Author: The Nack Daddy

Categories
Videos

Turtle Power!

Our little G-Man is so eager to talk & walk, and he’s getting closer on each front. Lately we’ve taken to roughhousing in Finn’s big-guy bed, a process Henry requests by saying, “Turtle, turtle!” in reference to the animal blanket on the wall. He’ll often start whispering it while in another room, then get louder and louder as he beelines to Finn’s room. Now the two guys tend to get their turtling on while the bath water runs (getting stripped down) and just after toweling off (reversing the process). Check out a recent occurrence. [Update: If you have trouble seeing the video below, please let me know and check out the vid on YouTube.]

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Finn being named “Edna” is connected to our reading A Penguin Story.)

Categories
Miscellaneous

A little learning…

Hmm… it’s getting harder to pull the wool over Finn’s eyes. Last night he was poking at a little plastic locomotive he’d dug out of his closet–one that I predicted (correctly, it turns out) would make a horrible racket if armed with batteries. He’s been asking about the train for a few days (“Check out the little speaker, Dad-O! How does it work?”), and last night I tried to give him more run-around:

Dad-O: “Well, we’d need some batteries.”
Finn: “They’re in the drawer over there!”
D: “Oh, okay. Well, it looks like we also need a screwdriver…”
F: “There’s one in the closet in the kitchen!”
D: “Yeah, but I need a tiny one…”
F: “It is a tiny one!” [proceeds to prove it]
D: “Oh, uh… really?”
F: “I knew that! I know everything!”

…and modest, too! ;->

Categories
Videos

Wildcattin’ Brothers

Last weekend the Nack Pack went back to The Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad in nearby Los Gatos (“Wild gatos!,” says Finn). Check it out!

Just for fun, here’s our vid from the same railroad back when Finn was 11 months old:

We explained that Henry technically had ridden these rails back then, but that from inside Mom-O’s tummy the view was limited. 🙂

Categories
Photos

Random Handsomeness, Part II

The little guy can’t let the big guy hog all the limelight, now can he? 🙂

Thanks to our photographer-friend Maria for the photo. Click for a slightly larger version.

Categories
Videos

Wagoneers! O Wagoneers!

COME, my pink-cheeked children,
Follow well in order.
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of smallguy pride and friendship,
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and kvetch, wearied, bent by G-Man’s “walking”…?

[This post brought to you by Walt Whitman & a Cuisinart. ;-)]

Categories
Photos

Random Handsomeness

Ladies, in about 20 years, it’s all over for ya. You’ve been warned. 🙂


(Click for a larger version.)

[Update: Seeing this post, the subject says, “That’s Finny up there… bein’ a nudist.”]

Categories
Videos

Henry’s First Pickle

Having gotten Finn into pickles last summer, we thought we’d see how his little bro likes ’em. During Saturday’s sojourn to the “Meat Hut,” Pickle Lady saw our wagon rolling up and intercepted us with a fistful of pickles. For a kid who makes some crazy faces & who spits out just about everything these days*, I thought Henry handled it well:

* We call him our resident ruminant.

Categories
Audio Clips

Funk Soul Brutha!

The resale value of a used iPhone, it turns out, is next to nil. That makes it easier to justify turning retired phones into iPods, and Finn is the beneficiary of my recent upgrade. Now he approaches me and says, “Where are those white headphones? I want a little ‘Funk Soul Brother!'”

Oddly, “Funk Soul Brother” is the one nickname we haven’t given to Goonie G-Man Little Billy Goat Henry, and Finn’s referring to a certain Fatboy Slim track. Here’s his rendition.

Categories
Babyslang

The Tastiest Poetaster

Just now as I sat in the gazebo, Finn squeezed in next to me carrying a handful of Gobots.

“Hi, Dad-O.
“Hi, Finny.”
“I’m writing.”
“You’re… writing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are you writing?”
“Poems.”
“Poems…? Really? What are the poems about?”
“Hearts.”
“Hearts?… What kind of hearts?”
“Poop hearts… I like talking about poop with you, Dad-O.”

Aaaand, Scene.

