Minnows In!

I think it's fairly common for parents to wonder what their children will be like when they grow up. For instance, LeeAnn and I have a strong feeling that Mary Poole will be called to be a cheerleader in her high school years. We base this assumption on the fact that she has a generally fun-loving demeanor, a winning smile and a paint-peeling yell that is sure to inspire weary fans and deafen opposing teams. It seems to be natural fit. From watching Perritt play in the kitchen we've surmised that, in a house full of good swimmers, there's a better than decent chance that he may be the best Sharks and Minnows player in the Smith family.

LeeAnn and I have fond memories of playing Sharks and Minnows growing up but we'd never seen a land-based variant of the game until we saw Perritt spontaneously create one in the kitchen about a month and a half ago. The way Perritt's version works is that he is the all-time shark and LeeAnn and I are the all-time minnows. Mary Pool is the disinterested lifeguard. While we're all hanging out in the kitchen before or after a meal, Perritt will silently call a start to the game and then, almost inaudibly, say "Minnows In!" At this point, the game is on and no one knows it but Perritt . . . that is until you hear the thunderous hand and knee fall of his bull-rush as he stampedes toward you and subesequently pens you into the corner despite your evasive maneuvers. You know you've been tagged right away but Perritt likes to make sure you're aware of your captured status by pulling up and hugging your entire leg . . . indefinitely. I think if you'd let him, he'd probably stand there smiling with one hand affixed to your leg all day.

This situation is a little dicey because once you've been captured in the midst of cleaning the kitchen or whatever, you don't want to move too quickly and knock this cute little shark onto the tile floor. However, he's so tenacious that he can't easily be detached from his death grip. These days the tagging process can also be quite painful for me because it's getting to be shorts season and leg hair makes excellent scaffolding upon which the shark can scale a leg. Clearly, as in the pool version, the object is to avoid the shark as long as possible.

However, while Perritt can be easily dodged once, I challenge anyone to dodge him repeatedly. Trust me, you don't stand a chance. To make it more difficult, Perritt has declared that there is no drain base like there is in the aquatic version. So what you end up with is an "Avoid the Shark" scramble in the kitchen which ends with the humorously small shark sinking his teeth into the enormous minnow he has carefully cornered. This is followed by the minnow carefully extracting the tiny carnivore and relocating the little guy across the room and attempting to distract him with a toy so the minnow can get about 5 seconds more work in the kitchen done.

It would surely be helpful if John Williams would be kind enough to provide us with a score like he did for Jaws - so at least we'd know when we were under attack.

Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

I lived on a cul-de-sac growing up in Montgomery and was fortunate to be surrounded by boys about my age. While hanging out with kids your age is fun enough, we were also lucky enough to have at our disposal a vast track of undeveloped land behind my friend's house and a bird sanctuary in my own back yard. We explored these unmapped areas endlessly and had the best time imaginable just being kids. One of my buddies on Whippoorwill Court was a guy named Brad. Though we went to different schools, he and I were great friends until I moved away in 10th grade. The one thing I'll always remember about Brad was that he wanted, more than anything in the world, to be a professional rodeo rider. He knew this fact from the time he was a small boy and never once wavered from it. I've never in my life seen a kid with more toy farm animals, toy guns and such an outsized enthusiasm to show all of these things off at every opportunity. He also had an unsettling interest in lassoing the other kids in the neighborhood which was great fun until my other friend's younger brother got whiplash as he was pretending to be the runaway horse - but that's a different story. The point is, if ever there was anyone cut out for the rodeo, it was Brad.

I don't know if Brad ever made it to be a real cowboy, but as someone who has had the rodeo life thrust upon him uninvited, I wish I could go back and counsel Brad to steer clear. I'd say, brother, put down those toy guns and that faux dip wad of Big League Chew because while the rodeo may sound glamorous at first, let me tell you something . . . it's hard, tiresome work and it gets old real quick. You see, the Changing Table Rodeo came to our little house about two months ago. And it hasn't left

If you've ever seen the calf-roping portion of the rodeo then you've witnessed the closest approximation to the Changing Table Rodeo at the Smith house, minus the rope. From the second our children hit the changing table, they transform into baby wildebeests whose sole goal in life is to get as far away from you as possible as quickly as possible. Turn them on their back, they want to be on their stomach. Put them on their stomach, they want to crawl to the edge and threaten to jump or turn around and head for the changing table implements (wipes, Desitin, etc.) Aim them toward the changing table implements and they want to scatter these tools to the wind. They are seriously crazy. And crazy strong too.

It's hard. It's tiring. You get dirty in the kind of dirt that you don't want to get dirty in. (Hint - this kind of dirt is accompanied by the distinct aroma of the stables behind the rodeo). It is simply not appealing as a lifestyle choice. But having lived this lifestyle for 2 months now, I do have a greater appreciation for and perspective on the the calf-roping challenge. I used to think it was a brutal and inhumane event that I hated to watch because it made me sad, but now I'm thinking maybe those cowboys are just a little misunderstood. Perhaps, they really love those little calves and just need to keep them from rolling around in their own filthy diapers and they've just figured out a really fast way to get down to business. So I've picked up some tips:

Things I need in order to be a better diaper changer:

• A horse because I think that would be just distracting enough to keep the children still for 22 seconds
  
• The raw hand speed and eye coordination that those cup stacking kids have. This couldn't hurt.
  
• Some cowboy boots with spurs that clink when you walk - you know, just to set the mood and let the kids know there's a new sheriff in town.
  

So while LeeAnn and I don't love our new profession, we do believe that if we're going to be living it, we might as well make the environment suit the event. So this post is sort of an explanation to our neighbors, who have no doubt pondered why we're constructing a dirt arena changing table in our front yard. Next week, the grandstands are being built to seat the throngs that will certainly come in awe at this spectacle of man vs beast. No doubt the cotton candy and rattlesnake bar-b-q vendors will soon follow as will a healthy crop of carnies hocking their wares.

Break out your chaps and ten-gallon hats, Buckhead. The rodeo's come to town.

My Hobby

My Hobby: Seeing how many pulls it takes to unroll an fresh roll of toilet paper.







Training Notes:

• Saturday - I accomplished seven solid pulls on a very new TP roll but there was still plenty of paper left on the roll. I got more interested in batting around the pile of toilet paper on the ground than on the unraveling effort and then just got bored altogether and crawled off. Must work on my discipline.
  
  
• Sunday - The toilet paper appears to be magically self-healing. I went in to do more experiments this afternoon and noticed that all of the paper I had pulled down on Saturday was now rolled back up onto the roll, albeit not as neatly as the original roll. Intriguing. I decided to let the roll be for the day since it had worked so hard to get itself put back together.
  
  
• Monday - As I was going to bed last night, I resolved to steel my attention and focus all my energy on my unraveling efforts. This evening before bath time I got three pulls into the effort and then was interrupted by daddy. I would normally complain and demand to be left to my training regimen, but I wasn't feeling it anyway, so I can wait until tomorrow.
  
  
• Thursday - Near total success. Daddy left me to play but didn't realize I had access to the bathroom. So while he was changing my brother's diaper, I scampered off to the bathroom where I had unfettered access to a very fresh roll.
  
  OMG LOL! You should see it now. And the funniest part was when daddy tried to roll it back up. You should see how it looks on the roll now, I can barely crawl by it without laughing.

My experiments will continue soon.

Employee Memo: "Lazy Sunday" now known as "Irresponsible Parenting Sunday"

There are no two ways about it, LeeAnn and I had a busy week last week. From her trip to Charlotte, to painting and decorating two rooms, to getting the house ready to have a baby shower on Saturday, to having the baby shower . . . what else . . . oh yea, feeding, clothing and entertaining two nine month olds. By the time we hit the bed at the incredibly early hour of 10:15 on Saturday night, we were completely exhausted. But time marches on, recklessly barreling through one day after another. Before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and the kids were raring to go.

Add to the fact that we both woke up feeling like we had gotten approximately 2 hours and 17 minutes of sleep, we were also greeted by the pleasant surprise that we were, thanks to William Willett, running an hour behind schedule. Hooray! If you add in Mr. Pibb and Red Vines (Crazy Delicious!), you've got a perfect recipe for what, in days of yore, we would have called a Lazy Sunday. Not so today. Now, it's more of a recipe for negligent parenting if you're not careful.

The problem is, this "lazy" concept is totally foreign to babies. I tried to explain it to Perritt, but he just gave me that glazed over look and then spit up a little - perhaps as an indication of his displeasure for the little he grasped of the notion. Mary Poole was equally unresponsive and decided instead to pull my glasses off my face during my demonstration of how to lounge about on the sofa with a big bag of Ruffles and a Coke. They simply don't get it.

Lucky for our children, we were able to rally just enough to maintain a semblance of a schedule and keep them fed and changed. We had a couple of moments of weakness: we declared the 11-12 hour "Hang out with Mommy and Daddy in Bed" hour, Perritt got to crawl around in a diaper - only a diaper - for about an hour (which he loved), and then when 2 rolled around, hopeful chants of "Two hour nap! Two hour nap! Two hour nap!" were clearly heard uttered by both parents as we put them down for their afternoon nap.

Unfortunately it appears that the 2 hour nap will remain as mythical as Nessie since Perritt's now rousing from his much less exciting, but much more typical, 45 minute nap. When Mary Poole gets up the battle plan is to mount a final, courageous assault on the ramparts of sloth and attempt to have a family run followed by a quick excursion to Toys R' Us to get some new goodies for the children.

6 o'clock bedtime! 6 o'clock bedtime! 6 o'clock bedtime!

The Garbage Disposer

Among the many memorable scenes from Stand By Me is the story Gordie tells his buddies about the Great Tri-County Pie Eat. It's certainly not the right forum to recap his story here and if I'm honest, there's really not that much of a parallel between the story of Davy Hogan and Perritt. However, what makes me think of this scene when I watch Perritt eat is that I am now convinced that he's on his way to being a serious contender in any IFOCE eating contest, including the fictional Great Tri-Country Pie Eat.

We've covered Perritt's eating prowess before - but that was much earlier in life. More recently, you may have read about his come-from-behind victory at the 2007 Metro-Atlanta Isomil Formula Gulp-Off, which earned him the stage name: Perritt "The Garbage Disposer" Smith. This is a particularly interesting pseudonym because that's what my brother and I used to call my dad when we were growing up. (It was a well known fact that my dad would eat any left-over remnant of food from dinner as long as he was allowed to introduce jalapeños to the mix.) Looks like good eatin' runs in the blood.

Unlike Mary Poole who will swat away spoons of applesauce and cast errant peas down to their untimely demise, Perritt will seriously eat anything on his tray or fed to him on a spoon. Brussel sprouts, pork tenderloin, pureed prunes, butternut squash souflee, cheese grits - it doesn't matter if he's had it before or never seen it in his life - he's gets on it like ants on a Cheeto. The effect is amplified by the fact that he hasn't mastered the finger/thumb pincer but instead grabs a fistful of food and jams it forthwith into his jaws; devouring it whole just like a ravenous Great White. Minus the rows of razor sharp teeth. Actually, minus any teeth at all.

At first, I thought the missing teeth might cause him problems eating, but now I'm beginning to wonder if he is somehow intentionally delaying their emergence as I suspect teeth may serve as obstacles limiting the amount of food he is able to get in his mouth. However, if Perritt's the competitor I think he is, I suspect he may start cutting some incisors in preparation for the Krystal Square Off coming up in Atlanta. Otherwise he'll have to learn to eat entire Krystal's burgers without biting. Either way, I'm confident he's going to place.

The Garbage Disposer stops for no man.