I really like the holidays, and I really hate them. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, because it represents the stealing of one culture from another. Nah, it represents families coming together and eating way to much food.

A big part of thanksgiving is the weather, if it was held in may or July, the spirit of the day would be different, thanksgiving would be nothing more than Labor day or the 4th. Bbq's and Frisbee instead of Turkey's and brown grass and football. If the weather isn't hovering around 32, and the house isn't steamy with Turkey. then I do not think families would get along as well.
My family is in a sort of period of detente. Although even just mentioning that I have a state of my family is enough to create turmoil. The relationships in my family are like the black specs you get in the corner of your eye, you can watch them floating around but as soon as you try and focus on them they flit away.

We'll be driving to Chicago for Thanksgiving, which is another in the long line of, "I want whatever I do to be special, but there are roughly 2 million other people doing the same thing." Well there are not 2 Million people driving from Roland with a 81/2 week old and a 2 year old. But they are moving from someplace to someplace else with the intention of seeing family and avoiding conflict.

I am tired. Bone weary, as little Leila has not wanted to be set down for the last 48 hours. I hope she doesn't have an ear infection. I do not know how we'll make it through the winter, if we've already had 2 bouts of colds and it is only November.

She might be sniffly, but Leila is still growing up. She smiles not...a lot! And really a lot more than Nyssa ever did. Nyssa--who is a very happy 2 year old--was a fairly miserable infant. Leila is starting to make other noises too, like laughing or giggles. I'll get some video up on here soon. As soon as I take some.

We started in on the Christmas holiday this weekend. Snow on Saturday, which covered the neighborhood and made it look sparkely and inhabitable. Happily it was just enough that I didn't have to shovel or sweep and it would melt by Sunday when the temperature reached the low 50's. Sunday we made spritz cookies and I put up the outdoor Christmas lights. All the lights entailed was a trip to storage, we had enough Christmas junk that it filled up the back of the Ravy. and spilled into the front seat...it was an odyssey of discovery, a trip to Ames and Lowes, and 3 tries at getting the strings to hang properly. a 4 hour deal, and it wasn’t bad.
What was important was that Nyssa came out with me about ½ through hanging the lights, and after playing for a few minutes said, “I want you to be done daddy.”
Which I took as encouragement that she wanted to be done so she could see the beauty I was creating. And then she said, “I want you to be done Daddy. So we can go play cars.”
She didn’t care about my creation, she was just bored!

More power to her.

I tried telling her, I was doing the lights for her, but that was small consolation, and I did not say it with too much verve.

But the lights went up, and they look OK. Not great, but good enough. When we get one of those plug adapters that turn 3 prongs into 2, then we'll have a lit-up Winnie-the-pooh sitting in out garden and that will be pretty great and exciting.

Lest people be confused I love Thanksgiving, and I am looking forwards to being in Chicago and seeing Katy's and My families. I am just not looking forwards to the drive. One thing I am doing to counter act the long drive is to purchase a DVD player for Nyssa for the back seat. I see those things and I hate them, although I woulda wanted one when I was 2, and then now I am buying one. Hopefully it will be the type of thing that comes around for long trips and never any other time. I gotta go to Wall-mart today to price them out.

I'm sorry that I am not showing you more pictures, it is mostly because we spend our days in our living room, watching football or Cailu...He's just a boy whose 4... And is really whiney too. so that one picture looks exactly like another. Hopefully we'll take a lot of photos while in Chicago...but honestly, Katy and I are not great at taking photos. We much prefere to fret in the moment we are in.

Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby

That is the title of a nice little Donald Barthleme Story, I think Colby ends up hung by his friends. But it was for a good reason, Colby was no longer fully participating in the group community...or at least not participating to his highest level.

I have received a lot of comment on this blog from many different people. Much more comment than I expected. Colby seems like a nice model for my last entry.

Apparently people felt it was depressing and sad that I had complaints about being a parent. And that was sort of the point. Parents are not really allowed to complain...or they are allowed to complain copiously within a narrow band of comments, "We are tired." "S/he is fussy (teething, has an ear ache, growth spurt, bratty)" but they are not really allowed to track their actual emotions...emotions that might not fit the reality of their child... and impressions of parenthood.

Nyssa is great, she is clingy and demanding, and funny and smart. She cares alot about Leila and is extraordinarily sweet to her and she tries to poke her head in and pull on her arms and legs. It is a learning process, a both/and.

Someone said it was sad that I wrote I didn't have the same glow as I did with Nyssa. And it is a little sad, but all I meant was this time is different. Nyssa was a much more difficult baby to deal with than Leila, and that glow allowed me to trudge happily through it. Having 2 children is exponentially more difficult than having one, and it is really important that Leila is laid back sometimes...and that Nyssa is not upset (or overly so) by Leila's crying. It is a dance always has been and always will be, and some music is sad.

