chollaball.net

The troubled economy makes salary adjustments and bonuses thin pickings. I understand. I’m not happy about it, but I understand. I get other perks, 2 days a week, to get all i like out of work along with most of what i like out of a day - software, sunshine, coffee, and the good company of my Budding Bipedalist, with a bike and no traffic or need for a shower. Its all work, whether its for TM or for G&A, I enjoy it all in the right doses and the right mixtures…perhaps it means I have embraced my sellout, perhaps it means i am blessed.

the carnage is kinda scary

About 4 we turned to a workout - mine and hers. Seriously…how did she get back there and manage to spill my beer?

then the Burley with Kila for some nubby-nosing en route to pick G up from school, and one of the World’s Most Perfect Spots!  How many awesome things can you count in this picture?

1. baby
2. beer
3. bike
4. sunshine
5. budding bipedalism
6. runzeheunding (offscreen)
7. blogging about my radness
   

failing to cap my recently-replaced rear shifter cable had a secondary benefit

Goodbye Hawes! Goodbye Pass Mtn!

Goodbye Firestation and Evil Traffic Light

Goodbye Red Mtn Church - thanks for letting us poach your parties and your spigots and your grassy areas, thanks for letting us hit your staircase and your curbs and launch off your bbq pits

Goodbye Boeing’s Longbow factory

The McDowells, are you ready Kila?

riding home from school

Almost as soon as she got in the trailer, G asked me if we could go up the bumpity-bumps and down the big hill near home. This took some Q&A to figure out she meant the giant mound of earth they pushed up at the construction site behind Red Mtn Church. We got up the hill, but could only reverse course to get down.

Everyone was already extremely extremely dirty, why bother holding back? The girls made mischief in the sand til they were good and done. Alana spilled my 3rd beer of the night, and my 2nd of this ride - if this sounds like I’m having too many beers, its cause I’m drinking none of them!

G had to potty, i told her just pick a spot any old spot

The desert area next to our neighborhood used to be 2 miles long and a mile wide, but the highway and the golf course and the church have wittled it away to just enough for Kila and I.  I’d be amazed if anyone but us is ever out there. I only know every inch of it cause Kila needed runs every day for 10 years. It worked with my love of exploring on the bike, which fed my need to string routes together. I have the zone around my house so dialed that moving is terrifying, but also a challenge to find something new. Kila is getting old, she will not want to roam outside a comfort zone like she used to; she used to do 18 miles up and down Bulldog Canyon.  But there is a high school and a wash and a canal blocks from the new home.  It will be fun for us.  I managed to find every jewel in the sand in Rocky Point; Kila and I will work it out.  And who says I cant bring a shovel and a mcleod and make some ramps into the wash pit?

A rainy weekend, but the girls needed to get out, so we bolted when the sky was clear.  The camera loved it.  G had fun, tons of it on the 2-Bike, so i don’t feel so bad that this is the Alana Show.

Penelope:  So this is all like fuckin ‘whatever’ to you.
Bloom: I usually drink with Bang Bang in the snack car, play cards.
Penelope: With who?
Bloom: Mrs. Yeungling. That’s her smuggler nickname.
Penelope: That’s offensive.
Bloom:  I think if it were offensive to her, she’d let us know.

— The Brothers Bloom, 2008

G filled Kila’s bowl to the brim, so Kila wouldn’t go hungry. Alana loves dumping Kila’s bowl. The instant it makes its distinctive clang on the kitchen tile, and long before an old bored dog gets hungry for more kibble, Alana sprints towards it like Kila when she was a puppy.  And its full to the brim.  What are the odds?

Alana is just tall enough to pull things off G’s table, which is just small enough for a littleGirl to sit at.   Hmm…the irony.

How do babies instinctively know all the important buttons and remote controls and broken glass and poison and bike grease and blackberries that they must not touch?!?! Why do littleGirls leave cameras at knee-level, forks on the floor, break dishes, scatter coins, and drop foodstuffs that stain unbleachably?  Its like a plot against me.

If you can’t spot the sucker in the room, its you.  My children need con names.

Mornings with me, G and Alana become our own existential morality play.  Someone is ready to get up when someone is ready to sleep, someone is squirming when someone is settling, someone is throwing toys up and down when someone is underneath them, someone is kicking someone in the balls when someone does not want their balls being kicked.

Alana wakes everyone up during the night with bursts of teething-inspired screaming.  G wakes everyone during the night incoherently mumbling “cho choc choc milk choc choc milk mommy choc choc chocolate milk.”  I must wake everyone up with the forcefield of stress and insomnia that permeates off me.

