The Fartist

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.

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

‘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

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

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

Here we are at Mikey's adoption today.

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

Happiest Place On Earth Adjacent

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!