I am not sad, I do not have regrets (Okay, I have a few), but clearly there are times when I think, "What on Earth have I gotten myself into?" And if I didn't talk about those times i'd be boring. thats why I like taking pictures like this: First of all it is funny, but second it is a fact of life that we spend a lot of time trying to avoid or ignore. And for what?

So I am looking at the pictuer and for the first time I notices the band-aid on Leila's foot, that is way sadder to me, makes me go, "aw" then the brown fecal matter released from her tookish.

Speaking of butts and crotches, Noodle has become, not facinated by them but aware they exist. I was on the Toilet the other day and she said, "You going pee?" "Yes" "You going Poop?"
"Maybe"
And here is the kicker: "You sitting on the Poopty?" and it wasn't a mistake, it was a joke! She made fun with words! I think that is so smart.

Nyssa came home from school the other day and when asked what she had for snack, said, "Diariea" Katy said, "Honey that is poop" and Nyssa said, "It's snack too."

Later, we found out what she actually had for snack, but i'll let you figure it out for yourselves.

Around Here

I loved that in the O'bama speech he promised his daughters a new puppy. It was the best of both worlds, a gift and an expiediency...every president has a pet, and now Big Daddy Barrack gets credit for his. Besides that jaded response, it was sweet to see his family standing infront of that throng in Grant Field (as Katie Curric reffered to it) in black and red dresses. I appreciated how Michelle's dress was a combination of her daughters, tying the family together. Michelle has seemed stern to me in the past, but on election night the full nature of her motherhood stood out.

What the hell, yer thinking, if I wanted to hear about Barack Obama and family I'd visit his blogg. So i move on.

Maybe the reason I am talking so much about Obama, is because of his message of hope. It is all we have left. Katy had her hernia surgery 2 1/2 weeks ago, and we've been scrapping by ever since. We've had help. My sister Laura spent a week with us and then as she was leaving we made a call for help to Katy's mom who spent last week with us. Kathy left on on Halloween, which was a real trick.

I have no idea how we've made it these last 3 years, er 5 days, without her. Not to talk just about me, but I was sick, Katy was half sick and half recovering from surgery, and Nyssa was bored crappy and wondering why we couldn't spend beautiful fall days outside playing. The thing is the wreckage of our lives just now seems like more than the sum of its parts. It seems irretrievable.

Katy is going back to work on Monday and Nyssa has learned it is funny to run away from you if you want her to do something. She has discovered that No no no no Noo, is a full service every day reply for anything. And because of Nana and Halloween she has discovered Cookies and candy.

All of that is fine, none of that is really going to change, but we have no energy to address it. What if Leila doesn't want to fall asleep at mid-night? What if Nyssa requires a 2nd or 3rd visit before she'll goto bed. Just about every night I look at the clock at 6:30 and think, "How will I make it till 8:15?" Nyssa's bedtime.

I Don't want this to be merely a list of complaints, but also, since new parents are not allowed to complain about all of their joy and luck and happiness I am sort of enjoying complaining.

What fascinates me is how different having baby #2 is from baby #1. From conception to till today they've been very different prospects. Nyssa has a Journal full of letters from Katy and I and Leila...
I was the one who read Nyssa'a positive Preggy test, and Katy and I were excited and euphoric from the get go. This time, Katy surprised me with a text message as i sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom...I never thought I'd be the kind of guy who needed to be "Told" I was pregnant. Who was so outside the process that I didn't even know I was being tested. And my first thought was, "There is no fucking way." No way it could have happened and no way we could sustain our burgeoning family. I had a million other thoughts too, most of them happy and full of good cheer.
I think I will love having 2 children. And I do love each of them right now, indidvidually. But right now, at this moment, they are so demanding, and their demands are so pressing that it is hard...That doesn't sound right. I loved having a new born. I love having 2 kids. I don't love having a child and a newborn. Things...emotions and actions...are so different this time around. The exhaustion I felt with Nyssa was bathed in a glow of euphoria. I have no glow this time, just an amazingly easy narcolepsy.

I started this post the morning after the election, (the picture above is of the "train of history" moving onwards...Nyssa and Kaitlyn in the Orange can) and it has been a full week without me finding the time to complete it. Everything is so fluid that my impressions change daily. I wanted this post to be about complaining and some of the horrid parts of parenting. I don't think it is. Although I am sure I complain amply.

