Happy Baby

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Dinner time at the Ross house

Edwin's been joining Mindy & me at the dining room table for dinner more & more often. But sometimes he just likes to carve his own little spot in the living room to grab a bite to eat. Although nowadays he's usually got a little someone looking over his shoulder.

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Sunday Mornings

I have so much electronic and dance music on around the kids, that every once in a while, I feel the need to balance it out with a quality tune from my youth:

Edwin seemed to enjoy the Nirvana, so I tried to push my luck with some White Stripes. But after the second minimalist production-quality, guitar riff-heavy track, Edwin complained it was too loud, and it was back to Ke$ha for us.

How dealing with a two-and-half-year-old kid is sometimes like dealing with North Korea

So North Korea is at it again. For the the second time this year, the rogue state committed an unprovoked act of violence on its democratic neighbors to the south, this time killing four.

Time to to put the them in their place, right? Not so fast says The Economist:

The starting-point for answering the North’s aggression has to be that, in the most basic sense, the Kims will almost certainly get away with only a symbolic return of fire. It is entirely wrong for North Korea to act as it does. But punitive military reprisals against the North risk a spiral of escalation and catastrophic war. Deterrence works badly against a dictator who blithely imposes famine and gulags on his people during peacetime. Even if there are doubts about the efficacy of its tiny nuclear arsenal, North Korea has enough men under arms, and enough conventional ammunition within range of Seoul—just 35 miles (60km) from the frontier—to make war seem very much a last resort.

I moderately agree with this sentiment. As much as the people that control North Korea deserve—for lack of a more eloquent phrase (hey, I don’t get paid to write this stuff)—what’s coming to them. But as satisfying to some sense of naive justice as that would be, the downstream impacts of a forceful response would simply make things worse. The known costs of the “escalation” would be too severe, and the unknown costs may be even worse.

So what do we do?

If you’re sifting through posts filled with pictures of my kids (& pictures of my nieces, & pictures of my friends’ kids) on this blog searching for an answer to that question, then you’ve come to the wrong place. But if you want to see me imply my son has a lot in common with Kim Jong Il, stick around.

A well-rested toddler is like Canada. Canada’s probably our staunchest ally. They’re pretty much just like us, only 1/10 our size. Yeah, I know there are some substantial ideological differences between the United States and Canada, but that’s all relative. When compared to, say Yemen, the countries look pretty much the same.

(Sort of reminds me college. When I left Northeast Ohio for college in Southwest Ohio, I became acutely aware of the differences between the regions. Like their takes on pasta for instance. In Cincinnati they think spaghetti should be topped with chili sauce—which they refer to as chili—and shredded cheddar. In Youngstown if three or more individuals gather for any period of time longer than 20 minutes, it is mandated that rigatoni with meatballs be served from a disposable aluminum rectangular serving tray. But when studying abroad in France, the answer to the question of where I was from simply became Ohio. Compared to France, the differences didn’t seem much like differences anymore.)

So yes, Canada and the United States may not always see eye to eye on the corn trade, but when it comes to the serious issues, we usually agree. Like when the United States called for the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It may have not been what they really felt like doing, but they realized it was the right thing to do at the time (hindsight, ah well, let’s not delve there in this space) and reluctantly joined America’s mission.

When Edwin’s running on full sleep (11+ hours overnight, 2+ during nap time), he plays Canada to Mindy's and my United States. He may not feel like putting on a coat before going outside in the cold or walking himself to 60-seconds of timeout after throwing his toy hammer in the vicinity of baby sister. But he intellectualizes our directives and complies with minimal incident.

A sleep-deprived Edwin, wow, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

29 days in, Edwin’s got potty training down. In fact, he pretty much had it down in the first week. Problem is, he gets up early to pee. Not so early that he can be talked into going back to bed. Like an hour and 15 minutes early. And again at bed time, he stalls as long as possible with repeated potty requests, which against our best efforts, has been pushing bed time back about 45 minutes.  All in all that means he’s been operating with 2 hours less sleep than normal for the better part of a month. I bring this up not to beg for ideas or help (he’s gone through his phases in the past…we will get through this), but just to level set where we’re at the present with this little sleep-deprived little monster handsome devil.

So when Edwin violates a widely-recognized household policy (like the aforementioned hammer toss), especially when Lyla is sleeping (which when occurring spontaneously in her bouncy chair in the living room, we go into full monastery mode), the first thought that goes through Mindy and my head is the concept of escalation.

Justice would dictate that a timeout is in order, but remember, this ain’t 14-hours-of sleep Canada we’re dealing with here (who would take his penance in stride). We know once the timeout sentenced has been handed down, a complete meltdown is inevitable, “waaah, but I don’t want to go in the kitchen….waaah, I want to say with Mama, waaah!” (our timeout spot is a rug in the kitchen so it can be timed via microwave).

Next thing we know, Lyla wakes up, Mindy’s got a headache, and what should’ve been a 1-minute process ends up with me spending 10-minutes attempting to reason with a hysterical 2.5-year-old on the kitchen floor.

So what do we do? We play it like the United States does with North Korea. A feeble attempt at diplomacy with the hope that when Kim Jong Il passes on, things will be better. We threaten timeout, but when his lip starts to quiver, we back down and say next time (knowing full well we’ll back down next time too), all the while hoping this sleep-deprived phase passes sooner rather than later.

How optimistic for the future should we all be? Uh, I dunno. King Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s son, has been tapped as the next Dear Leader, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see how far that apple falls. As for the Ross house, Lyla will be a 2.5-yr-old soon enough…

Anyway, here’s the little guy on one of his early mornings:

Getting Ready to Watch Football!!!

