OK, we're going to eeeease back into this blogging thing. Initially, by posting some greatest hits from the past year, most of which went out only to a select audience via email. (read: we were too embarrassed to post in public.) I'm hoping the effect is more "I'm glad Comedy Central re-plays The Daily Show for busy people who can't catch it every night" and less "Is this a new Price Is Right? I thought Bob Barker was dead?" 

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From September 9, 2008, here's "We Bad":

Yo.

Think we're going to let a little thing like having a baby slow us down? No frakin' way! It hasn't phased us hardly at all. 

Take today, for example. We got out of the house and went to the gym just 51 weeks after Noah's birth to start our grueling post-natal workout regimen: over 18 minutes

 without stopping on a lo-impact exercise machine, set at Level '5' Resistance (with explosive 'gutbuster' interval

 spikes up to '6') while watching football on a non-Tivo equipped television. Watching the NFL without pausing, rewinding or commercial-skipping takes Cheney-like mental toughness,

 but that's the kind of true grit we're made of.

Then we flagrantly gave Noah a diaper change right in the back of the minivan. But wait, 

you exclaim--doesn't the gym have politically correct family changing rooms with ferns and Purell dispensers and those wall-mounted plastic diaper-changing stations with five-

point child restraints? Yes, we growl, of course it does, for lesser families who let The Man rule their lives. Us, we're rebels, Masters of our own Destiny!

 You got a problem with us whipping our kid's wet diaper off in the parking lot? I didn't think so.

Next we were off to REI -- a

 store so tough it has ice axes for door handles--to buy Noah the latest in high-tech fitness gear which will equip him to partake in our active, 

on-the-go, unhampered-by-baby lifestyle. (We're raising him to be an un-baby-hampered baby too: there was a choice between a bike helmet with little chickies on it, and one with

 red flames. After checking that they were the same price, we unabashedly went with the flames.)

What's that you say? Why, you ask, if you're so tough, are you driving around in a minivan?

Well let me tell you, it's one bitchin' minivan. As you can see from this unretouched photo taken in the REI parking lot:

Yes, that's a used diaper wedged in the back gate of our van, which had been dangling there all the way from the gym.

Don't mess with us. We're badass.

I Know, I Know...

Me no post long time. And that isn't because we had a baby or are anywhere near apparently having a baby. The kid cried wolf a couple of weeks ago, and after that, nothing doing.

I have been really busy getting crap taken care of at work, so I can be ready to take a paternity leave. That is, I could have just dumped all my workload on someone and it probably would have been fine, but I've now pushed the Sysiphean boulder to a leveled-off point where it won't totally flatten whoever picks up where I left off, and I won't need to feel totally guilty about it.

So, now, Sandy and I are both at home, watching too much bad cable TV. She's had a head start, having taken off of work a couple of weeks ago, and she's watched every house-flipping, secret-ingredient-cooking-off, secret-ninja-warrioring, myth-busting, dirty-jobbing and "A Dating/ Wedding/ Baby/ Mid-life Crisis Story" show there is. Dear God, I caught her watching "The View" on Friday.

It's time to induce, just so we can do something meaningful with our lives again.

Stay tuned.

Happy 25th Anniversary, Lee's Comics!
At the risk of spoiling my image as a cool, suave, playa, I thought I'd share a little window on my past. Lee's Comics is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and Lee Hester, its owner, has written the history of his business in three parts. (Episode I, Episode II & Episode III)

I was there, handing Lee my money from the beginning. I haven't been able to verify it, but there's a good chance that my head, and Jack's and some of the rest of yours, is in this shot:

Lee's blog entries are lengthy, but interesting if you're interested in some perspectives on Palo Alto history, or in the insights of a longtime comics retailer. He tells an interesting story about the demise of Comix & Comics. Even if you weren't a Lee's customer back then, you should still check out the photos for the Early Years. Total early '80's time warp.

I still shop at Lee's new location in Mountain View and have had some interesting experiences there. Most notably when Michael Chabon did a reading of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay". Harrison was three, and if you've ever tried to take a three-year old to a reading at a comic book store, you'll understand why I was standing in the back of the audience with Harrison sitting on my shoulders, trying to keep him entertained and out of shelf-grabbing range. You'll also understand my horror when, first, Harrison farted, and then, announced in a not-so-soft whisper "Dad! I just farted on you!" Amazingly, the entire store did not turn around to look at us.

Later, while signing my book, Chabon complimented me on my old-school X-Men t-shirt. I'm never putting that signed copy of Kavalier & Clay on eBay.

Thanks for the memories, and Happy Anniversary, Lee!

Nice Blog: Working Parents

Thought I'd highlight and recommend one of the blogs on my Links list (over there on the right): the Working Parents blog from Business Week.com. It's written by a rotating panel of six Business Week editors and pretty much every entry has been a worthwhile comment on the problems or symptoms of being a parent trying to juggle a job, a family and a marriage at the same time. I don't agree with all the writers' opinions, but just knowing that other parents struggle with the same issues is comforting and helps me keep things in perspective.

I found these two recent entries particularly interesting: The Elusive 50/50 Division of Labor, and The Elusive 50/50 Division of Labor, Part II

They look at both sides of a classic argument (tell me you've never had this one): Do most men do a worse job at taking care of things around the house because they expect their wives to take care of it? Or do most women not trust their husbands to take care of things because their standards are too high? The Part II entry has an interview with Marc Vachon. Marc and his wife Amy recently launched a web site called equallysharedparenting.com. They've both decided to work part-time and stay home part-time, and they created the site to share pros and cons and help other parents who are interested in doing this.