Categories
Babyslang

Babyslang: Summer 2010

Time to fire up the Nack Family Secret Decoder Ring…

  • Chasando: Chasing. We’ve corrupted Finn’s nascent knowledge of Spanish, teaching him that the suffix “-ando” equals “-ing.” Thus he requests a little post-bath roughhousing by saying, “Let’s do some chasando!!”
  • Duck furniture: Dirt clods. Recently Mom-O & Finn used a big “lopper” to lop off a root growing behind our garage. Somehow Finn decided that the root was part of a duck house, and that the ducks took off, leaving behind their furniture (clumps of dirt). This leads to weird incidents like Finn running up, saying “I’m gonna blast you with some duck furniture!,” and then slamming dirt clods into my knee.
  • Sand Potato: aka The City Formerly Known as San Mateo
  • Hoot bags: Backpack. Our friend Hughes (Hoot) and I have similar backpacks, so when I pulled mine out of storage, Finn said, “Dad-O’s got a Hoot bag!”
  • Heavy Duty/Mega Duty: Blankets. Long ago Finn and I dubbed his green wool blanked “Heavy Duty,” and not long ago the even bigger wool blanket from Grandma Liggett became “Mega Duty.” We say that the blankets are brothers, or “Two Duties, Heavy & Mega.”
  • Metal nudists: Rodin sculptures up at Stanford.
Categories
Miscellaneous

“It’s Great to be an Engine”

“Buffer ’em, Bert!”

Finn’s evidently been listening closely to his Thomas videos. According to Margot,

The other day he rolled Henry’s little shopping cart over to the wall and parked it, then rolled the little walking wagon over towards the shopping cart and said “I’m going to buffer up the wagon to the cart”, which he then proceeded to do. Once the cart and wagon were “buffered up” nicely, he started pushing the conjoined cart and wagon backwards towards the couch so they’d remain buffered until he was done moving them. Cute, huh?

I’m inclined to agree. 🙂

Categories
Photos

A Day Out with Thomas!

After weeks of anticipation, yesterday we departed for the Island of Sodor (er, the nearby mountain town of Felton) to ride the rails with our big buddy Thomas the Tank Engine! Finn & I had come over last year with Grandma & Grandpa Nack, but he was too little to remember it, and Henry & Margot were attending for the first time. (Last year we somehow weren’t up for taking a 2-week-old on a steam train.) As you’d imagine, we had a ball, and with the brief exception of bath time, Finn has yet to relinquish his special Thomas souvenir badge.

We even got to meet Sir Topham Hatt (“that plut’,” Finn says–short for “plutocrat”), whom Finn wanted to offer some goldfish until realizing that “his boca doesn’t move.” I think Henry may make an even better Churchill/Hatt figure, as you may see in the a gallery of good times (HTML). Plus, here’s a bit of video:





Oh, and though my dad couldn’t join us in person this year, he was certainly there in spirit. 🙂

Categories
Photos

Horseando!

On Wednesday, Finny & I snuck off to the wilds of Ben Lomond, CA–the small nearby mountain town that’s home to Hoot, Milos, Alex, and–it turns out–some enormous horses. Despite his concerns, Finn was not eaten by a horse, and he proved more interested in eating sliced apples himself than feeding them to the big guys. Highlights included seeing big Nick (the white horse) drop what his owner called “road apples” (think we’ve been singing about just that ever since? right you are!); seeing those carted off in a wheelbarrow; and watching the giant horses roll around in the dust (what Finn called their “play area”).

Here’s a little gallery (HTML), as well as a video:

 

Categories
Videos

Bananas Unite!

During her visit last fall, Auntie Laura taught Finn a crazy little “Peel Peel Bananas” song–an event we captured on video. As it happens, our friend Tara took a shine to the video & taught the song to her twins, Bettie & Quade. On Saturday Tara, the twins, and their dad Andy came over for a barbecue that turned into an impromptu banana-jam:

On a related note, Finn & Quade enjoyed some two-man driving of a little wooden wagon from my cousin Anne. (Here’s a picture.) Yesterday Finn sat down on the wagon, paused, and said, “I don’t have a little buddy to ride with me. Those guys aren’t coming over this day.” After a little reflection, though, he noted, “Maybe we could get that little Billy Goat [Henry] to come ride.”

Categories
Photos

Gardening, Giraffes, & Stories

During my folks’ recent visit, Finn took quite a shine to helping with some gardening tasks, to the point that I now have to keep him from “weeding” the lawn bare. Even little Henry got in on the action, brandishing his own tools.

Finn and Grandma Nack teamed up to stuff his new giraffe (whom he curiously dubbed “The Badaff”) full of cotton balls, and he and both GPs enjoyed lots of quality storytime. In particular Grandpa Nack invited Finn to the gazebo for some thrilling readings from my childhood copies of Babar books. I can’t tell you how great it was to see the two of them delighting in tales of mermaids, lost monkey princesses, kleptomanical crocs (“bad dudes!”), crude dummies, and more. Here’s the customary little gallery (HTML).

