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2011-10-18T23:04:00.001-07:00

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Day 12: 11 Hour ‘Til L.A.

2011-09-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

We flew back home on Tuesday, September 6.

We left the Corinthia in the morning and got a ride to the airport from our friend Graham, saving us a lot of hassle with luggage on the Tube and a lot of money if we had taken a taxi. When we got to the airport, we tried to be a little smarter than we had been when we left, and told Mikey we’d have a snack in the lounge before getting on the airplane. Understanding that that was the way it was done and one didn’t jump onto the airplane upon arriving at the airport, Mikey was fine with it.

We try to make new mistakes, not old ones.

Business class on British Airways is worth every penny (though, of course, we were upgraded, so that’s easy to say). Our seats reclined fully into beds, and we drank champagne for 10 hours, which are two elements which rather well go together. One poor lady in sartorial hijab, who we took to be a nanny, was in charge of five under-5s, also in business class. Every once in a while, one of them would pass by us, and strike a pose before she came through to sweep him up. By about the half way point of the flight, at least one, and usually two of them were sobbing, and the woman looked like she was about to join them. We looked at Mikey, contentedly watching Rio or Kung Fu Panda 2 on his seat’s monitor, and were very grateful.

Airline travel, no matter the class, is claustrophobic and dull. Eventually, if you’re me, you sit on a sandwich. Drinks end up in your lap. Things go in your hair, God knows what. That’s on your own. Add to that a 2-year-old, and you get a whole hell of a lot messier. 10 hours later, you’re ready to go.

I asked Mikey when we were finally getting off, “Did you have fun on the plane?”

“Yes,” He said enthusiastically. “We go again on the plane.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “We’ll go again on a plane to visit Grandpa and Grandma at Thanksgiving, okay?”

“Okay … Is that today?”

We’re not a typical family: one British (Ian’s passed his citizenship test, but hasn’t been sworn in yet), two Americans; same-sex parents, adoptive child; white parents, biracial child. We have a domestic partnership in California which is recognized in Europe, but not the United States. We have a legal birth certificate that we carry with us, which says that by some miracle, Ian and I are Mom and Dad (I’m the Mom). When we asked for our customs form, we were told one per family, but we didn’t know what that meant. We considered ourselves a family, and so did California, where we were landing, and Europe, where we were coming from.

It turns out that we needed two, but we didn’t get that information until we were in front of the customs agent, an hour after landing, after Mikey had learned that if he repeats the word “Bodato, bodato, bodato” (which we assume was a combination of “bidet” and “potato”) over and over again, he can finally make me turn all the colors of the rainbow.

Despite our aggravation, we got our luggage, and came up the ramp at Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, where a long line of people were holding signs, waiting for their foreign relatives and friends to arrive. Mikey had already decided that he needed to push his stroller at that point, and I was next to him, trying to help keep him from pushing into walls and the folks around him.

Suddenly, Mikey noticed all the people behind the barriers on the other side of the ramp, and he began waving at them. It took a second, but soon practically everyone began waving back, and some were clapping, as if greeting a film star. Mikey kept smiling and waving to the crowd, welcoming him back to Los Angeles and home.

“That’s the future President of the United States!” someone shouted from the crowd.

I swear.

Seemed like the perfect end to our first trip abroad, this spectacular welcome home.

Day 11: Fun With Cubism & Him Got No Head

2011-09-20T23:33:00.000-07:00

Gentle reader will notice we’ve steered clear of culture in our wanderings through two world capitols. This wasn’t merely because of our creeping philistinism or a belief that Mikey couldn’t handle a museum – though, when we passed the Louvre on our arrival in Paris, Mikey literally passed out. It was nap time, to be fair, and we were in a gently rumbling cab.

In plotting the trip, I had multiple itineraries, and some of which included museums. In Paris, I noted the location and a possible day to visit the Musée de Rodin sculpture garden, the Picasso museum in the Marais , the Centre Pompidou, and even – based on Amanda Kaiserman’s recommendation – the Musée de la Chasse, which is a museum of taxidermy … which might’ve been too creepy for even me. In London, I had the British Museum, the Museum of Childhood in the East End, and the V & A, which is supposed to be very child-friendly. We never made it to any of those places, and I blame the good weather for that. For the most part, we wanted to be outside.

On the last day in London, however, we were meeting our friend Helen, her mother, and her daughters, and they told us to go to the Tate Modern in the south bank. Mikey, of course, wanted to go by Tube, and we didn’t really know where we were going so we wound up there a bit early.

It’s a spectacularly cavernous space, and upon entering, I thought Mikey might be tempted to see whether it echoed with the same booming clamor as he was able to create in the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion in his hometown museum, LACMA. Instead, we headed up to the top floor which is called the “Under 5s Zone,” a “creative, physical and sensory exploration of themes inspired by Cubist artworks.” A neat idea, a playground interpreting work by Georges Braque and Juan Gris: to Mikey, it was a slide, a maze, and a climbing wall. And, as luck would have it, Helen and her family had also arrived early, and so Mikey had Lily and Lulu, two older little girls to explore it with.

We had lunch in Café 2, sensibly located on the 2nd level, and then we all walked across the Millennium Footbridge over the Thames, from the Tate Modern to St Paul's Cathedral.

There were the usual buskers in front of the Cathedral, including a man in a suit, whose hat was evidently floating above his open collar.

“Mikey, look at that funny man,” I said to Mikey, who was oblivious, chasing Lily and Lulu around.

He looked and he stared, and then he screamed, “HIM GOT NO HEAD!”

This was not an amusing illusion to a 2-year-old. It took a few minutes to calm him down. For weeks after, if we made any reference to someone bonking or hurting their head, Mikey would whisper, “Like him in London?”

When Mikey had settled down, we said our goodbyes, and were off to meet our friends Sarah and Craig at the Mandarin Oriental. By the time we settled for drinks and food in the Bar Boulud, Mikey was stretched out on the banquette, sound asleep. God knows what his dreams were like.

Day 10: The Tiger, The Eye, & The Social Butterfly

2011-09-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

The Corinthia is a wonderful, stylish hotel with all the mod cons and then some, and it really can’t be beat for geographical convenience, right on the river at the Millennium Bridge, next to the Embankment Tube station. It’s also right down the street from the Strand and the Vaudeville Theatre, where we were set to go see Mikey’s first West End play, “The Tiger Who Came To Tea.”

It was the last day of Kids’ Week in the West End, which for 14 years has been dedicated to making theater more family-friendly, offering free or discounted tickets for children, special workshops, and other events. This particular play was the only one in the Under 5 set that fit in our schedule.

The play is based on a famous book by Judith Kerr, which I hadn’t read, and I considered whether we should get it for Mikey before the play. Instead, we decided to prompt discussions with Mikey about what he thought the tiger was like – nice or scary or somewhere in between? We all decided that we sure hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be very scary. Ian and I hoped the same for the audience of Under 5s.

Everyone’s first play in London should be in the precipitous nose-bleed section, in a chair perched on an incline that challenged your balance, and Mikey’s seat certainly qualified. For a pound, we rented a pair of binoculars, but I don’t think Mikey ever agreed to look in the end with the smaller lenses.

Mikey squirmed a bit from lap to chair to lap, but when the play began, he was absolutely mesmerized for 55 minutes. He shouted “tick tock” with all the other kids when the cast signaled they were changing the clock, he laughed when the silly daddy tried to put his shoes in the toaster, and he and every other child in the audience flew into the air with fear and excitement when the tiger made his appearance.

If you haven’t read “The Tiger Who Came To Tea,” forgive this spoiler, but, basically, the tiger eats everything. The little girl and her family still hope that he’ll come back, and buy a big tin of Tiger Food if he does, but Mikey decided that “The tiger wasn’t nice.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t share,” Mikey explained. But he still loved the play, and wanted to go back. Over the next couple of days in London, he continued to ask where the tiger was now.

We met up with our pal Teresa who was in London, working on a movie. It had begun to rain lightly, so we borrowed an umbrella from the front desk and headed across Millennium Bridge towards the London Eye, which Mikey called the Big Wheel.
Another activity perfectly suited for a toddler, letting him run from one end of the glass box and shout out, “Hi Big Ben! Hi boat!”

Back down in the rain, we caught a taxicab to the home of our friends Peter and Gary, in Islington near Sadler’s Wells, the dance theater. Mikey fell asleep in the cab, and we laid him down on the sofa in their living room, giving the four of us an opportunity to catch up. When Gary served the traditional Sunday roast with all the fixings including Yorkshire pudding, Mikey woke up and joined us. He ate everything, and when the time came for dessert, Gary offered him the choice between two of his favorite things: “Ice cream or pie?”

“I would liiiiike,” he considered the options, and then perhaps his mind went back to Madame A. at the Hotel Crillon. “I would liiiike the … boiled egg, please!”

Gary accommodated our eccentric child, so Mikey had a boiled egg while the rest of us had sweets.

That night we met up Teresa again, and had another friend to introduce Mikey to, Bettina, at the bar at the Corinthia. Mikey was at his flirtiest best while we drank and chatted, and the staff insisted on bringing him some chocolate cream lollipops to spoil him a little more.

Because clearly, that’s what he needed.

Day 9: Conspicuous Consumption & The Healing Power of Spicy Soup

2011-09-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

Honestly, traveling by train is as stressful as traveling by plane. There’s still customs, and immigration, and there’s a childkin running around your ankles and he loses the ticket you gave him to play with, and you think that Club 3 means Car 3, until you get to Car 3, and you suddenly realize no, you’re in Car 12, and you start running, running, running with baggage banging around behind you and holding Mikey’s hand until he wants you to pick him up, and then alors, there you are, in your little nook of four chairs facing each other across the table and you start ordering wine, and you don’t stop until you reach London.

All that said, train travel is jolly. You can look out for farm animals, and unlike slower forms of transport, if you miss them, then more will be right ‘round the corner in about two minutes. And, again, the food on Eurostar compared to any plane is really good. Mikey ate all of his and then half of mine.

When we got to St. Pancras, we caught a taxi to the Soho Hotel to pick up the bags we left behind, and then on to our next hotel, the Corinthia. It had only been open a few months, but our taxi driver said in his opinion, it was the best hotel in London.

We checked in and went to our room, which wasn’t a suite, but had plenty of space for Mikey’s bed and lots of fruit and other snacks laid out. After we made a few phone calls, confirming plans for the next couple of days, we realized it was just us three. No fabulous friends to meet up with. Ian knew that he wanted to go to a restaurant called Bangkok for dinner, but it was up to me to plan what we would do in the hours up to that.

The first time I went to London, almost 20 years ago, I went for business and spent almost the entire time in a convention center (sorry, centre) in Islington. I managed to get out, and twice I caught a cab to a place I needed to go: once, to the Tower of London, and the second time, to Harrod’s.

With Mikey, we went easy and opted for Harrod’s. Next time, the Tower for sure.

Harrod’s is supremely depressing. Even when you go with a 2-year-old, and head straight to the 4th floor, where the pet store is, and you spend time checking out every puppy and kitten there. Even then. The rest of it is the most vulgar of merchandising to make the fair maidens of Beverly Hills blush. There is nothing without a designer label. Nothing for a 2-year-old to be excited about under 50 quid. And the elbowing and shoving to get to this shit which will be outgrown in no time makes one weep for western culture. And eastern and southern culture too, because it wasn’t just blond-haired blue-eyed folks doing the grabbing.

Mikey was obviously fine amid our angst. He’s pick up something, and if it was too horrible, which it always was, we’d say, “Look at that! Wow, what a thing. Let’s put it back now, because it doesn’t belong to us, right?”

It worked!

The boy was so good, we took him to a Waitrose (which is a sort of mini-mart) in South Kensington, where we let him grab whatever he liked and we bought it for him, like we wouldn’t do at Harrod’s. He was perfectly happy, particularly when he spotted a 6 pack of “Scotch Pancakes.”

“Are those pancakes with Scotch in them?” I asked Ian.

“They’re like American pancakes,” Ian assured me. “Little to no whiskey in them.”

Mikey loved them, and that’s most of what he ate when we went to Bangkok, the restaurant which made Ian remember life in London when he first moved there in the 70s. He was a punk, a dressing horse for Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, swathed in bondage outfits with a huge purple Mohawk. Bangkok was there at the time, with a delicious, burning, sinus-clearing soup, which was good then and good now.

“Picy!” Mikey said, and he was right.

Day 8: Jardin d’Acclimation

2011-09-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

On our last full day in Paris, we went to the Bois du Boulogne to the Jardin d’Acclimation. An amusement park which has been charming children since Napoleon III opened it 150 years ago, it promised to have the ponies which had been so elusive to us. Even if the horses were in the south of France vacationing with their friends from the Jardin du Luxembourg, we figured it was a good excuse to take the Métro somewhere. Mikey may be a city boy, but public transportation is exotic to a child of Los Angeles. They’re all trains to him, and they’re all Thomas the Tank Engine.

When we got to the Jardin, we found we just missed the in-park train which runs every 20 minutes, but Mikey immediately found the ponies – in this case, the mechanical ponies which take you on a very bumpy ride. I rode along with him twice, and then he said he was ready to go on his own. Unfortunately, the rules were that solo riders had to be 5 or older. This unfair, ageist policy triggered one of the very few melt-down tantrums of the trip.

Ian finally showed him what three was on his hand, for three years ago which he would be in a week. Then he showed him what five was on his hand.

“When you’re that many fingers old, we’ll come back and you can ride the pony by yourself.”

“Okay,” Mikey sniffed.

And then we were off, on a boat ride, over vents that blasted mist, round a merry-go-round, into a hall of mirrors, and on Mikey’s first roller coaster which only scared him when the car went very fast through a dark tunnel. We spotted llamas and donkeys, and then lo and behold, ponies. At last, Mikey got his pony ride.

By then, it was mid-day, and the boy was tired. Too tired to even complain when he found out he was also too young to go on a trampoline. I think he was relieved. Minutes later, he was curled up in his stroller, and minutes after that, we were on the Avenue Charles du Gaulle, having wine in a café.

While Mikey slept, we took the Métro back to the 1st and the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and spent a few hours shopping.

Mikey woke up when we got to our hotel in time to dress to meet our friend Richard and Roberto, who live in a gorgeous apartment in the 9th near the Opéra. I’ve unfortunately forgotten the name of the restaurant they took us to, which was pure old Paris, a series of candlelit chambers, where Mikey ate rabbit.

Occasionally, in between the courses, when we were tired of sitting, we went outside into the dark streets of Paris to jump in mud puddles and say bon soir to strangers.

Like you do.

Day 7: Jardin du Luxembourg, Shopping, Snails, and Mikey Plays Boules

2011-09-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

The night before, we talked to Amanda about child friendly restaurants in Paris. By child friendly, I don’t mean places where enormous mice riding skateboards serve pizza, I just meant cafes where Mikey could get up from the table and run around from time to time, brasseries that weren’t perched on the edge of busy roads. The perfect place occurred to her while we were sitting at Cremerie – Restaurant Polidor: we needed to go Café Paul. The food was excellent, but more to the point, it was located on the periphery of a quiet trafficless square called the Place Dauphin in the quiet island where Paris was born in the middle of the Seine between the banks, the Île de la Cité.

So we had a second date with Amanda scheduled.

In the morning, though, we packed up from the Hotel du Danube, and left our bags – including our expensive puppies – in the lobby, while we went to the Jardin du Luxembourg. We knew they had a playground and a pony carousel, and when we told Mikey, he couldn’t wait. After a few minutes of searching the typically French, gorgeous, well-organized grounds, we found among the chestnut trees, the carousel, but no ponies. At the grounds to the playground were the ominous words, “Les poneys sont absents pour une durée indéterminé.” Uh oh, time for a distraction from disappointment!

Fortunately, the playground proved to be diverting not only to Mikey, but to us as well. Mikey was certainly the only child wearing a tee-shirt and jeans – all the French children played in the sand and fell off slides into the dirt in the hautest of finery and frippery. We got to drink nuclear espresso, that what the French call “café” out of whisper thin plastic cups which melted in our hands, and watch the nannies and their charges. And we got to learn that regardless of culture and language, playground push-fests and melt-downs are universal.

We took a taxi back to our hotel on the left bank to collect our luggage and then moved across to the Hotel Daniel on the right bank. As comfortable and friendly as the Hotel du Danube had been, the Hotel Daniel was even more so, and the junior suite was just what we required. We had lunch in the restaurant with Marie Segal, a fabulous PR agent and an old friend from Ian’s misspent youth, and then we felt it was time to give the right bank shopping some equal time.

Fortunately, Mikey crashed in his stroller mid-way to the Galeries Lafayette, so we were able to shop just for ourselves, all up and down the Boulevard Haussmann. It was very necessary because we packed light, and after seven days, two pairs of pants are not enough. Especially when you have had a 2-year-old, frequently one who is eating or needs a diaper change, on your lap 50% of the day.

The kid slept so soundly, we were even able to investigate the Bordeauxtheque in the Galeries Lafayette, where fabled vintages are displayed like modern relics in black plexiglass in a hushed, cathedral like atmosphere.

Mikey did not wake up until we were at home, post-shower, with new clothes on, drinking our new wine, ready to head out to meet Amanda. Of course, he was a little predictably tetchy, and difficult to motivate, so we were about a half an hour late. Fortunately, Amanda had some entertainment, watching the boules players and the Tai Chi in front of the white marble Palais de Justice.

Dinner was great, and Mikey had his first snails, which he loved (garlic and butter, what's not to love?) though that wasn’t quite enough to distract him. While I caught up with Amanda, Ian took Mikey out in the square, where he interrupted a group of exceptionally attractive French teens playing a game of boules.

Mikey charmed them, and they showed him how to play.

“Is he having a good time in Paris?” one of the young ladies asked Ian, after everyone survived Mikey hurling a two pound metal sphere this way and that.

“He loves Paris.”

“And Paris is honored to have him.”

Yes, it was a bit of Gallic hyperbole, but really, truly, what’s wrong with that?

Day #6: Naked Man, Furry Puppies, and Dinner With Amanda & Hemingway

2011-09-13T00:26:00.000-07:00

Day 6 began as a sort of a dream where we had no idea what time it was. While we were over our jet lag, our iphones never adjusted to European time, and when we called the front desk on waking, we asked what time it was, and we think they said in French that it was eight o’clock. When we got ourselves together for petit dejeuner in the little room off the central courtyard, we got the feeling from the polite staff that we were a trifle late. And then when we set off down the street afterwards, we noticed the sun was high in the sky, and we went in one more time to see what time it was. About quarter ‘til eleven.

Nous sommes en retard!

(And no, that doesn’t mean we’re idiots)

We were meeting a friend at eleven thirty some miles away. The hotel was the grande dame très chic of marbled Parisian hotels, the Crillon, fitting because our friend is a grande dame très chic herself. She’s famous, so we’ll call her Madame A.

As we scurried along the Seine for our lunch, we had to stop short when we got to the statues in the Jardin des Tuileries.

“Penis!” cried Mikey. “Boobies and penis!”

There are other interesting statues in the eastern fountain in the gardens, a minotaur and a centaur, but first the boobies of a nude woman caught Mikey’s attention, and then the penis of a nude man. In later research, I discovered the latter statue was “Cain Venant De Tuer Son Frére Abel (Cain Coming From Killing His Brother Abel)” by Henri Vidal, intended to capture that remorse most of us feel when we kill a sibling. Mikey recognized at once that the naked man was “sad” and we asked him why.

“Maybe the sun burn he’s butt?”

We met Madame A. in the lobby of the Hotel Crillon, and she swept us out to the central courtyard and her usual table. There was a buffet brunch and Mikey thought the miniature salade Niçoise looked interesting – but only as a vehicle to eat little quails’ eggs. Madame A. immediately instructed the staff to bring Mikey a dozen quails’ eggs, and while he ate them, we drank our champagne. Suddenly, there was a need for a diaper change (these things happen even in the most elegant of places), and I took him off to the bathroom. Mikey discovered a toilet brush and found that to be as much fun as anything else in Paris thus far.

When we returned and had finished our brunch, Madame A. said she needed to give Mikey a gift so she took his hand in hers and brought her to the shop. She showed him bears and bags, scarves and books, and then a little stuffed puppy he immediately crushed to his chest, love at first sight.

“Look,” said Madame A. “He has a daddy.”

She handed Mikey a larger version of the puppy. I touched them too. They were soft. Too soft. Then she found an even larger puppy, and tried to give it to Mikey, asking if he wanted all three, but he shook his head. “Just two.”

The saleswoman murmured something discreetly in Madame A.’s ear.

“Vraiment?” Madame A. shuddered. “Oh la la … Mikey, which one do you want?”

“Two, please, to match.”

Since she had been pushing for three, Mikey was hardly being grabby. Madame A. agreed and the puppies were wrapped in gold foil and put in a large bag. After our kisses and thank yous for brunch and the gift, she said to Ian, “Perhaps you could put them out of the way when Mikey’s friends come to play? They are chinchilla.”

Mikey loved cuddling his puppies, but they weren’t enough to put him to sleep in the cab or at our hotel, so we spent the afternoon shopping on the left bank until it was time for dinner with an old friend of mine, a great jewelry designer named Amanda Kaiserman.