They say that God gives you only the burdens you can handle. I don't know who Them is, but they were thinking of children. I remember this from Nyssa (Look how fucking cute she is!), trying and trying and trying to get her to sleep or to stop crying, and being at my wits end when she would finally and for no reason stop crying. Or she would be a whining and horrible child for 2,3,4,5 days and just when I thought, "You mean she's going to stay this way?" her tooth would pop through or she'd come down with a cold, and gradually her mood would improve. Well this process is happening again only it is multiplied by 2...I am convinced that anyone who has more than 2 or 3 children is a bad parent...You have 3 options. 1) both kids are crabby. 2) one kid is crabby the other is not. 3) both kids are happy or asleep. Obviously I am existing most of my life in the 1-2 zone. And I haven't even spoken about my house yet. Or my dogs...

We have a propensity in our culture to blame children for being children. I am not blaming Nyssa and Leila (well especially not Leila) they are just responding to their physical cues. In Nyssa's case complete and total boredom.

We had another weekend this weekend. We got lucky actually and it went pretty well. On Saturday we drove down to Des Moines to get Leila a fuzzy car seat cover. A wind proof shell and puffy fluffy fleece on the inside, it is really a slickster. But Leila had kept us up all night fussing and crying and now she was doing the same thing. She wouldn't really eat, and she wouldn't settle down. It was 10:15 and i decided to call the Dr. What a lucky break, for us. Apparently Leila has an ear infection and by 12:15 she was snarfing down her first set of anti-biotics. (Another way the 2 births are different for me is that Nyssa seemed like an instrament of perfection, a refutation to the idea of orriginal sin, and Leila is, well a baby...I felt bad befouling Nyssa, with Leila, giving her something like formula or Anti-biotics, while not ideal is not a big deal...by the way, 2+ years out and I don't think either of my kids has sinned)
Leila felt better almost immediately, or was tired enough to sleep the rest of Saterday and most of Sunday night. And Nyssa, who has been sick herself, started to feel better. She spent Saturday, playing with us or by herself (a real rarity) and Sunday trying to wake me up.

I do not know what happened, I slept well Saterday night. But on Sunday all I could do was sleep. I went back to bed from 7-9am, slept durring the 2nd half of the Bears game...and for 45 minutes after Nyssa got up while she jumped on me, and said, "Daddy no." and "Daddy sit up."
I sat up Sunday night, but still slept from after dinner to Nyssa's bed time. I'm not proud, just sleepy.

But I feel bad for Nyssa, cause I want to play with her, especially once her idea of playing evolves past sitting on my lap, kicking me in the nuts and jabbing her elbow in my ribs. I mean if Katyfullin wanted to do that...And look at her when she smiles, it is so radiant and so full of glee. And to think, some of that is related to me!

I was sitting on the big exercise ball that is 97% magic at getting Leila to stop crying, when the clock turned 10:00 and the West Coast polls closed. CNN announced the clousure and the screen faded out...faded in and I was expecting them to maybe award Obama California, but instead they announced him the presidental elect. I held Leila in my arms and Katy was walking down the stairs and I thought I am glad you are here for this moment.

I am an Obama supporter, not lover. But what struck me about last night was the rising excitement of the broadcasters and the sense of a new start with which the evening was infused. The Republicans are trying to say otherwise, but this was not a vanquishing of George Bush, it was a vanquishing of the party that had brought us 2 failed wars and a wildly oscillating budget...oscillating, I guess, only if you oscillate into an abyss. It will be nice to have JR. out of office. But no real change could have come by replacing him with another republican.

I have not been am Obama lover because it has been impossible to know how true he would remain to me. Up until yesterday the thought was it was impossible to be elected, much less elected President, without giving away your favors to big business and industry. Maybe nothing has changed today, and that would be a crushing loss. But yesterday we elected a man who seemed to stay true to his beliefs, attacked his attackers and looked to unify his constituents, and he did this while relying on mass quantities of small donations. Not none of mine. May that fact help him stay true.

What attracted me to Obama was his message of Hope. An elusive thing. We made a mistake 7 years ago, in the wake of 911 by proposing the oldest and worst solution to our new problems...by seeking only war we squandered all the good will the world was willing to express us. Near the end of his speech O'Bama said, "To reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope."

Obama knows in his heart that unless human liberties are shared by humanity, those liberties are frail. This is not something that Bush and all his Christianity has ever considered. It will be interesting to see how and how quickly Obama is able to correct the abuses of the Bush administration. A declaration against all forms of torture and violent coercion would be a nice first days work. Obama has the heart to do this, what will his head tell him to do. What will happen to the prisoners at Guantanomo? The warrentless servalence, the secret forgien prisons? The illeagal survalance here and at home? And these questions do not even begin to ask what will happen about those 2 pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanastan, nor how will he begin to mend all of the international fences that Bush43 bulldozed.

This country is too proud and to often too full of itself to simply say, we made a mistake, and if 47% of the populations could vote for the old guard and California vote 60+% in favor of Obama while at the same time abolishing Gay Marraige...then this country clearly does not understand yet how liberties must be shared by all and it will not be easy for Obama to see his way to make the clearest and most basic changes.