Categories
Photos

Slip slidin’ away

We’re a bit behind in sharing a gallery from my folks’ recent visit. In the meantime, here are Grandpa Nack & Finny getting their hair blown back in a session of “Kindasteep“:

(Here’s a larger version.)

Categories
Photos Zoos

“Oh no, don’t EAT me, goats!!”

Someday, technology will allow us to jump a few seconds back in time (TiVo-style) to record marvelous moments that have just transpired. And given that by then we’ll also have time machines (right?), I’ll return to last week & capture one of my favorite Finny moments ever.

Last week the boys and I, together with Grandma & Grandpa Nack, headed over to Happy Hollow, the nearby park & petting zoo. This time I came loaded with quarters, all set to buy handfuls of snacks for the various goats, sheep, and donkeys on hand. Everything went great until the end, when instead of a mere handful of food, I gave Finn a whole Ziploc bag. The horned amigos made a beeline for the big guy, prompted him to start panicking, “Oh no, oh nooo, don’t EAT me, goats!!”

I put down my cam and quickly broke up the pack, knocking the chow to the ground & drawing the goats away from Finn. Poor dude–but he recovered fast, and ever since we’ve been laughing it up about those hungry, hungry goats. Here’s our gallery (HTML).

Categories
Photos

Matinee Idols

(cue old-timey radio announcer voice)

Starring…
      Grandpa Nack!
and
      G-Man!

in a bone-chilling adventure battling the sinister forces of Nack family light fixtures!!

No Henrys were harmed in the making of this motion picture. 🙂 (Click for a larger version.)

Categories
Birthdays Photos

Hen Party!

What a nice birthday party we had with our little buddy Henry! A posse of niños, including Harper, Charlotte, Dominic, Ken, Julian, and Madison, along with their respective parents & of course Grandma & Grandpa Nack, were on hand to help us celebrate. Carrot cake, juice boxes, and other treats were flowing near the guys’ new sandbox. Mom-O & Dad-O remain kind of bushed, so without further ado, here’s our gallery (HTML).

By the way, with the Flash galleries, if you happen to be using a large monitor and like high-def images, try pressing the little square in the lower-right corner to get a full-screen display. Press the ESC key to exit when finished.

Categories
Birthdays Milestones

El Segundo Es Uno!

Oh my goodness. Henry is one year old today! We can hardly believe a year has flown by since he arrived on the scene last year after only 1.5 hours of labor.

Our littlest dude has got a lot going on these days–so busy growing, growing, growing. He’s getting ready for many more teeth to arrive–they’re making themselves known in big bumps and lumps in his boca. He’s been working really hard on practicing his walking, forcefully leading his hapless escorts around the house and getting very upset when we want to take a break and sit him down on the floor!  (I am prone to calling him “Stampy” because of his disproportionately heavy footsteps!) And he’s really starting to chatter away. Lots of babbling and even some honest-to-goodness words like Dada, Mama, ball, cool, go, Coco, and uh-oh. He loves his little sleeping buddy Ollie, and has warmed up to his stuffed cat (an Xmas gift from Grandma Nack).

More Henry-based action includes “rock stance“: standing with his feet wide apart and jiggling one leg up and down (think David Coverdale in the 80’s). In addition to assisted walking, he’s able to pull himself up to standing unassisted, and has even stood (stock still) on his own for several seconds at a time. Dad-o has introduced Henry to “fountain inspection” both at our newly repaired fountain as well as neighbor Richard’s kid-magnet front yard fountain.

I’m only half joking when I call Henry my bossy baby. He wants to do everything himself, and when he needs your help he’s very clear about what he does and doesn’t want you to do. If you try and feed him, he grabs the spoon or piece of food and puts it in his mouth–he doesn’t want us doing it! He’s gotten into some serious chug-a-lugging, grabbing both his and Finny’s milk cups and jamming in both sippy lids at once. He’ll also let us know if and when he wants to be held (or not!) and is remarkably strong for his size (evidenced by pushing himself off me when he’s had enough of my lap).

This week he’s gotten in plenty of playtime with Grandma and Grandpa Nack, and was introduced to his very own sandbox (a wonderful gift from them) this evening. After his initial uncertainty about sitting in the sand, he got pretty engrossed in scooping and pouring. Every day this week has been an adventure–trips to Happy Hollow, Blackberry Farm, and other parks, along with shopping trips and picnic lunches. He was yawning his brains out by 6:30 this evening–I’ve never seen him that sleepy! But now that he’s in bed he’s having kind of restless sleep. Maybe he knows his birthday party is tomorrow! Happy Birthday little G-Man!