When I say she’s an old friend, I first met her when I was about Mikey’s age, and besides being lovely, glamorous, and funny, she’s sweet and generous and willing to meet up with us in kid friendly locations. We were told that a restaurant in the 8th called Cremerie – Restaurant Polidor was ideal for introducing kids to brasserie food. It was an old favorite of the Lost Generation, and we later saw it in Woody Allen’s latest movie as the place where the modern day character meets his hero Ernest Hemingway.

Unfortunately, Mikey’s exhaustion finally caught up with him and he fell asleep on the hard wooden stools before Amanda arrived, and didn’t wake up until dinner was over.

Lucky for him it was time for ice cream.

Day 5: Le Bateau Mouche d’Amour

2011-09-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

Arriving an hour before our train to France at St Pancras station, we find the place eerily still. That is because everyone in the know knows that these trains are like wild beasts, impossible to predict until they alight on one particular track ten minutes before they are set to depart, and it behooves everyone to wait until that magic moment to form a mob and storm the Eurostar. Even if a certain 2 year old has decided to take his shoes and socks off but moments before.

The ride once we crashed it was enormously civilized, and we took advantage of the policy of unlimited refills of our rosé. I also practiced the address of our hotel, and what to say to our taxi driver when we arrived in Paris. “S’il vous plait, nous conduire à St Germain des Prés, à l'Hôtel du Danube, à cinquante-huit Rue du Jacob.”

Moments after we arrived at the Gard du Nord, we were in the queue, waiting for a taxi. Suddenly, there was a parting of the line, and we were ushered through, with the explanation, “You have a family.”

This, by the way, was the way we were treated throughout Paris. So much for the reputation of the prickly Parisiens.

I told the driver, “Sivoplay, noo condwere a San Germahn day Pray, ah Lotel du Danyoob, a sickant wheat roodoo Jaycub.” And miraculously, he took us there!
Hotel du Danube we picked because it offered a reasonably priced suite, but Room #16 was big (for a European hotel room) with enough space for a cot for Mikey, and a little cheaper, so we went for that. The downstairs was pale green and the upstairs was tangerine toile, patterns and colors that only the French can get away with.

Mikey was asleep, after being absolutely perfect on the train, so we waited until he woke up to begin our exploration of Paris. Despite the quality of the double-decker tour the day before, we decided to its equivalent in Paris, the tour down the Seine on the bateaux mouches. We walked from our hotel halfway across Paris along the river before giving up and letting a nice taxi driver, who didn’t have a taxi, but a bicycle with a carriage in back take us the rest of the way to the launch.

The boy did not have a lot more interest in the tour than he did in the double-decker, though he did enjoy screaming at the top of his lungs (like everyone else) when we passed under a bridge. No, what inspired him was a little girl about his age named Simone. She was cute and chic, possibly Senegalese, and Mikey followed her all over the bateau, giving her hugs when she’d let him. Ian and I took turns chasing the two around the boat.

When we’d catch them in an embrace, those around them would smile and say, “Ah, c’est Paris.”

Sadly, the relationship was not to be, and by the time we were back on dry land, the aim was to find food. In no time, we were at a café on the left bank, and Mikey devoured a plate of charcouterie and we found our way home. Eventually.

Turns out it’s really damn easy to get lost in Paris, which isn’t necessarily bad when you’re not in a hurry.

Day 4: Double-Decker

2011-09-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

After breakfast on the fourth day in England, we decided to do the ultimate touristy activity. The double-decker bus tour.

Why? Memory fails.

Truly, to be honest, I’m not sure what we were thinking except that we understood we could get on and off, so we imagined a leisurely drive around the town, popping off to say hullo to the ravens in the Tower, or have a pint, or get knighted, and then back on. What actually happened is we passed Parliament, pointed out Big Ben, and then someone on the bus said they wanted to go see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, and before we knew it, we were off and far in the maddening crowd.

We were close to Hyde Park, which is close to Kensington Garden, so I suggested that we walk on and see the Peter Pan statue and the Princess Diana playground. It would have been a fine destination, but closeness is relative, and we had the bad luck to run into some police on horseback. This made Mikey remember that he had missed out on the horses in the New Forest, and all of the sudden, nothing but horseplay would do. Specifically, he wanted the policemen to get off their horses and let him have his turn.

Time for a nap came quickly and with tears, and Mikey was asleep before we were five minutes in the cab bound for the hotel. A few hours later, when Mikey woke up, we told him that we had to go to the store and get some wine and snacks because we were having a few friends over, old friends of Ian's who were dying to meet him. The prospect of having folks over he could show off to appealed to him, and before long, Mikey was singing and dancing, and doing his latest trick, drawing with his feet, to the delight of all.

The next morning, we went to St. Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Paris.

Day 3: The Cat & The Bidet

2011-09-08T23:09:00.001-07:00

We checked out of the Mill after breakfast, and went to visit the freshly minted couple, Helen & Simon Rhodes. After some exchange of photos and some gifts of clothing to Mikey, and a few more games of “Stahp it!” with Cousin Lauryn, we were off again to London.

Our aim was to try to make it to our hotel in Soho to drop off our luggage and then the rental desk of Alamo in Euston Station before 4:00 pm. Mikey was a little upset that he still hadn’t seen any horses, but since we had stayed at the Soho Hotel before, I felt confident in making him a new promise, “We’ll try to find some horses in London, but I promise you that we will find the biggest cat you’ve ever seen right in our hotel.”

The black ten foot tall Fernando Botero bronze in the lobby was as promised.

We dropped off our luggage, and zipped over to Euston station just in time. The Tube ride back to Soho was loud, and Mikey sat through it in stunned silence. When we finally got out, he said, “We do it again now?”

Later, we promised, we had to rush back to the hotel, drink some champagne, and explore our room. Of course, the bathrooms at the Soho are gorgeous and well-appointed, by which I mean they came with a little more than Mikey is used to at home.

“What this?”

“It’s called a bidet,” I said.

“Bidaydo?” he repeated back, curious why a potato, which he had eaten before fried, mashed, diced, and riced, would be ceramic and toilet-like in its natural state.

“Just bidet,” I said. “It’s to wash your bottom.”

Of course, he had to try, and let's just say he found it delightful. I think he’d still be on it in a state of ecstasy if we didn’t drag him off.

Day 2: Two Ducks & A Wedding

2011-09-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

In a reply to my Day 1 description in this blog, my friend Maryanne Stahl, a teacher, novelist and passionate devotee of waterfowl, said that she was pleased that I finally posted something nice about ducks. Usually I reference ducks and geese only in the context of foie gras. Maryanne, with that in mind, you may want to avoid the bit of this update.

Our second day in England began with full English traditional breakfasts. If you’ve never indulged (and no one except very fat English people indulge in this very often), it consists of bacon, sausage, fried eggs, grilled tomatoes, and optional fried bread, beans, and/or black pudding. Black pudding is not to be confused with the common American Kraft chocolate pudding, but is basically blood and fat congealed into an attractive splat. I know, and it’s yummy. So there.

Mikey ate all of that, and then demanded some tea. Of course, he gets what he thinks he wants, which we decided was milk warmed with a few dribbles of tea.

After breakfast, we were told that the hotel resident tame duck, named by her owner Crispie, had arrived. Crispie was happy to meet Mikey, which she showed by nibbling on him, which most of us decided was more than fair for being poked in the eye "gently."

The wedding was at 2 o’clock, about an hour away in Lyndhurst, so at 1 o’clock, our niece Lauren tore through our hotel’s parking lot and we roared after her. Through tight forested roads we raced, by in large remembering what side of the road to be on, until we arrived at the city hall with a minute to spare. Once again, Mikey had fallen asleep before he had a chance to see any of the New Forest ponies he was desperate to see, and he stayed asleep all through the ceremony, where his Papa accompanied Aunt Helen down the aisle to give her to Simon Rhodes.

The reception was at a huge hotel another half an hour away, and by then Mikey was awake and ready to party. The back lawn was vast, and while Helen and Simon tried to get pictures taken, Mikey and Cousin Sapphire-Jade chased after each other. We were brought inside for dinner, and Mikey found his place in the receiving line, hiding behind the curtains to avoid the tickling clutches of Cousin Lauren.

“Stop it!” he would snarl from behind the curtains.

“Stahp it! Stahp it!” Lauren would tease in perfect imitation of his American accent, which he thought was hilarious. This interchange became the repeated game of the evening. Even days later, Mikey would ask to play “the game,” where I would be Cousin Lauren and say “Stahp it!” and he would call me “Crybaby!” and then eat me.

After dinner, the dance floor came out and Mikey and Cousin Sapphire-Jade danced for approximately four hours straight. Occasionally, they let others, like the bride and groom, out on the floor.

Finally, we dragged Mikey home, back to the hotel. Despite his obvious exhaustion, Mikey did not want to sleep. We felt like a snack too, so we went down to the bar and ordered the special, which was duck rolls.

Mikey took a bite and said, eyes widening, “This Crispie Duck who bite me?”

“I think it’s a different duck,” I assured him.

Mikey still had his revenge.

Day 1: LAX to Lymington

2011-09-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, August 25, 2010, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we tip-toed into the dimly lit preschool room, where soft music was playing, being careful not to step on any of the little bodies of the sleeping children scattered on mattresses across the floor. Mikey was sound asleep when I picked him up, but he opened his eyes to ask, “We go on plane now?”

Yup. We were off. On the way down, we told him what we were going to do. We were going to drive our car to JohnnyPark, take the bus with our luggage to the airport, get our tickets, check in our luggage, get on a plane, and fly high in the sky until we landed in London, England. It all went according to plan, more or less (Johnny Park is temporarily a two-bus trip to the airport which is a little exasperating to those of us schlepping big suitcases but not to Mikey) until we checked in our suitcases and got our seat assignments. Mikey’s understanding of the arrangement was that next we go to the airplane and fly.

“But Mikey, we have to wait because the plane isn’t ready yet.”

“We go to plane now!”

We tried another tact, telling him that even though (God knows) we weren’t flying First Class, by hook and by crook, we could get into the First Class lounge at LAX where we could mingle with movie stars. That held no charm. Finally we got him up there by explaining that we could watch the planes from the lounge. Unfortunately, it turned out that the lounges, while still lovely, have changed since the last time we were privileged to visit and don’t afford views of the planes. More disappointment.

“But, look, a buffet! Pizzas and mozzarella! Can we interest you in the gin and tonics which look really good to us right now?”

He was mollified with playing with the ipad until we got the word from the hostess that our plane was boarding. As we left, we saw another family being escorted out of the lounge because their child’s crying was disturbing the other travelers. Coulda been worse, we said.

The plane ride itself was great. Mikey’s flown a couple times before and has been great except for the time when he had a cold which turned into an ear infection at 10,000 feet. Still, this was an 11 hour flight in the middle of the night. We had the ipad, and British Airways had inflight cartoons. After a couple hours, the cabin lights dimmed.

“It’s night-time?” Mikey asked. We told him, yes, it was, and he curled up on his seat and went to sleep for 8 hours, until we were about ready to land.

London greeted us with the traditional August chill and rain. When we made it through customs and got our luggage, Alamo greeted us with the news that their power was off and they were confirming registrations and credit cards using their cell phones. So it took forever, and Mikey spent his time jumping in mud-puddles.
We told Mikey that we were driving down to the New Forest to see Papa’s sister, Mikey’s Aunt Helen who he had never met, getting married. He’s been to two other weddings, and while he loves parties, he was more interested in hearing about the New Forest ponies. Traffic was rough, being a bank holiday weekend, and by the time there were any horses to be seen in the forest, loping idyllically through the banks of ferns, Mikey was fast asleep.

We checked into our hotel, the Mill at Gordleton, which we never would have found except by the power of GPS in our rental. It is a beautiful old converted water mill on the river Avon, surrounded by fish ponds and duck ponds, and modern sculpture. We had the Miller’s Suite, so Mikey had his own room and we had a living room. Mikey was the only one of us not in danger of banging his head on the low rafters.

We had cream tea in the garden, and then Helen, Cousin Lauren, and Cousin Sapphire-Jade came over. They were still finishing arrangements for the wedding, but they wanted to see us and let Papa wrestle with Sapphire-Jade, who is 5, and Mikey. Afterwards, we drove into town to see the ferry to the Isle of Wight and have some fish and chips.

Mikey fell asleep around 10 o’clock and it was the end of our first day in England.

Lesson Learned

2011-07-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

Mikey started at preschool last week. There are dozens of daycare centers in walking distance, including the one he attended for the last 9 months, but the shortcut for finding a quality preschool is to go to the website for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (http://www.naeyc.org) and do a search for the schools that are accredited by them in your area. We got this from Jenifer Wana’s book “How To Choose The Best Preschool” where she writes “Because the process is so rigorous and time consuming, fewer than one in ten preschools has NAEYC accreditation. If a school has this accreditation, you can be pretty confident that it’s a high-quality program.”

Of course, this insider tip is not exactly on the QT, and the NAEYC-certified school in walking distance from our house turned out to have a 9 month waiting list. So, while we waited, Mikey went to a fine but not outstanding daycare, and we hoped he would get enough education from home.

The second best way to educate is to model expected behavior. The best way to educate is to say no. As in, “No, this is all my broccoli, not for you!” and watch as your child sneaks giggling into your lap to eat your broccoli off your fork before you make it to your mouth.

The lessons learned are seldom the ones you tried to teach. Over and over again, Ian in his British way will tell Mikey, “No, eat properly with knife and fork.” “Don’t chew on your brush. Brush your teeth properly.” “No, Sprog, you’re scaring the cat. Pet him properly, please.”

Mikey listens sometimes and obeys, and sometimes doesn’t. Tonight, however, he demonstrated that he learned his first adverb. We were playing cars together on our bed, and I was slouched over the pillow.

“Sit up, daddy, like this,” he said, getting into the position what the yogis call sukhasana, and we call “criss-cross applesauce.”

“OK,” I said, half-propping myself up.

“No, Daddy,” he sighed. “Sit properly.”

Lesson learned.

A Bad Dream

2011-07-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

Mikey had a nightmare this morning. He’s had nightmares before which woke him up and made him scream or cry, and sometimes required him to run to our bed in the middle of the night, but this is the first time he articulated what scary thing had happened to him.

“Papa! Papa!” Mikey called. Papa is Ian. I don’t take it personally anytime Mikey calls for Papa instead of me, Daddy. I’m mature that way.

“What is it?” Ian asked him. “Honey, Papa’s here.”

“No!” Mikey was still asleep and screaming. “Papa ate my foot!”

With that, Mikey fell back asleep. Ian and I slept for a while ourselves, and then started getting dressed. Mikey is starting preschool next month and we talked about Ian taking him there this morning, for a special event where they’re bringing in sea creatures for the children to see. Then I couldn’t take it anymore, and started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“’Papa ate my foot!’” I said.

“You’re mean.”

“If I’m so mean, how come you were the one eating his foot, hmm?”

Like I said, I’m mature that way.

Nursery Jewel

2011-06-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

As Mikey was being put down to sleep tonight, Ian came in and held out his fists. “Choose one,” he said. Mikey chose the right fist, and Ian opened it up to show a brilliant blue plastic gem. Our friends had given it to him a week ago, and Mikey loved to play with it. Sometimes it put it in his mouth a little, and we’d quickly tell him no, and he’d relent.

After lights out, Ian heard Mikey coughing, and when he came into his room, he found Mikey on the floor. “Mikey, where’s the blue diamond?”

Mikey pointed to his mouth and giggled.

“Ted!”

Ian and I tore the room apart, looking for evidence that Mikey hadn’t swallowed the two-inch diameter disc. While we did it, we kept grilling him, “Where is the diamond?” If you listened in, you’d imagine we were agents of a smuggling king pin, “Where is the diamond, Mikey?”

Mikey just pointed to his mouth and articulated it very plainly, “I put in my mouth, and I eated it.”

Of course, I rationalized that if the diamond had cleared his windpipe, he must be fine, but Ian pointed out that it wouldn't digest at all and would end up stuck in his small intestine and cause a blockage. We kept telling Mikey that this was serious, we were going to the doctor if he really swallowed the diamond, and he stuck to the story through laughter and tears. We knew the diamond had been in the room and couldn’t be anywhere else except inside him.

We live just a few blocks from the Valley’s only pediatric trauma center at Northridge Hospital so we brought him there.

They got us through in no time, though we shared the ER with some pretty sick folk and Mikey spent the whole time in a fabulous mood for a toddler at midnight. There were choruses of “Spiderman! Spiderman! Is he strong? Listen, bud, he got radioactive blood!”, there was practicing his rolls and somersaults (“You know, these floors are regularly splattered with blood and vomit,” a passing orderly let us know, in case we didn’t know), and there was telling the 12-month-old with the high fever weeping in his grandma’s arms, “Don’t cry, baby. Don’t be sad.”

I used my phone to check us into the hospital on Facebook, “Ted Peterson & Ian Smith are at Northridge Hospital Medical Center – Oh Mikey, did you really swallow that plastic diamond?” And the replies were predictable. “Don’t worry, Ted; it will come all right in the end” was one. “This too shall pass” was another.

The doctor was good, though there was a passing moment of weirdness. (“You’re both his dad? How that happen?”) The results of the xrays were inconclusive. He said to be on the look-out for abdominal distress and faintness of breath. We went home and put Mikey to bed at 1:30 am.

While padding down his pillow, Ian found this in the pillowcase.

So the good news is that Mikey doesn’t swallow huge plastics gems, and doesn’t need surgery. There will be no abdominal distress or faintness of breath.

The bad news is that when asked where something is, if he doesn’t know, he points to his mouth and says he ate it.

Top 10 Father's Day Songs

2011-06-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of great songs out there for Mother’s Day, but for today, in celebration of my first Father’s Day of being an actual legal dad, I thought I’d try to find the best songs about being a dad.

I’m not counting songs with Papa or Daddy or some combination in the titles which use the words for something other than a father. For example, “Oh Daddy” by Fleetwood Mac which is about Christine McVie’s bandmate Mick Fleetwood, “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” (I don’t think that’s a real Daddy, unless incest in implied, in which case, shame on you, Cole Porter and Mary Martin!) or “Gone Daddy Gone” (as much as I love the Violent Femmes).

Honorable Mention. “Father Figure” by George Michael. Misses the list because although it’s a good though slow song, it’s not really about an actual father. Still I think it fits, in a weird way. As for the video, George Michael smokes like it’s his hard duty, and this has to be the apogee of shoulder pads on thin women. Bless.

10. “Whatta Man” by Salt n Pepa (featuring En Vogue): Not specifically for Dads, though there is a shout out to her man spending “quality time with his kids when he can” and, of course, “You so crazy. I think I wanna have your baby.” Mostly it’s about a “mighty mighty good man,” which is what a dad needs to be.

9. “Daddy Cool” by Boney M. Okay, the Daddy in this is probably not a real great Dad. He might be the same kind of non-Dad Daddy that is in the “My Heart Belongs To Daddy,” but it’s so funky and Boney M is such awesome awesomeness, I can’t leave it off.

8. “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna. Madonna doesn’t get much credit for depth, but now that I’m a dad, I realize what good advice is in this song, and not just about pregnancy.

7. “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” by James Brown. Of course.

6. “Papa Loves Mambo” by Perry Como. Unh!

5. “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon. Must be the sweetest song written by a father to a son. Made bittersweet by that father leaving too soon.

4. “Children Will Listen” by Stephen Sondheim. I think of this so many times when I look into the boy’s eyes.

3. “Color Him Father” by The Winstons. “I think I’ll color him love.”

2. “Blessed” by Elton John. Sir Elton just became a father, but this song from 1995 shows that he was ready to be one 16 years ago. “You’re a child in my head. You haven’t walked yet. Your first words have yet to be said. But I know, you’ll be blessed.” I don’t know about the people with the bat heads in the video but I’ll repeat after Mikey each night that I promise you that, I promise you that.

1. “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens “I know I have to go.” Perfection.

(The Anti Father’s Day Song) Papa Was A Rolling Stone by the Temptations

A Blog Entry to Embarrass You in Years Ahead, Mikey

2011-06-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

Mikey has been practicing his potty skills and so has been spending more and more time sitting on the toilet or his potty with his big boy underpants around his ankles. Tonight, as usual, we talked about this and that while he sat on the potty.

He decided that everyone was a color. I’m blue. Papa and Mikey are pink. Grandma is orange, and Grandpa is purple, and sorry, Dad, so are monkeys. That led us to sing about eight silly monkeys dancing on the bed. Then we discussed how our fingers individually were one, one, one, one, one, one, but they were also one, two, three, four, and five, which we agreed was interesting.

Then there was a pause, and Mikey looked at his todger, still waiting for the impulse to pee, and retracted the foreskin, and said, “Look, Daddy. It’s Sir Topham Hatt.”

If you’re not familiar with the bald-headed character from the Thomas the Tank Engine series, he looks like this.

Mikey later incorporated my reaction to that into the act when he repeated it for Ian’s benefit.

“Oh my God,” Mikey said, holding his head in his hands, giggling. “Oh … my … God …”

Purrrfection

2011-05-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

I swear I’m not bored, not in the least, I’m overworked ... but I’m suddenly aware of a feline soap opera in my neighborhood.

A couple weeks ago, we saw a small calico cat in our backyard with three kittens, obviously fairly newborn. They might have been born right there, possibly under my very nose, while I was trying to set up a three wire trellis for our Mourvèdre vine (yes, poor to mediocre wine coming soon!) or dealing with the loss of the third, littlest olive tree in a pot.

My friend (and former boss) Tim risked blood loss to gather up the feral cats in his neighborhood and bring them in to be fixed before releasing them. I’m an animal lover too. Well, frankly, that’s a silly phrase. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love some animal? Yes, I know, there are the Michael Vicks, but that’s lack of education. No one smart, no one with any empathy can believe animals are any less than humans, especially the ones of the cat and dog varieties. Yes, I digress, but the point is I’m an animal lover too, and instead of making everyone miserable schlepping animals to the pound in a crate, I think of short-term rather than long-term solutions. I just feed them.

This is the microcosmic equivalent of feeding homeless people instead of teaching them a trade. It’s easy, and so I do it. Sorry. Part of my excuse was that I want to teach Mikey about being careful around strange animals while maintaining empathy. (That looks awfully good on paper, doesn’t it?) Here’s how the routine has been for the last couple of weeks:

We’ll be out in the backyard. Mikey will notice the mother cat, who is generally on the other side of the pool fence from us, yowling.

“Mama cat hungry!”

So we go inside and get water (or milk if Daddy is feeling especially generous) and cat food (apologizing to our own cat Floyd) and being very, very careful not to spill, and then more carefully that the cats who might be scared of us don’t scratch, we bring them out to the cat and her kittens. Now, her kittens are adorable. You could watch the three of them (one black, one black with white paws, and one calico like her/his mom) all day long run around our backyard, onto the furniture, playing with Mikey’s cars and pool toys, and wrestling around.

I don’t know if it was Ian or me who first looked at the adorable creatures at play and mused, “Where do you suppose they’re pissing and shitting?”

So there’s that. But they’re so cute, what does it matter?

This morning, the kittens’ charm was lost on Mikey for the first time. He saw them playing with his baseball in the back yard, and hammered on the glass door, “No, cats, that’s my ball!”

“You’ll scare them!” I warned.

“Okay,” Mikey replied, and hammered harder on the window.

Then, just now, I saw a new figure in the backyard. A long sleek black cat, who gave the kittens a obligatory pat on the head, and then proceeded to mount the mom.

The kitten daddy.

And my poor fixed fluffy Floyd cat just watches from the window and thinks, “The drama!”

A Year Ago Today, We Brought Our Son Home

2011-05-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

We were a little nervous about meeting the stranger. I had an email from our social worker saying that Michael’s social worker “really didn't express any major concerns and said that you guys were going to fall in love with him.” We weren’t sure if that was just words, since they were desperate to find a quick home for him, but we were optimistic, if, like I said, a little nervous.

Two children we had brought into our home had already been returned, lost back into the system. A 5-month-old infant who had taught us the basics of diaper changes and play, rocking and feeding, and that we really wanted to do this and might be good at it, and then a toddler who taught us not to take our eyes off one of those for a second. We had just kissed Baby A goodbye 24 hours before. This was our third-time-is-a-charm or third-strike, however it turned out.

That was May 27, 2010, one year ago today, when Ian and I brought our son home. He had with him a suitcase of all his possessions: a couple tee-shirts, a couple pairs of sweat pants, a ball, an Etch-A-Sketch, and a small plastic truck.

That’s unbelievable to us now. 365 days have flown by, and yet, it’s hard to believe there was a time when he wasn’t ours, and we weren’t his. How is it possible we weren’t there for his first smile, his first words, and his first steps?

We don’t concern ourselves much with what we didn’t share with him during his first 20 months on the planet, because he’s all about the future, not the past. This week, it’s break-dancing in front of the TV in imitation of the contestants on “So You Think You Can Dance,” and reading a new favorite book "Making the Moose out of Life," and telling our nanny Sally “I don’t miss you, I miss Daddy,” and eating Floyd’s dry cat food in order to get Papa and Daddy to cry, “Mikey, nooooooo!” while he giggles.

Thank you for making May 27th, 2010 to May 27th, 2011 so much fun, little boy, our pride and joy, our son. And infinite years to come.

La Coccinelle Jolie et Son Bébé Dansent!

2011-05-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

The lyrics go:
Jolie coccinelle
Emmène-moi, emmène-moi
Faire un petit tour de soleil
Chatouiller le ciel avec toi

Roughly (according to the record company Putomayo who put out this album together with other children’s songs across all cultures) translated as:

Pretty ladybug
Take me away, take me away
Let me take a ride around the sun
And tickle the sky with you

Mikey's First Passport

2011-05-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

Ian is British, and his sister, Mikey’s Aunt Helen, who is as of yet still known only from photos, is getting married in August in what will be the second great royal wedding of the year. Once we got a new birth certificate for Mikey, we went to get a new social security card and a passport.

That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some awkwardness at the post office. You can’t get a new passport for a child under 16 without having them be present, and with current budget cuts, the post office is only open certain hours on weekends, so we joined a long line filled with fidgeting kids. When “Tony” (not his real name – oh, wait, actually, yes, his real name), the only person present handling the passport work got to us, he first looked at Mikey’s photo and deemed it unacceptable. Luckily, there was a place right across the street where Ian could take Mikey and get an emergency pic taken.

Yes, it was obviously that Mikey looked too cute and cheerful in the first photo, and that isn’t likely how he would look during a transatlantic trip. Actually, the problem really was that his face was too big in the first pic for the facial recognition software they use. You’d think in this day and age where Picasa and Facebook and dozens of other available-to-the-public programs can recognize your fuzzy, pixellated face from miles away, the feds would know how to do it too, but best not dwell on what that means for airport security.

The other part of the experience which was a little awkward, was Tony slowly catching on to the fact that Mikey was adopted by two men. When I got to his window, Ian was outside chasing Mikey around the parking lot, playing the new game Mikey invented, Spiderman versus Sharkman. All three of us have to be present, so Tony asked for my son to come to the window.

“And you wife,” he added.

“Hold on, I’m waving to my son and partner,” I said, gently correcting him while I gestured to them to come in.

When Ian and Mikey came over, we chatted away while Tony looked to the birth certificate to the application, and back and forth, a couple times, not sure what to say. I didn’t want to say anything and make any assumptions about what he was thinking. Ian chatted with the people behind us in line, and Mikey played on the floor with their kids.

Finally: “Which – who is the father?”

“We both are,” I said. “We adopted him.”

Since I had put the adoption certificate down together with the application and birth certificate, the fact of his adoption shouldn’t have been a surprise. We had filled out the form as appropriately, all Tony had to do was copy. Once it finally sunk in, Tony filled in the form, took our $105, and said we’d get his passport in 4 to 6 weeks. And then we’ll be on an 11 hour flight to London.

Hold on, let me let that sink in.

Oh boy.

O, You Scary Cow

2011-04-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday night, Mikey didn't want to go to bed, so we said, "Tomorrow, you want to see animals?"

"Huh?"

"Horses, chickens, cows. What sound do cows make?"

"Mooo," Mikey said. "I see animoos."

"Yes, you go to sleep now, and when you wake up, you see animals."

Cut to 3 am. Mikey climbs up in our bed. "I see animoos. I see animoos now."

We explain that animals are sleeping, and we won't go to see them for 6 hours so he should go to sleep. He can't. Too excited. Keeps listing all the animals he's going to see (including sharks, fishies, and octopus ("ottopoos"). We can't sleep either, perhaps because of the excited toddler bouncing up and down on the bed.

Finally, it's 9 am, and we pack up our picnic lunch (including the requisite bottle of wine for us) and head for the Gentle Barn. It’s a great place (www.gentlebarn.org), a home for farm animals who were neglected and abused. Mikey falls asleep in his car seat. When he wakes up, he sees his first horse.

"Animoos, yay!" he cries. "Yay! Yay, animoos!"

We get out and see the horses and then the cows. Mikey's eyes widen. He hadn't expected them to be so big.

Then the cow looks at him and goes, "MOOO!"

Mikey runs into my arms. As he wakes up more, he gets less frightened, particularly when we go to smaller critters elsewhere in the farm. He even helps me feed the horses some carrots. But still, whenever he sees something he's not sure about, he calls it a "cow" or "scary cow."

"Look at that piggy, Mikey! It's huge!"

"Scary cow," Mikey nods.

Another Toy Story

2011-03-05T16:36:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to Mikey in my ear in a conspiratorial hiss: “Mickey Mouse and Woody … fuck.”

Even three-quarters asleep, I knew he was talking about two of Disney’s beloved characters, Mickey Mouse and Woody, the cowboy character voiced by Tom Hanks in the Toy Story franchise, of which Mikey was a great fan. Still I had to ask, “Mickey Mouse and Woody, what?”

“Mickey Mouse and Woody,” he articulated carefully, holding up his toy fire truck where he had put his Mickey Mouse and Woody figures. “Fffuck.”

“Yes, Mickey Mouse and Woody in the fire truck,” I agreed.

But that was not the end of the narrative. Unlike the adventures of Woody in Toy Story 1, 2, and 3, the storyline in Mikey’s land of imagination is not professionally produced and scripted. It is not a slave of character consistency, genre constraints, or simple logic. In short order, Mickey had tossed Woody aside (but kept his hat on his own head) and was on board a toy plane, destination unknown. In the seat next to him was a small plastic skateboard and three crayons, Red, Yellow Green, and Cerulean.

“Eeee,” Mikey intoned softly, pushing the plane backwards into the wall. “Crash.”

The crash was not too serious, evidently, because the plane turned around and continued to go backwards until it stopped in front of a twenty-one pound cat named Floyd. Floyd gave it a sniff.

“Nein, nein, nein, Floyd,” Mikey said. “Auf, Floyd. Minen. Minen plane.”

Like most toddlers, Mikey speaks excellent German.

The cat gave Mikey the Usual Withering Look, and then the small plastic skateboard was out of the passenger seat and rolling along the floor. Soon it was wedged into a baby doll’s lips.

“No, baby,” I said, becoming just a bit parental. “Take the skateboard out of your mouth, you could choke. It’s dangerous.”

“No,” said Mikey. “Baby and satebor a-kiss.”

Then there was much smooching noises and the baby doll and the small plastic skateboard went to first base. There is a lot of kissing in Mikey’s play. That’s why I believed that first rumor I heard about Mickey Mouse and Woody.

Best Birthday Ever, Part II: Happy Yoyo

2011-02-16T22:14:00.000-08:00

Mikey wasn’t mad about the caviar, but he loved the birthday cake, of course. He had some interest in eating, and lots of interest in blowing out the candle, over and over again while singing his version of “Happy birthday,” which is “Happy yoyo.”

Best Birthday Ever

2011-02-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

Last year, I turned 41 and it was a pretty shitty birthday. We had just lost “Baby J.” Today, at 6:45 in the morning, we heard the door across the hall creak open, and little feet pad into the room. And then, my son crawled into bed with us and said, “Daddy, cuddle Mikey.”

Don’t have to do much else to make this the best birthday ever.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a video from Christmas, of Mikey putting on a joke t-shirt I gave Ian and hamming it up.

Son O' The Beach

2011-02-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

Considering that we live in Southern California, we haven’t taken Mikey to the beach often enough in the 9 months we’ve had Mikey. I count X times: once with Aunt Kelly and Cousin Natalie to the rather grim beach just off Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway where we stayed for about 10 minutes; once at the Huntington dog beach, because we were visiting our friends Lindsley and Jonathan; twice in Venice Beach, visiting friends, but only one of those times during the day when a beach is really a beach. There isn’t a great excuse for this negligence on our part. In the first couple of months, Mikey hated the bath and loathed our pool, so we didn’t think a trip to the beach would have been enjoyable for anything (this was, by the way, during the time of the 10 minute visit to the beach with Aunt Kelly and Cousin Natalie, which certainly would be evidence of that theory). Most of Mikey’s outdoor activities could be accomplished in our backyard or at one of the many parks in a three mile radius. Psychologically preparing ourselves to pack up, fight traffic, find parking, deal with crowds, there was always something that took precedence.

Besides, we figured, how much fun could a 2-year-old possibly have on the beach?
Now we know, and we feel guilty of depriving him of the beach, and the beach of him, for so long.

Our friends Georgie and Melissa live a few steps from the sand in Venice, and they love Mikey, so we get invited down frequently as part of his entourage. The last time they invited us down for brunch, which is sometimes a dangerous time for Mikey since his naps are pretty sacred and fall somewhere between 11:30 and 4:00 – basically, the same as brunch. We figured though if we went down early, we could play at the beach for a couple hours and do brunch at 11, and have Mikey in the car by 12. Or ideally, crashed out on a big fluffy pillow at Geogie and Melissa’s, but experience has cast serious doubts on the concept of the nap away from home dream.

Venice Beach, of course, is known as the crazy asylum of beach towns, alternately bohemian, chic, gang-ridden, and commercial, the home of hippies, millionaires, homeless folk, and bodybuilders. There’s no place quite like it, and it’s the second most visited tourist location in California, next to Disneyland. Fortunately, in January, it’s not very crowded, particularly at the pier, where Washington Boulevard turns into the ocean. There were just a couple beach-goers there with us, some ladies doing yoga in the sand, and the sea gulls.

When we had been there at night, Mikey had walked on the sand, looked out at the sea, and declared that he was okay on going back inside. This time as soon as we set him on the sand, he had his sandals off, and was running, shrieking with joy, at the water. At that moment, I realized we, in our madness, had not dressed him anything but a dry day at the beach, so I raced after him to roll up his sweatpants. In no time, he was soaked. We dried him off and put him in outfit #2. He jumped into the waves and fell face first. More drying, outfit #3. Not having an infinite diaper bag with an endless wardrobe of dry clothes, we were glad that we could distract him with other beach activities: collecting shells, terrorizing seagulls, using his favorite phrase “Big butt!” on hapless beach citizens.

We have no choice, we have to commit to trying to get out to the beach every weekend if we can. Oh, and the L.A. Zoo. And the Long Beach Aquarium.

I guess this is the theme of everyone’s childhood – so little time.

The Fartist

2011-01-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

Your 2-year-old may be in MENSA; he may play the piano beautifully; he may do long division in his head. He may even be able to put the square block in the square hole with some consistency, and not put spinach in his ears. Be that as it may, and I don’t want to brag, but our boy can fart on command.

This morning, we’re cuddling in bed per usual pre-getting-dressed-for-school, and he lies across me, belly to belly, and lets out the longest, trumpeting fart. The cat jumps off the bed and hides. Ian and I respond appropriately, with snorting chuckles, and say, “Mikey, did you fart?”

“Neiny fart,” he agreed. He calls himself Neiny. And then I felt his belly contract as he prepared another assault. This one was shorter but loud, a gun shot. We laughed some more.

“What was that?”

“Neiny fart more,” he explained.

“That was funny,” I inform him, because I’m concerned that our 2-year-old have a proper understanding of toilet humor.

“Ha ha ha,” he said, dutifully. “More?”

“No, that’s probably enough.”

He took my head in his hands, the way he does when he is dead serious about an issue. “Daddy, more?”

“Okay,” I acquiesced. “More.”

Upon which, he grimaced and let out the last bat’s squeak of a fart.

“Ha ha ha,” he said.

Daddy and Papa are bursting with pride (and more).

Close your mouth, please, Michael. We are not a codfish.

2011-01-13T10:26:00.000-08:00

I feel a bit of a fake saying that our son has a nanny. The occupation evokes Mary Poppins, Jane Eyre, Becky Sharpe, Nanny McPhee, Mrs. Doubtfire, Maria Von Trapp, Nanny in the “Eloise” books, the governess in “Turn Of The Screw,” Anna in “Anna and the King,” Scarlett Johanssen in “The Nanny Diaries,” and Jo Frost in “Supernanny,” and Fran Drescher in “The Nanny” and Juliet Mills in “Nanny and the Professor.” Princess Diana was a nanny for a time, and so was Marie Curie. We found our nanny Sally on Care.Com, where she also advertised herself as a housekeeper, and we decided it would be nice to have someone who was a bit of both. As it is on weekends, we spend more time than we’d like cleaning when we could be out and about with the boy. Mikey still loves his daycare preschool, and is learning a lot and is very popular there, so we don’t have a need for Sally more than a couple afternoons during the week and on weekends when one of us can’t be home.

The fact that it’s taken us 8 months to need any help speaks to how much our friends love Mikey. We have been invited to very few parties or events where Mikey’s presence wasn’t expected, and most often, required. In addition to being a very good-looking kid, he is intensely sociable. While the other kids at the New Year’s party we went to were dropping off to sleep in various beds in various rooms throughout the house, Mikey was doing somersaults on the dance floor when the clock struck midnight.

On Care.Com, we had over 72 responses to our ad over the last couple of weeks and interviewed a dozen women. A couple candidates were plainly wrong, a few had no chemistry at all with Mikey, and maybe half either didn’t have the energy or the experience we were looking for. It was a little like dating or finding a house, you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for until you’ve experienced what you absolutely don’t.

So yesterday afternoon, Ian and I met Sally at our home, and then drove over in her car to pick up Mikey at school. After Mikey said his goodbyes to his teachers and classmates (which requires hugging and kissing each and every one of them), we went back home, where we had juice and chips, watched a little Toy Story 3, played Ring Around The Rosey over and over again, and Sally helped Mikey as he devoured his tamale dinner.

First day, but so far, she’s Practically Perfect In Every Way.

Moo Christmas

2010-12-27T14:34:00.001-08:00

‘Twas the night before Christmas, Ian and I both individually sat on Mikey's bed and explained that tomorrow is a very special day, it's Christmas, and he was going to get presents, and Mikey sat there and nodded seriously. "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

The next morning, however, was like any weekend, where he woke up and wanted to be cuddled in our bed, and drink juice, and eat Marmite on toast, and watch Toy Story 3 on TV. Finally, we persuaded him to go with us to the living room and look under the tree, where we had wrapped and stacked up a pile of presents the night before. The one item that was unwrapped was a rocking horse which was actually a cow, and he got on that and rocked away, oblivious to the other gifts. Finally, we handed him a present and he unwrapped it, and played with it with enthusiasm, still showing no interest in opening up more. That's the way it went -- he was enthusiastic about everything, but didn't do the full orgy of tearing up presents that we were expecting. In fact, it wasn't until Boxing Day he finished opening all his presents, and then after he opened the last, he said, "More! More presents!"

Lots of great stuff. Buzz Lightyear was a big theme, and so was music. He's been playing with a stand-up keyboard we bought for him, and on Boxing Day, we went to our friends Graham and Ali and they gave him a drum set which we have yet to put together.

Right now, Mikey’s keyboard compositions are very modern, atonal dissonance with accompanying Gregorian style glossolalia. I'm hoping he goes more commercial, but that's my pop sensibility.

I tend to call Mikey "Mikey Moo." The other day, he called out to me as "Daddy Moo!" And then on Boxing Day at breakfast, I said something about "Mikey Moo," and he began moo-ing like a cow. When I realized what he was doing, I began laughing, and he looked at me very seriously, "No, Daddy, not funny." So I had to stop laughing while he continued to moo with a very stern expression on his face, which is about the hardest thing I've done in a long time.

Here’s the obvious: Christmas is for kids. I don’t see why anyone without them would like the day in the least. When you become a parent, it can be your favorite holiday again.

Stage Father

2010-12-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

For the last month, Mikey has been practicing for his preschool’s holiday concert. There were four songs to sing: “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer,” “The Dreidel Song,” and “Feliz Navidad.” With great enthusiasm, we would sing them all together after school, applauding as he rocked back and forth and punctuated certain words (“Eh eh eh eh eh NOSE! Eh eh eh eh GLOWS!”), or acting out certain parts of the song (laying his head horizontally across his hands in the universal sign for sleeping during the line “He sees you when you’re sleeping” in SCICTT). On that Friday, we got him dressed up in his prescribed outfit and accessories – white shirt, black pants, Santa Claus hat, and flashlight – and got him to school.

We returned at 10 am for the concert, and were ushered into an overcrowded classroom, filled with parents with a little space for the kids to perform at the front. After squeezing in, it was the running of the toddlers as they all came into the room, screaming, laughing, and crying. Half took the stage, and half ran into their parents arms and clung. Mikey was one of the clingers.

So we sang along with the kids on stage from the audience.

Ironically, that evening, Mikey did want to go up on stage. Unfortunately, it was the stage of the El Portal Theatre where we took him to see his first English panto, in a performance of “Cinderella.” If you’ve never been, a panto is a British tradition, a performance for the whole family with sing-a-longs, cross-dressing (the ugly stepsisters are always played by men), improvised chatter with the audience, and lots of dancing and corny, slightly saucy jokes. Before it had begun, Mikey was down the aisle and up on stage, to the applause of the people finding their seats, and the consternation of the stage manager.

He was transfixed by the dancing and singing, and joined with the audience to boo the ugly stepsisters, and we had a great time.

A family holiday tradition is born.

My Son's Asleep

2010-11-21T16:48:00.000-08:00

What a weekend.

It rained.

It also rained on the day we drove downtown to get married three and a half years ago, so we had a good association with rain in L.A., now it’s made permanent. The press conference was at 1 o’clock, and we were the first court case at 1:30. We arrived at about ten after, and the first person we saw was my brother, Mikey's Uncle Moosh, holding a Buzz Lightyear mylar balloon for Mikey. Buzz Lightyear is Mikey’s latest obsession ever since Disneyland, and he calls him “Eyte Ear.”

