As you may well know, Margot & I have long enjoyed calling one another “Peanut” (feel free to roll your eyes—I’ll wait ;-)), and long before we were even engaged, I made her a sort of bizarre “peanut car” from Legos. It carried peanut M&M’s, and I added the license plate “BIFURC8” for fun:
Here’s a clip of the boys discovering it yesterday in Margot’s office.
Anyway, it only took us the better part of a decade, but we’ve now kitted out a real car (the A8) with “BIFURC8”! That is some nerdy, nerdy family love—i.e., just our two-lobed cup of tea!
For some reason a couple of months ago, Finn decided that once a month, Mom-O should do a sleepover in his room (cuddling with him all night). Never one to be left out, Henry decided that he should get a similar arrangement with Dad-O, and thus on Monday night we each headed to one of the dudes’ rooms.
Henry persuaded me quite foolishly to agree to stay in his room after I tucked him in, doing “homework” on my laptop in the lower bunk. Even after I shut its lid, he was so jazzed about my presence that he couldn’t stop monologuing into the darkness. Later I jotted down some of his bizarre utterances:
Dad-O, why do you love Manti Te’o so much?
I love Manti Te’o, too. We all do, ’cause we’re Irish people.
[singing] I just haaate my daaad doing home-worrrrk…
Your computer keeps winking at me!
When do construction workers build volcanoes?
Lava & magma are cousins.
Sometimes when smoke detectors get dusty, they freak out.
I’m playing tricks with that light [crossing his eyes]. Do you see??
Air conditioning sprays out ghosts.
And so on, and on, for hours. I was of course tired, trapped, and frustrated (just go to bed, Goonie!!). And yet I finally just laid back & resolve to enjoy the ride. We won’t have the wee man just like this for long. 🙂
…it just might look like this. 🙂 Their desire for cheese sandwiches knows no bounds. Margot thinks they should start a tiny, orange-bandana-sporting gang, throwin’ cheese-signs and getting into scuffles with rival preschoolers (the Colbys vs. the Muensters, etc.).
Well, our first (pseudo)academic milestone has come and gone. Our man Finny “graduated” from preschool last week, and is now officially on his way to Kindergarten in the fall. The Maestras at Pasitos put on a really fun little ceremony and potluck dinner for the graduates and families. All the kids got to make gold cardboard mortarboards and decorate them, and they each got to walk up and receive a little certificate while the Maestras said something nice about them. It was very cute and Finny was very proud. At the end, all the kids and Maestras danced to “Guantanamera.”
Henry, on the other hand, had a complete and utter meltdown just before the ceremony started. Tons of shrieking and crying to the state of hyperventilation. (Of course, this happened front and center next to all the waiting families…) “No one is paying attention to me, Mom-o! No one is playing with me! Why don’t I get a present?” I think we finally got a big ol’ glimpse of sibling jealousy. I got him calmed down enough with a little lap time, and then he was off riding a tricycle behind the ceremony until it was finished and the rest of the kids could play.
Here’s a gallery of the afternoon’s proceedings, including a fantastic surprise visit by some Mexican heritage dancers in full costume. As Henry noted: “Mom-o, they’re not wearing pants, or shoes and socks..or shirts!” But they had some mighty cool feathered headdresses and rattles on their ankles.
This past Memorial Day weekend, we discovered that the dudes’ heads were once again infested with lice. We had treated them several weeks ago, and done mountains of laundry, and tried to be as vigilant as possible to prevent their return, but those little buggers are tenacious! Sadly, we had to cancel our big Memorial Day BBQ because we didn’t want to spread it around to any of the families who’d be coming over.
Finny helpfully told us that the Spanish word for lice is “piojos” (pronounced pee-oh’-hoes), which sounds a little more lighthearted than “lice.” So, we spent Sunday evening and Monday combing out piojos, washing them out of all the bedding (again), and quarantining stuffed animals. On Tuesday I decided to call in the professionals – of which there are suprisingly many! – to come in and do a far more thorough job of nitpicking than I could do. They checked all of us for piojos, and luckily John, the nanny and I were clean. The boys, however, still had a ton of nits in their hair, which the “lice ladies” calmly and gently picked their way through (while Yvonne and I did yet more laundry).
They came back yesterday for another double-check and comb through, and happily the guys were piojos-free. Of course, in the meantime, I purchased lice-repellant shampoo and conditioner and better nit combs because I’m sure we’ll be dealing with this for the next few years as the guys go through school.
Update: Here’s Finn’s homegrown solution for depriving one of lice (and limb!):
As Margot likes to note, Henry loves physical comedy & inciting his brother. Here those two great tastes go great together, with the big guy inspecting the little one for toe jam:
