La Coccinelle Jolie et Son Bébé Dansent!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.