he added a twin bed to a room, he said, “I am making a room for your friend. The one who knows about Minecraft.”

“He has a name, you know.”

“I don’t remember it,” he said.

“Do you want me to tell it to you?”

“No,” he said. And then he added a window to the room.

Benadryl

Luca puked Saturday night. It was one of those matter of fact pukes that don’t really cause much drama. He barfed, announced it, Diana cleaned up some, Grover ate some, and then we all went back to bed.

But that puke had a little extra built in. That particular puke had dispatched an army of tiny men with tiny ball pain hammers to knock little dents into every inch of Luca’s body.

Like the aforementioned barf, Luca didn’t seem to mind the hundreds of welts all over his body. This was a missed opportunity. He could have parlayed it into a couple free days off school or a Lego set. At minimum some ice cream. But he just shrugged it off and delighted in showing everyone his welty butt.

If you’ll recall from Luca’s early days, he developed some allergies that required us to stalk him at all hours with an Epipen in case his throat ever closed up. So we got a little nervous he was having some kind of allergic reaction to laying around in the same pajamas for 48 hours straight.

So Diana asked me to call a very unenthusiastic doctor on call who said go get some Benadryl and never interrupt her viewing of “Downton Abbey” ever again.

Diana asked me a barrage of questions of which I didn’t have the answer. I assumed the role of “Dr. Hamann” and lied a diagnosis in an authoritative voice rather than have to call back Downton Abbey. I said this happens all the time (probably not), and would be cleared up in a few days (totally made up) and all he needs is a dose of Benadryl (true) and rest and lots of fluids (made up).

This seemed to calm down Diana and I went to Jewel. During the 5 block drive, my brain developed a little hole in it where the name “Benadryl” fell into, never to be found again.

I stood in the kid’s section, dumbfounded. What was it that I was supposed to get? NyQuil? French Fries? A tire iron? I grabbed what I thought the Downton Abbey doctor said to get, which ended up being a popular cold and cough medicine instead of the Benadryl.

I came home and attempted to assume the Dr. Hamann persona again. “No. This is much better for him. Its active ingredient is much more affective against welts because welts are really just his body doing little tiny coughs. Yes. That’s the ticket.”

On my way back to Jewel, I received at text from Diana that simply read, “Please get Benadryl.”

Luca was fine an hour later.

First Snow Man

On Saturday, cousin Finn came over sans Steve around lunchtime. After theoretically eating, they commenced whatever it is they do in between one of them crying.

As customary every week, I slid downstairs to play Xbox for as long as I could before one of them started crying. A couple of games in, I felt this pang. What am I doing down here? It’s beautiful outside. Balmy. And I’m just sitting here in the dark playing Titan fall. You gotta get those boys outside, man. You’re missing their entire childhood in front of this damned box.

Now, this had absolutely nothing to do with how crappy I was playing and had minutes earlier thrown my Xbox controller across the room.

I raced upstairs declared it time to go to the park. It’s a beautiful day out, guys. What’s wrong with you? You’re missing your entire childhoods in front of a damned box. The boys ran from me, screaming. Luckily, I am still big enough to manhandle three boys under the age of 10 and we were at the park in minutes.

After a few minutes throwing the ball to Grover, I noticed how nice and packable the snow was. So I began throwing snowballs at the boys. They begged me to continue but I could see a snow down the back of the coat incident on the horizon.

“Who here has ever made a snowman?” I asked.

No hands went up. I pulled at my collar, Rodney Dangerfield style. Okay. Okay. There was still some time to salvage some childhoods here.

We commenced making a pretty great snowman. He had sticks for arms. Leaves for eyes and a mouth and some pretty great pine needles for hair.

Elijah said, “Watch this.”

I said, “No snow wieners.”

Eli stopped packing.

We stood back and marveled at our guy. I asked that we name him, for blog purposes. But they wouldn’t indulge me. I gathered them up and squatted down.

“Okay guys. I’m going to give you a life lesson here. The very minute we leave here, some kid is going to smash our snowman. We can either walk away and know that snowman is doomed, or we can put him out of his misery.”

The boys attacked the snowman with a ferocity that made me a little uncomfortable. Shortly after the boys realized just how wet and cold they all were. We walked back home and resumed letting our childhoods slip away.

Eli and Luca Song

I can’t remember if I told you we have a new babysitter. I did, right? Well if I didn’t her name is Schuyler and we’ve already established a similar awkward, old man/millennial woman relationship that I had with our previous sitter Hannah.

Even though it’s been months, I really know nothing about how Schuler interacts with the boys. I never see into their world, which is more than a little disconcerting.  Every time I try to sneak into the house to catch her teaching them black magic or getting them into the show “Two Broke Girls” Grover alerts them to my presence with his damned unconditional love. At most, I catch her chatting with them pleasantly. But she could be chatting pleasantly about “Two Broke Girls,” right?

Last Friday, it all changed. I sat down to a glass of wine and a baguette with Diana and she simply pressed play on her iTunes.

The recording begins with Schuyler whispering something incoherent. I assume it isn’t an episode recap of “Two Broke Girls.”

Then she begins singing, accompanied by a jaunty guitar. Her voice kinds sounds like a mixture of Nora Jones and Feist. The song goes:

“This is a song about Eli and Luca

and all of their favorite things.”

Then Luca shouts, “That’s me!”

“Things they they like ta’

Do on the weekends

And anytime in-between.

They like Legos and orange juice

watchin’ Slugterra

and hangin’ out, shootin’ the breeze.

They really like to

sing in the bathtub

and eat anything with...”

Luca adds, “Cheese!”

“They like playing with Grover

hanging with friends

and Luca loves mac and cheese.”

Luca shouts. “Cheese,” again.

“And to sing karaoke, they say ‘Okey Dokey!’

They’ll eat all your raspberries.

They’re great to hang out with

all day long.

We’re singing this song

about

Eli…and Luca.”

Luca ends with, “Dats me!”

Schuyler says, “Woohoo!”

Luca says, “That’s a big one.”

And then the world explodes from cuteness overload.  I think I’m up to speed on Schuyler now.

Man, I wish I could upload audio to this thing.

Wait! I can. Here it is!

https://clyp.it/0egkyjsi

My Biggest Fan

I knew Elijah and Luca were going to read the blog. I mean, that’s the point of this silly thing. But I assumed it would have gone a little like this:

1.     Eli and Luca discover the blog in their teens.

2.     They immediately hate me for it.

3.     They make me take it down.

4.     I continue the blog in secrecy.

5.     I keep the books hidden like pornography.

6.     They discover the hardbound books in an old dusty box in the basement when they’re much older.

7.     They proclaim their love for me.

8.     They construct several gilded statues of me.

9.     They forgive my typos.

However, this nine-step plan for typo forgiveness moved up by several decades. 

The other night, I had banished the boys to the back of the house to get their PJs on, knowing full well there would be at least seven more requests/threats before they actually accomplished this feat.

I heard a cackling coming from our room. A howling laughter I normally attribute to discovery of a funny looking poop. I was partly correct. I discovered him sitting naked (of course) on our bed with an old HamannEggs collection spread out in front of him.

I was struck by just how much he loved it. But then again, they are all about him. And poop. He even took to reading them to Luca, who also loves Eli and poop.

So I immediately ordered two more editions, which Eli devoured happily. So I’m going to start tailoring the blog to seven year olds and five year olds. Which I’ll accomplish by changing nothing.

p.s. Eli just started reading on top of his very tall dresser. I assume I’ll be writing about his broken arm shortly.