On the fifth floor, the press conference was behind schedule, but all our friends had arrived early, ahead of us. In addition to Uncle Mikey, Aunt Kelly, and Cousin Natalie, we immediately were embraced by 25 other local friends who insisted on being in court in the middle of a day on a Friday. Susan and Lee Cummings and their son, Mikey’s buddy, Lanyon arrived shortly thereafter to Mikey’s delight, and just in time since Mikey was in the middle of his normal naptime and feeling overwhelmed.

The actual hearing was quick. After the conference, we went into room 419, where Judge Michael Nash made a speech, and then the actress Nia Vardalos asked us some questions, to which the answer was always “Yes.” The court asked us for our names and to spell them, which I stumbled over, and then to identify our friends in the audience and I drew a blank. Mikey grabbed all the stuffed bears in sight and fell out of his chair with a thump. When Nia Vardalos started crying during the questions, Ian lost it too. Basically, it was a shambles. A glorious shambles.

Afterwards, we had a couple interviews with local and national newspapers, and Mikey’s lawyer Cynthia Billey and all of her associates at the Children’s Alliance made sure the paperwork was all done and we were out.

On Saturday, we packed up the car during Mikey’s nap, and then as soon as he opened one eye, he was out in his seat, being whisked away again. He said, drowsily, “Home!” But we said, “You’re going to a party at Theo’s!” And he said, “Theo?! Party!” and got very excited. At Theo’s (and Graham, Ali, and Sophia Bradstreet’s) home, we had a party for most of the people who came to the court hearing, plus the Bradstreets and a number of other folk who couldn’t take off the middle of the day for the court but wanted to celebrate. Among them was Ian's boss Norman and Lyn Lear and their family, and another of Mikey’s attorneys, his education advocate, Sasha Stern, also made an appearance, to tell us that cases like Mikey’s is the reason she can get out of bed in the morning.

It was a blast with champagne for the grown-ups, trampoline jumping for the young ‘uns, and high calorie, low nutrient snacks for all. We lost track of how many people Mikey got to surreptitiously sneak him a cupcake.

Today is totally low key. We went to the Farmers Market, had some tamales (Mikey’s two requests of today, reflecting the Most Multicultural Child On Earth was “Marmite!” and “Tamale!”), and picked up some exotic mushrooms for dinner. Mikey is theoretically having his first uninterrupted nap of the last two days, but in true fashion, isn’t interested in sleep now that he can do it.

There is finally silence in his room. My son's asleep.

It's Official: He's Legally Ours Now

2010-11-19T20:29:00.000-08:00

Here we are at Mikey's adoption today.

Details to follow. We are celebrating now, no time to blog.

Happiest Place On Earth Adjacent

2010-11-10T07:57:00.000-08:00

I went to Disneyland for the first time in my life on Sunday, and I suspect it won’t be the last time, given Mikey’s reaction. It wasn’t a trip we had planned far in advance. Growing up in Ohio near Kings Island with grandparents in Orlando near Disneyworld, my lack of amusement at amusement parks was based on experience. On Saturday, however, we were at a park in West Hollywood and met up with my friend and former head huntress Susan and her son Lanyon who is Mikey’s age, and she launched into a pitch on Disneyland. All my concerns about cost, age appropriateness, and lack of alcohol were addressed and dismissed, and once Ian had turned, I crumbled. So Sunday morning, we left at 7:15 and breezed down to Orange County 45 minutes later when the park opened.

I was in the front seat looking for a parking space, and Ian was in the back with Mikey. I heard simultaneously Ian say, “Oh … dear,” and Mikey burst into tears.
Mikey, it seemed, had greeted Disneyland by vomiting down his shirt.

He was fine, so we changed into his (only!) spare and met Susan, Lee, and Lanyon at Jamba Juice where Mikey had a smoothie to make up for the lack of food in his belly -- and it went all down his spare shirt. This is before we made it through the ticket gates.

So Mikey wore Lanyon's spare shirt, and we went into the park. Lanyon was content at sitting in his stroller, grinning, and saying, "Disneyland! Disneyland!" while Mikey had to be out of his stroller, racing around in the crowd, saying, "Wow!" We saw our first cartoon character, Buzz Lightyear, the hero of Toy Story 1, 2, & 3, and Lanyon said, "Buzz!" and Mikey said, "Ahhhhhhh!" and ran into my arms. Not a big fan of people with masks over their faces, and no idea who Buzz Lightyear was.

We educated him by taking him on his first ride, which is a Buzz Lightyear ride where you fire lasers at the evil Emperor Zurg while spinning in your cart. You can actually control the spin with a lever, so Mikey saw to it that we were constantly spinning. The whole time, shrieking with joy. We also picked up a Toy Story 3 tee-shirt, so Mikey would have a commemorative article, and Lanyon could have his spare shirt back.

That was the theme for the whole day. He has a blast. He high-fived Sully, the giant blue monster from Monsters Inc., he sat through fully 3/4 of a Disney show which felt like 4/3rds of one as Handy Manny droned on, he went on the merry-go-round five times and six or seven other rides, he ate and ate and ate. Many highlights, but when he and Lanyon held hands and ran around giggling, it was not only one of our favorite parts, from the Oohs and Aws of the crowd, it was the favorite part for many strangers. We're going to sell this video of them to Disney, or we should.

He fell asleep in his stroller at 2 pm, and we drove back. And then we learned at home how to wash vomit out of a car seat! Talk about a happy ending!

Actually, the happy ending or happy beginning occurred last night when Mikey’s lawyer notified us that she had received official confirmation that we will be at the courthouse adopting Mikey on the 19th at 1:30 pm. We will be the first on the docket for National Adoption Day. Hooray!

The Birthday, The Bed, The Ear, The Adoption.

2010-10-28T22:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve had my first practical use for this blog. I’m using it to help me put together a baby book as a gift for Mikey for his adoption day, which will hopefully be next month.

It’s been a pretty busy month since the last update, too busy to update on how busy everything has been.

Mikey’s birthday went brilliantly, though he took the notion of the “birthday suit” literally, and didn’t wear his clothes through most of it. The theme of the get together with family and friends was Bubbles, Balls, and Balloons. The latter two were great successes, but the former was a flop – the cheap bubblemaker I got spit out a zillion bubbles in the first twenty seconds and then stopped. The next day at the All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, Mikey’s little cousin Natalie was baptized, and Ian and I were godfathers. Mikey, to Ian’s horror, would only wear the very dirty tee-shirt his grandparents brought him of a basketball to church.

He got an embarrassingly huge pile of gifts for his birthday, considering we hardly made a big deal of it. We had to open up one or two presents a day for two weeks to go through them all, and meanwhile the cards had gotten all mixed up, so we don’t know who gave the good stuff and who gave the crap. Ian’s boss gave a great present though: Mikey’s first big boy bed. It’s from Pottery Barn Kids, the Catalina twin bed, which we liked because it gets down low so he can crawl in now, and later can rise up with room for a trundle bed for sleepovers. (And no, this isn’t Mikey’s bedroom, this is the bed from the catalog – I’ll take a pic of the bedroom later)

At school, he’s moved up to the “older kids’ class” which is filled with 2-year-olds, up from the babies class he’s been in up to now. He loves it, but Ian and I have asked the teacher to tell the kids to let him do some things on his own. We know that Mikey just points and people run to get him whatever he wants … it’s the curse of being cute. As I know all too well, alas.

Last Friday was a bit of drama. Mikey had a bit of a cold. Nothing serious, we thought, just a bit of a sniffy nose. We put him down at the usual time of 7:30 after a great night of sushi at Akari, and at 9:00, he was awake, calling, “Daddy! Papa! Daddy! Papa!”

When we checked on him, he was touching his ear, “Ear, boo boo!” I figured he had a bit of sinus thing like I get when I have a cold, and I was looking at his medical records to see whether he was approved for children’s ibuprofen, when Ian said, “I think we should take him to the emergency room.”

Mikey had quickly turned from whining to screaming, and we quickly threw our clothes on, and got him in the car and to Northridge Medical Center in three minutes – it’s about ten minutes away by foot. I haven’t been to an emergency room in decades, and so I was picturing a scene like you see in “e.r.,” but it was very calm and orderly. In fact, Northridge is the Valley’s first pediatric trauma center.

Despite Mikey’s howling, it took us an hour and a half to be seen, and when we told him that the doctor needed to look in his ear to see the boo boo, he calmed down and let her do it. She said it was an impressive otitis media middle ear infection, and sent us off with a prescription for codeine and antibiotic. Mikey was so exhausted at two o’clock in the morning that he had the hiccups and still fell asleep, hiccupping with his head resting on his chest.

He’s better now. Tomorrow, he’s dressing as a puppy for his first of several Halloween parties. And, like I said at the beginning of this blog, on November 19th, we’ve been told, which is when National Adoption Day is celebrated in Los Angeles, we will be able to adopt him!

Shoe Business

2010-09-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

The week ahead looks to be interesting. This weekend we have two birthday parties for two little girls, Monday is Labor Day, and Tuesday, I start at a new job. I’ll be working for The Mouse on the massively multiplayer game for kids, Toon Town. Appropriate given my daddy status. On Thursday, my parents come to Los Angeles to stay with us. On Saturday, Mikey turns 2 and we have a party with a couple family and a handful of friends. On Sunday, Mikey’s cousin Natalie gets baptized.

A lot of major events in a short period of time. And then today, Mikey just put his shoes on by himself.

The way it went down was this. Ian had left early, and I was getting Mikey ready for preschool. We had juice (Naked ™ Green Machine + Essential Greens ™ Veggie Harvest), then breakfast (Farley’s rusks, banana, and milk), then brushed teeth, combed hair (no crying today!), and put on clothes (red Paul Franks monkey tee-shirt, red and blue checked shorts), and were debating the merits of different shoes. Red shoes were considered and rejected because they have laces. Sandals were in the diaper bag and not part of the equation. So, blue shoes or gray shoes? Before we had settled it, the phone rang, and I went to chat with Ian for five minutes.

When I came back, Mikey was in his nursery, playing with his Legos ™ and wearing the shoes he had put on by himself. And the right foot was in the right shoe, and the left foot was in the right shoe. (This is something which my mother can tell you, it took me more years that it ought to have to figure out) Mikey had even worked out a compromise between blue and gray shoes.

As you can see.

Rhapsody

2010-08-15T13:28:00.000-07:00

On August 14th, Ian and I took Mikey to see our friend Rachel Worby conduct the Pasadena Pops for one of the last times, since she is leaving after this season. The theme of the night was “All That Jazz,” and it began appropriately enough with Kander’s “All That Jazz” from Chicago, and then went through Mancini, Monk, Ellington, and several by Gershwin. Normally, as close friends of the Maestra, we get a good table up front, but at the last performance we decided that with Mikey, we were best off on a blanket in the back. It turns out that was a great decision.

It had been a month and a week since we had visited the parents and grandparents in New Bern, North Carolina. And it had been a week since I got an email from my mom with the title “Dad Is Dead,” referring to her father, my grandfather, Mikey’s great grandfather, who he only had a chance to meet the one time. How is it possible for a death to be a shock when it isn’t a surprise? I don’t know, but it was. I think it’s simply that I’ve been lucky for 41 years: no one I’ve truly loved has died before now. I am so grateful that we decided to hitch a visit to North Carolina onto the back of my cousin’s wedding in Wisconsin. The photos that we have of Mikey and Grandpa giving each other high fives are ones I will always treasure, and when he’s old enough to know what a remarkable man his great grandfather was, so will he.

So, it’s been a sad week. Add to that that Mikey has begun preschool, so he’s not home for several hours during the day. Apparently, according to his teachers who know what to say, he misses us enough that he’s called out “Daddy!” or “Papa!” after his nap, and once or twice looked for us in the preschool kitchen (the place where naturally we’d be), but the truth is that he loves it. He’s so social, it’s a good fit for him.

When you’re with Mikey, there’s not much time to reflect on your grandfather passing on and your son growing up. You’re feeding, chasing, laughing, and doing all the other present-tense things you have to do to keep up with a 23-month-old. Even at a concert like Saturday’s, you can’t sit and reflect on the music much, because the kid requires your attention. Then there was the plaintive, warbling glissando of the clarinet – which Rachel described as a bit of humorous improvisation at the first rehearsal of Rhapsody in Blue which Gershwin decided to keep in – and Mikey froze and began his dance.

The pity of it is that unlike the visit with his great grandfather, we were unable to capture it on film. Our video camera undoubtedly has a night light, but damned if I know how to find it in the dark. As he danced among the blankets and chair in the back rows of the concert, we heard various witnesses describe it as somewhere between a contemporary interpretative dance, a Charlie Chaplin routine, and a drunken jig. In fairness, Rhapsody In Blue, which closed the concert, began about two hours after Mikey’s usual bedtime, so the normally energetic kid was even more punch drunk than usual.

For me, Rhapsody In Blue was first associated with the black and white fireworks in the beginning of Woody Allen’s Manhattan. Then, when United began playing it in their commercials, I began associating it with flying. Now and forevermore, it will remind me of a warm August evening outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and our son jumping, tumbling, shaking, and skipping perfectly in time with the score. A rhapsody indeed.

Score!

2010-08-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

In order to stay certified as foster parents, Ian and I need to take 15 hours of classes on some subject or another related to parenting. We took a big whopper of a class a couple months ago, the Beyond Consequences workshop, which was interesting but since we didn’t then have a child let alone a deeply troubled one (knock on wood), we mostly did it for the hours. Two weekends ago, SCFFAA had a parents’ round-table which included daycare and was only 2 hours, so we thought we’d check it out.

The first big take-away from the seminar had nothing to do with the speakers, but with Mikey having a good time playing with the other kids and barely even noticing we were gone, leading us to the conclusion that he’s ready for preschool.
The second take-away came from some of the advice the parents on the panel gave about keeping score. It’s apparently pretty easy to become resentful, only notice the things you’re doing to make the whole family thing work, and rack up a lopsided scoreboard in your head, picking up points for every time you have to get up during the night to feed or attend to tears, deal with a bad diaper or a temper tantrum by yourself, do laundry and clean the house while your partner has fun playing with the kid, or do whatever it is which isn’t your favorite part of being a parent. I don’t know if there is a multi-point system, but if so, how would one calculate the number of points for getting the poop out of the tub when our relaxing bath-time went terribly wrong last night? And is that score multiplied when your partner unhelpfully chimes in, “It’s breaking up! It’s breaking up!”

No, the advice was, basically, don’t keep score. Open your eyes and recognize all the things your partner is doing which you aren’t noticing, enjoy the parts of raising a child that are truly magical, and get over yourself. Which is pretty good advice, whether you have a child or not.

So, Ian and I don’t take score on who does what, or we don’t keep score, which is slightly different. What, after all, is the point of keeping any score? As a game designer, I can say it’s a way to quantify your degree of success, usually compared to other players. Since you and your partner – as defined by the word “partner” – are both members of the same team, it’s counterproductive to make that a competition.

Where score matters are on things like developmental tests which Mikey will be taking soon courtesy of the north Los Angeles regional center. And scores matter on the playground, where life is tough.

We just got back from the playground in Tarzana, where I met up with my good friend and parenting mentor Suzanne and where Mikey was literally mobbed by a gang of boys and girls who looked to be between 6th and 8th grade who were hanging around, waiting for their day camp field trip. About a dozen of them passed him around, getting high fives and fist bumps, pushing him in another kid’s push car, and generally oohing and ahing over his every grin and giggle. Meanwhile, every other kid in the park, including Suzanne’s own absolutely adorable and sweet little girls, were ruthlessly ignored no matter what.
Suzanne and I laughed about it, and then I was thinking about this whole notion of competitive childrearing afterwards. Giving Mikey a point for every minute with every teenager looking on him with adoration. Subtracting points from Suzanne for such sad cheats as her prompting her youngest daughter, “See, show them you can do fist bumps too!” That kind of thing.

It’d be funny to be that shallow and that competitive. I would never do it. But if I did, the score would probably be 89 to 4 in Mikey’s favor. Approximately. ;)

The Potty Animal

2010-07-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we bought Mikey a potty. It’s arguably too soon. He’s 22 months old, and most authorities say boys aren’t ready for toilet training until they’re closer to 3, not close to 2. He also is wet every morning, and the rule is that until you can hold your bladder, you’re not ready for toilet training. What we’ve been doing is letting him come into the bathroom when we go, and his job is to flush the toilet and put down the lid afterwards if he wants.

So, why did we buy him a potty? We just wanted him to be comfortable with it, sitting on it, playing the drums on it, whatever he wanted to do. We’ve talked to some friends of ours whose 2-and-a-half year old daughter cries whenever she’s put on her potty, and we wanted to make sure that Mikey didn’t have that same reaction. Let him warm up to the object over time, we reasoned.

Tonight, we came back from a playdate and dinner, and Ian went to the bathroom and Mikey followed. A moment later, I saw that Mikey had his pants and diapers off and was sitting on the potty. Ian asked for me to get him a book to read while he sat, and I gave him “8 Silly Monkeys.” (“8 silly monkeys jumping on the bed / one fell off and bumped his head / Mama called the doctor and the doctor said / ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed” et cetera).

A minute or two later, Mikey bolted up and we saw that he had pooped in his potty.

Not saying that he’s toilet trained, but pardon me while I brag about our 22-month-old and what he did 24 hours after getting his first potty.

Genius.

Mikey Meets Grandma and Grandpa

2010-07-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

My cousin Sarah got married in Kenosha, Wisconsin last weekend, and Ian, Mikey, and I flew out from Los Angeles to be there. As you know from my previous blog entry , this is the second time Mikey’s been on a plane with us to go to a wedding, and we hoped his perfect behavior on the plane at and at the party wasn’t a fluke. I can’t say we’ll never have a bad flight with him, but now that we’ve been on 9 separate planes with him, it’s safe to say that the rule is that he flies very well. On the last flight today, one of the stewardesses came to us and asked if she could hold Mikey, and we said sure, provided he didn’t object (which of course he didn’t), and we talked about her own attempts to adopt while she rocked our son in her arms until he drifted off to sleep.

Just one of the moments of the last six days which will stick with us.

Mikey’s plane patience was tested at the start when we flew out at 6:30 pm from LAX, arriving at O’Hare just after midnight. By the time we met up with my parents, got our car (and then got another car with a bit more room for all our luggage), got lost in Chicago, and made it to the hotel in Kenosha, it was after 3 in the morning. He actually woke up the next morning, which meant he didn’t sleep his usual 11 hours, and that was the theme of the week: sleep deficiency. Even when we tried to put him down at some time approaching his normal nap time, he was too excited. This is a boy who knows how to have fun.

The wedding was very touching and my cousin looked beautiful. Mikey had already bonded with my parents by then, and fell asleep in his grandmother’s arms. When Ian and I whispered to her, “Do you mind holding him?” thinking his 30 lb. weight might be a bit much, she looked back at us and then smiled at him before whispering, “Your dads ask really dumb questions sometimes.”

He was awake, however, in time to break dance at the reception, after watching some of the older boys do it.

The next day, we flew with the parents to New Bern, North Carolina to stay with them for two days and introduce Mikey to his nonagenarian great grandparents who weren’t able to make it to the wedding. Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s no direct flight to New Bern, North Carolina from most locations, so we were supposed to change plans in Atlanta. Unfortunately, a massive storm hit the south-east, centered in Atlanta and the weather got so bad that the airport was shut down. Our modest layover became a desperate fight to get out of the water-logged city any way we could after our flight was cancelled. We were booked by the computer to fly out the next morning, but slightly more humane and human ticket agents got us in the long standby list for the last flight out that night. It began to look like only one or two of us was going to be able to get out, in the high drama as we entered our sixth hour in Concourse B.

Meanwhile, Mikey was having the best time, playing with other kids if they had strollers he could fasten up, high-fiving and fist-bumping whoever would return it, staring at people who were sleeping until they opened their eyes, and pointing out the “big trucks” and “planes” and “rain, rain, rain” outside the windows. He probably felt we left too soon when we all, to our relief, managed to get onto that last flight out.

The visit in New Bern continued the bonding between Mikey and his grandparents. He had his first ice cream with them, as well as his first seafood Newberg and broccoli soufflé. They put him up on their player grand piano so he could pound on the keys or watch them play themselves by magic. They hosted a party at their house on the Trent River, and thirty of their friends didn’t let explosive thunderstorms dissuade them from coming to meet Littlest Mikey.

And Mikey met his grandparents at their apartment at a retirement center. My grandfather is not doing well, but he is still quick-witted enough to tell me that he was rereading a book the other day and didn’t think much of the writing except for the introduction. The book he was modestly referring to was his own Stories For My Grandchildren , for which I wrote part of the introduction, and I promised him that I would be reading them to our son. An easy promise to keep.

As far as my grandmother, on meeting Mikey, she said, “We think he’s a gift from the Lord.” I can’t disagree.

The Water Baby

2010-06-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

Mikey became a water baby today.