They've worked out a new approach to sharing tasks: if you want to split up the workload at home, you also have to split the difference on what standards the work needs to be done to. Whoever takes responsibility for a given chore gets to do it their way, and the other partner takes responsibility for butting out and accepting the shared standard. Ironically, this is a basic principle of being a good manager at work, and making compromises with your partner is what marriage is all about. But it's funny how rarely we (at least I) use this skill in an explicit way at home.

We have had 2 more ultrasounds since the last post. The first was the level II – where they can see all the bits up close and personal. We saw lips, the heart chambers, even little toes. Of course I didn’t see as well as Baldwin (bad angle) and truth be told, I am not exactly sure what I’m looking at most of the time. But the doctor said everything is right on track, and that s/he is supposed to look just like that.

Speaking of “s/he” I am still standing firm that I don’t want to know the sex of the baby until after he or she arrives. Sadly, I am the only one who feels this way. Foster and Harrison are still split on their hopes for a girl or a boy (respectively) and are campaigning furiously for me to change my mind. And poor Baldwin really wants to find out too – he doesn’t care what the gender is, but he really wants to know. I told him he should find out, just because I don’t want to doesn’t mean he can’t find out. He has just as much right as I do… but our doctor said that rarely works out for the best. In the end he’s being sweet and “respecting my wishes.”

So Baldwin’s plan was to study the level II ultrasound very carefully. Which he did. And after it was over, he told me that at one point he thought to himself, “hey! I know what that is. I see two round organs… and an oblong thing in the center… hey …” and then the sonogram technician flatly stated, “…and these are the baby’s kidneys.” Nice.

Yesterday we had another ultrasound. Not scheduled, but we promised the kids we’d take them to one. Since all of our other doctor appointments have been first thing in the morning, when the kids are at school, we asked our doctor and he said, “Oh sure, I’ll slap an ultrasound on you if the kids come.” Which was really nice of him. Unfortunately the baby was sleeping, so there wasn’t much action, but Foster thought the beating heart was amazing, and Harrison giggled for about 15 minutes when the doctor said, “That’s the baby’s butt.” Ah, 8 year-old humor.

Elevated sense of humor aside, Harrison has been really, really interested in the baby, and all that comes along with it. The other night he asked me, “Sandy, what happens if the baby comes in the middle of the night?” I thought he was just concerned that we would leave him home alone, so I tried to comfort him by saying, “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll probably have Nai Nai and Yeh Yeh come watch you… we won’t leave you alone, buddy.” He just looked at me quizzically and said matter of factly, “Uh, no. I’m coming to the hospital. I just want to make sure you wake me in time.” I told him that sometimes babies take a long time to arrive… like hours and hours. His response? “That’s okay. I’ll just wait.” Me: “In the hospital waiting room?” Harrison, “Of course not. I’m coming in with you.” This just stopped me in my tracks. Much as Harrison has been a comfort to me, I wasn’t sure I wanted him IN THE DELIVERY ROOM. So I told him there wasn’t a lot of room, and they usually only let one person in with the mother. He hung his head, looked quite dejected and muttered, “Oh. The husband.”

When we asked Foster if she wanted to come to the hospital in the middle of the night as well, she looked at us just as incredulously as Harrison, but said, “Uh, no. And don’t wake me. I’ll find out when I get up.”

Now that’s a girl after my own heart.

Mugsy

We recently had the privilidge of dog sitting our friends Mike & Leslie's adorable dog Mugsy. I know we're on the verge of getting a dog and I wanted to do a test run to see if everyone was ready to face up to all the downsides to having one: the accidents, the barking, the chewing on things not meant to be chewed on, the tracking mud all over the floor, couch, beds, and the pooping, always the pooping.


Just one problem... there was no downside. Mugsy is the perfect dog. She was well-trained, quiet, and never chewed or scratched on anything. She wasn't a prissy china doll--she'd get excited and run around like a wind-up toy if you wanted her to. But if you were sitting quietly, so would she. While we were reading or watching TV, she would hop up and put her head on your lap. And, as you can see, she was extremely friendly with the kids.

She's a Coton de Tulear... bred in Madagascar as ship's dogs, so they're used to living in confined spaces.

And of course now we're all SO into the idea of getting a dog, but I know that if we decide not to shell out the price of five Bugaboo strollers for a purebred Coton and adopt a nice, deserving dog from the pound instead, the poor cur is doomed to disappoint. At least we're waiting til after our other new family member arrives first; maybe by then we'll be happy with anything that already knows how to eat out of a bowl.

How Not To Talk To Your Kids

A while back, my cousin emailed around this interesting article about how to praise your kids from New York magazine. It kicked off a lot of discussion via "reply all" (which is how much of our extended family's communication seems to happen these days), so I thought I'd post it here for anyone who wasn't on the original email.

I've seen several comments online that people think the recommendation is to stop praising your kids (interestingly, some people seem pleased by this conclusion, while others lament it). I don't think that's what the author or the researchers meant. The recommendation is to stop praising your kids for the wrong things. Don't praise them for having the right answer, or getting the top grade, or for being smart. raise them for putting in significant effort, or being persistent, or taking on and overcoming tough challenges.

Another common conclusion? Easier said than done...