Day 1497 - Conversations with Emma

Over the past four or six months, the kids have started to become more interested in games.  We probably have close to a dozen games that the kids can choose from.  Some of their favorites are Chutes and Ladders, Elefun, Candy Land, and Guess What Mommy Drank For Lunch.

Tonight, Emma hopped on the sofa next to me and seemed a little bored.

"Daddy, will you play with me?" she asked.

"Sure," I said.  "What do you want to do?"

"Oh!  I know!  Let's play a really fun game!" she exclaimed.

"Okay, how do you play?" I asked.

"Pretend you're dead."

Day 1495 - Thanksgiving Road Trip

Although we went as far as buying a turkey for the freezer, we decided at the last moment to go to Northern California for Thanksgiving.  We only visited Santa Clara this time because Crazy Gaga was too busy cleaning out the slot machines at all of the Indian casinos.  Literally, cleaning out the slot machines.  She brings a bucket of sponges and Lysol and literally cleans the slot machines inside and out.

It was a quick visit, but it's always nice to spend the holidays with family.  How else would you know what a colonoscopy or prostate examination feels like?  And it's all the more better talking about it while eating turkey and stuffing....emphasis on the stuffing.

Although holiday conversations about body orifices are always intriguing, what I really want to talk about is the road trip to Santa Clara.  Just in four short years, these road trips have gone from exhausting to really exhausting.  When you're traveling with infants, the tough thing is the bottle feeding and the over-packing of luggage and supplies; did we really need to bring the Diaper Genie in the car?  But when you're dealing with four year olds, it's a whole other ball game.

I'd say between three and four years old, our kids began to get bored and infinitely irritated with car trips.  About the only two things our kids say to us on these long road trips are "Are we there yet?" and "You ran over another bird!"  This age was also the time when we decided to purchase a portable DVD player -- the savior of all car trips.

But the one thing that really got me on this trip was my thought that driving at night would make it easier.  We drove several hours, stopped off for dinner, and then brushed the kids' teeth and put them into their pajamas.  With about three hours left, I thought I could coast right through while the kid sleep through the rest of the trip.  But boy was I wrong!  Why is it that the kids will fall asleep coming back from Costco, but when we have 200 miles left to Santa Clara, all they want to do is raise my blood pressure?

As we pulled back onto the highway for the last leg of the trip, Andrew immediately started to whine.  What was he whining about?  He was complaining that it was too dark outside. 

"Andrew, it's night.  It's suppose to be dark," we explained to him.

"But I DON'T LIKE IT!  IT'S TOO DARK!  WHERE'S THE LIGHT!" he screamed.

"You need to go to sleep like the sun," we said.

"WAKE UP THE SUN!!!" he demanded.

His whines turned into screams and cries.  Inevitably, this began to get Emma upset.  Her tolerance for shrieking and very loud noises has decreased, so she got angry at Andrew.

"Andrew!  Stop crying!  It's too loud!" she pleaded.

"I DON'T LIKE WHAT YOU SAY, EMMA!  STOP IT!" yelled Andrew.

"You stop it!"

"NO YOU STOP IT!"

"STOP IT!"

"NOOOO!"

And cue the dissonance tones of crying and shrieking by the Emma and Andrew Crabby-nacle Choir.

I put away the DVD player because I thought the kids were going to fall asleep.  So Lisa grabbed the player, and attempted to set it up for the kids.  This always gets me a little nervous because Lisa has to turn around in her seat and stick her butt in my face to reach the DVDs.  I fear that she might slip, and her ass on my head would be the end of the Ichikawa family.  I imagine our epithet would be something along the lines of "What an ass-inine way to die."

Of course the kids' excitement of watching a DVD turned into disagreement over what to watch.  Even when we told them they could take turns watching a DVD that turned into an argument over who got to watch their show first.  I felt like I was listening to CSPAN.

Ultimately, Cars 2  and Go, Diego, Go made the remainder of the car ride peaceful.  We arrived at Santa Clara at 10:15p and the only person who fell asleep in the car was Lisa.  Coincidentally, the only person who pooped in the car was Lisa, too.

As I got into bed at midnight and thought about our crappy car drive, I took solace with the thought that my crappiness isn't unique.  My crappiness is the one thing that bonds me with all of the other families across the country trying to make it home for Thanksgiving.  So this year, I give thanks to all of the other crappy families out there having a crappy day and crappy travel problems.  Happy Crapgiving everyone!

Day 1494 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 1493 - Picture Friday

Emma likes to refer to the xylophone's mallet as Andrew's blockhead.

Andrew!  Did you put bubble bath on your toothbrush again?

Following directions does not quite work when you refuse to open your eyes.

My bear doesn't want to play with me because he's hibernating.

Have a great weekend!

Day 1492 - The List is Life

You are what you eat.  What is also true is that you are what you buy.  This is especially true at the grocery store.  The next time you're at the grocery store you should take a peek to see what people are buying.  Perhaps the bundled up woman is buying chicken noodle soup and cough drops.  Maybe the grizzled man is buying Jack Daniels and TV dinners.  Or the bow-legged elderly person is buying a pack of Depends.

I had to run out to the grocery store to buy exactly three items.  And as I waited to purchase these items, I realized that from these three things you can create a pretty accurate picture of my life.  I won't elaborate much more and will let these three pictures speak for themselves.  Here is what I bought:

1.  STRAINED PRUNES

2.  STOOL SOFTENER

3.  BALL & CHAIN

Day 1490 - Calling Mr. Furley!

There was a very awkward moment that happened in our bedroom.  Umm.  Let me rephrase.  There was a very awkward moment that happened in our bedroom that did not involve me with my clothes off.