I meant to get up earlier yesterday.  I meant to get up earlier cause I meant to be sleeping during my sleeping.  Instead, Alana threw a fit at 6:00am, and I settled down with her and G while Beckie snuck out to work.  Except the 2 of them kept me in a state of semi-sleep deprivation.  About 9, I finally told G to get out of bed and get herself a bowl a cereal. In retrospect, I think she was inspired by feelings of empowerment and the realization she could feed herself.

then I heard thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk as G streaked across the house
then I heard drag-drag-drag-drag-drag  and looked up to see G’s little yellow chair in the bedroom facing the bed.
then I heard thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk as G streaked across the house
then I heard drag-drag-drag-drag-drag  And looked up to see G’s little yellow table setup neatly in front of the chair.
then I heard thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk and promptly fell back to sleep.

I thought I woke up to see G sitting at her table.  I definitely woke up to G dragging a kitchen towel back to the kitchen saying “I’m cleaning up all the spills.“

I found some milk sloshed in the hallway, and a few cheerios scattered about the foyer.  I don’t really know what happened.  G shut up, Alana and I slept.

Today again I tried to sleep, to lose myself in my solipsism and comfy pillows. The presence of others intruded upon me, toy toolboxes opening and closing, toy drills roaring to life, while babies and toddlers stood face-to-face along crib walls, reading books and singing and trying to say hello in french, but all i heard over and over was G going “bonjur bonjur bonjur bonjur!!!“.

Parenthood is an attempt to infuse a reality and meaning by fulfilling a biological destiny and perpetuating one’s essence. Its a masochistic desire to be self-limiting, using your own reflective consciousness to shape that of others upon you. Mine want to get up early, I want to sleep in, there is no exit.

Alana and I walked in the door.  Beckie said “Alana!” which she’s started recognizing as her name, evidenced by when she heaves her fatty face up and throws a big bejowelled grin at you.  Then she said “blahblah” which actually in real life sounds like Mama.  She kinda sorta did the same to me the other day, its hard to know if you are the thing she wanted or just the next shiny thing.  She also kinda says Kila.

The words are slow in coming, but the voice is there.  Crying has long been a dialect unto itself, joined now by burbles of happiness, chirps of interests, and tuts or impending dismay.  All come across crystal clear and with perfect diction. We were happily playing in the dirt at the zoo when Beckie passed by chasing G, and Alana launched into a concerto of squeaks and squeals and uneven asthmatic-sounding wheezing. She does love her mama.

Again I find myself trying to match this behavior to G.  When did G start “talking”?  When did she know to use words to communicate? G continues to seem above-average in her verbal skills, and talking to her is a full blown conversation - only the simplicity of her thoughts reveals you are talking to a 4-yr old. We have been so lackadaisical with Alana in so many ways I’ve had pangs of guilt that we do not do enough, irrational remorse that acumen begins early and butterfly effects into a college scholarship or a stool at the drive-thru window. I don’t read much to either of them, though I used to much more with G - much easier when there is only 1 needy Monster to placate.

In some ways Alana gets spoken too more than G, since Genevieve is always interacting with her. It gives her 3 instructors. In some ways G talking to her is best of all, certainly G grabbing her and wrestling with her offers her companionship unlike anything her parents can give. Beckie and I talk to Alana, but G gets all up in her grill and speaks Alana’s language. Like with her starting to walk, I feel bound to stimulate her talking. It gets funner when she talks back. Maybe that’s why suddenly I’m interested?

i can not evaluate Alana on her own terms, only in comparison to her 15% lighter sister. Is it wrong to have stockpiles for survival? She seems to be as much of an enduro baby, but not a racer. Is it wrong to be at the back of the pack? Is G’s energy today a result of who she was at 1, and if so it is too late for Alana to be G, but it is not too late for Alana to not be a pod? My own need for 8 hrs a week biases my thinking, colors can not be trusted.

New Years Resolution: make sure both my girls get at least an hour a day of exercise with me, like Kila, above and beyond whatever else they may get from wherever else.

2nd game this year, and G may be a fan for life.  Tell her in the morning we are going to hockey, and she starts asking if she can get french fries and a hot dog.  She says “our team is red” in the car ride over, and asks when we can start howling.

We don’t actually watch much hockey, its more an elaborate trip to an elaborate park where both girls get to run crazy.  I think I watched 14 minutes of action total.  Ironic that G was throwing a fit in the parking lot about how we’d miss the game when Mommy and Daddy were trying to get their tailgate on. We got her fries and a hot dog, and she promptly spilled her drink on the pile of extra napkins. Hurricane Genevieve gets her game face on.

you’d think this would get old after the 7th time

someone ate someone’s fries while someone was riding escalators

club-level provides a safe romping venue for a soon-to-be-standing baby

tropical storm Alana

DOH!

hope the staff has Windex

games are won in the corners

G is a fan of cheering

This made it 4-0 in the end of the 3rd, and we still had to drag G home.

23lb of hefting, why does she get the Gu shot?