A little background: I love having a pool. When I was a kid in Ohio, I was the one with a pool – it was a rarity among folk in a climate where winters (and most of fall and most of spring) were harsh enough to freeze 20,000 gallons to a solid. When Ian and I bought our first house together, he required a good kitchen and I required a pool. Of course, we also required a quiet neighborhood, extra bedrooms, and all the other requirements for parenthood, and we were lucky enough to get it all. The pool is fenced in, as required by California foster care, and we have an attached hot tub which we never use as such, but which we figured was perfect as a kiddy pool. I live every minute of every summer I can in the pool, and Ian, who grew up in an even less pool-oriented climate than Ohio – England – has gradually gravitated towards it as well. Needless to say, as summer begins in the blast furnace they call the San Fernando Valley, we want our child to be comfortable in the pool because that’s where we will be.

Mikey, on being brought out to the pool at a friend’s house days after we first got him, screeched in horror, and could only be comforted with a snack cup of pretzels. Gradually, we introduced him to our pool, and he came to understand the pleasure of dipping his feet in the water and splashing, with me or Ian by his side. A week ago, he stood up on the highest step in the hot tub/kiddy pool, and then soon, he was comfortable walking along it, collecting some toys we scattered along it.
Today, we brought him out to the pool, as we do every afternoon, and we went through the familiar procession, feet splashing, standing, squirting one another with bath toys, collecting toys on the top step. Ian sat on the top step, and Mikey just suddenly decided to sit down next to him. That lasted for an hour or so of play. I was in the middle of the hot tub, and Ian got out to lie out on the deck, and Mikey went to join him. Mikey handed him his shirt, and Ian put it on, and we thought it was over for the day.

“Should I take his swim suit off here?” Ian asked.

“Might as well, and take his diapers off too,” I said. “They’ve already absorbed half the pool.”

When Ian removed Mikey’s bottom half of clothing, Mikey held up his arms to have his shirt removed as well, and soon the naked little boy was back in the pool, and I was watching warily to make sure he didn’t find the immersion in water too … relaxing. I was so expecting imminent pooping that when he turned around and squatted, I assumed that was it, but Ian called to my attention that he was just trying to get down to the next lower step. I helped him down, and for the next two hours, we played in the water which was up to both of our necks, laughing, splashing, and singing. I only pulled him out because the sun was setting, and I was entirely pruned up.

He may turn out to be a bigger water baby than even me. I wonder if Ms. B, who is giving him swimming lessons in a couple weeks, will mind if he does it nude.

My Trip To The Clouds & Sun Valley

2010-06-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Father’s Day weekend and the out of state wedding we attended were perfect, as of course was I (Littlest Mikey). We drove to Burbank Airport Friday morning, which is nice because it’s close and small, and only had a bit of grumpiness when they took my shoes off and took away my sippy cup at security for thirty seconds, because I look so shifty. We hung around the gate with our friend Stan, Chris, and Robert who were also going to the wedding, and I smiled at all the folk waiting for the plane who were doubtlessly thinking, “Oh, a baby on the plane. I do hope he sits near us!”

The first flight was about two hours from Burbank to Salt Lake City. I cried for a moment as we walked across the runway to the small plane and it roared in a scary way, but that didn’t last long. I am not used to being held on a lap for two hours, so I squirmed between the two laps I had available and ate and ate and ate, and sometimes I played with the food boxes, or the tray table, or the window shade (where I learned two new words “Up” and “Down”). Then we had a short layover in Salt Lake City and moved into a smaller propeller plane. I tried to stay awake for the hour flight to Sun Valley, but much to everyone’s disappointment, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, we were on the shuttle to our hotel, the Sun Valley Lodge. Our room wasn’t ready, so first we were put in a room which could only be reached up a long flight of stairs. When Papa Ian complained that such a room wouldn’t do for a baby in a stroller, they moved us to another room on the ground floor. This room had a lovely view of the lodge ice rink, but when Papa Ian called to ask what time the shows were and whether they were loud, we were moved again and upgraded to the best room in the hotel, the parlor suite with two balconies and a separate living room. Something about a squeaky wheel, which I very seldom am, myself.

That night we went to a pre-wedding dinner at a restaurant, where I had lamb for the first time. Many people said I was cute and well-behaved, so that must be true. We left just before dessert at 9:30, and I fell asleep in the crib the hotel provided without any protesting.

The next morning, we went off in search of a restaurant in the “village” of shops attached to the lodge, but ended up returning back to the hotel where I was a little grumpy and didn’t want to wear my bib and occasionally things were thrown to the floor. The ‘rents need to remember to feed me first, then go exploring, right? After that, I went back to normal angel mode as we found a playground on the property and did swings and slides for an hour or two. We went back to the room for my mid-day nap, but I was too excited about seeing more of the town to sleep, so after a while, they plopped me in my stroller and walked a mile down the road to Ketchum. We’ll have to send you some pics and videos of the walk, because it’s all that snowy mountain, big vista, big clouds, “God country” good stuff. Anyhow, I fall asleep in the stroller apparently, but two hours later, I wake up and they have visited Hemingway’s grave, run into some other wedding guests, and we’re out eating burgers and chowder.

Then we had to spit spot back to the hotel, and get dressed up for the wedding. My dads wore black tie and I wore the seersucker suit my grandma sent me, which was a mite too big when I tried it on a couple weeks ago, but fit as if tailored now. (I learned a new word at this moment, “Ready,” as in “Are we ready?” “Ready!”) The shuttle took us to Lindsley’s stepmother’s ranch. Huge place. The ceremony was in the barn, the reception was at the guest house, and the dinner was in a tent down the hill. Someday when I come back, I might get to see the house itself which apparently down on the river. I was a little shy and frowny around the crowd at first, but by the time dinner was served, I was running across the dance floor, from table to table to tell people “Hi” and be the official greeter. If the bride was miffed that I was getting more attention than she was, she didn’t show it. I hope my life continues to be like that tent, filled with people who love me. I learned the word “moon” after pointing to the night sky. I finally fell asleep in my stroller at about 11:30, just in time for the first shuttle back to the lodge, and a little past the time when I got to see Papa Ian do the Macarena.

I slept in late, but we still had to spit spot to get all packed up and Daddy Ted left his cell phone charger behind and Papa Ian left his Kindle charger behind (they discovered hours later back in El Lay when they unpacked). We took the shuttle to the brunch at a country club where there was a bagpiper who frightened me when he came in and when he left, since I was right near the door, and he sounded like a dozen cats going backwards through a vacuum cleaner. We went back to the lodge, and after another walk around in my stroller, I fell asleep until the shuttle came to take us to the airport.

The security folk in Sun Valley Airport take their jobs very seriously, and were very thorough in searching my diaper bags. They tested all my food to make sure my bananas and hot dogs weren’t bombs, patted Papa Ian down for looking shifty (which is how he looks when he’s annoyed), and then I got annoyed at my Osh-Kosh straps until we unsnapped one, Huckleberry Finn style and I was okay. I loved my window seat which had a view of the propeller, which looks a bit like my ceiling fan at home which makes me go, “Ooooh!” whenever it’s on.

In Salt Lake City again, I didn’t want to be in the stroller as we walked to our connecting flight, so I held Daddy Ted’s hand and ran so we wouldn’t miss it. Daddy Ted was impressed with my speed and it wasn’t until I suddenly began going slowly that he looked down and discovered that I had lowered my second Osh-Kosh strap and was going as fast as I could with my pants around my ankles. I don’t think Salt Lake City had seen the like before.

I didn’t sleep on the plane, but continued to eat and play and play peek-a-boo with fellow passengers, including some of the wedding guests. On the landing to Burbank, I pulled at my ears a bit and whimpered, but that’s the only time the pressure seemed to bother me. We drove back home, said hi to the cat (who I call “Dat”) and went to sleep after a bit of protest.

Today, back to some routine, playing in the park (when I wake up – it’s 8:30, and I’m still asleep), then social workers come at 3, swim class at 5:30.

His Name is Michael

2010-06-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

I’m still not going to include any photos of “Baby M” on this website, because a) I’m not sure how I feel about breaching the privacy of a minor like that, and b) it’s against the rules of our foster care agency, and we could lose him as a result. Probably B is more to the point.

Anyhow, Ian and I decided that it was okay to do away with this “Baby M” stuff, and give his name. It’s Michael. Mikey, we call him. Coincidentally, that’s the same as my little brother and occasional writing partner. I can say that I spent the first 20 years of my life saying, “Mikey, do what I say!” and then took 20 years off, and am now prepared to say “Mikey, do what I say!” for another 20 years (at least).

Now what I have to find is the old toy we used to have which played:

My name is Michael
I got a nickel
I got a nickel, shiny and new
I’m gonna buy me all kinds of candy
That’s what I’m gonna do.

I’ve begun looking for a nanny/baby-sitter/au pair at least part time, and it’s funny how many enthusiastic folk blow you off rather than even showing up for the first interview. We’re relying on recommendations first, but we’re also looking at an agency. I signed up on GreatAuPairs.com, and the first response I got was from a man in China who wants to come out and live with us. We’ll have to think about that one.

Check out my partner Ian’s blog about feeding Mikey, the Sprog at http://www.tastebudding.blogspot.com/

My Son's Hair

2010-06-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

I haven’t mentioned it before, but Baby M is half African-American and half Latino. Ian and I are both white. Some have said we’re very white. I’ll have to decide as M gets older how much of his personal life it’s appropriate to share on the web, but suffice to say, transracial adoption is a controversial topic for many reasons, some good and some bad. We know there’s a lot of ways we’re going to embarrass him growing up, but we’re going to do what we can on anything we can fix with a little education.

Today, I drove M down to see Althea at Spice Salon on West Pico, just off La Brea. She’s a Jamaican hair dresser who has been running classes for white parents to teach them how to take care of their black babies’ hair. She didn’t have any group classes coming up, so we did a one-on-one consultation.

I wasn’t entirely clueless, it seems. I showed her the brush I was using daily and the olive oil based conditioner, and she recommended a moisturizing shampoo I could use instead of Johnson & Johnsons generic baby shampoo, which would also not hurt his eyes, called hair milk.

She told me to get a wide-pronged comb and every morning, do the leave-in conditioner, work out the knots with the comb, and then brush, and she showed me how to do it gently but firmly.

“I’m not the only black person who hates to see a white couple with a black baby whose hair is so untidy, he looks like a wild child from the Congo,” Althea says. “Hair is part of our culture. Do something with it, so he’ll be proud.”

I can’t teach M how to be black in America, but hopefully I can give him some tools so he can figure it out for himself.

Slightly Down & Very Up

2010-06-08T21:12:00.000-07:00

Today we had a meltdown at CVS. It’s the second time I’ve taken M there, and each time, there’s been an issue. The first time, I put him in a cart without checking to see that it pushed alright – and when I discovered that it didn’t, I lifted him up to put him in a properly working cart and he freaked out at being lifted up, only calming down when placed in position again. Then, when we were leaving, he lost it again after I let him roam in the aisles and then picked him up to leave. This time, I checked out the cart to make sure it was working correctly, put M in it, and we were having a great time, until he reached for some medicine and I said no, and he lost his mind. Arms up, tears exploding. I had dealt with him crying before, of course, and obeying the dictums issued from Dr. Kaplan’s “The Happiest Toddler on the Block,” I began empathizing (“You’re mad! Mad!”) and speaking Toddlerese, telling him what he was feeling. He didn’t go into my arms as he usually does, he thrashed on the floor.

Five minutes went by of hysteria.

Ten.

These are very long minutes, but I wasn’t irritated with him, more confused that my usual tricks weren’t working, and a little embarrassed, to tell the truth. Finally, I swept him up and took him out of the store, our errands unfinished. Afterwards, I thought I should have left him in the aisle, finished my shopping, and collected him afterwards. Oh well. Thirty seconds into the car seat on the way home, and he was calm as a cucumber.

The rest of the day was fabulous. He’s been nervous about the pool, crying when he first was brought close to one, and then tentatively trying more and more, putting his feet in the water, splashing, sitting down on the highest step and walking on it. Today, no progress off the highest step, but he still enjoys it. I figured we do it every day and he'll get more and more comfortable ... and meanwhile, I get to soak in the pool.

Then, there’s bathing. He loved the bath on Day 1 we got him, and has hated it every day since. We’ve done everything. The temperature is tepid. The bath is full of suds and toys. Ian or I have gotten in the tub first. We’ve tried bringing him over to the shower. Everything turns to suspicion and then tears. Finally we brought out Baby J’s old baby tub, and M liked to play in it with the bath toys. Today, I filled it with warm/tepid water and carried it out to the back patio and filled it with suds. M played with his toys in the suds and then asked for help taking his shirt and his diapers off, and then got in. Turns out the little bugger likes bathing al fresco.

Then, there’s feeding. He’s got an appetite, but not for green stuff. We’ve played around with texture, trying to puree broccoli and green beans down to a mush, and still, it ends up down his chin when he tastes it. Today, I slipped spirulina in his banana yogurt. Now, if you haven’t had spirulina, also known as blue-green algae before, it’s full of beta-karotene and other vitamins and intensely green. That yogurt looked like acid guacamole. But he lapped it up and wanted more.
Not an up-and-down day. A slightly down and very up day.

Thursday, we’ll get more word from the social worker about the process of adopting this challenging and wonderful toddler.

Getting To Know “M”

2010-06-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

When we had Baby “J,” I titled all the posts about him, “Week One With Baby J,” “Week Two With Baby J,” et cetera. In part, it made titling these posts easier; but it also betrayed our suspicion that it would ultimately be a temporary placement. Since we fully intend and believe Baby M to be a permanent placement, cumulating in an adoption in about six months’ time, that tradition has to change.

That said, it will be a week tomorrow since we took in Baby M.

Here are the words he says pretty consistently: Ball, More, Dada, No, Yes, Yeah, Hello, Hi, Goodbye, Thank You (“Di doo,” after receiving something), Please (when prompted “Saying please”), Blue (when looking at a picture book about colors, he is only interested in the one with the ocean and saying “Blue,” the other colors are merely in the way of getting to blue), Cheese, Nana, Cat (occasionally, when the presence of Floyd is enough to get any reaction at all), and Poo Poo.

He’s very independent. He wants to put his pants and shoes on by himself and sometimes succeeds. I can’t rush him, or he’ll give a reproachful, “Ah!” Any new situations can likewise only be approached by M at his own pace and comfort level. Playgrounds, bath, bed, all are met with hostility if he’s pushed, but if he’s allowed to approach them himself, he’ll get into it. He’ll go get diapers or a ball or whatever you send him for that’s out of the room, and once in a while, when his diaper is full, he’ll go ahead and get the diaper and bring it to you as a gentle hint.

The trick we’ve been told over and over again is establishing a routine. We have a routine in the process of being established, but it’s not easy. We have to be ruthless about enforcing the right times for meals and naps because mere minutes after the proper moment, we’ve got tears. Otherwise, there’s a little “Eh!” before he settles down.

He can sleep by himself in his crib (or “cot” as Ian still calls it) but he prefers to fall asleep against my chest, and then be transferred over. I like it too.

Baby "M"

2010-05-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

What I left out of the last blog post was that when Ian called me and said we were going to lose Baby “A,” he said, “Apparently, there’s a baby boy a month younger who has become available. I said ‘yes.’” Now, Ian is the cautious one of the two of us. He notices the crack in the ceiling and worries that the attic is going to come crashing down on us, and he notices that the pool has extra leaves in it and worries that the pump is burned out and is going to cost us hundreds of dollars. (For the record, he was wrong about the ceiling, and right about the pump)

The baby – we’ll call him “M” – has been with the same foster family for 19 of his 20 months on earth, and they couldn’t keep him any more, even though parental rights with his biological mother had been terminated almost a year ago. This means that almost all of the hassles of foster-adoption, the two or three hour long visits several times a week with the biological parents, the threat of having him returned to them, all that wasn’t going to happen. We were asked if we could pick him up Thursday between 1 and 1:30, and we said we would, but we still had Baby “A” and only one crib.

There was a behind the scenes kerfuffle, and we brought Baby “A” to our agency where the people who had brought in his four-year-old sister were meeting us. They seemed very nice, though after the fact, I learned there had been a bit of a funny British/American translation issue. Ian wanted to tell them that “A” wouldn’t sleep in his crib without duress and he used the British word for crib, which is “cot.” “You let him sleep in a cot instead of a bed?” they asked, horrified, imagining the poor baby in a fold-out army issued number.

Having decided we were taking on Baby “M” stifled our grief over losing Baby “A.” We were like a restaurant, flipping lunch service for dinner service in the 24 hours between babies. Today, we went down to the Culver City DCFS office and met him.

He’s handsome. Our social worker called him “beautiful,” and that might be more accurate. We were told there might be some behavioral issues – scarcely surprising for any foster child, let alone one on his first day away from the only family he’s ever known – but aside from a brief cry when Ian picked him up, he was good as gold and remained that way all day long, from driving back to our house, to play time, to dinner time, to bath time, to bed time.

Tomorrow, he’s got a visit with the pediatrician, and our three day weekend. We’re hoping this angelic demeanor will last. Everyone keeps saying to us, “This is the one.”

Feels like it.

The First (and Last) Week of Baby A

2010-05-25T12:19:00.001-07:00

We had Baby J for a month to the day; it looks like we’ll have had Baby A for just over a week. We got a call yesterday from our social worker saying that the family who took in his four-year-old sister, someone certified to take care of her asthma, is also going to take him in. There was a possibility we could have kept Baby A longer if we had agreed to take in his sister, but it would have been very difficult to take care of a chronically ill child and her very active toddler brother without help, and there was a good likelihood than in a couple months, he would end up with his biological mother and her seven other children at the end anyhow.

It has been a great week with him. What a difference between a 21-month-old (not an 18-month-old as we had thought before) and Baby J, the five month old. We took him to petting zoos, pony rides, parks, and on Saturday, the Pasadena Pops, where our friend Rachel Worby is the conductor and musical director. She played on the steps of City Hall, and Baby A was standing up on stroller boogying when they got to the Duke Ellington medley. Definitely a memory we’ll always have.

He’s taking a nap now after playing ball in the front yard and then a walk over to the grocery for some much needed ‘nanas. Probably go to the park this afternoon after lunch.

We don’t when he’ll go, today or tomorrow, but we’ll enjoy the time we have left, though it’s hard to plan your day when anytime, you may be called home to pack a bag for forever for the little one.

Baby A

2010-05-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

We got a call last night at 10:30 about a year old baby boy who was in need of immediate placement in a foster home. We had been getting a number of calls since losing Baby J in February, but none of them seemed right. There’s always the possibility of losing a child when you foster-adopt, but some possibilities are stronger than others, and if your goal is to be an adoptive parent and not a babysitter, you have to keep that in mind.

Earlier yesterday, we got a call about a 2 day old baby girl, born positive for crystal meth. We said yes, and in the minutes it took to pass the word to the county social worker, another family had already beaten us to the front of the line. Last week, we turned down a match with another little girl born positive for crack and syphilis, but whose mother was fighting to keep her.

Fifteen minutes after we said yes last night, he arrived. Baby “A” is actually more of a toddler than a baby, not twelve but eighteen months old, and doesn’t fit in any of Baby J’s old clothes. He was asleep, but woke up in my arms as I carried to the crib. He cried when I tried to put him in the crib, so we brought him to bed with us. He was exhausted but so resistant to sleeping, he stood on the bed as his strength left him and he began to do the drunken splits. Finally, he snuggled in with us and slept until 7 this morning.

He’s very vocal and babbley, saying favorite words like “Ball!” “Spiderman!” and “Mine!” He refused to eat his breakfast of bananas and cereal, and it was such an anathema to him that we discovered we could use the bowl to chase him away from anything we didn’t want him to get into. Finally, when the hunger got him, he showed that he would eat bananas (on their own), crackers, and drink milk and water.
When I was at Target with him buying him a high chair today, I made a classic rookie dad mistake. He pointed out a big ball, and he had been so good, I grabbed it and gave it to him. I don’t know what I was thinking: that he would be happy with the ball in the basket, to be played with when we got home? No, obviously, as we were the store, we were playing the game where he throws the ball down the aisles, crying until I retrieve it for him. And then he gives the “I got you!” grin, because he knows he has.

Have no idea whether we’re going to be able to keep him for a while or forever or not.

Cleaning House

2010-03-24T15:43:00.001-07:00

So, it’s been a year since we were certified for foster-adoption. I know this because the agency called and said it was time to inspect our house again. The guy who is coming over is the same one who looked it over last time, and he said he was sure that everything was fine, it would probably be a pretty quick visit. That’s good, so he probably won’t spot the stash of drugs and pornography.

Kidding, kidding. We’ll bury that in the usual spot in the back yard, next to the dead hookers.

I held off updating the blog the last month because I was hoping for news of a new placement, but that hasn’t happened.

Baby J is long gone. We packed up a suitcase for him so he’d have more to take to the next foster family than he had coming to ours, and there’d be some familiar toys and clothes so hopefully he wouldn’t be too scared. We took the baby seat out of the car, and the stroller out of the garage, and they’re all in the nursery. Like us, they're just waiting.

I mentioned in the last blog that it was too soon to have learned a lesson after loving and losing J. Pretty much, that’s still the case, but we have decided one lesson that we’ve learned is that we can handle this. That’s something.

My novel has been passed to a producer for Lifetime, and a literary agent. Fingers crossed that something will happen on that front.

Better get back to wrapping up the knives in a lockbox, plugging up all the outlets, replacing the rubber corners on tables which have fallen off, locking the chimney and toilets, locking away the cleaning products and medicines … I don’t want this guy’s estimation of our house as the world’s safest place for placement to be diminished.

