Daddy Does Diapers Right

It's nice to know I can still impress my children. I took a solo trip after church to our neighborhood "Tar-zjay" for various fashionable sundries. L met me at the door on my return and saw me bringing in the goods.

"Daddy! You got diapers! Good job, Daddy!"

She then ran off into the house, "Children, Daddy's home. Come give him hugs."

A Rocky Mountain "Hi!"

L and N had one of their perennial "special treats" last weekend. We got to host our old friends the Sams family for a couple of days on their California excursion from the rarefied air of the Colorado Rockies.

It was a little scary to see how much Zeke had grown, and this was our first time seeing twins Lucy and Dot. All five kids were bouncing off the walls all weekend. (Often quite literally. Poor Lucy and Dot seemed to have an affinity for that wall behind them.)

I think both Zeke and N were somewhat stunned and awed to find another boy to play with - they both tend to live their lives in a flurry of females.





L got to have some baby holding practice (Hmmm... drooling, bib, light lashes,... that's Dot!)

How is it that in two full days of non-stop shutter action no one managed to get a single picture of Kelsey or Stacy? Probably because they were off changing a diaper, wiping a runny nose, or chopping up tofu for somebody's lunch. It is truly the moms who suffer the most in this world. (Though I firmly believe Stacy brings it on herself justly for the cruel insistence on feeding our kids tofu.)

A Whale of a Laundry Tale

L scampered into our room at some point last night and ended up sleeping in bed with us. She awoke as I was getting ready for work. Suddenly she whispered very intently to me from my bed. "Daddy! What is that?" She was pointing to the overstuffed hamper at the end of the hall.

"It's a towel and some socks," I replied.

"Oh," said L, "I thought it was a blueberry (a.k.a. "blubbery") whale and the socks were big teeth. I was very scary."

Horses and Hematomas

It was a pretty evening tonight, so L decided to take her horse for a walk.










No one can say she isn't determined...

Meanwhile N decided to take a faceplant right in the middle of the driveway. If scars add character, this kid's got it made. I'm sure L will be telling everyone he stood right behind her horse and spooked it.

My Pretty Girls

No real reason for posting. I just love this picture.

Blue Genes

When the proverbial apple falls from the tree, sometimes it rolls down hill a little ways. Sometimes it doesn't roll too far.

Sometimes it clings to the trunk...

But lest one think that only the Perkins line has a penchant for inbreeding, check out some of these Stepanek throw-backs...

Birthday Bash

We celebrated N's second birthday yesterday. The party was held in a park up in Burbank and lots of friends and family were there. It was a two-year-old's birthday party, and I'm stumped at finding ways to make that sound particularly exciting. It was fairly low-key with no thrills or spills, which is exactly what we wanted. Just a lot of family and friends, some nice weather and some open spaces.

L was far more excited about the festivities than her brother, but that's mainly because she sees the whole event as a prelude and lead-in to her own grand birthday celebrations, which she's anticipating in about two weeks. (She's about to begin learning that life lesson we call disappointment.)

Rather than anecdotes, I'll concentrate on pictures. Clicking on each brings up a larger image.

Mommy's homemade car cake!

Bubbles! Yeah!

Technophobe? Not our G-G-Pa!

N loves his Aunt Cla-cla.

Going long or long gone?

Star-spangled Joycers.

On Daddy's lap.

Birthday headdress. (How sad.)

Mommy kisses.

The Beckens came!

Aunt Wendy too!

N and his Gramlynne.

L must help open gifts.

Fork malfunction.

Joyce & Jay

Blow!

L's friend Kiana.

Cousin Laura came!

Chug! Chug! Chug!

Appenzeller Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Two weeks ago I went over to Thomas' house where I met up with Roy and Mark for an informal wine tasting. Wanting to be contributory, I swung by the local cheese shop and picked up a couple of hunks of Appenzeller and Gruyere, two of my favorite cheeses that I used to get all the time when I lived in Switzerland. They are wonderful cheeses. Gruyere is one of the two traditional cheeses used in fondue, (the other being the iconic hole-y Swiss cheese Emmentaler). It is heady but mild. Appenzeller, however, has a bit more umph to it. The uninitiated might describe it as fragrant.
Ok, as smelly.
...OK, as stinky.


...OK! It's STANKY!


So we're all gathered around the bottles and glasses and we've all tried a sample or two. Roy and Thomas had been discussing the tannins and the color and growth potential, and Mark and I had been nodding in enthusiastic but thoroughly clueless agreement. That's when I decide to, shall I say, cut the cheese. (There's a really good reason for that euphemism.) The plastic wrap had barely been punctured on the App when all conversation came to a screeching halt. I wasn't greeted by any immediate enthusiasm when I asked who wanted to try a slice. Reluctantly, however, they sampled the most minimal morsels and I was rewarded with wheezes and coughs and gaspings for air as they staggered about like Fred Sanford in the midst of a "big one." (OK, so maybe it wasn't sooooo dramatic, but it was close.)

