December 31, 2009

The Santa Situation and Other Holiday Nuggets




















It snowed Christmas Eve and the day before, (about 8" total) giving us a perfectly timed white Christmas.

Rhys, Bella, and I geared up for a Christmas Eve day stomp in the snow - no small task. Have you tried to put mittens on a fussy 18 mo. old lately?

Our great friends the Moon's and Van Der Bosh's joined us for a Christmas Eve feast of roast beast. Our three families combined for seven boys and one little girl, sweet Lucy Moon, all age 4 or under. Let's quickly do the math....hmm, oh, yes, it equals chaos. Buzzed on Christmas candy and electrified by the pending arrival of the Fat Man, the biggest of the small ones, Kelly, Willem, and Jack, frenetically tore the house apart, somehow avoiding injury during hours of roughhousing. Cocktails were consumed by all over the age of 4, certainly an ancient parental survival mechanism.

Cast in the role of Old St. Nick for my second year with the same group of mostly nice little boys and girl, before roast beast and after a few beers to perk my jolly-old-soul, I slipped away to Grandma Mary's house and changed into my Fat Man suit. The costume is deluxe complete with white beard and wig; fur trimmed hat, coat and nickers; round spectacles; and topped off by a well placed pillow around my middle, of course. I barley recognized myself.

Sack of Christmas gifts, straight from points north in hand, I rang the doorbell and gave my best "Ho, ho, ho!" The kids had been warned of Santa's arrival and I heard squeals and the pounding of running little feet from the other side of the door. I made my big entrance, greeting eight, wee, beaming faces with another ho, ho, ho and boomed, "Merry Christmas" for good measure. As a courtesy, I greeted the mostly naughty group of half-drunk parents and began my serious business: giving the first gift of Christmas to all the good little children. Randomly, I drew out Kelly's present first. He approached me with an appraising look, not smiling, quickly snatched his gift, and retreated out of my site line, screaming and crying. I doled out my bag of goodies to the other kids, staying in character and using my best baritone Santa voice to quiz the kids on their status: naughty or nice. All the while, Kelly was still freaking out. Catherine, wide-eyed, through clenched teeth, hissed, "You need to leave now. Kelly is freaking out because you're Santa." Kelly made me! He's only three. What?

Apparently, Kelly figured out, almost immediately, I was behind the beard and flipped out not wanting me to be Santa. Catherine, after realizing that Kelly had dissected the whole Santa charade, told him that Daddy was just pretending and that the real Santa would, in fact, visit our house later and bring him presents. He finally stopped crying 45 minutes later when, in a act of parental desperation, we stuck a candy cane in his mouth.

Due to the emotional trauma suffered by myself and eldest son, I would like to officially and publicly announce my retirement as one Christopher R. Kringle.

After spending the morning opening presents, Kelly put on his new fleece jacket and sunglasses and hiked a few blocks to our little neighborhood park. The snow was too cold and light to make a snowman, so we just flung handfuls in the air and rolled round in the powder. Despite the torments on Christmas Eve, dressed in his red Christmas pj's, Kelly had a joy-filled Christmas playing gracefully with his mountains of new toys and his loving, little brother.

The photo below of Rhys with blue ink on his face was the result of Kelly's unsupervised attempt to make Rhys look like a "Kitty Cat."

Beckett played the part of Christmas elf in his festive jumpers.
















December 23, 2009

Christmas Cookies



Beckett can't help it, he was just born cute.

















Kelly showing off his new gears to Dariana.
For a video of the gears turning, go to:
http://gallery.me.com/tfkdenver#gallery

Pebe reading to Kelly and Cath via recordable book. Kelly listen to his grand ma read The Night before Christmas about 16 times before bed.

December 18, 2009

Tree Topper, Tree Tropper, Tree Topper





























We finally bought a fine fur tree and trimmed her with our collection of heirloom ornaments: sparkling glass balls, handmade gems from our youth, silver bells, and a traditional fat-lipped fish with a lady face. Rhys just learned to kiss, lovingly puckering his moist maw for most any occasion, even if you only ask for a hug. Unable to resist a pair of perfectly kissable lips, Rhys made out with the lady fish for a while, then we hung her high out of reach of her little lover boy.

As Doodie peered down from atop the soup, judging our actions naughty or nice, Kelly and I pretended to be Christmas Trees, balancing the Santa tree topper on our head just for the fun. I finished our trim job by placing the Santa, needlepointed with love by my mom in 1980 and bequeathed to me last Christmas, on top of our fancy, fat spruce.

We trimmed the tree last Sunday. Since then (it's now Friday) we've hosted three holiday parties at our house. Grandma Mary came in for a quick pre-Xmas visit with the boys. We planned to take her out for a nice hot meal, but ordered in Little India - too pooped to rally for a an evening out and away from Crew KRB. Catherine has been asleep on the couch before 8pm most nights this week.

Did you see the photo of Beckett? He's getting cuter and balder.

December 12, 2009

Big Christmas Box and the Tiny Tree


































So, we finally mustered up a focused fifteen minutes and fished the boxes stuffed with Christmas chachkies out of the crawler. We decided not to free the dusty fake poinsettias from their clear plastic coffin, but we unboxed the musical snowball to the delight of Kelly and Rhys. Santa and his petite team of just three reindeer must have circumnavigated the glass globe at least one hundred times before the boys grew tired of watching. When the blizzard inside the orb waned to a flurry, Kelly would reminded me to turn it over by prodding, "More nieve (snow in Spanish)."

Rhys loves do anything with me, but especially if he's sitting perfectly in my lap, just so. He'll read a library of books, watch a few minutes of a ballgame, or eat really anything perched in the sweet spot of my lap. If he slips down just an inch or if I need to shift him this way or that, he can lose his marbles lickety-spit...and drool. He's a big lover and hugger. Two of his favorite books involve hugging. One picture book called Hug is about a baby chimp who needs a hug. The only word in the book is "hug" and Rhys lights up each time the word is read and leans his head toward my chest, giving me a little snuggle. At the end of the story the little lost chimp, Bobo, finds his Mommy and gets a big hug. Rhys always laughs and grins when I give him a big hug, too.



Today, Catherine took the big ones to a birthday party at Monkey Business while I stayed back at base (gladly) with Beckett. I hadn't had a day alone with him in a while. It was a joyous, relaxing few hours together. After his morning bottle and before his morning nap, I gave him a proper bath. My only regret today was not running for a camera and doing a Pebe style photo shoot. Beckett kicked, splashed, and smiled while I shampooed his thinning baby hair and de-cheesed his neck folds.

For more photos of today's adventures around the house, go here: http://gallery.me.com/tfkdenver

Did you notice the foot-long strand of drool tailing out of Rhys' mouth in the photo above?


December 8, 2009

Doodie is Watching

Elf on a shelf, Santa's "spy elf" used to control children's behavior around Christmas time. A brilliantly simple idea for manipulating children that's essentially just a little bit of red cloth with a kind of creepy head attached. With the help of it's accomplice adult, the elf is placed up on its perch to observe kids all day long. "Kelly, let's just stop the whining right now. Doodie is watching." Allegedly, the elf makes nightly magical flights back to points north to file "naughty or nice" reports with El Gordo Rojo. I don't personally believe a word of this nonsense, but Kelly seems to change his tune when reminded of Doodie's duty.

Elf on a shelf instruction #1: Name the elf. Kelly named him Doodie, of course. Instruction #2: Do not touch Doodie - the exact same instruction #2 for potty training! As you can see from the photo, Doodie's elf hat (all elves sport a festive, pointy lid) was removed by one Kelly Goodwillie before mom had a chance to read and absorb the importance of rule #2. With luck, this supervisory error will not transfer to potty training.

The other neat Elf on a shelf trick is kids are instructed to tell their elf what they want for Christmas. I asked Kelly to tell Doodie what he wanted for Christmas. Kelly said, "Cars..... and.... a.....baby doll!" He already owns over 60 cars, the match box variety, and one talking baby doll. He jogged into the playroom to retrieve his doll for me to see. On his return Kelly pointed out the fact that the baby was in a basket and mumbled something about changing his stinky diaper. The doll's given name is, yes, "Dukey." Doodie and Duky are quite the pair.

November 29, 2009

ZooPa duPa day

After supplying Joe with 72 hours of pure, all-boy bedlam and mass quantities of holiday comfort food at Casa de Goodwillie, Pa begged for a morning out and about. We rallied the troops and bundled up Kelly and Rhys for a chilly trip to the zoo. Catherine volunteered to stay back at base with the wee one, who's bottle and nap schedule conflicted with our big boy plans to unabashedly make monkey calls, bear roars, and elephant trumpets - my specialty.

The massive male and smaller cuter female orangutan carefully plucking pasta shells from the matted grass with their surprisingly nimble opposable thumbs was a highlight of our zoo tour. I joked with Kelly that the orangutans were eating mac and cheese. I was so engrossed by the orange haired pair's display of dexterity at pointblank range that I failed to detect Big Boy's behavior right under my nose. Rhys, like a monstrous snail vacuuming clean the side of a glass aquarium, was sucking and licking the Plexiglas enclosure - surly fingered, mouthed, and nosed by hundreds of snotty zoo patrons of similar stature since it's last proper cleaning. I gave the circular smear of saliva and snot a quick swipe with my jacket sleeve and announced we were moving on to see the gorillas.














On our way toward the exit and slices at Abo's, Kelly insisted we stop to feed the parakeets nectar. Even though one of the colorful buggers nipped him, Kelly loved this.

November 24, 2009

Three Little Willies


















Three little Willies sitting on a couch, one fell off and he said ouch. No not really. They all sat nicely together sucking suckers and hands and whatever else they could stick in their slick, drooling pie holes.



















Weird vacation photos to follow.....

Stunning.

It's like we were their yesterday the way we.....do you see that?

November 23, 2009

Overheard at Casa de Goodwillie

"Kelly, don't eat my shoe! That's gross. Mommy walks around all day with that shoe. It's dirty and germmy."

Two minutes later, "Kelly! Don't put the couch in your mouth! What are you doing? That's gross!"

Pa just arrived from KY and has renewed his friendship with Rhys and the oft standoffish Kelly in record time.
"Kelly don't sit on your mothers neck. Beat me up some more. Ouff."

After unexplained screams from the direction of playing Pa and Kelly, "He's ok. I just spilled a little wine on him."

Rhys vocab words:
  1. Hat, referring to a plastic yellow-bellied, green frog perched atop his melon head. He carefully placed the frog on my head, too, six million times and thank-god-he-was-waring-a-diaper laughed every time Mr. Frog jumped off.
  2. Orange juice, referring to milk or water. We don't give him juice, yet, but Rhys has learned to parrot his big bro's Kelly's morning mantra.
  3. me or my, referring to his insatiable desire for any food item not nailed down or secured with lock and key within his reach, surprisingly long and growing daily.
  4. Book, his interest in reading has mushroomed over the past month. His favorite genre: dog books. Tails, by Matthew Van Fleet, Go Dog Go, by fake Dr. Seuss, and Good Boy, Furgus by David Shannon, among other canine related titles.
  5. Dot, referring to One Red Dot, a brilliant pop-up book for all ages. Yesterday, when we were tottering in the neighborhood, Rhys stopped, squatted down, pointed to a circular shape on the sidewalk fashioned from petrified discarded gum and said, "Dot, dot."
  6. Pato, referring to zapato, the Spanish word for shoe, Rhys' favorite possession. If shoeless, Rhys is semi-obsessed with the exact location of his shoes. Interestingly or, more precisely, coincidentally, pato, is the Spanish word for duck, the Rhyser's favorite animal to imitate. Rhys' duck call sounds like, "wack, wack."
  7. Kelly and Baby Buckett, referring to his beloved brothers. They truly get along wonderfully, for now.
  8. Boca, nose, eye, belly button, referring to his cute little body parts. Sometimes, he accidentally pokes himself in the eye when pointing them out.


I always ask for peace and serenity for my birthday, but with the three boys (3mo, 17mo & 3yrs), this year, I gladly settled for joy and love. Life is good.

November 16, 2009

A Day

After I got Rhys, the giant killer/eater, down for beddy-bye in his brown, footed, dogie pajamas - so cute - Kelly and I spent the evening together, dinning, talking, and making creamy, butterscotch pudding. He actually ate, no, gobbled, two helpings of the meatloaf I made - prominently showing onion flecks and all. Accompanying the main course this evening, Kelly chomped a half an avocado and inhaled several portions of home-made apple sauce. My boy clean-plate-clubbed his dinner. This occurrence is observed as often my hair is cut in the winter months. I offered to make pudding as a reward for his shocking display of Rhys like voraciousness. Perched on his stool at the kitchen island, Kelly helped me (I actually mean it in this instance) mix up the pudding and while it cooked, slow and low, we talked about words for objects in Spanish. I picked off a few of the easy "Como say" questions and we, together, made a list of the words I didn't know: cabinet, picture, floor, salt, pepper, curtain, chair, among others for Manny Manny to translate tomorrow. Tell Manny Manny his name is Kelly Buenowilly. "That's silly."

After we placed the pudding in the frig to cool, I quizzed Kelly, "What should we do now?"
"Look at the moon. Where's the moon? I can't see it."
"I don't know. It's hard to see with all the lights on in the house."
Kelly started touring the house flicking off all the lights until the house was as dark as it could be.
"What are you a vampire?" I asked jokingly.
"Yes, I'm a happy vampire," was his sweet retort.
"Let's go up stairs and see if we can find the moon," I offered.
"No. I don't want to," Kelly's standard answer to everything these days.

He apparently forgot the point of his light extinguishing mission. The joyous search for switches was certainly more fun than moon gazing on a cloudy night, anyway.

So, we sat on the floor for a while, not know what else to do, whispering about not knowing what to do. Kelly's ear-to-ear, toothy grin glowed in the dim light. He clearly was having a ball operating in the novelty of darkness.

"Is it ready?"

We ate pudding together. We read Paul Gobel's "Storm Maker's Tipi" and turned out the lights.

"See you in the morning when the lights turn green. Love you."

"Love you. Good night."

November 9, 2009

Rhys' First Walk


Rhys' forth bottom tooth erupted, finally, after what seemed like months of pain, crying and bailing buckets of drool. Even with this dental break through, this afternoon he was def con 4 fussy. With the light and warmth of a glorious fall Monday flatten and falling, Rhys' cry fest made me call it quits at four o'clock and head out for a "walk" with Bella and 16 month-old Rhys. I added quotes to walk because I completely expected our "walk" to conclude after a mid-block face plant, wailing, and me hoisting Rhys up into ride on Daddy position.

Rhys surprised me by toddering straight down our walkway, making a quick pivot right and high stepping up the block toward the little park to the west. When I caught up to Rhys, moving in a halting, unbalanced, penguinesque gait, two doors down, he was having the time of his life giggling and repeatedly vocalizing "baath, baath, baath!" Every uneven sidewalk paver and crack was a major obstacle deserving a brief deceleration or even full-stop for Rhys to evaluate each inch of treacherous elevation change. Rhys also paused with the irregularity and predictability of a humming bird at a feeder to inspect his belly button, lifting his green Pati jacket and t-shirt to expose his cute, bulbous abdomen.

Rhys managed to navigate the entire standard long, dog-walking loop up Milwaukee, down Elizabeth and back up to Fillmore, crashing hard to the prone position only twice - tearless delays of his determined progress. The only time I carried him was to redirect him back to the sidewalk after his frequent scouting missions of our neighbor's front porch decor. On one occasion, I grabbed him to divert his course away from crossing the (traffic less) street.

After our forty minute lap of smiles and hard urban hiking, we return home and Rhys returned to def con 4. Rhys is an outside dog.

October 29, 2009

Snowy Pumpkins


A fall blizzard trapped us in the house, but help soon arrived. Rhys the St. Bernard warmed our hearts with his cute doggie Halloween getup and stopped crying long enough for me to take this picture. He loves doggies and saying doggie and reading about doggies, and tries to lick Bella, now and again, but being dressed like a dog seemed to fray the vestments of his soul. He seemed fussy.

We had snow drifts as tall as Rhys on the upper deck.

I made Kelly put on his snow boots and go outside in the cold. He made footprints in front of the house while I dug the cars out. No photo.

Beckett seems heavy, finally, and is sleeping for longer stretches at night. He's growing cuter, daily.
He smiles at me and even other family members.

Thanks for reading.