Facebook Profile Pic Analysis

OK, so I’m up way later on a school night than I wanna be. But I’m on wait-until-Lyla-wakes-up-from-her-evening-doze-off-session-then-feed-her-a-bottle-and-put-her-to-bed duty. She was due to eat at 10-10:30. Since it’s well past midnight as I type, I obviously got a little more than I bargained for tonight. Anyway, I only provide this intro as a warning that what I’m about to write only interests me (if even that).

It has finally arrived! After much laboring, a great milestone, my 15th ever Facebook profile pic has been selected.

Why is 15 a milestone, you ask? Well, it ends in a 0 or 5 for starters…that’s something, no? My dad’s birthday was the 15th, so there’s that. And don’t sleep on the fact that 15 is the atomic number of phosphorous. Oh, and the Andy Warhol quote, right? And maybe most important, during my arguably most productive season in organized baseball (when I anchored a slightly-above-average collection of 13- and 14-year-olds by batting clean-up and playing 1B, plus earned a much-deserved benchwarming spot on my league’s travelling All-Star team) I wore the uniform number 15.

Without further ado, here’s the pic:

Photo by: Mindy Ross for The Ross Experience

As you can see that’s Edwin and me. And because of civil society and its arbitrary laws against keeping gorillas as pets, it should be obvious that this photo was taken at the zoo.

And since I promised this one week ago via Facebook status update…

need a new profile pic. but considering it'll be my milestone 15th ever profile pic, I can't choose lightly. oh, and I'm planning a statistical analysis all 15...but you already knew that.

…here it goes.

As misnomer-ous as it may be, I’ve not been in all of my profile pics:

The individuals featured in the 3 pics I wasn’t in:

1. Nick Swardson – There was a Facebook trend that lasted a few days a while back where people picked their celebrity doppelganger. Google him, we look somewhat alike from certain angles.
2. Steely McBeam – During the Steelers’ 2009 5-game losing streak, I changed my profile pic to Steely until the Steelers finally won a game. Sort of a hunger strike-lite. I asked others to join in support. There were no takers.
3. Dick LeBeau – From is Hall of Fame induction last month. Changed my pic on a whim, but the change lasted over a month.

So for the twelve I was in, here the location by state and whether the pic was taken indoors our outdoors:

So you noticed my most recent pic included Edwin and myself, right? Well, it turns out I was solo for only 3 of my profile pics, which were my 1st 3 overall. (Un)interestingly enough, no more than 2 people total have ever been in one of my profile pics. It’s either just me, or me + one other person. Here’s the breakdown:

So Edwin’s the big winner. But in Lyla’s defense, she’s only been alive 9 short (read: long) weeks, so Edwin had a 2-year head start. But what’s the deal with Mindy’s presence...lacking, huh? I chalk this up to the fact that we may be together in the occasional staged family photo, our best stuff comes when one of us is chasing the kids around while the other is snapping away. We got to get ourselves into some more pics together.

Unless something really unique pops up, I’m hoping we can kill 2 birds with one stone with the next profile pic (get Mindy’s and Lyla’s figures up + break through the 2-person limit glass ceiling) and get the whole 4-member Ross clan into the next profile pic.

So we had another kid

Lyla. She's great. Only nine days old, and she's already got us wrapped around her finger. I'm nervous and excited all at once at the prospect of having a daughter. I used to jokingly refer to Edwin as a prima donna when he would whine over nothing--now I have a feeling that if Lyla could talk, she'd tell us we ain't seen nothing yet.

But back to Edwin, I feel bad for the little guy. He's chasing our attention like a cop after a Cincinnati Bengal. So since Lyla is currently playing the starring role in the real world, I've decided to give Edwin a little coverage in the blogosphere...

Tools, Tools, Tools. That's pretty much all Edwin cares about. Sure, he's able to yell out whatever sport is on TV, and even throw, kick or hit the ball around a little. And yes, he likes to belt out tunes from his ABCs to pop punk songs intended for teenage girls. And every now and again a car, dinosaur, robot or pirate will keep his interest for 2-8 minutes. But it's really all about the tools.

It's hard to think of a moment in time when the kid does not have tools in his possession. Here's the conversation we had tonight after dinner:

Dave: You want to go outside while Mama feeds Lyla, buddy?
Edwin: Ye-eh-eh-es.
D: Wanna bring a toy?
E: Uh huh-ah-uh.
D: Wanna bring a soccer ball and play soccer?
E: No. Tools.
D: Which tools?
E: Two ones.
D: Which two ones?
E: Two screwdrivers. Orange one. Yellow one.

So tonight we walked up and down the street fixing things with screwdrivers. Maybe tomorrow night he'll dig up the tape measure and measure things around the neighborhood (so far everything is "18 inches", as that's how long his tape measure is). When we brought him to the hospital to meet his little sister the day after she was born, Edwin was more interested in hammering away on every piece of medical equipment he could find than acknowledging Lyla's existence.

And when it's finally time for bed, he needs to take "two ones" with him, usually one screw and one drill bit. (FYI- If you're ever babysitting, don't let him talk you into a power tool as one of his allotted "two ones", unless you want to hear the soothing sounds of a drill intermittently over the baby monitor.)

Thankfully, Grandpa Randy (the supplier of most of these tools and teacher of the difference between an open and closed wrench) gave him his most prized possession: his tool bench, which provides a home for his copious tool collection. Here's a photo Mindy took (a quick 2 megapixel one on her phone) of Edwin at his tool bench wearing his brand new work goggles: