Money, Money, Money

Haven't filed in a while. I'll take the convenient excuse that I returned not long ago from a trip to North Dakota to "play" with Michelle's two brothers, one of whom lives in the Peace Garden State (sounds hippie-like, doesn't it? The residents must be confused with, say, Rhode Island, or some other super-liberal state). I'll detail that trip once I load some photos.

This post has to do about a little boy who's wising up to the concept and value of money. This past weekend, I was doing some cleaning in the kitchen (at least that's how I imagine my activity there) when Nathaniel came up to me brandishing a quarter.

"Daddy!" he said. "I found your money."

"You did," I said. "Where did you find it?"

"In a drawer."

"Which drawer?"

"Your drawer," he answered, without the slightest sense of guilt.

I considered whether I should reprimand him right there for rummaging around in my things.

"Oh. Then it's my money. Can you put it back in the drawer, please?"

"No," Nathaniel responded without a moment's thought. "I'm taking it to the bank."

The calculus: Start your investment by taking someone else's money and putting up none of your own.

Pretty shrewd, kid. I'll give you that.

Nap Time

I am at home today enjoying a holiday that few others get. In case you're unaware, today is Victory over Japan Day, and Rhode Island is the only state in the country to still recognize it. State and municipal offices are closed. Brown University is closed. Private businesses are open. Even federal offices are open. Yes, it is one strange holiday.

Since Michelle works at a private company, she went to work, and so I am watching the children today. We've had a nice, relatively relaxing time so far. We started the Day with Daddy with the usual 6:30 a.m. wake-up call from Natty Lou, who wandered into our room and crawled into bed with us. This has become a ritual since Nathaniel began sleeping in his "big-boy bed" a few weeks ago. His room adjoins ours, and while there is a door between our rooms, there is no lock, which means that Nathaniel can wander into our room anytime he wants. We've considered a few ways to keep him in his room during his naptime. One option was to put a latch on his door. We immediately ruled that out, because we felt that he may look at his room as some sort of punishment, rather than a tranquil, restful place. We decided to put a gate between the rooms, which prevents him from coming into our room – although he could scale it – but allows him to see in our room, so he doesn't feel "locked in." We hope we're sending the right message.

We don't put up the gate at night, although we have entertained that idea about every morning Nathaniel comes into our room and wakes us up. When that happens, we try to coax him to cuddle with us, a ploy – I admit it – to keep him in the bed, so we can sleep a little longer. It rarely works for long, for when Nathaniel is awake, he is ready to take on the day. He initially gets under the covers with us, but after a few minutes, he usually says, 'I'm hungry,' and no matter how hard we try to convince him that his hunger pangs could wait another half-hour or so, once he gets locked on a thought, he won't let it go.

And so it was this morning. He let loose a tremendous pee in his potty (TMI?), and I led him downstairs for breakfast – Daddy's signature jalapeno-infused scrambled eggs and cantaloupe. As he was finishing, Isaiah and Michelle came downstairs, and the little one ate some pureed pears and Cheerios. Nathaniel has been a wild man lately, even more energetic than usual, and we're not sure why. I think it's because he's not getting enough sleep. His naps have been really erratic. Perhaps it's the transition to his bed, and the fact he's no longer contained, as he was in the crib. He's never been compliant with napping anyway, so his ability to move around may be exacerbating his general resistance to afternoon shuteye. Whatever the case, he's been challenging lately. Knowing that, I wanted to get him outside and running as soon as I could in the morning. So away we went, to the playground on the water.

We stayed there for a little more than an hour, and then got on to one of Daddy's favorite activities, which is eating. The bagel shop downtown in our fair bayside town is always a favorite destination. Nathaniel gets a blueberry or cinnamon-sugar bagel with cream cheese, and I'll splurge on a sesame bagel with fresh lox, capers and cream cheese. Yum! I had the rare forethought of bringing a bottle for Isaiah, kept cold in an insulated container, and a pouch of pre-made organic sweet potatoes and white beans. So, we all dined in style, a pleasant late-morning meal.

By the time we finished, it was about 11:00 and time to shove on home. Isaiah was due for a nap, and Nathaniel needed to follow soon thereafter. Failure to meet these unscripted deadlines penalizes children and parents alike. The children get knocked off their routines, and that means pain for the parent, because they turn into emotional wrecks. It's an incredibly fine balance.

Anyway, I thought I had everything going to plan. I got Isaiah up to nap, and armed with a bottle, he promptly fell asleep. Nathaniel, against his nature, relented without little fight for his quiet time, too. I came downstairs, and I thought I had it made.

Anything but. About 45 minutes later, Isaiah popped back awake, and he has been a nightmare since. He won't fall asleep. In fact, he's screaming right now, in the middle of the afternoon, when he normally is dead asleep. It's painfully obvious he's exhausted, so this outburst should be short (I hope.). About a half-hour after I left Nathaniel, I went into our room to get this laptop. I opened the door, and to my left, I noticed Natty Lou's door was open, though I had closed it before. Just as I was about to close it, I looked down. There, right next to the gate, was Nathaniel's outstretched form, his head resting on his blanket. He fell asleep as close as he could get to us. How sweet. I guess he loves us, after all.

Ball boy

Isaiah loves his balls.

Let me rephrase that. Isaiah loves basketballs. We have two basketballs in our house, one a small, bouncy inflatable and another a mini regulation ball. We have a hoop in the house. It's one of those that looks like the real thing, with a net, a post and a clear plastic backboard with the painted square to aim those bank shots.

I love playing with this hoop. Scarcely a day goes by when I don't launch a shot. The hoop is located in the playroom (itself converted from our dining room), and it faces the den, which means I can back up into the den and hoist long-distance 3s. I've never been a long-range marksman, but what really makes the shot difficult is we have a low-hanging light in the playroom, right in the path of most shooting angles to the hoop. A made 3, therefore, needs to be a graceful shot without too much arc (or else it will hit the ceiling) and with enough precision to avoid smacking the hanging light and incurring Michelle's wrath. It's a miracle the light has remained intact, and that the hoop remains in the playroom.

Back to the balls. Nathaniel has not shown more than a passing interest in either basketball. It's more of a stop along his daily rip-roaring tour through his toys. If you can imagine the toys to be like food in a cafeteria line, the basketballs would be something like broccoli and carrots. Yes, he'll put some on his plate every now and then, but they wouldn't be his first choice, not by a long shot. It shows in his shooting as well. When he does interest himself in a basketball, he'll grab it, clutch it in both hands between his legs and fling it in the vaguely general direction of the basket. On a few occasions, the ball has made it through the hoop; however, usually, it's caroming off the ceiling, his toy shelves, the buffet ... or that hanging light.

Isaiah is not shooting buckets, but he's sure more interested in the basketballs. Like with other toys, he approaches the balls with a studious bent. He eyes them carefully, then reaches out, touches it, rolls it slowly. He taps at it. Now that he can crawl, he'll nudge it and watch intently as it rolls away. Sometimes, he gets in a sitting position and grasps the ball with both hands, either slapping at it and smiling or laying his hands on it, like a preacher baptizing a child. His emotion is so Zen-like, it's as if he's trying to decipher the ball's meaning.

He's especially fond when I sit near him and dribble. His little red head will bounce up and down in time with the thump of the ball on the carpet. Then, I'll roll the ball over to him, and he'll clutch it greedily and slap down hard on it with his hands, attempting to mimic the dribbling. When he gets too exuberant and the ball slips out of his grasp, he'll look at the ball and then at me, his face nearly expressionless, as he calculates the next move. "Do I want the ball that badly that I'll crawl over to it? Or can I wait out that big guy there who's sure to fold and get it for me?

Can you guess who usually gets the ball?

Lazy summer afternoon

Aaaaaah, a lazy Saturday afternoon in the summer.

The boys are napping, and Michelle is taking a well-earned break, her head resting on a pillow. It's just me and the coffee for now.

We've seen some pretty big moments around here in the last week. First, Isaiah has learned to crawl. Well, mostly. He's figured out how to prop himself up on all fours, his little arms outstretched as if he's about to rip off some pushups. His legs are curled and tucked in, like a frog that's poised to leap. And he's rocking in that position, which generally means he's cuing up to crawl. It's that last step that's eluding him for the moment. But he is moving. He's doing it for now by dropping to his stomach and using his hands and arms to pull himself forward. The motion bears more than a passing resemblance to soldiers shimmying along the ground. Yet Isaiah's leg motion is not as coordinated; they're mostly just flailing around. That last bit of coordinated effort, of combining the leg motion with the arm motion, is just not there. Yet. It's only a matter of time.

And then the fun really starts.

Progress also has been made with Isaiah's older brother, Nathaniel, who's on the doorstep of turning 33 months. That is, he's getting ever closer to turning 3 years old, which would mean he could go to a more structured day care/school. To enroll, however, you need to be potty trained, and on that front our little guy has made amazing strides this week. With patient supervision, monitoring and cheerleading from his mommy, Nathaniel has been pooping and peeing regularly in the potty. The last couple of days, he's barely needed any prompting: Suddenly, he'll run upstairs, do his thing, come down and announce he either pooped or peed in the potty. Then, either Michelle or I will go for confirmation, dump the contents into the toilet and let Nathaniel do the honors of flushing it "down the tunnel."

For each potty pee, he gets two goldfish; for each potty poo, he gets a lollipop. Michelle had started out with giving him a piece of gum for each potty poo, but Natty kept swallowing them, no matter how many times we preached to him to throw the gum in the trash when he was done with it. He just didn't get it. You mean it's not food? Then what is it? he seemed to be thinking. I can't blame him for being confused. Gum is kind of weird that way.

Nathaniel has been on such a roll with the pee/poo potty that we've had him in his big boy pants (i.e. underwear) for the last few days. So far, so good, save for one especially messy mistake. We're all really proud of him. For a few months, we've had isolated incidents when he would pee or poo in the potty. But he's been really regular, so to speak, for the past week. It really appears as if the light bulb has gone off. There's more work to be done, and for all we know he may regress some. But we're sure happy he's on his way.

Clammin'

The heat has arrived in New England. For more than a week, I've watched and read news reports of the searing heat wave gripping much of our nation. My dad, who lives in Texas, has told me of the epic drought in the Lone Star State, a stretch of rainless days that's gone so long that mature oak trees may die, and neighbors around the lake are entertaining trucking in water, so they can get their boats in. We mercifully had been spared the heat; whenever I looked at the map, it showed this balloon of red that reached to the north, west, and east (and of course south) but never expanded enough to encircle New England.

That changed yesterday. According to the National Weather Service, the thermometer hit 100 degrees in Providence, and it was 103 in Boston. I was startled when around 3 p.m. I checked the temperature in our little bayside town, and it was 99 degrees. We're just not geared for this. Most homes, ours included, do not have central air conditioning. Instead, we have window units interspersed throughout the house. They don't get used too often. But they're sure getting a workout now. It's amazing what a difference there is between 90 degrees and 100. Maybe it's perception, but I don't think so. I can function at 90. I'm a blob at 100, a torpid mass, chugging water, normally robust appetite way down. Welcome to global warming, my friends; this is just a foretaste of the misery to come.

