Catfestation

Ah, dear sweet Mittens:

She's such a good cat, even after the incident which partially severed her head and permanently smeared her countenance.  She's an orange tabby, as you can well see, and, wait... that's not our cat, these are.

  

The talkative one in front there is Bailey, aka 'Crack-head Cat,' and the one in back is Paige, the quiet, evil one who recently tried to pull a cookie off the counter in the kitchen as Crackhead goaded her on.  I don't know who the hell Mittens is.

Truth be told, over the years the boys have drawn cats regularly, beginning as stick animals with whiskers and now with these, again, photo-realistic renderings.  I wonder why we have seen so many cat drawings?  I suppose it's because there has always been a cat in the house, and, when our first cat, Scout, died, we got the family kittens.  It's also fairly easy to render a reasonably recognizable feline, even I can draw a cat.  I think it's more than that though.

There's something about sharing your home with another animal that makes our being a bit  more understandable.  For instance, sometimes when I am up late at night and TV is so mind-numbingly inane, I find myself watching the kittens fight, wrestle and in general torment each other and then snuggle up together on top of the heater vent.  It is very easy to make the jump and see the same behavior from my little mammals.  I feel that this is very important; not only must we be aware of the emotional, human journey our children walk, we must also remember that they are just little beasties, baby primates.  This helps me when the fights break out and the tempers flare up and the competition reaches a crescendo of yelling and tears.

On top of the maddening array of emotions they must tame, the near cacophony of language they hear which must be deciphered, the social understandings to be sorted and all the other complex human stuff they face daily; they must also hear, and try to grapple with, the wild thing inside them.  I am very hesitant to try to weed that out of them, for they must know it, listen to it, feel their own blood racing through them, feel their cheeks redden, feel primitive fear and primal joy.  All these things must be understood and savored with our animal hearts, not our human heats.  It's difficult for me to explain it, it must be difficult for them to understand.  Personally, I like knowing I am an animal, I find it easier to forgive others and to forgive myself.

So, we have cats. 

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"You are not the Prettiest Princess of Beautiful."

Actually, I am...

Retroaster

This is from when N was about four-and-a-half:

I feel confident that it is portrait of the whole family.  We actually do look like that, frighteningly similar, especially in our faces.  Even our then cat, Scout, looks the same, just add whiskers. And, yes, we do have a garden of Happy Flowers in our backyard.

I am afraid to admit my limited knowledge of the iconography used by four-year-olds, I can only say that those are indeed angels above us and there is a traced hand in yellow up towards the top, either a symbol of God's omnipresence in our lives or he had just learned to trace his hand.

I remember one time finding some drawings of mine in a box from when I was a kid , the paper yellowed and dogeared and the crayon fading, and feeling sort of sad at the realization of temporariness of this sort of thing.  I, of course, have saved a lot of the boys' stuff and am glad for that, but, I fear it won't last.  I am very glad that we took photos of quite a bit of  it.  It is nice to watch how they have grown in style, watch as arms get added to the stick dudes, then hands, and now those creepy noses and more expressive mouths.  Watch as the once blank skies fill with suns and moons, airplanes and clouds, and even an occasional blimp.  Watch houses become more three-dimensional with more logical placement of windows and doors.  Watch as the flowers loose their smiles and the trees gain their branches.

So, in the saving of all this crap, perhaps I will give them great memories as they get older; perhaps some of it will be seen by prospective girlfriends and close friends, much to their embarrassment; perhaps, when they are someday famous in whatever fields they may choose, there will be drawings and the like from their childhood to be used in their biographies...  oh hell, I don't really care, I just know I've got a lot of blog fodder.

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"How do you spell WANT? ...I think there is a silent K."


Ahh, the elusive 'silent K'...

Creepy Clown Circus

Good God am I going to have nightmares tonight:

 

As you can see there on the wall of the tent, they are an award-winning group.  Pretty nice ladder there on the left and how about that elephant riding guy?  Still, they are very creepy, I've always had a problem with clowns, it's that painted on smile, I think.

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"Now it's my turn to irritate you."

At least they are taking turns...

The Return of "rney" and a "Glimmering Jewell"

I thought he had gone:

But, here is is making a rare cameo.  I've missed him and his buddy Bert. In fact I've missed all the cool folks at Sesame Street.  There is a lot of that sort of melancholy sense of loss when you have kids, and it makes me sad.  It doesn't necessarily make them sad, just me.

There are so many things that were so very important to them that just fall to the wayside, never, really to be considered again.  Recently the boys were looking for something on PBS to watch, they found Sesame Street and said that it was for "little kids" (somewhat cavalierly I thought) and moved on.  However, it was a Bert and Ernie skit and here, a few days later, the brief reprise of his role.  Still teaching I see, you can count on those Sesame Street characters to do their job.

Sometimes as the pictures scroll by on my screen saver here, I remeber the things we've laid aside; sippy cups, soothies, onesies, overalls, the Old Navy jumpers I loved, those suctiony plates and those filthy bibs.  The little clown girl on Disney whose name escapes me, The Mickey Mouse Playhouse, Bob (of builder fame) and so many other shows.  Books, oh man, all those little beginner books so cute and earnest, Z loved a book that made a rainbow out of ribbons so much he used to hug it, and N used to mouth the words of Goodnight Moon when he was maybe two.  Even the beginner Dr. Suess books sit on the shelf collecting dust, although the biggies still remain favorites.

All this makes me sad, but, as I said, not them so much.  They are making new TV friends on Word Girl and Wild Kratz, Geronimo Stilton and Cam Janson are now household words, replacing the 'Do You Know How Much I Love You' mouse and Winnie the Pooh.  And man, they rock their new jeans and school spiritwear.  So it all moves forward, new discoveries, new places, new challenges... and I suppose it's hard for them, too.

Here's an arbitrary "glimmering jewel" that Z was very proud of the other day:

It is pretty cool, isn't it?

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"Are there dinosaurs in heaven?'


That's a very good question...

The Lies of Omission

"Dad, Dad, Dad, Daddy... Dad?!"
 "Yes, son."
 "Does this look like the Statue of Liberty?"

"My,"  as you know this is my way of buying time, "Well, yes Zack, it does look like the Statue of Liberty."

Well, it does have that greenish coppery patina, there is a door, and a torch.  It is either the Statue of Liberty or the crossing guard at my first elementary school, a shell-shocked WWII vet who always smiled creepily.  But Z has never seen him so, it must be the Statue of Liberty.

I could not begin to list the ways this does not look like Lady Liberty.  Just as I could never explain how wrong some of their knock-knock jokes are, or how not the melody and words of  'The Twelve Days of Christmas' that was, or how so few snowflakes look like huge cubes.  Or how unfrightening  that look to throw off the pitcher is, particularly with that ridiculously large batting helmet perched on your head.  Or how bad that Frisbee throw was, or how that looks more like rabbit stew than the Easter Bunny.  Or how cute you look when you are mad, or how I never want you to grow up.

I'll just leave all that out for now.  I do it all the time.


From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"Do we have a pretend submarine?"


We do now...

Self Portraits

That's Z on the top there, and N mugging (it's a genetic thing.)

I mentioned in a previous post that I now had access to all the pictures the boys have taken with their Fisher-Price cameras.  (Well, that's not really true, when Marci downloads them to the computer she deletes some things, like say forty-four pictures of a Clifford episode on PBS, or N mugging for Z, both equally disarming I might add.)

Amidst the astonishingly eclectic array of subject matter, two recurring themes become evident; portraits and the things they cherish.  Besides that it's mostly just really weird shit.

I don't endorse or recommend things very often, but, I will say this to parents of toddlers and beyond:  get them a camera.  It is a fantastic lens outward for them and inward for you.  It's gives you a brief sense of what it must be like in their heads.  For example, I notice the angle is often up, the way they go through life.  There's another bit of advice I would give, kneel or bend down to talk to your children, any kid really, it means a lot to them.

They make a new generation of kid's cameras that are a little more sophisticated and also make short videos.  That might have been pretty cool for N and Z, but somewhere, deep inside me, I suspect it may have led to some serious dumbfu**ery, you know, of the jumping off the shed variety, so I am sort of glad that we didn't get those.  Although it would be nice to capture their voices, the tone and timbre of their own natural speech.

I guess, even though there are pictures of each other and themselves in their shots, it is the subjects they choose to capture that seem to really color the self portrait they are in the midst of painting for themselves.  As parents we get to watch our children build themselves, sure we add water and nutrients, but, it is their minds that are reaching out and weaving within, their minds deciding where to conclude, what to love, where to put themselves, where to hang their portrait to dry when they are finished.  It is an amazing and beautiful  process to watch if you just try to remember to look at them self-creating.  I find that watching them change and grow makes me want to as well, why should they have all that fun growing up as I sit idly by and watch?  I choose to grow with them.

Marci and I always say we are jealous of the boys reading a favorite book of ours for the first time, or a favorite symphony or movie.  But watching them do those things for the first time is priceless.  In a song I wrote for the boys when they were very young I said:  "I'll watch you watch the setting moon."  I guess I sensed, even then, that although I know how beautiful a setting moon can be, the more intense beauty is in the face of the child seeing it for the first time.

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"Wanna play whack the lemon?"

Yes, yes I do... 

(You can hear the whole song by clicking on "A song for my boys on YouTube" on your right up there, I'm pointing as though that would help.)

Steve of the Desert

I do not know what they are thinking sometimes.  In this case I don't know if I don't have enough information or if there is just too much here:

I am stymied, I simply don't know where to start.

Here's what I think.  This is Steve, out for a walk on the desert near the shores of the ancient Nile river.

Why does he have a Mohawk?  All ancient civilazations had a form of this haircut, further proof of alien visitation in the early days of man's development.

Why does Steve have patches on his knees?  His sportcoat was at the cleaners.

Why don't his hands match and is one of them a claw?  Yes, The Claw People actually built the pyramids and, of course, The Sphinx, as you are well aware from that World Civ class freshman year of college.

Why is Steve dancing?  His feet are very hot, look at the one actually on the ground, clearly flames are leaping up from his toes.  Which explains the look of agony and shocked dismay on his face.

Is he wearing glasses?  Why yes, yes he is.

On the other hand maybe Steve is a bird.  I never get Modern Art.

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

Nick:  "...the machine that is inside me, that makes me grow, is fueled by Dust and Fire."  (Caps intentional)

Zack responds:  "Honeycrisps are the best apples, EVER!"

Always, and this is important, respond to a non sequitur, with another non sequitur...