That ladybug is a man!

Breakfast is more exciting now that the ladybug larvae have moved into their terrarium, a terrarium delivered rather early by Santa’s Fed Ex elves.

Things we won’t mention until much later:

• Several of the larvae made it to Mom’s poppyseed muffins before we could retrieve them. We’re pretty sure we caught most of them, though.
• It’s 70 degrees and humid in the terrarium, but it’s 29 degrees and not so humid outside our house. Looks like this  particular crop of larvae won’t be making it to the garden.

Baby bro comes to Legoland.

One of the best things about the soon-to-be bankrupt U.S. mail is that its uneven service works wonders for spreading out your birthday gifts.

If your birthday is… say… on the 15th, and you have friends and relatives that live more than a state away, you can bank on getting presents in the mail until at least the end of the month.

This year, my favorite toy arrived by stork on the 25th. He takes A LOT of batteries and several adults to maintain, but doesn’t anything worthwhile? I can’t wait until he needs his next “re-binking.”

Proper assembly requires proper tools

• Time to assemble: 5 hours, 23 minutes.
• Missing parts: honest instructions, 3 screws, 7 AAA batteries, 4 gin martinis, and 1 properly-sized allen wrench.
• Number of Chinese factory workers laughing their asses off at me: at least 1.
• Time until first child fist fight over a train: 18 minutes.
• Time until second child fist fight over a train: 49 minutes.
• Time Abby managed to stay up past her normal bedtime: 1 hour, 17 minutes.
• Chance of another birthday party at our house… ever: a solid 14 percent. Jackson might get one… but only when he turns one. Enjoy the photographic evidence.

The Battle for No Bedtime

Straight outta Peabody… I’m a crazy monkeybaby name-a FreezPop

From the gang called Toddlerz With Asugarhigh.

If I’m yelled at, I musta stole a cookie cat.

Dropped the box and made a mess; now where the dog at?

Chorus

What you want matters not under my roof!

In order to get Hogan and me farther away from them, my parents are busy digging in, hammering on, and swearing about the soon-to-be finished basement. Actually, my father has few practical skills, so this project, in truth, is a “pay someone else and then pretend you are a foreman” project.

To show my disgust at them for mindlessly blowing several days worth of the tuition money necessary to send me to a private university in a warm weather locale in the year 2026, I’ve just completed my own renovation project. This new addition to my bedroom allows me complete privacy, enhanced protection from Hogan’s dangerous, unpredictable tail wag, and enough interior soundproofing for plausible deniability in the event that someone calls me to go somewhere or to do something that doesn’t perfectly synchronize with my internal toddler clock.

We're so proud of you!

Ultimately, you never know how your kid is going to turn out in the end, but it’s probably important to watch for signs of trouble and to at least try to put the young back on a better path when necessary.

Sometimes it’s easy and nature lobs you soft, underhanded meatball situations to get you to let down your guard. Perhaps you catch your child lifting the family dog’s tail in order to “ring its doorbell.” No problem. That’s a simple “dogs don’t have doorbells, silly child; they live in our houses and listen for our doorbells because they’re wolves on welfare” conversation. Perhaps your child decides she will eat only ginger snap cookies for a month. No problem. Give the dog* all the ginger snap cookies and eventually your child will get hungry enough to eat the gruel you’d rather she ingest.

Much better!

But other times it’s more difficult. What do you do when your offspring gravitates toward riding in the back of a police car? Do you risk offending the officers present by yanking her screaming and kicking from their squad car?

What is the etiquette for such an extraction? If a two-year-old girl and a thirty-nine-year-old man get into an unscheduled Shin Do Kumate in a squad car, who do you think gets pepper sprayed and tased? How do you explain to your daughter later that obviously she seemed like a greater threat to the officers and that you’re washing her eyes with milk because that’s what the kind paramedics said would make the stinging stop?

Fire trucks, on the other hand, are very comforting signs for parents. Even if your child tosses a would-be, miniature driver crying to the asphalt on her way up to the vehicle’s seat, or if she shoves dismissively an older boy over to ride bitch because he has no f’n clue where the fire is, it’s still a welcome relief to see her riding in the front of a fire truck, rather than the back of a police car.

*Sometimes letting the dog eat several hundred ginger snap cookies all at once can have unintended consequences. It’s better to space them out over time.

I can't believe we're still watching this crap!

Peabody toddler Abigail Moore admitted that she “actually hates” WGBH’s Cat in the Hat cartoon, but she continues to watch it on occasion because it’s more fun than “doing whatever her parents want her to do instead.”

I legitimately like Curious George, but I put up with Martin Short’s incredibly grating voice and poorly-conceived hijinks only when I need a little space… or when he’s explaining how a bee hive works… bee hives are pretty cool.

This is a bad post, but it’s really just to demonstrate uploading and inserting an image into a blog post and I thought it might as well feed google at the same time. Beats lorem ipsum delorum does it not?