The kids were finishing up their bath when our friend, Lisa Haskins, came over to visit.  Lisa is known to the kids as Lisahaskins (compound word) or Nee-Nee Girl.  You see, the Japanese baby word for bedtime is pronounced neh-neh.  But since our friend is white, she pronounces it nee-nee.  Ergo, Nee-Nee Girl.

After Andrew finished his bath, he bounded out of the bathroom naked and said, "It's Nee-Nee Girl!"  I don't know why it's still kinda cute and endearing to see little kids run around naked at home when it is just plain depressing and ugly when I do it.  At least that's what the wifey says...

Nekkid Andrew started blabbing off to Nee-Nee Girl about some random stuff, and then he said something that took us all aback.  He said to Nee-Nee Girl, "I want to show you how big I am!"  Here comes the Mr. Furley look...

We were all afraid what was going to happen next.  Nee-Nee Girl just looked at me in shock and pleaded for help with her eyes.  I asked Andrew to repeat what he just said, and he said once again while scratching his balls, "I want to show Nee-Nee Girl how big I am!"

Andrew took Nee-Nee Girl's hand and started to pull her into his bedroom.  I was interested to see where this was leading, although I was ready to stop the proceedings if it ended up like a tragic ABC Afterschool special.

But butt-naked Andrew did not take Nee-Nee Girl into the bedroom.  He stopped in the hallway and pointed to his growth chart.  "Look!  Look how big I am!" he said as he showed her how tall he was.

Although we knew Andrew's request was innocent, it is pretty funny how our adult minds can reinterpret things into Mr. Furley-like innuendo confusion.  Just goes to show you how our minds devolve as we get older.  All that we needed to finish up the night was to have a naked Emma go up to Nee-Nee Girl and say, "I want to show you my jugs" (Emma has a jug collection).

Day 1488 - Watch Out for the Storm!

This past summer, we bought a family membership to visit several children's museums across the country.  Call me unambitious, but I think we'll just stick to the three museums in town.  The three museums in the Los Angeles area are Kidspace, Zimmer, and Skirball Cultural Center.

We visited the Skirball Museum to explore their Noah's Ark exhibit, and it was a really cool place for the kids.  Everything in the exhibit is hands-on which means two things:  1)  Kids are able to learn through independent exploration and sensory experience; 2)  I could never bring Crazy Gaga to this place because there isn't enough Purell in the world to sanitize this place.

Instead of going through a wordy description of the entire exhibit, I thought I would share a few pictures with some snarky commentary.  And to make it extra fun, there was a surprise celebrity guest at the museum, so I'll drop off some random hints as we make our way through Noah's Ark.

You begin your adventure in this 8,000 square feet attraction by getting ready for the impending flood.  As you can see in these pictures, Andrew and Emma are creating a dramatic rainfall.  There is another area where you can create thunder.  And lastly, I decided I would contribute something to this area by giving a generous donation of wind.  Warm, musky wind.

CELEBRITY GUEST HINT #1:  This person probably does not live a simple kind of life like Noah.

When you turn around, you see the outside of the ark.  By the looks of it, Noah has been preparing his solo spot for the Chabad Telethon too much because the ark is not quite ready to take on the flood.  But don't worry because you're able to collect wooden slats to build the ark and place matching foam animals on the conveyor belt to get them inside the ark.







At first, Emma and Andrew didn't realize what the conveyer belt did.  So, I grabbed a couple of foam animals, turned the crank, and demonstrated to them how to get their sponge gazelles into the ark.  Call me the Pied Piper of Conveyer Belts because once I showed our kids how to do, there was a gaggle of toddlers drooling over foam sloths, llamas, and zebras.

When you enter the ark between two wooden camels, there is once again a variety of activities for your child to engage.  You can enter wooden crates and pull on rope to activate windows and hatches.  There is a three foot model of a ark that you can play with much akin to a doll house.   But most surprising to me is that there was a kiosk that sold dill pickles and a gift store that sold t-shirts that said "I Told You So!" inside the ark.


CELEBRITY GUEST HINT #2:  When this celebrity's child was being too timid to play with some of the exhibits, the child was told "What you waiting for?"

 

There is also this wall of various stuffed animals that children can match up into pairs.  Emma thought this was a fun thing to do and was curious about the different names of the animals.  As I watched Emma play with these dolls and move them from shelf to shelf, I wondered what Crazy Gaga would've thought about Emma playing with these dolls.  All I could come up with is that she'd probably see this wall of dolls like this:

The last room of the gallery was Emma and Andrew's favorite.  It was one gigantic room of platforms, ladders, tunnels, and ramps.  The idea is that you are inside the ark with the animals and you need to clean, feed, and care for them on multiple levels.  The realism of the room went as far as having fake poop on the floor and nearby brooms and buckets.  Personally, I'd second guess the animal poop when you have some kids running around with unusually loose diapers.

 

We probably spent an hour and a half at the Noah's Ark attraction.  I must say there was a great amount of thought and creativity that went into this project.  Every animal in this exhibit was made from recycled items.  Flamingos were made out of pink fly swatters, kiwi birds were made out of boxing gloves, and the mane of a lion was made from hundreds of keys.  I think the skin on the alligator may have even been made from recycled DVDs of a couple of my failed television shows.

All in all, the Skirball Cultural Center's Noah's Ark attraction was a great way to spend a few hours on a windy weekend.  There is no doubt that we will be returning to this place in the near future.  Get it?  No doubt...What you waiting for...Simple kind of life...




That's right...the celebrity guest was...

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