OK, consider all that a preamble. The main story for today had to do with my first foray into clamming. Ta da! After more than a decade of living in the Ocean State, I finally did what most Rhode Islanders would consider a requirement for living here. Last Sunday, after church, Nathaniel and I headed over to T.J. and Maureen's house. (you can read more about them in the previous post.) We walked to the shore of the Kickemuit River (which locals call the "Kicky"), which was at low tide. That's the best time, as it turns out, to go clamming, because you want to go a ways out in the river – about two to three feet deep in water – to dig out the clams. To ferret them out, you dig your hand or toes into the sediment, which is a loamy mud. The clams, are nestled in there vertically, so you're feeling around for a pointy end, rather than the breadth of the shell. When you locate the pointy end, you dig around it and pull the clam out from the muck. Voila!

T.J. and I collected some three dozen clams in roughly an hour, a pretty good haul. And most of what we harvested were big clams, which locals call quahogs. Their shells are a black-silver, whereas regular clams, which locals call soft-shell, are whitish. In fact, I've been told that "clamming" is digging for clams near the shore, where the soft shells hang out, while "quahogging" is digging for clams in the water, where the quahogs burrow in. I don't know why.

On Tuesday, I took my batch, about a dozen in all, stuck them on the grill, and waited for the shells to pop open, which means the quahogs are cooked. I dipped them in butter and soy sauce and let them slide right on down. Now, that's good eatin'!

Thanks, quahogs. Thanks, Rhode Island.

Family Times

It's a sun-filled summer weekend in Rhode Island. This morning, we trekked over to an arts & crafts fair in Tiverton. A beautiful day to stroll amidst the artists' booths, gnosh on some cookies and listen to a (presumably) father-son guitar duo. They played very rootsy, folksy music, the kind I imagine people heard at the Newport Folk Festival in the 1960s and 1970s, right after musicians first began plugging in. The boy looked like he was 12, and man could he play! Nathaniel was smitten by the music; he nodded his head up and down, ever so slightly, in rhythm to the music and swiveled his hips to some of the up-tempo songs. He really loves music, and it was a nice treat for him (and us) to see it live.

Our neighbors and us are heading over to a former neighbor's house for a steak and margarita extravaganza. I'm mixing the Mexican candy, and T.J. is in charge of marinating and grilling the steaks. It's church tomorrow morning, as usual, and playtime of some sort in the afternoon. For us, that's a jam-packed weekend!

Michelle has faithfully uploaded photos, and so, without further adieu, here are some:

This is from the carnival that comes to town every Independence Day weekend. Daddy pushed off from the top, thinking he needed the extra momentum to make it down the slide. We almost got more than we wanted, as we went airborne!


Our families streamed in from six states to witness Isaiah's baptism. Here's his first bite of his baptism cake.


Michelle's brother, Matt, and our neighbor, Bob, give the July 4th sign.


The crew at the Independence Day parade.



Lighting sparklers at our neighbor's annual backyard extravaganza

What a weekend with the family! Next year, again?

Celebration Week

Whew, what a week!

Our house played host to myriad activities revolving around Isaiah's baptism and our nation's 235th year of independence. Hooray! (Go USA!)

When you have family strewn all over the country like Michelle and I, it's a rarity to get everyone together in one place at one time. Save for two individuals (Rob and Kate Niccolini), we were blessed and grateful that everyone from our families came into our humble little town to witness Isaiah's entrance into the Lord's kingdom and to take part in the host of events and parties thrown around Independence Day.

I won't give a detailed accounting of everything that happened. I'll post a slew of pictures soon to illustrate that. The best I can say it just how rewarding it is to see family and friends and to be together. At some point, you realize that the best times to be had are with those closest to you – by blood, extended family or by friendship. And the best thing you can offer is yourself. Strip away all the events, fireworks, parades and other stuff, and what you have is people being together, talking, laughing, playing, joking, deepening the bonds that keep us bound.

We are blessed that through some unfathomable luck of the draw, we were born into the richest country on Earth. We want fir little, and we have a lot. We have the ability and the means to conquer distance and see each other. We can congregate for special occasions, such as Isaiah's big day.

How lucky we are. God bless America.