Inseparable

Truer words were never spoken

2008-07-28T10:36:00.002-04:00

I don't even remember what led up to this, but MK came up to Cathy, looked her in the eyes, and said, "Mom, you just don't get me. (long pause.) But I still love you."

It's the law

2008-01-29T20:21:00.000-05:00

Sometime during the holidays we were in Linens 'n Things, and they had for sale a plaque that read "Peace. Love. Joy." As we walked past it, Helen walked up next to it and said, "Daddy," and pointing to each word for emphasis, "Peace. Love. Joy. IT'S THE LAW!" I cracked up, of course, and now she chastises me with this whenever I'm grumpy.

Print your hand

2007-12-12T06:58:00.000-05:00

Helen is forever writing up and posting on her door conditions that you must pass to enter her room, or lists of rules you must follow in her room. The latest was a palm scanner. I laughed every time I walked past this, and was sorry to see it get replaced.

Tra la la la

2007-11-30T09:40:00.000-05:00

The other day Helen was playing the triangle, loudly of course, and I asked her to stop. She said, "But Dad, the triangle is my life!"

A perfect day for french fries

2007-09-22T20:21:00.000-04:00

We ate too much fast food in the month of August, and so decreed that September would be a french-fry-free month. A few days ago, out of the blue, Mary Kate decreed, "I think that today is not a good day not to have french fries."

It's a technical term

2007-08-22T13:03:00.000-04:00

Cathy brought the girls to the Maryland Science Center (a frequent destination for us) yesterday. When they came home, Mary Kate told me that she'd learned that Pluto is no longer considered a planet, but is now a 'doofus planet.'

The next food network star?

2007-06-23T15:13:00.000-04:00

Long ago, Helen invented a friend by the name of Johnny Garlic, from whom she learns such 'recipes' as mixing her peas into her spaghetti or putting cantaloupe in her bean burrito (ick). So now, whenever we cook a meal ad-lib, we say that it's a Johnny Garlic recipe.

Update: When we were driving from Napa to the South Bay a few weeks ago, we passed Johnny Garlic's Restaurant!. Evidently their chef has been on the Food Network, so I wonder if Helen picked up the name there.

Rolling thunder birthday

2007-06-15T17:06:00.000-04:00

We traditionally bring our kids to IHOP for breakfast on their birthday. Helen's birthday is near Memorial Day, which happens to be the same weekend as Rolling Thunder, so the IHOP is typically filled with bikers. This is always a source of amazement for our kids - I'll never forget the birthday when one of them heard it was Helen's birthday, and an entire restaurant full of tattooed, leather-wearing bikers stood and cheered for her. Just more evidence of what I already knew about bikers, since my late brother was one: Despite the often-menacing appearance, by and large they're really good people.

Today's special

2007-01-04T14:48:00.000-05:00

Someone gave us for Christmas a little holder for single-serve jelly and honey, of the sort that you would see on the table in a pancake house. Like those, it has a holder on top to hold a menu or whatever. So, I put a piece of paper in there that said "TODAY'S SPECIAL IS SQUID!" I guess Helen didn't approve of that, because later the paper had been replaced with one that said, "TODAYS SPESHL IS MARSH MELOSE."

It must be the stripes

2006-05-31T21:41:00.000-04:00

Mary Kate calls chipmunks "mini-skunks."

Image interpretation

2005-11-19T11:35:00.000-05:00

Zingo is a very cool bingo-like game for small children. It is one of the few games that my kids were able to play as early as age 2, and now that they are 3 and 4 they can even play against each other without adult help. The tiles have images and corresponding words on them, but being unable to read quite yet, Helen has her own names for some of the tiles. The one pictured here, she calls "burnt toe."

Besides, someone might slip

2005-10-06T15:52:00.000-04:00

When Megan was about 4, I was driving and eating a banana, and when I was done I winged the banana peel out the car window into the woods. She chastised me for littering, and I (shame on me) replied, "No, that's not littering. The crows will eat it." About ten minutes later she, somewhat sheepishly, said, "Daddy, I don't think crows eat banana peels."

Kid photos

2005-10-04T13:38:00.000-04:00

My mom took a few pictures when she babysat the other day, which I've uploaded to Flickr. View them here.

Happy girl

2005-06-24T17:46:00.000-04:00

My neighbor Nora Callahan took this picture of Helen at one of Megan's swim meets. Click to enlarge.

I like pie

2005-05-31T13:57:00.000-04:00

My third-grader has a friend at school who is in the habit of interjecting into random conversations and at random times the sentence, "I like pie." This amuses me. Googling it gives me the impression that this is a somewhat well-known meme, but I can't find anything suggesting an origin for it.

For those just tuning in...

2005-05-24T13:31:00.000-04:00

A bunch of older material, from back when Megan was our only child, can be found here.

3-year-olds are not rhetorical

2005-05-11T09:05:00.000-04:00

Me: "Helen, how many times have I asked you not to play in the shower curtain?"
Helen: "Fifteen."

Just once a day?

2005-05-10T16:36:00.000-04:00

If Lifehacker thinks that cleaning the kitchen floor every day is obsessive, she clearly either doesn't have children or has a dog to clean up after them. We sweep the kitchen floor two or three times a day, every day.

Daily admonition

2005-05-09T08:40:00.000-04:00

"Helen, it's not nice to tell your sister that she looks like a pinwheel."

Pictures of Megan

2005-03-31T11:13:00.000-05:00

I needed a couple of portraits of Megan for something, so I figured I may as well post them: wacky and conventional.

Crime scene

2005-03-23T14:19:00.000-05:00

Helen loves to lay down on the driveway and have us trace her outline with chalk, which she then colors in. These look just like the stereotypical film-noir crime scenes, and I have to resist adding a blood stain and the chalk outline of a gun. By the way, the L in "HELEN" is backward because she wrote it upside-down, sitting above it.

Sign of the times

2005-03-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

My 8.5-year-old just used the word multitask.

Photos!

2005-03-19T08:29:00.000-05:00

We got our last couple of rolls of film developed at Snapfish, and I've finally gotten around to making the pictures publicly viewable. Since I am just terrible about posting photos the past few years, having them all online with no effort from me is pretty handy.

... and don't make me say it again!

2005-03-14T11:53:00.000-05:00

Mary Kate: "Daddy, 'poop' is not a nice word."
Me: "I know that, sweetie, but I didn't say poop."
Mary Kate: "I know, but I did."

Caution: Objects may be older than they appear

2005-02-20T17:19:00.000-05:00

For about the 10,348th time, I just told my two smaller children: Do not pick up food off of the kitchen floor and eat it. We keep our kitchen pretty clean, so eating food off of the floor is a sort of Russian roulette: Most of the time, the food is very recently dropped, probably in the most recent meal. However, occasionally it will be a piece with remarkable camouflage that has escaped detection for quite some time, and is probably quite inedible.