Building Castles on the Beach

So, mostly I just gush about the boy all the time around here. But I'm noticing our Christmas tree over in the corner and it's looking sad. In the past, dozens of different kinds of ornaments have adorned its branches. We don't follow any certain style; over the years, we've collected a variety of flavors. Some fancy crystal, some homemade felt. Some green and red balls, some tourist souvenirs. But place them all overlapping the festive blinking lights, fill the room with more eclectic tastes of the season, and the tree appears downright elegant. Here's what it looks like this year: That looks even worse than in real life. Here. It looks slightly better with the lights on, but you can't really tell how the ornaments are distributed. It's just such a mess, I'm embarrassed to even post these pictures. Any guesses why it looks this way? Generally, Xander's pretty great. But the fact that he's turned our Christmas tree into this mockery ...

I don't know where my son is right now. I'm pretty sure he's in his room. I'd have heard the door open if he'd escaped. But exactly where he is in that room? That's a mystery. I could check. A good inch-wide gap separates his bedroom door from the floor, the result of wall-to-wall carpeting however long ago. These days we go with naked hardwood. If I lie on the floor a little ways down the hall, I can get something of a view inside the room. But right now, I think all I'd see is blankets piled on the floor, tossed off the bed. Not long ago, a monkey foot wrapped in footie pajamas forced its way under the door in an effort to escape the confines of the room then got stuck there. I had no choice but to open the door and replace the monkey boy back into his big boy bed. Thus began Xander's first night sleeping without a crib. A couple of days ago, the boy was committing some random terrorism around the house and ended up in time out. His mother and ...

At two-years-old, Xander can't get enough out of trains. He wakes up in the morning calling out, "Choo choo!" Mom and Dad hear it through the baby monitor, and it's enough to make me want to ditch the whole system. If he wants me to wake up, he can climb out of the crib and say "choo choo!" at me in person. I don't think Mom is there yet, though. When we finally pull him from the crib, then, he runs to wherever he was last night with his trains before being forced to give them up in favor of a pacifier and cup of milk. He carries at least three trains in his arms, wanders around the house, sometimes putting the trains on a track, sometimes just pushing them around the floor or couch or table or bathtub, always with the mantra, "Trains. Choo choo. Trains. Choo choo" on his lips. And the perpetual smile is kinda creepy. He watches a variety of train-related videos during the day. Thomas the Tank Engine is one of the favorites, much to m...

Here is the boy at the local skate park. I swear there are kids tricking (Is that the proper skate term? Sounds wrong.) out there every time I look. Don't they have school? Or homes? Except the area was uncommonly deserted this day when Xander discovered that the skate ramp makes a pretty good slide. No longer satisfied with wholesome Bieber bangs or even a faux-mullet, Xander had opted for the who-has-time-to-think-about-his-hair 'do. We had a couple of options: 1. Do nothing, which would mean we'd have to get him a board. Maybe a longboard to start? Then just send him over to hang with the cool kids. He's already got the hoodie. 2. Take him back to Sport Clips. The first time we did that has been previously chronicled . Not a bad option. But I believe that when you're getting a haircut, you should get your hair actually cut. Which brings me to option 3. Break out the clippers and shave his head myself. You can see for yourself which option won the ...

The Boy is nearly two-years-old and it's about time he learned how to kick a ball. I mean, Ronaldinho was juggling a futebol de salao right out of the womb, right? Xander's behind schedule. As for me, I started playing soccer when I was five. It was the mid-seventies and soccer was exploding in popularity all over America. "Soccer Made in Germany" was broadcast semi-periodically on PBS. Pele was paid millions to play out his waning years for the New York Cosmos. And the AYSO's "Everybody plays" policy helped extend the Sixties nearly into the Eighties. At some point I realized that I was rather comfortable with a ball at my feet, so my parents put me on a team. I played my whole young life, then didn't for many adult years, then started coaching a few years back, and now I'm consistently playing again. I play indoor, managing maybe three minutes without keeling over, and somehow I end up stepping on an opponent's toes nearly every game....

Every summer the LDS church sends their young women, ages 12-18, to a week-long summer camp. It's there they learn the ways of The Force, as well as the best fixins for Dutch oven cooking. Actually, I know about as much about what goes on at Girls' Camp as I do about what goes on at Boy Scout Camp, which most Mormon teenage boys attend every year, but which I never did, despite being a Mormon teenage boy. I was busy playing soccer or something. This started long before Title IX, by the way. In fact, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Young Women Camp . In your face, 2014  Division I women's lacrosse at the University of Colorado. Where were you in 1914? Anyway, today my wife and my twelve-year-old daughter  drove   a car full of teenage girls  to their camp site near Cripple Creek, Colorado, tucked away back there on the sunset side of Pike's Peak. T hat leaves me alone with the boy for the rest of the week. The following is the account of how our first day as c...

Detritus is an interesting word. First, I just found out that it's spelled "detritus" with a second T, not "detrius" without a second T. And second, some people claim to pronounce it with a long "e" as in "dee" and a long "i" as in "try." Others leave the vowels short and even leave out the second T in the pronunciation. Plus, it seems to be mostly used in biology or medical jargon, as in "the detritus of the dead bird in the garden is fertilizing the plants." And because I'm a nerd, I looked it up some more and found out Detritus is also a video game much like Asteroids, a troll in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and some kind of electro-aggro-industrial band. Now you know. But for my purposes here, I'm referring to the physical debris that erodes away from our lives consistently, all day long. More specifically, the crumbs  of food  and bits of trash that end up on the floor of my house is ...

As you can see, we let the boy's hair grow for over 18 months. It got pretty long. But super cute, right? He was only mistaken for a girl once, even though he was wearing overalls with a football on the bib, which is downright iconically boyish, if you ask me, so it must have been the hair. The mullet is also worn by spiders from Mars. His grandmother took it upon herself to cut his bangs a few times while she was watching him. A small price to pay for babysitting, but one more time and his cute, shaggy 'do would have turned into a mullet to rival Ziggy Stardust. On Monday, Memorial Day, we opted for an official haircut. I thought I might just get out the clippers and buzz it down, but I know my wife well enough not to mention it. Our brother-in-law said we should go see The Russian, an old barber who's been at this little strip mall shop for decades, I guess. This appealed to my wife because of the spinning red, white, and blue barber pole in the window. ...

Starburst jellybeans taught Xander how to say "Please." You see, I'm plagued by cravings for seasonal sweets. During the winter holidays, Sam's Club bakes these red velvet/ white chocolate chip cookies that are great gobs of cosmic delicacy. I was physically depressed when I went in for my fix in January and was told they only make them during the holidays. I'm in a forced state of remission until November. Then I get this thing for Starburst jellybeans every Spring when bean season comes around. I'm fond of most kinds of soft, fruity, jelly candies: the orange slice, the gummy bear, the Mike and the Ike. A regular jellybean is a tasty treat, even the black ones. But the Starburst jellybean completes the Easter basket. I don't think they taste much like the old-school, square Starburst fruit chews. But each flavored bean is something better. Even the yellow ones. And especially the purple ones. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, purple is the best fruit. T...

This marks my 100th blog post. I'm home with the boy today. It's fitting since I started this whole thing by staying home with the boy in the first place. The difference is that last spring he was a little peanut squirming around, attached at the nose by a line of oxygen. Today, he's still pretty squirmy, but with clearly defined motor control and he's able to breath his own air. He's about to hit 18 months, and he's turned into a pretty healthy, extra cute kid. Look, see? We celebrated (my staying home, not my blog) by taking a long walk around the neighborhood, stopping for a while at the park for some climbing and sliding. The X-man loves the slides. He'll climb up a straight ladder to get to the top of a slide, then he throws himself down the slide by basically walking off the edge and falling onto his diaper-padded bottom. He's gratefully learned to lean backwards and not forwards because half the time he's so quick I barely get to the ...

Previously on " The Great Sleep Debate ": Dad starts to lose his cool after waking up at 3:00 in the morning for the five-hundredth time in a year. Then I remembered that back when the boy was still the size of my forearm and his whole head would fit in my palm, my wife had picked up the book  Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child  by Marc Weissbluth, M.D. At one point she told me in this totally incredulous way, "This book says if you put your baby down to sleep at six o'clock, he'll sleep straight through until six in the morning." We scoffed out loud together, for what did I care, anyway? Xander needed sustenance every two hours. Sleeping through the night would have to wait. We waited too long. I was beginning to feel like it would just be better to lie down on the hardwood floor of the nursery while the boy rattled the slats of his crib with his bottle all night. So I made an agreement with May. If I read this book, which she only ended up reading...

Xander has kept us up nights for over a year. His first month he was still in the hospital, so that part doesn't count. But when we brought him home, he was feeding every two hours. My wife and I would alternate nights staying out in the living room and sleeping on the couch while Xander slept his short periods in his little chair. Where he spent most of his time a year ago. When we brought him into the bedroom, we bought a co-sleeper that attaches to Mom's side of the bed--I think it's  required to be on Mom's side--but we continued the trading procedure, and every other night I slept next to the baby. (Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I only sleep well on the right side of the bed.) After a few months, though, the day came when I woke up in the morning and realized I hadn't had to soothe the baby all night. Huzzah! What followed wasn't every night, but sometimes we would all get a full night's sleep. Roll over, put pacifier i...

Giving toddlers a reason to walk since 1990.   Xander took his first step two days before his first birthday. I was holding a Seinfeld DVD that he wanted (such good taste already, right?), and he forgot to hold onto the bed as he reached for it. It's a little over a month later and we've had to reconfigure the house. We have many surfaces in our small dwelling, the better to stack books and soda cans and iPods. He can now get to the lower level surfaces: coffee tables, end tables, corner cabinets and shelves. One shelf is restocked at least five times a day with his Boynton board books that end up on the hallway floor every couple hours. He also ends up in the kitchen cupboards. Our Tupperware cabinet has never seen such disarray. Well, are you? So we've had to move things around. Hide our books. Block access to the Christmas tree. We bought a fancy "look ma, no hands" gate for the basement staircase. (We could have just put the actual door back on th...

Last year I started a journal that I'd hoped to show the boy later as he grows. This blog has turned into that record of his growth and development (but an excerpt of that journal is included below). I posted two other portions of his birth story last spring that you should read if you haven't. My wife's ordeal that ended up in a five week hospital stay before labor is related in p art one , and labor and Alexander Brent Wescott's birth on November 15, 2010, constitutes  part two . Romantic stuff. Part three is to be read to the tune of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." When Xander was born premature at 34 weeks, within a couple of hours it was clear his lungs hadn't developed enough to handle his own breath, so he was intubated with a CPAP mask that covered most of his face. That mask only lasted a day, but the ventilator tube remained down his throat for a week. Over the next few days, he ...