The Fourth and Final Week with Baby "J"

2010-02-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

Three impossible words to realize and difficult to even type: He’s leaving us. We don’t know when or how, but it seems that it’s all settled even if the details have yet to be worked out. California and Baby J’s home state have decided to move the case, and of course, he’s going with it. It’s not about his birth parents being fit or unfit, or the home we’ve tried to make for him, it all comes down to cold, by-the-book legal jurisdiction and possibly money. Like I said in an earlier blog post, no state wants a new foster case.

As of this writing, we have heard from Baby J’s appointed lawyer that the other state’s DCFS has initiated a petition for services for him and they’re looking for a new foster family there to take him in. California DCFS has yet to receive information about it, such as day and means of transporting him, other than that we are likely to receive more information today. So, we are regulated from the role of foster and potential adoptive parents to simple babysitters waiting for their charge to be picked up.

I didn’t cry at first when I heard all this. J was asleep at the time and I went in and watched him, and even then, I didn’t. We had known since Day 1 that there was the risk of losing him, but being generally lucky people, we figured luck would be on our side. Then he opened his eyes, smiled, and reached up his arms to be picked up, and the tears came even as I smiled and cooed and lifted him up to play airplane. The tears kept falling throughout the day as I talked to Ian, and my parents who never had a chance to meet him but cried also at the prospect of losing who would have been their first grandson. We had visits and phone calls from friends, and my brother, J’s Uncle Michael, came over, and there was more laughter than tears.

He’s still in our home and our hearts, and it’s too soon, too close for reflection on what it means to have had this wonderful boy for one month, which he will forget but we never will.

Week Three With Baby “J”

2010-02-03T15:41:00.000-08:00

Well, we’re midway through Week 3, and things aren’t any more certain than they were Hour 3. Like I said in the last entry, the judge has asked the parents’ home state to take the case, and the following Friday, they still hadn’t responded with a yes or a no. Ditto on the continuation on Monday. So, this Friday is the continuation of the continuation of the continuation of the continuation of the very first part of the process. It is a little like knowing you’re running a marathon, and stepping into quicksand right from the start.

No one’s happy about this limbo. DCFS doesn’t know whether this is a real case or not, the birth parents aren’t sure whether to stay here or go home, we don’t know if we’re foster-adopting or just babysitting.

But J continues to amaze us. When he first came to us, he could barely raise his head during “tummy time,” and now he can prop himself up. He can sit by himself with no support, if not quite consistently. He can roll over from his back to his stomach if not – alas, for him – from his stomach to his back yet. Last night, Ian and I taught him to wave “Hello” and once he caught on, he couldn’t stop laughing.

He has a little bit of a cold and is beginning teething, and then there are the usual other bodily secretions, making him the gooiest baby. And yet, even goopy, he is good-looking. So adorable that I was stopped by no fewer than five women at Ralph’s stopped me to admire him.

“How old?”

“Five months,” I smiled. The woman smiled. J smiled.

“Enjoy her while you can. She’ll grow up fast.”

J had no idea he had just been feminized. I hope to be around when he’s old enough to get mad about that.

Week Two With Baby "J"

2010-01-26T13:17:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, our sister-in-law Kelly gave birth to a little girl, who, if we are able to adopt Baby J, will be his first cousin. We got to the hospital yesterday, and J was a little cranky, so we went looking for a restroom to change him. In all of UCLA Santa Monica hospital, there is no bathroom with changing facilities. We even discreetly checked out the women’s restrooms to see if by the old double standard, they were there in there, but no luck. Finally, we changed J’s diaper in the front lobby, and then learned that babies aren’t permitted to visit the maternity ward. That’s right: no babies allowed in maternity. H1N1 contamination fears, it seems. So I visited the beautiful little girl, and told J all about her. Hopefully he’ll get to meet her soon.

Earlier yesterday, we had our third meeting with birth mom and dad, which is stressful for all of us. Ian and I are in a strange state of being as foster-adoptive parents: we are supposed to be cheerleaders for reunification until that doesn’t work out, and then we’re supposed to snap into parent mode. Being human, and having this amazing little boy in our lives, whom we feed, burp, change, play with, tickle, and sometimes just stare wonderingly at while he stares back at us and then slowly grins … well, let’s just say our cheerleading for reunification with the birth parents sounds really false in our ears.

Baby J’s birth parents love him, that’s pretty clear. And he has not been neglected or abused. I don’t think they can take care of him, but it’s not my call. The judge here in California has decided to move the case to another state, where the birth parents actually live (one of them was visiting here when the incident occurred leading to J being taken away by the police), and we will see on Friday if that other state agrees to take the case, and with it, our boy. 50/50 odds, we’ve been told.

It’s hard to warm a bottle with crossed fingers.

We just want to be able to name the next blog posting "Week 3 With Baby J."

First Week With Baby "J"

2010-01-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

A friend came over this weeknd with her six-year-old daughter who noticed that I had not set up one of the play mats in the nursery, and the little girl made herself useful in fixing it for J. She patted my arm and said, “I know this is tough, but I think you’ll get a hang of it eventually.”

Friday was the biological mom’s detention hearing, to see whether it was legal for the state to take away her child to begin with. Since we heard nothing, that’s good. If it had been found in her favor, there wouldn’t have been any phone calls, just cops at our door to take him away.

Next, we’ll be hearing who the judge for this case will be, which will determine a lot. There are judges renowned for doing anything for reunification with mothers and babies (“M’am, if you could just do crack and whore on weekends only, maybe?”), and we’re hoping we don’t get one of those or it’ll be a long, drawn-out process.

Best scenario from our point of view is that the judge severs parental rights off the bat, and we’re fast track for adoption in 6 months. Otherwise it could take a year or more if the mother keeps getting second and third and fourth chances – which happens.

6 Things we have learned about Baby J this week:

1. He goes through 10 to 12 diapers a day, sometimes one right after the other.
2. Only 3 things make him cry: being wet, being hungry, needing a burp. It’s no use trying to find another reason, even if it doesn’t make sense that he could be wet, hungry, or needing a burp.
3. He had his first solid food – rice cereal – last night, and loved it. Ate every bit.
4. He is the most social baby. He beams when there’s company over, new people to coo over him.
5. He is fascinated by himself. He can stare into the mirror at himself without blinking.
6. He is nearly there on sitting up on his own, and can stand up as long as someone’s there to help him keep his balance. We may have to lower his mattress in his crib soon to keep him from climbing out.

One thing I didn't have to learn this week, but was emphasized:

1. Thank God for friends and family.

Baby "J"

2010-01-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

As I write this, it’s 6 am, and we have a 5-month-old in a crib sleeping away with – I can tell you – a clean diaper and a full belly.

Yesterday, Ian called me to say he received a phone call from our social worker at about 5 o’clock pm about a 5-month-old girl. He proceeded to tell me the story of how she ended up in the system, which is convoluted and we probably don’t have all the facts – and probably wouldn’t give them all online if/when we do. Suffice to say, she was at the DCFS office, ready to be picked up. I called them to confirm we were interested in her, and was told that she was actually a he. No name yet, but come and get him right away.

(We learned his name later, and just like his history, going to keep that a secret on this public blog. Call him “J.”)

Our nursery is as complete as it can be considering we didn’t know the age/sex/number of what we would be getting. I ran out the door and picked up what I figured was the essential what-a-5-month-old-needs-to-survive-one-night-at-our-place: blue onesie for 9-12 month old, diapers (what size? No idea what he would weigh), wipes, dry formula, bottles, nipples (hee hee), and car seat.

I picked up Ian and we went to the office, getting there at about 7:30. They bought him out, and he was “cranky” as he had been all day. He howled in the social worker’s arms, and then he howled in mine. Ian took him, and he calmed down immediately, and smiled and played with Ian’s glasses. The social worker said that was the best they had seen him all day. I can see I’m going to have to work on this.
Half-way back to our house in the car, he fell asleep in the car seat, his hand gripping mine. We got home at 8 and he slept until 11. First diaper change, unsuccessful attempt to get him to take a bottle of formula, and then swinging him around the house until 1 am when he decided to sleep.

He woke up, not crying, at 5 with a wet diaper. Changed, and finally got him to eat, and again to sleep.

Got so much to do today, going to pediatrician, meeting with social worker, picking up all the additional things didn’t have time to get tomorrow.
Hopefully, he’ll get to stay with us, because we’re smitten.

Close Call and Call Waiting

2010-01-09T15:20:00.000-08:00

Another near miss with getting a baby. I was on the phone having a business call, and Ian was in a meeting as well, and when we got off, we both had voicemails telling us to call our social worker right away. I got to them first, and was told about a two-day-old baby boy, born positive for cocaine, but with no medical issues. His mother was incarcerated, his father was unknown. This was an emergency placement where someone needed to pick him up right away.

We were second on the list, and the people ahead of us were supposed to be calling back in 5 or 10 minutes to give a definite yes or no. 5 or 10 minutes turned into 30, and I impatiently called back, and was told our social worker was on the phone with them and would call me back. Another half an hour, and she called to tell me that they had decided to say yes.

In the meantime, I had straightened up the nursery, and Ian and I separately had gotten our hopes up. It made the frustration more painful when it didn’t happen, but the truth is that it was just bad luck. No one at fault. We hope he ended up in a good family.

And we hope the next one will be ours.

If I’m on the phone with you, please understand if I have to hang up if another call comes through. Heh heh heh.

No, Virginia, There Isn’t A Santa Claus

2009-12-18T10:19:00.000-08:00

"No, Virginia, There Isn’t A Santa Claus."

That’s what my parents told me growing up, and I never could understand why they called me “Virginia.” Besides that, I was cool with it. The presents you get at Christmas were from your parents, grandparents, friends, and other folk who worked hard for the money for it, and cared enough about you to get what you wanted. You didn’t have to tell Santa that you wanted a six-foot-long Brontosaurus stuffed animal because you already told your mom and she was buying it (or sewing it herself like mine did, two years in a row, because the first one was loved into extinction). It wasn’t about being a relatively good boy or relatively bad one, it was about being loved even if you were a bit of a shit. Which of course I wasn’t, but I could have been for all you know.

Re: Santa Claus, my little brother and I were told the story, but it wasn’t any different than being told the story of Peter Pan, King Arthur, the Cat in the Hat, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Br’er Rabbit, Snow White, Eloise, Bilbo Baggins, and all the other characters who are fictional but whose stories have worth. (Actually, an aside, my mom would say King Arthur was probably based on a British commander with a Roman name who fought the Anglo-Saxons in the late 5th or early 6th century, but I digress) The guy who lives in the North Pole with elves and Mrs. Claus and Rudolf and occasionally Frosty when that special aired and hung out in malls, we were told all about that, because to be in ignorance of that is to be a freak. We were told that many kids believed that Santa was real because that’s what their mommies and daddies taught them.

And that was fine. We had friends who were Jewish, Quaker, Christian Scientist, Catholic, and a whole bunch of other beliefs we didn’t share, but we weren’t to make fun of them for that. This was the original early 70s Sesame Street debuts multicultural “Free To Be You & Me” generation, after all.

So, there was no trauma about that growing up. Adults hearing that I was raised as a Santatheist, however, tend to be horrified more often than not. It is as if I were abused or at least pulled from my childhood fantasies to the cold realities of life too soon. I don’t know. I certainly wouldn’t discourage any parents from telling their kids that Santa is real, if both parties get some enjoyment out of it. But will I do that for my kids when I have them? I don’t know either.

We do have a tree, and some stockings by the fireplace, and lights on the house. And though it’s looking unlikely that we’ll have a child in time to share this Christmas with, we are pretty certain we’ll have one or more for next. And like so many other things, we’ll figure out what to do on this issue when the time comes.

For the time being, though, you can hear me exclaim as I drive out of sight, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

Keeping Walking

2009-11-23T20:36:00.000-08:00

“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep walking.” – Buddhist proverb

How do you update a blog when nothing’s happening? I feel like I need to have an update at least monthly, but honestly, if you want to hear about any news or development, you can stop reading now.

Ian and I were touched by the reaction to the last blog. I think it had become understood that we would be getting the twins, and it would be a lot of work, but we would handle it. But that’s not how it turned out, it seems. It would have been heart-breaking if we had actually met G. and J., but the fact that we could let them go is evidence in itself that we made the right decision.

We’ve received a couple phone calls about potential matches since then, so we know we’re still on the agency’s list, even if they haven’t been right. We still have a little dream about getting a baby for Christmas.

In the meantime, we’re just a couple months away from my brother and sister-in-law having their first child, a girl. They’re in a flurry of baby-showers and birth classes and name debates, which is fabulous to participate in, as uncles-to-be.

I’m still expecting that sometime in December or January, the novel will be published online, but we’re still figuring out the contract. So that might not happen. I’m still looking into other publishing options.

All of this is to say that there’s no real news or development. No news isn’t bad news, it really is just no news.

It’s like sitting on a powder keg watching lines of the slowest black powder fuse inching their way closer, knowing everything is going to explode eventually. Hmm, maybe the Buddhist quote about walking is a nicer way of putting it.

The Latest (and Last) On The Twins

2009-10-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

Today, we talked to our social worker and told her that we would not be taking the twins. It was a hard decision. For three months now, we have been fighting to get information on them that we knew their pediatricians had, while we window-shopped for all the twin accessories and imagining the wonderful, impossible tasks ahead. We had begun reading “Raising Emotional Healthy Twins,” concentrating on the philosophy to think of them as two children rather than “the twins.” (Obviously, that never completely stuck) We had talked to pediatricians and specialists about the children’s known medical issues, and there are some esoteric subjects on pediatric endocrinology we could claim amateur expert status at discussing.

Days, weeks, and months went by, and we still couldn’t get satisfactory answers to our questions. It was probably selfish of us to hold on for as long as we did, when the twins might be placed with other prospective parents less concerned with some of these medical issues. We also know that if we waited any longer, it would be harder to place the children so near the holiday season.

Our social worker assures us this case was unusual, and that saying no to this particular match won’t muck up our chances of getting another match with another child or children. For not being religious, we are curiously fatalistic – we will get the right kids for our family when the time is right.

And the twins, G. and J., will get the home they deserve. With all our heart, we wish them well.

On The Brink

2009-09-30T15:45:00.001-07:00

Something’s gonna happen, I just don’t know what or when.

I haven’t updated the blog at all this September because while things are progressing on the novel and baby fronts, they were progressing slowly and I kept hoping to have some announcement to make. Instead, out of a sense of obligation to have at least one new blog post each month, consider this a situational overview.

On the novel front, I’ve been contacted by a new online literary magazine about serializing the novel, publishing two chapters every month for eight months starting at the end of this year. Can’t talk too much more about that except that they’ve sent me a contract and it’s in the hands of my agent and lawyers.

On the baby front, well, something will undoubtedly happen in the next week. The major frustration has been getting straight answers about potential medical issues. Apparently, until we’re at least foster parents, we’re not supposed to talk to directly to the twins’ doctors, so we’re forced to play the world’s slowest game of 21 questions, sending them to our social worker, who sends them to the county social worker, who sends them to the doctor, who has his nurse practitioner answer them. Or not answer them. And then begins the follow-up questions, including questions about why previous questions weren’t answered.

Next week, they have a doctor’s appointment, and we’re sending the questions once again, hoping they get answered with fresh eyes. If they do, and even if they don’t, something will happen in October because we really have to say Yes or No now.

And thus concludes the no-news-is-good-news update.

The County Of Los Angeles Deems Them "Cute"

2009-08-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

I have pictures of the twins, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to share them on a public blog, particularly since they aren’t ours … yet. But damn, are they cute. Trust me on this. Or you could trust the official statement of the County of Los Angeles on the matter on their adorability. From the report we were given today on the girl:

Current caregiver perceives child as: happy, easy going

CSW perceives child as: cute, curious

And on the boy:

Current caregiver perceives child as: happy, stubborn

CSW perceives child as: curious and loving.

Both are also describes as “very affectionate.” So the huge smiles in the photos are not just for the camera.

We’re sending the reports on to some pediatricians to see if there are any notes back from them. The next step will be to meet them at their foster home … and then, to take them home.

It may just be a matter of a few weeks now. Oh, boy. And girl.

Twin & Tonic

2009-08-13T17:28:00.001-07:00

So we just got off the phone with our social worker after her meeting with county social workers. Overall, more good stuff than bad. Our concern about the twins not being developmentally on target is largely gone. Since we last talked, they are not only sitting on their own, they’re crawling, cooing, engaged and interested in everything, and sleeping through the night. Who knows, they might be walking soon too.

On the bad side: the mom right now is in rehab, so she sees the kids for 3 hours every Sunday. The county social workers say this is the usual pattern, but once she’s finished with rehab, she’s likely to disappear altogether. The other annoying bit is that the judge on the case is “very thorough,” which our social worker says means parental rights won’t likely be terminated very soon. On the other hand, the county social workers are adamant that the twins shouldn’t be given back to the mother … who, by the way, is pregnant again. Our social worker still consider this a “low risk” case as far as reunification goes. It just might take a while.

So, we said to sign us up for the next appointment, where we meet with the kids’ social worker … I believe we see a photo!

Other than that, looking forward to our 3-day-weekend which begins to tomorrow. In Vegas baby!

Ian says he’s going to “invest” $20 on slots because babies need new pairs of shoes!

Careful What You Wish For

2009-08-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

I was in the gym this morning, when I got the voice message from our social worker, “You and Ian have been selected as parents for the twins. I’m going to give Ian a call now.”

What followed was a series of attempted phone calls between me, Ian, and our social worker. I was on my cell phone getting bad reception in the gym garage, Ian was dealing with work phone calls, and Kitaho was en route between home and work herself. And then there was my brother and sister-in-law calling in because they knew today we were supposed to get the news, even though we had assured them that since the other family had been waiting for children longer than we have, the odds were that we wouldn’t have good news.

So finally, we all connected. It seems that the twins have more medical issues than we thought, and we’re looking into the seriousness and treatability. They are not developmentally where 11 month old children should be, but that is not unusual for preemies. Once we get the medical records, we’ll know whether they’re progressing or if the issues are serious. And the parental rights have not yet been terminated, though that seems to be the direction things are headed. On the plus side, the kids are apparently mentally and emotionally on target, and particularly giggly.

Next step is another, more detailed meeting about the kids and their needs with a larger group of social workers, and when we get the information on that, we’ll know what all is likely to be involved with taking care of them. And then, if we think we can handle it and want to proceed, we’ll meet them in a couple weeks.

Very excited, but on information overload. It’s a lot to process, thinking about dealing with major medical issues for one child, let alone two, so we’re still a bit cautious until we have more details.

Still – I think champagne’s called for. (But then again, isn’t that always true?)

Growl

2009-07-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

So, today, we were supposed to be hearing the result of the 9 o’clock meeting to determine whether we’d be getting the 10 month old twins, who are frankly pushing 11 months now. We received word at 8:30 that the meeting has been put off for another week while they work things out legally. We also were told that the other family in the running has been waiting for six months longer than we have, so as I said in the last post, that means that unless we are demonstrably a better match for the twins, all things being equal, they get the babies.

Oh well, what will be will be. If not these babies, then others will come our way. We’re still naturally optimistic people.

That Pollyannaish sentiment aside, I’m really growly at work right now. Heh heh heh.

Update on “Ring, Phone, Ring, Part 2”

2009-07-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

So we got the phone call about the twins on Monday, and quickly said “yes.” We thought we’d hear back an update the next day, but our social worker only heard back that she’d get a response on Wednesday. Come Wednesday afternoon, we were told we’d hear something today. Not really expecting to hear anything today, we were pleasantly surprised to get an update of sorts.

Long story short: we have a week before we know whether we’re getting these twins or not.

They’re scheduling a “Staffing” which is a meeting where our social worker, another family’s social worker, and the twins’ two social workers (I did not ask if the twins had twin social workers, but that would be cute!) all get together, talk about them, talk about us, talk about this undoubtedly unworthy alternate family, and decide our fate. Apparently, if all things are equal, they decide based on which family has been waiting longest. No idea whether they’ve been waiting for a longer or shorter time than we have.

Also, no idea if it will ultimately be just one other family in the competition (hate to use that word as if it’s a game with children as the prize, but it’s appropriate to how it works).

So after next Thursday morning, we’ll get our real Ring, Phone, Ring call back, and see whether our lives have been turned upside down or not.

Ring, Phone, Ring, Part 2

2009-07-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

It has been over four weeks since we got a phone call about children available for foster care, since it looked like we might be getting a newborn named Abraham. At the time, we consoled ourselves that it wasn’t meant to be, and the next time, surely, that would be the one for us. Over time, though, it began to get a little frustrating, even though logically we knew some day we’d get another call, patience was at a premium. This week, I’m on a tight deadline for the game I’m working on, so I consciously said on Monday, “This would be a bad time to be told there’s a baby available. I bet I get a call.”

And, of course, I did. Yesterday, five minutes before a big meeting, our social worker called to tell us about twins. A boy and a girl. Ten months old, currently in foster care but needing an adoptive home. I said yes, and then called Ian and said, “Twins. I said yes. I’ll give you the details later” as I rushed to the meeting. Bless him, he just said, “Okay, I’ll be waiting.”

Now we’re waiting again to see if we got accepted. Apparently, they’re collecting case files to see which family is most suitable. It may not be us.
On the novel front, really enjoying the latest rewrite. After the latest person came back and said he loved the book but was confused by the relationships between the (vast) cast of characters, I’m cutting with extreme prejudice and simplifying the relationships so they aren’t cousins and nephews and nieces of my main character, but direct descendents. What’s nice is that having fewer characters requires the characters who are there to do more, so they’re all getting richer and more interesting as I go.

So between that and the game, I’m keeping my myself busy while we wait for the call … Ring, phone, ring …

Feckless Friday

2009-06-19T13:10:00.001-07:00

Today, I went to the dentist, was informed that we would not be getting a baby boy we hoped for, and an agent turned down my novel. It’s one o’clock in the afternoon right now, and I figure the weekend has to pick up from here.

Rats.

Actually, the dentist thing wasn’t that bad. I switched to a different insurance carrier, so I switched dentists, to Dr Boris Shlayman in the Valley. I mention his name because so far, he’s been excellent. He gave me a temporary onlay – a sort of half-crown – which required drilling up a tooth which was half broken filling, half decayed to the point where he took a photo of the back of it to show me it had turned blue. Not apparently a healthy tooth color. Today was Take Your Daughter To Work Day, which he observes. I got to hear his daughter as she peered into my mouth during the procedure say, “Is that the inside of his tooth? Gross!” Absolutely no pain. He even gave me a topical numbing before the injection, so I could have dozed off during it.

Then I came into work and checked email and got the two unwelcome ones. The one from the adoption agency was particularly disappointing. Briefly, we had been told on Wednesday that there was a month-old preemie baby at Children’s Hospital they wanted to release at the beginning of next week. His name was Abraham. We immediately said yes, we wanted him, and our social worker hung up to talk to the county social worker. Three hours went by without reply, and then we were told she finally got a hold of her, and we were third on the list – behind a family who had adopted one of his siblings years earlier and a family who has been waiting longer than us. None of us ended up with Abraham though: the email told me that a cousin of his Mom’s – someone who had been ruled out as unsuitable before – had been given him. I sure hope that first evaluation was wrong.

And then the rejection from the agent. Well, rejection is part of being a writer … one might argue it’s part of being a person. At least, the rejection wasn’t a form letter. He said he found the premise “intriguing” but “there was not enough line-by-line tension in these opening pages” to draw him in. Something I might look at.

And now, let the weekend drinking begin.

The Pride of Hollywood

2009-06-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

The Grand Marshall for Long Beach Pride? San Francisco Mayor, gay marriage advocate, and state gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsome. The Grand Marshall for San Francisco Pride? First Lieutenant Dan Choi, bringing attention to the continued enforcement of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell despite the administration’s promises. The Grand Marshall for DC Pride? Cleve Jones, gay right activist going back to the days where he interned for Harvey Milk (he is a major character in the recent film). The Grand Marshall for NYC Pride? Rupert Starr, former POW and decorated WW2 war hero.

The Grand Marshall of our own Hollywood Pride parade, in these everything's-changed-post-Prop-8 days?

Chelsea Handler, comedienne and author of "Is That You, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea."

Risk, Repeat

2009-05-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

Having a child is always a risky proposition. Having a child through adoption has additional risks, chief among them the risk that you won’t be able to keep the child you love. That’s true with private adoption or foster-adoption: the mother may change her mind or behavior, and a court may be called on to decide the fate of your family. It is the position of the California foster and adoption system that if possible, children should be with their biological parents. Perhaps that’s good for the kids, which means it’s ultimately worthwhile ... but that doesn't mean it's good for the nerves of adoptive parents.

We just said we’re not interested in taking on twin boys, a couple days old, born premature. They’ve got some health issues – one needs to stay in the hospital while his lungs develop, both had prenatal exposure to crystal meth – but they were so much exactly what we wanted in any other way, we nearly said yes. The problem for us was the risk of having the babies taken away from us, which was pretty high. The mother had drugs issues (obviously), but she was in a treatment center and had been there for a month. She had given up other kids for adoption, but she was visiting these ones in the hospital. The father seemed to be involved as well. All signs pointed towards a mother who had made some mistakes, but was on the road to recovery and was going to fight for her kids. Better to put the little boys in the hands of someone who just wants to foster and not adopt, to care of them until the court decides the mother is ready. We wish them, and the mother all health and happiness.

Damn, though. It would have been great.

Next ones we hope will have a risk level we can stomach.

Editor & Prey

2009-05-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve given my novel to a couple different people since Thanksgiving for their feedback and suggestions, and as I’ve incorporated their suggestions, I’ve given new versions to new readers. My sister-in-law Kelly is the latest to read and review it, and in some ways, has been my most valuable editor.

Of course, that’s not to be dismissive of the feedback from everyone else, but they are all very connected to me biologically or romantically, so Kelly – as close as we are – is near as I’ve come to getting input from a Trusted Outsider. Besides being a great technical editor, Kelly gets a different sense from some of my characters and their motivations than people who have known me longer and subconsciously fill in the blanks.

Of course, Kelly is a sweetheart and all her notes are prefaced with, “You don’t have to worry about this if you don’t want to … This is just my opinion …” and then in the margins “This made me cry” and “I loved this part.”

Noel Coward said, “I can take any criticism provided it’s unqualified praise.” He never met Kelly. Because of her, I have to write a new chapter to my novel to support an alternate MO for the main character’s actions which was implicit but not expressed is given its due.

Nursery Sublime

2009-04-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

As I write this, Diego is at work in our spare bedroom, turning it into a nursery. Since we don’t have a child (or children) yet, we don’t know the gender, so we’re doing it in various shades of brown, white, and beige, with bits of orange and red. I did the preliminary (rather amateur) painting pass, and hopefully when Diego adds the chair rail and the crown molding it will cover up the spots where my enthusiastic brush and roller went awry. Then, he’s creating a window seat in the bay window that opens up for storage, since what we have been told over and over again is that a nursery can’t have too much storage.

It should be done by the end of the week. Meanwhile, we’re reading our books (The Baby Book by Dr Sears; What To Expect The First Year; The Happiest Baby In The Block and The Happiest Toddler In The Block), going to meetings (Popluck Club in West Hollywood every month; online and group meetings with the Southern California Foster Family and Adoption Agency at St Anne’s), and getting earfuls of advice from everyone with or without a baby.

We are apparently at the top of the list and could get a phone call at any time. In fact, we got a phone call last week about a pair of siblings, a two-year-old and a four-year-old. We still have our heart set on a baby, so after a discussion, we decided to say no. We hope with all our hearts they’ve found another good home and family.

And I’ve begun serious work on novel #2 while I wait on word from readers of novel #1. It’s going to be a love story.

Now I have to figure out how to upload photos to show the nursery work in progress.

Ring, phone, ring.

2009-03-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

At 9:30 this morning, Ian and I signed our final paperwork as officially certified foster parents. I had lunch with my bosses to talk to them about taking paternity leave whenever I get the phone call, be it tomorrow or months from now, and what is funny is, they had no official policy towards maternity or paternity leave, despite the company being around for over ten years now. The reason is easy to understand: I’m in the video game industry, and it is largely dominated by men, and most of those men are single and straight. It’s pretty unusual for them to reproduce, and it’s still fairly unusual for men to take paternity leave, even in this day. So I’m the test case.

I have to say, they’ve been awfully supportive about this, particularly since I can’t tell them when I’m going to suddenly take off for a couple weeks to bond with my baby. We could be in the middle of a busy time at work – in fact, we are always in the middle of a busy time, so that’s guaranteed to be the case. I volunteered to have SVN file-sharing software installed on my home computer and all the editors so I could do work from home, but my boss stopped me and said, “No, if you’re going to take paternity leave off, you shouldn’t be working. You should be spending time with your baby.”

This coming from a straight non-breeding breeder, by the way. Pretty incredible.

Now, ring, phone. Ring.

Safety Last

2009-02-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

At 10:30 this morning, an inspector from our foster adoption agency came over to our house to see whether we had a safe environment for a child. We had diligently built a fence around the pool and a screen in front of the filter; we put plastic catches to make it hard to open a dozen cabinets, and magnetic locks to make it impossible to open another six without the right key; we put chains over our liquor cabinet and one across the door to the office cunningly fashioned so the cat could get in to his box but a toddler couldn’t get in or get stuck; we put plastic cushions on every corner of every hard bit of furniture; we put plugs into all electric outlets, and locking devices over the toilets; we put a rubber cushion around the bath faucets; we got a crib and changing table and linens.

The guy took about ten minutes to check it all off and say, “Looks good. Safer than my house.”

So we passed as “suitable for placement.”

We’re not quite there yet. They have to finish a report on us, and we have to go in and sign some papers. But there’s nothing we have to do now.

Ditto the novel. I have it in a dozen different people’s hands, and all I have to do is wait while they read it.

So what do you do when there’s nothing to do?

I’m going to work on the nursery. Get it painted and organized. Since I don’t know whether we’re getting a boy or girl or a set of siblings, and what their ages will be, I can’t finish the job, but I can get pretty far.

I can read books about how to care for a child between the ages of 0 and 3.

I can keep looking for babysitters and daycare centers.

I can go to the Pop Luck Club meeting on Sunday, and find out about all the things I’m too ignorant to be worried about.

I can look for more people in publishing who could look at the novel, and gently nudge the people who have had months to read it so far.

Considering I have absolutely nothing to do but wait, I’ve got a pretty long To Do List.

Pedia Tricks

2009-01-26T15:59:00.001-08:00

From time to time, we get to see how the other halves live. Going to Hollywood premieres and parties in gorgeous houses on the beach on one hand, riding public transportation and seeing how medical care works, or doesn’t, for the poor on the other. I’ve been spending the last couple of days trying to get a pediatrician for my imaginary child. While he or she is in foster care before adoption, we will be using Medi-Cal, which is normally what the poorest people use.

Now, most people when they’re having a baby, talk to their friends and family to get pediatrician recommendations: who is the nicest, most experienced, most convenient, most comforting. We go to the website for our insurance carrier, and since we have a PPO, chances are this spectacular doctor is listed. Or we call him or her up, and they say, “You have Blue Shield PPO? Of course, come on in.” If you go to Medi-Cal website, you don’t see a listing of doctors who take Medi-Cal. You are told to click on a couple acronyms – CMC, NDC, NPI, etc. It turns out none of them include listing of doctors. If you call up the pediatricians your friends recommend, I assure you none of these excellent doctors takes Medi-Cal. Nor can they give a reference, because no one they knows takes Medi-Cal. Eventually, it comes down to doing endless google searches to come up with a list of pediatricians who say they take Medi-Cal, but God knows if they are any good.

Through a gay dad’s organization Ian signed us up for, I found one pediatrician who alerted to me to the fact that the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, only the biggest and best children’s hospital in America … takes Medi-Cal! The problem is that it’s some distance away, and I would really like a pediatrician who is closer in case of emergencies. Still, I feel I’m getting closer.

Speaking of getting closer, the novel is finished and in various people’s hands, some friends and family members, a couple people who might be in the position to help me get it published. They call this kind of thing a waiting game, as if there’s any game aspect to it. Speaking as a professional game designer, I can say with authority that there is no such thing as a waiting game.

Trolling The Ancient Yule-Tide Carol

2008-12-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

“Deck The Halls” must be my favorite Christmas carol. There are a lot of funny old words that come out during this time of year (honestly, “manger” is only used in conversation to describe one particular barn, and it always make me think of "A Clear and Present Manger"), but “Deck The Halls” not only have Fa-la-la-la-las, (which are much better than Little Drummer Boy’s morose Pa Rum Pum Pum Pums) and donning we now our gay apparel, but the rather peculiarly worded tradition of trolling the ancient yule-tide carol. But ‘tis the season to troll.

We’re coming up towards the end of the year which began by me deciding to write the novel I had been mulling over. Midway through the year, another project began, taking the home study courses for foster/adoption. And along the way, there was a video game to get out and another one to begin designing, trips to the Derby and the Bahamas, quitting smoking, some political matters to get involved in, and lots of not newsworthy but hilarious and wonderful time spent with family and friends to distract me from these projects.

This time of year is particularly filled with distractions. We’re not going anywhere, but we’ve got all the other activities with cards and presents and decorations and parties and dinners. Last night though I still managed to get twenty pages of rewriting on the latest draft of the novel done. There’s still a bit of paperwork to do for the home study, but the references are done (and, I hope, glowing). We’ll get bids on fencing the pool over the holiday, and the nice thing is that I got a little bonus at work to cover it. All the news today is about turmoil and recession, but my life continues on its lucky streak which has lasted nearly forty years now.

Maybe that’s the story. A cheery guy named Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come to show him that life is actually pretty shitty. I like it. Next book.

Merry Christmas

Beach Reading

2008-12-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

In 1620, a group of Pilgrims landed in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, prompting the first Thanksgiving in America. In 1648, another group of dissidents had an equally rough first couple of years of privation some distance south, as they founded the nation of the Bahamas on an island they called Eleuthera, meaning “freedom.” Since Plymouth, Massachusetts is frankly cold in November, my family decided to go to Eleuthera instead to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Eleuthera itself is ingénue actress shaped, three miles wide by one hundred miles long, but we spent the first five days of the trip on an island off the “main” island called Harbour Island, which is three miles long by a half miles wide. Fortunately it has a number of good hotels and restaurants filling up that limited space, and my parents, my brother, and my sister-in-law joined Ian and me there. And if the famous pink sand of the island wasn’t enough of a draw, there was the beach reading as I passed around pages of my novel, fresh off the press.

It would be a cold-hearted author who didn’t dream of reducing his sweet mother to tears, so that goal achieved, I mark the vacation a complete success. I have returned with great editorial notes from my family, who are obviously supportive enough to be kind in their criticism, but very good editors with different specialties, noting when I reference the wrong fish to be in a lake, when my pronouns get mangled, and when I make huge leaps in logic to confound the most patient of readers. They’re so fiercely loyal, though, I’ve begun referring to them as my bulldogs.

On the last couple of days, Ian and I explored the main island of Eleutheria, which while much more beautiful than my fictional Midwestern city of Athelstan, Ohio, had in common with it that the best years had gone by decades ago. From a visitor’s point of view, that isn’t necessarily bad: you have the beautiful pink powdery beaches which used to attract royalty not to mention hundreds of visitors every week to the three airports on the island basically all to yourself. The people of Eleutheria and Harbour Island are unfailingly friendly, but there’s no doubt they’re suffering as resort after resort shuts down in the wake of economic woes and the more dramatic effects of several bad hurricane seasons. There’s very little to do. It’s like arriving at a party in time to see the caterers taking down the buffet.

I am generally a very relaxed person, and after a week of enforced relaxation, it’s all I can do to keep from slipping into a coma.

So Near, So Far, So Good

2008-11-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Monday was a pretty eventful day on the two big projects. We met with our adoption/foster social worker for our first visit of our Home Study, and I finished the third draft of the novel. In both cases, it’s a little like being a skyscraper climber looking down, impressed with yourself on how far he’s come and perfectly aware how far there is to go. And then you plod on.

The social worker was very nice, and gave us great compliments about the house, which was squeaky clean. Our cat Floyd was well-behaved, though after she played with him for a little bit, he got a bit of the “crazy eyes” and we knew he was ready to up the game to the thing he does where he closes his entire body on your hand like a bear trap. After we diffused that, I think we came off as the right mix between serious and easy-going, structured but not set in our ways. At any rate, she returned our Thank You email afterwards, which is something.

We have to finish our paperwork outlining out budget, doing maps our house with “fire safety routes,” getting references plus employer references, DMV records, proof of income (two paystubs), evidence of home owner’s and car insurance, our domestic partnership contract, and get the pool fenced. Hard to believe it, but the list used to be much longer, and most of the stuff on there is easily done. I mean, I need to show proof of car insurance at a moment’s notice, don’t I?

On the novel front, I finally finished the agonizing Chapter 3, and am rereading the book as a whole as quickly as I can to see how it all works as a whole. One of the things I’ve found tricky about doing a long piece of work like a novel is staying with a consistent voice. The tone I know can shift – there are funny scenes, there are sad scenes – but I’m watching out for changes in style.

So far, though so good. Ian’s reading it now, and I’ve sent a copy (with lots of admonitions that this is a rough, rough copy I haven’t even checked for spelling yet) to a friend who is in the medical / elder caregiving field to get her insight into the subject, since that’s pretty important to get right in the book.

This is the part where I talk about the enjoyment being in the journey not the destination. Is that the truest cliche or what?

Being The Perfect Parent In Eight Words Or Less

2008-11-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

On Monday, we’re meeting with our social worker from the Foster/Adoption Agency to begin our home study even though not quite all of our paperwork is done. It’s a lot of thoughtful work to fill in some of the forms. One question, for example, is “How would you react to bedwetting?”. You want to say you wouldn’t shame the child and make a big deal about an occasional bedwetting. You want to say that if it were chronic or you suspected it was a psychological reaction to abuse, you’d seek out a therapist. You want to say that you would definitely clean the sheets and have some spare sheets, because even though that sort of answer seems overly obvious, there’s probably no such thing as being overly obvious when filling out a form that will be sent to a government agency . But you have four inches of black line to do this in, so you have to find just a few words to answer all that.

We’re nervous, and of course planning on spending Sunday scrubbing our house down and hiding our liquor and pornography.

And I’m finally, after two months of being waylaid by it, finishing Chapter 3 of the novel. It’s turned out to be quite a good one, but a bugger to write, with a sermon and two flashbacks, balancing action with exposition. There’s nothing like the feeling for a writer when your characters surprise you. Must be a bit like being a dad.

Dragged Kicking & Screaming Towards Doing The Right Thing

2008-10-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

So my sister-in-law, Kelly, like me, doesn't have a landline, and like me, lives in California, not a battleground state, so she, like me, hasn't been getting robocalls. She did, however, this week get a call on her cell phone from the No On Proposition 8 (for those of you out of state, and even some of those of you in state, "No" means you're for gay marriage, and you're saying "No" to no gay marriage, and "Yes" means you're against gay marriage, and you're saying "Yes" to no gay marriages) and she told the caller to go on, that if this were a different issue, she'd be pissed about them calling on the cell phone. So she talks to them, and ends up volunteering to do some phone calls of her own.

And now she's going to UCLA on Saturday for an information session where they prep you to take a shift outside one of the polls during election day, clarifying Prop 8 to people. She asked if Ian and I want to do it too.

Short answer is: no, not really. I've given money to the Human Rights Campaign for the fight, and towards the No On Proposition 8 group specifically. I'm not rich, but I have more money than time. At least that's what my initial reaction was, until I started thinking about it. One shift on election day on an issue that's important and relevant to me. Kelly has a busy life too, but she's managed to find time to fight for my rights.

So, grudgingly, I'm tagging along it seems.

Guilt: a positive motivator.

Always Sweat The Small Stuff

2008-10-27T12:06:00.001-07:00

Any big project, like a novel or adopting a baby, can seem overwhelming from the start, unless you begin with the easy, fun parts so before long, the progress you’ve made makes the whole of the project less intimidating. The downside is that the last 10% of the project takes twice as long because it’s the shit you never wanted to do in the first place.

On the novel, it’s been this terrible Chapter 3. Chapter 1 and 2 were about introducing characters and the situation, and they went pretty fast. Chapter 3 through 20 brought everything to a climax, and they went pretty fast. Chapter 3 is about making sense of the stuff that I wrote, trying to explain how any of this stuff is possible. In other words, it’s exposition, and it’s a drag to write in a way that makes it not be a drag to read.

On Saturday, I went to a pumpkin carving party at my little brother’s house and there was a psychic who had me roll a pair of dice as an answer to a question. I silently asked about the novel and got a 4 and a 5 which interpreted as, basically, pay attention to the details. Do sweat the small stuff.

The paperwork we’ve been putting off on the baby front is the short answer questionnaire which asks questions like “What are you limitations?” (One and a half lines to fill in the answer), “Describe your saddest day?” (Two whole lines to describe it), “How do you handle stress?” (Three lines!). I know that the agency is just doing their due diligence that I won’t fill in answers which say I like to do heroin every night, crying children make me want to bite things, and I enjoy sacrificing small, cuddly animals on an altar to my dark god. But I want them to like me, and think I could be worthy some day of a Greatest Dad In The World coffee cup, so I struggle. The usual bullshit answers don’t apply. In an interview for a job, we know “Describe your weakness” is always best answered as “I’m a workaholic” or another typical make-vice-into-virtue replies. But you don’t want to give a child to someone who says he’s obsessed with perfection, or phobic about disease, or anything that screams Daddy Dearest.

In the details and the limitations, I might just have to do the unthinkable and Be Honest.

Body, Soul, and Fingertips

2008-10-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Since the last blog entry, we’ve completed some more paperwork and done our LiveScan, where to the tune of $20 per finger, Ian and I sent our prints in to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (wasn’t one of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission report to get the intelligence agencies working closer together, and that’s why the department of homeland security was invented? And they can’t share my fingerprints?). I had this little fantasy that my prints would be matched to some unsolved cold case file, but no one’s come knocking on my door, so I guess I turned out to be not at least a known criminal.

The big expense still to come is putting a fence around the pool. We haven’t found anyone to do it for better than $2500, so that’ll be the one we’ll probably go with. Sure does suck to drop that dough before the holidays.

I will say that one result of this whole adoption home study is that I’ve become a much healthier person. Not only have I quit smoking, but as a result of my doctor’s recommendations (I had to go in to have a physical, and I hadn’t been to a doctor for anything in years and years), I’ve been eating better and exercising, and dropped 30 lbs. So that means I’ll be one of those slim, non-smoking dads? What fun are they?!

About the novel, I’ve finally gotten to a stage on the accursed Chapter 3 where it’s moving along. The tricky part is that I set it up that it is a series of flashbacks happening during a church service in January. I came up with a little sermon for my priest to give from the Second Letter to the Corinithians, Chapter 5 which would be appropriate for the flashbacks I wanted to give, and I got into the first of the flashbacks, and then I made the mistake of talking about the chapter to my brother and his wife, people who actually go to church. They reminded me that there are certain readings from certain chapters delivered at certain times of the year in the church calendar, at least according to the Episcopal church. I really hope that January is a fine time to read from the Second Letter to the Corinthians, or I can make the church a Presbyterian church or some denomination with a more relaxed view about when to read certain books of the Bible. I wrote to their minister for advice, but evidently she has more important religious duties than helping a non-religious novelist work out his Chapter 3 because it’s been a couple weeks and I haven’t heard back.

So, as usual, I assume it’ll all be fine and plod on.

Sometimes people mistake that for optimism when it’s just laziness.

The Dry Spell

2008-09-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

I had been doing so well. Every day, something was written on the novel. Every day, we moved a little further forward on getting certified for foster adopt. I had really be impressing myself. The last month though, it’s been a crawl.

What happened? The list of excuses is legion and sometimes legitimate. My parents came to visit. We took a long weekend trip. I caught a nasty bug. There are deadlines at work that need to be met. The end result is that I got out of the habit of working on the novel and filling out paperwork.

I have to finish Chapter 3 which is a difficult exposition-filled chapter where I need to give the reader a lot of information in an entertaining way. I have to get a fence built around my pool, attend a Water Safety class, measure all the rooms in my house, come up with a budget, get Livescan checked, ask some people for references, and sign here and here and here and here and here.

Doesn’t sound like too much, does it?

Okay.

Okay, today.

I’m off!

Book and Nanny

2008-08-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

I am looking for a babysitter for my non-existent baby. I don’t know whether I need childcare for a boy or a girl, or twins, and whether we’re talking a toddler or a newborn. I don’t know if he or she (or they) have special needs, or requires medication. But in order to complete my home study, I need to have one or two babysitters, who have had their criminal background checks certified by Live Scan and updated tuberculosis tests and are certified in CPR and First Aid, for my mythical child. The chicken or the egg question may be still up in the air, but I can tell you that the sitter comes first.

I haven’t started any interviews, but I’ve done plenty of other things for my theoretical baby. I’ve quit smoking, like I mentioned in the earlier entry (9 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, and 48 minutes according to Quit-o-meter on Facebook, saving me $327.25), have started exercising more and eating better, since in addition to getting a babysitter for my non-baby, I’ve had to get a physical. On Saturday, we’re also getting our second estimate for a pool fence. Wouldn’t want our fictional baby to drown.

On the subject of my baby who is fiction rather than fictional, and may or may not be drowning, the second draft is going very well. Some chapters are better than I remembered them being, and some are a little … bloodless. What’s supposed to happen in them happens, but it just reads, in technical terms, kinda blah. My plan is that after I’m finished with the second draft, I’ll put the book aside for a couple weeks, and then attack it fresh. I have to finish the last chapter and completely rewrite Chapter 3 before I can take that kind of a break.

I had hoped to have it in good enough shape that my parents could read it at the end of August when they’re visiting L.A. Will this motivate me to bust my ass and get it done? … Hard to say. My motivations are a mystery to me as much as anyone.

That will be something I’ll have to say in my interview with my no doubt bewildered nanny-to-be.

Feeling A Draft

2008-07-23T01:51:00.000-07:00

The first draft of the novel is done, and I’m afraid to look at it. It weighs in at 90,270 words and one has to wonder, how many of them are utter shit?

I know that some of these words are definitely going to be deleted in the second draft. This is not just playing the odds, which would be fair enough, but it's also a matter of knowing how I write. Example sentence: “She threw a bright shower of red [red spring flowers] at him, and rushed back into the field without a pause.” When I wrote that, I had an image in mind, but I didn’t want to say that the character throws red geraniums at him, or red tulips at him, or red begonias at him until I had done a bit of research and found what red flowers would be growing in southern Ohio in the Spring which would have a nice, satisfying petally showery quality to them. If I were more of a gardener (I actually worked for two summers as a gardener in southern Ohio after high school graduation, but that was long ago), or I lived where my novel is set, and it was that time of year, I might’ve immediately known what to write there. Since I don’t, and it would really trip up the flow of writing the scene, my habit is to throw in a couple of brackets to communicate with my second-draft-writing future self, and move on. Otherwise, the temptation of losing myself in endless google research into the flora of vernal southern Ohio would be too great.

I know some of these brackets are really lazy. I’ve bracketed character’s last names, not sure if I’ve given them already and unwilling to do a search, and addresses, and even – if memory serves me right – one part where I just knew I had to describe something in a flowery, poetic way and I didn’t have time that night.

What I am less looking forward to is marrying some pretty different tones and styles, and deciding what’s best for the novel as a whole. I’ve talked to some writer friends of mine who have taken years to write their books, and I have to imagine my problem is not all that bad since I’ve only had my couple dozen different moods, and levels of energy, and alcohol consumption, and distraction of 2008 to try to reconcile into one reasonably coherent whole.

But I’m excited. I’m thrilled actually, which is about ten times over excited. I realize I need to say that, since I like to sound ambivalent. Like my previous post about the adoption process. My folks didn’t want to reply right away with a “Hoy! That’s great!” or “Jeez! That’s terrible!” because they couldn’t tell what I was thinking about it.

And I am thrilled about that too. I mean, I'm buying a new car, since my current two-seater bachelor roadster won't do. I'm getting a fence built around the pool. I'm over the moon, actually, which is ten times over thrilled.

I guess that’s something really basic that writers and dads need to be able to do: communicate.

Another Chapter One

2008-07-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

I’m still not smoking. Four weeks, three days, and some hours according to the little thing I put in Facebook to track it. And I hit 80,000 words tonight, though I’m not quite finished with the first draft of the novel.

I have started on another project which has been interesting. I’m looking into becoming a father.

On Thursday, my partner Ian and I went to the Southern California Foster Family & Adoption Agency, at a complex in east Los Angeles called St. Anne’s, which is a hundred year old maternity home for teenaged girls. Since we missed the orientation last Thursday, we met with Robyn, one of the directors of the program before hand. Basically what they do is concurrent foster/adopt to solve the old chicken-or-the-egg dilemma where California only likes to place children in foster homes which want to adopt, and it’s next to impossible to adopt (unless you go private) unless you’ve already got a foster kid. So at the end of the eight week course, we’re going to be certified as both foster and adoptive parents to get the system running.

The meeting consisted of us, two other same-sex male couples, one other same-sex female couple, five opposite-sex couples, two single men, and one single woman. One of the first things that was discussed was how a child gets put into foster care to begin with, and it’s always an accusation of some kind of abuse, from abandonment to sexual abuse to physical abuse. As a result, very few of the kids are without some kind of issues, and the agency has begun offering therapy, since according to Robyn, “All the kids need it.”

Not surprisingly, older kids are the hardest ones to place. Over 50% of the kids are Hispanic or “mixed” Hispanic (as George said on Seinfeld, “I don’t think that’s the word we’re supposed to use.”), about 20% are black or “mixed,” and the rest are white, Asian, American Indian, or some other group. Pretty evenly divided boys and girls.

We talked through the flowchart of what follows what, and a couple things struck me as being particularly peculiar about foster/adopt, beginning with the first phone call saying a baby is available. We basically have 24 hours or less to say yes or no. So, that’s pretty alarming to imagine 24 hours before a baby comes into the house, whether you have a crib or not, whether you’re in the middle of crunch time at work, or are about to leave on a trip, whether you’ve done any research into day care or nannies … You just have to say yes and accept the lightning strike, I guess.

Then there’s the whole legal aspect of it. The schizophrenic part of foster/adopt is that the baby is put with you because you want to adopt it, but the state’s interest is in trying to get the birth parents to step up and show they can handle it. So there’s court hearing after court hearing, and visit after visit from social workers as well as court-sanctioned visits from the birth mother and/or her family. So you bring into your house these people who basically abused the baby you’re taking care of, and you’re being all chummy with them to facilitate them taking the baby away from you. It’s vitally important we treat them with respect, for the good of the kid. It sounds tough.

Now, it sounds like a fair amount of negatives, but Robyn said that as awkward as the system is, it’s so much better than the old one, definitely for the kids and also for us. It goes from foster-to-adopt being a many year process to being potentially less than a year. Oh, and we have a couple fifty page applications to fill out, asking such loaded questions as whether our childhood was happy and how we would raise a child of a different race “respecting and teaching them about their culture.”

Overall, it’s such a strange dramatic mixture between the inspirational and the depressing. We decided it’s a good thing that our home life is utterly, utterly devoid of high drama.

The novel, however, is just reaching the moment of high drama, which is why I have to sign off.

More to come …

Smoke and Poetry

2008-06-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

I took almost a week off writing to quit smoking.

Writers just tend to smoke. It’s the image we have of writers from old black and white photos and movies, of the man pounding feverishly on the keyboard, an overful ashtray at his side, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Then he pauses, inhales, exhales out a plume of smoke together with inspiration – “That’s the word I was looking for: lachrymose!” he mutters and returns to the banging of the keys.

Maybe it’s just that everyone used to smoke, and we tend to revere the old novelists and poets of the 20th century most that writing and smoking seem to go together. Look at any old picture of any of the lions of literature, and there’s bound to be smoke in it. A cigarette as an accessory may point to the writer’s toughness or his insouciance, his manic intensity or his savoir faire. Visually, of course, it’s hard to beat: a smoke-filled garret looks a lot better than it smells.

I was already a prolific writer but I picked up the habit of smoking just before college, twenty years ago. I was so baby-faced and soft that if I didn’t smoke, the next best thing to do was get a tattoo. And in the late 80s, in the deep south, everyone seemed to smoke. The few people who didn’t seemed almost apologetic about it.

Through my 20s and halfway through my 30s, I couldn’t smoke at work, but that was about the only place I didn’t, and it gave me good reason to take plenty of breaks to puff away and think about video game design (“That’s the creature I was looking for: a goblin with an uzi!”) and screenwriting (“That’s the direction I was looking for: CUT TO!”). At home, in the car, in restaurants, in bars, I smoked and smoked and smoked. I met people smoking. We were friendly, bumming smokes with each other, lighting one another (a very intimate gesture when done right), falling into easy conversation while holding our cigarettes just so in a way which Freud would certainly recognize.

Bit by bit, I started smoking less and less inside. Probably in part because more and more of my friends didn’t smoke and I didn’t want to stink up the place. I wouldn’t smoke in my own home office, but go out on the balcony and then when I got a house, out on the back patio. There was still a ritual, but smoking was separating itself from writing.

I’m not an idiot though. Or not entirely an idiot. I decided that I had to quit before I turned forty (full disclosure: I had also decided that I had to quit before I turned thirty, and then thirty-five), so I went to the Meridian Center for Hypnosis in Westwood last Wednesday at 9:30 in the morning and let them do their thing to me. Honestly, I didn’t think it took. A few hours later, the cravings were intense. The next day too, and the next. What was missing for me though is the existential angst that hit me on my previous attempts to quit smoking, the certain knowledge that this wouldn’t work, that it was only a matter of time before I started back again.

So tomorrow will be one week since I quit, and last night I wrote five hundred words on the novel. And they were five hundred pretty damn good words.

Writing What You Know

2008-06-02T17:04:00.001-07:00

It is inarguably the number one cliché of creative writing classes “Write what you know.”

In my professional career as a video game designer, I’ve written about three hundred sword and sorcery fantasy stories, dialogue from postapocalyptic soldiers, storylines from the perspective of giant robots that turn into cars, and conversations between 18th century pirates. In my semi-professional career as a screenwriter, I’ve written a dozen scripts where people are dealing with ghosts, serial killers, monsters, and saving the world with super powers. In my burgeoning career as a novelist, I, a 39-year-old man living in Los Angeles am, naturally enough, writing the story of a 82-year-old woman living in the fictional town of Athelstan, Ohio.

Why can’t I just write about me?

Thankfully my life isn’t dramatic enough to make a good story. To be entertaining you have to have conflict on every page of a novel, screenplay, or video game script. At best, my life would be a sitcom of the old-fashioned variety, with minor hassles that need to be dealt with and then everything is tied up neatly in 23 minutes including subplots and some pointless but funny scenes thrown in.

And then there’s the simple fact that as working video game designer, I gotta write what I’m told to write. I was never filled with a burning desire to expand upon the adventures of He-Man, a footnote of 1980s Saturday morning cartoons notable for his blond pageboy haircut and musclebound physique, too gay to be gay, and his battles against Skeletor, but that’s where my paycheck was coming from, and that’s what I did. And a reviewer was kind enough to call my effort on that “competent,” which is as good as I could hope for.

Unless you’re Emily Dickinson, and probably even then, as a writer you write to be read. You want the characters to fascinate, the theme to enthrall, the pages to fly (except when the reader pauses to reread the part where you describe an asphalt road with such lyricism it brings tears to the eyes), and copies of the book to be in every man jack’s hands.

So can the story of an old woman in made-up town have that sort of effect?

I hope so, but it’s been a busy couple of days, and I’ve only put another 5,000 words into the novel, and I’ve taken about 2,000 words out. The slow slog towards first draft is slow and, needless to say, sloggy.

But I know this old biddy like she was me.

Writing and the Writer

2008-05-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, Jai Clare , wrote about being a writer and whether one is still a writer when the creative juices are dry and one doesn’t feel “that pressing need.”

I’m not a disciplined person. If I didn’t enjoy writing, I wouldn’t do it – or at least I wouldn’t do it with any dedication, a couple hours a day.

I think there’s a writer’s personality type, which isn’t all that common. You tend to be an introvert who, paradoxically or not, likes people. Well, I like people anyhow. A writer can be more misanthropic than I am, but he has to at least be interested in people. On the other hand, you have to enjoy time on your own without people, and feel energized by it and not lonely.

You have to have some encouragement. I hear stories about writers who come out of families who didn’t read or who didn’t appreciate their talents, but at some point, someone had to say that something they wrote had merit. Rejection is part of the job, but you have to believe that what you’re doing is worthwhile to someone other than yourself, and have some basis for believing that.

The novel I’m working on now is technically my second. My first one I wrote in seventh grade. It was a murder mystery titled “A Little Madness In The Spring,” about competitive serial killers, father and son, killing off people at a college reunion in order of the squares on a Monopoly board. The detective was named Alabaster Cox.

Since then, I’ve been working as a writer and designer in the video game industry, and with my brother, I’ve written some screenplays which have been sold or optioned if not actually been made into movies or TV shows yet. Video games, TV, and film are obviously the most financially rewarding media, but there are certain stories which seem best suited to ink on paper. There is also a part of novel-writing which appeals to the autocrat in me. Obviously, when I finish my first draft, I’ll have friends and family read it and take their opinions into consideration, and down the line, there will be agents and editors, but ultimately I am the author. If it’s bad or good, it’s because of me, with no excuses, like a screenwriter might have when an actress butchers his lines, or a video game writer whose cutscenes get cut because the animators don’t have time on their schedule to do them. If it doesn’t sell well, of course, then I might have excuses. We’ll see.

I don’t expect to get rich writing novels, though that’s an agreeable possibility.

Right now, I’m 70,000 words into the first draft of my novel, and I’ve been told that it has to be 80,000 words for anyone to look at it … though there are obvious exception, like Nicholas Sparks’s “The Notebook,” which was 50,000 words. Still I have two and a half chapter to go, so I’m not concerned about length.

Insert obvious male joke here.

The Derby and Eight Belles

2008-05-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

Hello. I don’t know what the tradition way is to start these blogs, but if it’s anything like starting a story, I like to jump right in.

The purpose of this is to talk specifically about a novel I’m writing, but I’m going to back my way into that. One of the chapters in it has the main character going to a fictional horse race in Kentucky, and I’ve just gotten back from two real horse races in Kentucky, the Oaks and the Derby, so I’ll start with that and work my way backwards into talking about the book.

Last week, I left on Monday night, flying from Los Angeles to Louisville. I checked into a very Victorian bed and breakfast near the university called the Inn At The Park. My family and I were the only people staying there until the weekend where the rates went up nearly 10 fold, as they do throughout Louisville in anticipation of the Derby.

Tuesday through Thursday, my cousin Paul took us on tours of the state, from the Derby Museum where we boned up on trivia to the Kentucky Horse Park where we met several champion horses and boned up on more trivia, to Berea, a little college town off in the mountains where we looked at folk crafts. Mostly though we drove through Kentucky, past all the great, vast, green, hilly lawns of one horse “farm” after another, separated by ribbons of white and black fences. We also went to a stud farm to see Smarty Jones, the Derby winner of 2004, the Preakness the same year, and second in the Belmont Stakes, so almost a Triple Crown Winner.

Friday was the Oaks, and it looked like rain. My mother managed to talk her way into getting a forbidden umbrella into the race track after cajoling the security guard into looking the other way. As a preview of the Derby itself, the crowd was pretty well-dressed in their seersuckers and big silly hats in the boxes, though more mixed at the betting windows. I was keen on trying on some exotic bets I had learned to make – partial wheels on exacta boxes and the like, but I had most success with the conservative bets of $2 Shows on the favorites. They also have a Daily Double where you can pick the winners of two separate races on that day, and in a special rule for that weekend, you can bet on a race on the Oaks for Friday and the Derby on Saturday as part of the same Daily Double. I went ahead and put $2 on the favorites, Proud Spell for the Oaks raced by Gabriel Saez and Big Brown for the Derby raced by Kent Desormeaux. I figured the odds against chosing the winners of two races were against me enough that I might as well pick the favorites in the big races.

I would have bet on Eight Belles, who was still on the program as the heavily favored choice at the Oaks. There was a lot of speculation on that Friday over whether she would race at the Derby or the Oaks, and she was on the program for both. She ended up scratching in favor of racing at the Derby, so I went with Proud Spell.

Before the actual Oaks race, the storm finally broke and after a half an hour of hoping it would let up, we left. Luckily we had our one umbrella and when we worked our way under cover to the gates, we found the abandoned umbrellas of people who had their confiscated ... Well, let’s just say we got back to the car several blocks away and were relatively dry.

We saw Proud Spell win the race back at the hotel.

The next morning, we got up early to go to the governor’s breakfast in Frankfort. It was spitting rain still as we had our country ham and grits, shook Steve Beshear’s hand, and toured his house. It was still spitting rain when we got to Churchill Downs in time for the second race, but soon it cleared, and the sky was filled with white puffy clouds and then clear blue.

My brother, who has a friend who knows a lot about horse racing, placed a number of exotic bets, but I stuck with the conservative $2 Shows, not aiming to make much money but just to have a horse to root for – though, of course, winning a bit is always good. I placed one silly bet: a $1 “Hi-5” where you pick all the horses in a race in order. The odds of winning are as infinitestimal as winning the lottery, but the prize was a $100K Mercedes and I thought why not. I don’t remember what all my picks were but since I already had Big Brown for my Daily Double, I bet on Pyro as the winner for that one. I didn’t bet on Eight Belles at all. There were so many other favorites to fill out a Top 5, and I picked Adriano, Colonel John, and Gayego to go alongside Pyro and Big Brown on my ticket. Obviously, I wasn’t even close at the end. One dollar down the drain, a ninth of the cost of a mint julep.

It was a great race. The crowd roared when Eight Belles surged ahead, leading for most of the race, and roared again when Big Brown – who though he was one of the favorites was expected to have trouble being in the 20th position on the edge of the race – tore ahead. There was a blip on the giant video screen at the end, and it wasn’t clear whether Horse 20, Big Brown, or Horse 5, Eight Belles, was the winner. We cheered when it was clear Big Brown had won, and I had my Daily Double.

There were two more races to go, but we had to leave after the Derby to go to my Great Uncle Harold’s retirement center for dinner, so we went in to cash our tickets. My cousin Paul stayed behind to see the governor give the award to Big Brown. He thought it was strange that the ceremony took so long to get started, and in retrospect, he thought he saw some “activity” out on the track, but it was far away and unclear what it was.

In line getting cash for my winnings, I talked to some other fans, who were enthusiastic because they had placed bets for Shows and Places on Eight Belles, and her odds were so unfavored, they were going to collect big. No one knew that they were collecting money on a horse who was already dead.

When we arrived at my Uncle Harold, a friend of his who was joining us at the dinner told us about Eight Belles breaking both of her ankles and being euthanized on the track. We went in, sure that the story couldn’t be true, and we went to the television room where an old man was sitting watching the next race. We asked him if he had heard something about Eight Belles being injured.

“She broke her legs, they shot her,” he said with a strange smile.

It was apparently good TV. I’m glad I missed it.

Post 1

2008-04-28T09:37:00.001-07:00

Testing