After the full measure of mockery and indignities had been levied against my precious cheese, I was able to extract a grudging admission that it really was a pretty good cheese, though they would not go so far as to say it was welcome at the wine tasting. They had some concerns that hints of "oak" and "blackberry" didn't pair well with "sweat sock" and "septic tank." They seemed to put a lot of emphasis on the distinction between "fermented" and "decomposed." I was crushed. At least until the evening ended and I realized no one else wanted the cheese, so I got to take it all home myself.

Well two weeks have passed and I have fared no better in my own home in preaching the glories of Appenzeller. I've been enjoying it slowly all by my lonesome and I realized that tonight needed to be its grand finale, since the Appenzeller was getting to be a bit ripe even by my standards. Most of it went into a macaroni and cheese for dinner, and a glorious mac and cheese it was too! (Even Stacy and L agreed.) The rest was nibbled on as dinner was being prepared. Afterwards, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I was preparing to throw out the leftover Appenzeller rinds that were still on the cutting board. N, fresh from the dinner table, but nevertheless hungry, came up to me looking for a hand-out. He saw the cheese rinds, pointed at them, and made that usual grunting noise generally associated with feral dogs and rooting pigs.
Intrigued by the prospects, I handed him a piece. It flew, of course, directly into his mouth; it took about a second and a half for his eyes to get wide. I braced for the wail of fury, but in never came. The next thing I knew he was chomping down on the rind with vigor. It was all I could do to pry it out of his mouth. I spent the next minute or two surgically removing any last shreds of proper cheese from the rinds while N stood beneath me with his mouth open like a newly hatched blue jay.

That's mah boy!

Later on, while tucking in the kids, I sat down on L's bed and leaned over to give her a kiss. She immediately pulled back violently and turned her head.

"You smell like stinky cheese!" she cried.

N, however, warmly welcomed his good-night kiss.

The Palos Verdes Uprising

On Saturday there was a street fair up in Palos Verdes near the Peninsula Promenade (or whatever they call it now). Feeling a little housebound after a couple of days of home-sick-with-the-kids, Stacy was looking for a reason to get out and that sounded good enough. The kids had been testy all morning and we thought the fresh air would do them good.

We parked in the mall parking lot and started the adventure at the dancing fountain near the entrance to the fair; one of those walk-in fountains that has the random shots of water bursting up from a couple dozen different half-hidden spigots - always a big hit with L. Contrary to all expectation, we managed to keep her dry without a major meltdown. Little did we realize that our petite Mademoiselle Defarge was merely biding her time.

We entered the fair proper and weren't too much further along the walk when L gave a squeal and pointed frantically down the path.

"Trash truck, Daddy! A trash truck!"

A miniature garbage truck sat next to the waste management recycling booth. L never lets an opportunity for career enhancing experience pass her by, so she immediately squirreled up inside and hogged the driver's seat for 5 or 10 minutes, no doubt ticking off dozens of PV moms who had similar career aspirations for their youngsters.

The fair itself had a hundred or so booths set up, mostly opportunistic commercial intruders hawking chiropractic exams, toxic mold inspections, and cellular phone service, but there were a few cool stands here and there that we poked around in. Some scrapbooking stands for Stacy, a few glass vendors, and lots of incense that made us queasy. (But incense stands are de rigueur in So Cal outdoor fairs and we would have missed them were they not there.) We ended up getting an ironwork "welcome" sign for our front door from a cool vendor with lots or really nice pieces that were all actually fairly reasonably priced.



We soon came to the train ride, but at $6 for a kid and adult, we let it roll on down the track without us. There was a little grumbling about that from the proletariat, but then the petting zoo was spotted and distracted general attention. But at $6 for a half dozen goats on the cutting edge of heatstroke, Daddy nixed that idea too, though it was clear the natives were getting restless and revolt was fermenting. The revolution broke the barricade about three meters away at the pony ride. Fearing a guillotine in my future, I gladly sprang for the $5 to keep my populace in line. (It was either that or take them to the food court where I would have had to let them eat funnel cake.) With the uprising quelled, L rode a pony while N sat contentedly in his stroller humming tunes from Les Misérables.

Then there was lunch at the food court (we avoided french fries), but by then the sun and a very loud band had both begun to pick up, so we scarffed what we had and returned full-circle to the spot that began the day - the fountain. This time, however, there were no hopes of dryness to be had. The mini-revolutionaries, fresh from their confidence building victory at the pony stable, knew they had the upper hand, and the aristocracy was running scared. Soon they were running drenched. But it ironically proved to be a long-term opiate for the masses - L and N never slept better than they did then -- at the end of the day.