once, twice, three times a lovie

those who have ever met penelope are no doubt, familiar with lovie. you'll notice that i don't call it "her lovie", "pen's lovie", "the lovie", or any other such modified title which might suggest that lovie is anything other than a fully functioning member of the family. no, lovie is the name of a loved one so dear, it shows up in more family photos than myself. lovie was crafted before penelope's birth with an intended application as an infant's comfort blanket. the idea, according to leading minds on children's development, is that a "comfort item", consistently introduced to the baby during sleep and feeding becomes a valuable tool in later months to calm the child when under distress.

to call lovie a "comfort blanket", however, would be somewhat like calling your liver a "comfort organ", or oxygen a "comfort gas".

among the great ironies of life is that you can never truly know how past decisions effect your current state; for there exists no objective "control" scenario without actually traveling back in time and changing the decision at its institution. as our little girl learned to draw comfort from the quaint little quilt, a dangerous symbiosis began to develop. like a weed, the relentless lovie began to lay roots; to attach, to intertwine, to inseparably embed itself within the delicate emotions of the little creature. and not unlike anakin skywalker, dwelling within darth vader but unable to free himself from the power of the dark side of the force, so our little one exists- tied to the life force of the inexorable cloth. did we create the dysfunctional dependence as it currently exists? could she have lived a healthy, satisfied life had we withheld this narcotic rag from our unspoiled little infant? we can no more go back and un-introduce lovie than we can change the channel when "die hard 2" plays on tbs.

one of the troubling aspects of pen's lovie dependence is that she refuses to keep track of it, or even look for it if she doesn't know where it is. as often as i have tried to explain the process of standing up and scanning one's field of view across one's environment, the mere realization that lovie is not on her person becomes an immediate crisis. not isolated are the times when i have seen her in the throes of uncontrollable sobs when lovie was literally within the reach of her stubby little arms. nevertheless, as lovie began to show the haggard tears and blemishes of incessant usage, its mortality became increasingly apparent to us. worn and diaphanous beyond recognition, each new hole, each needed repair acted as a harbinger of the calamity which rested on our horizon, as we became aware that the life span of this gaunt cadaver was going to be grossly insufficient.

and so we commissioned "new lovie".

new lovie was an exact replica of what came to be known as "old lovie"- the original blanket. (granby, the irreplaceable creator of lovie was wise beyond her mortality in purchasing and stockpiling extra lovie material against just such a day.) and while the resemblance was uncanny, new lovie served largely as a novelty piece until the fateful moment when we parted ways with old lovie somewhere between the south end of concourse b in the salt lake airport and row 33 on united flight 416. (it was a conversation i hope no parent has to have with their child when i sat down and explained to my little princess that new lovie was all that we were left with.) still, new lovie stepped up to its newfound responsibilities, performing all of its required functions with old lovie-like precision. (out of deference, i suppose, to old lovie, new lovie has remained "new lovie" even after six months of being the only lovie.)

thus, it was nothing short of speechless, stomach-dropping, head-spinning, 1929 wall-street crash horror when new lovie came up missing after an outing to the park. (yes, dad was on duty.) after retracing every single step twice, i had to own up to the fact that lovie went missing on my watch. since pen had talked before about wishing lovie were pink and purple, i tried to spin it as a positive. "this is our chance to rebuild a new and greater lovie upon the principles of lovies gone before." the day's itinerary was immediately dropped for a trip to the fabric store, and even with the purpose of the outing known, the stress was clearly starting to build on penelope. it took two locations before penelope was able to find a suitable fabric. the conquest, which seemed to appease her now violent withdrawal symptoms, was a gruesome confluence of pink and purple- a sight which i can only really describe as what i imagine it must look like when a purple dragon vomits cotton candy. still, no appeal to aesthetics could stop me from living another moment with a lovieless penny.

about a week or so after "special lovie" took office, an event unprecedented in the history of lovies took place. new lovie was recovered from the back pouch of an old unused stroller in the garage, where pen must have placed it after the park outing. initially, special lovie was cast aside like so much soiled tissue, but in time, a balance of power formed between the two current lovies. thus, "i need my lovie, daddy", has been replaced by "i need my lovies, daddy", and so on. like fishing line without a hook, the lack of one renders the other useless. thus, a new crisis has been introduced... "daddy, i can't find one of my lovies!"

in fact, i think i hear her crying now...

(other possible titles for this post were "of lovies lost", "a tale of two lovies", "she lovie, she lovie not", and "hey, you've got to hide your lovie away".)

lego warfare

eil has entered the creation phase. this is the time when passion develops for legos, magnetix; any variation on the erector set of yesteryear. to my great contentment, lego construction turns out to be an ageless thrill which our western society wrongfully and arbitrarily assigns to a needlessly younger audience. unfortunately, as i have disovered, there are two types of lego building: 1) limitless creationism, in which the only boundaries are the confines of one's own imagination; and 2) construction of pre-designed sets. while the set building is capable of yielding pieces of profound magnitude, they require a level of perseverance rarely found among the target demographic. 

which is how i found myself enlisted in the assembly of a birthday gift in the form of a v/stol capable  av-8 harrier aircraft. and while i did have at least the foresight to undertake this task while the baby was sleeping, it was attempted in the presence of both eli and penelope. now, i must explain that assembling a lego set in the presence of children adds a panoply of encumbrances which vastly complicate the otherwise achievable chore. for one, the critical element of time is introduced. instead of methodically completing each step of the provided instructions, the parent must realize that with every passing second, the chances at successful project completion further diminish. as soon as the pocket-sized plastic parts are unpackaged and placed on the working surface, they are in the gravest danger of abscondence, either by willful intention or simply sticking to the underside of a foot or pant rear. the un-distractible children desire to play a role in the project, yet they truly believe the parts will be self-accountable, presenting themselves when their time is at hand like so many newly hatched turtles intuitively finding their way back to the sea. under such extenuating circumstances, the parent becomes like cinematic protagonist diffusing a bomb in it's final 15 seconds of countdown. every precious second is a scramble to build the item while protecting the scattered inventory and simultaneously assigning the children with just enough responsibility that they believe they are actually participating in the process. there are split-second determinations to be made regarding which parts are truly integral to the final product, and where substitutions can be made with parts on hand from other sets. "it's the red wire... no, the white... no the red wire!!" fortunately for everyone, we completed this one with 00:01 left on the clock. there will barely be enough time to wipe the sweat out of my eyes, though... this set can convert from the harrier to a single prop airplane, or a helicopter.

cover me, i'm going back in.

dollar per

a recent produce sale at our local market saw the price on pineapples plummet to a dollar a piece. it was enough to get us to put down a sizable investment on a crate of the tropical treats and dust off the old dehydrator which has moved houses with us around five times and been used all of once. the dried pineapples turned out so well that over the past two weeks, we've spent no less than $48 plus tax on pineapples, and have little left to show for it but a sandwich baggie of leftovers and mouths so contused and lacerated by citric acid that we couldn't taste a block of sea salt if it were tied to our tongues. still, what a way to go.

the trick

the other morning, i woke up to conspiring voices in the next room. the subject of conversation was a trick to be played on me. eli was clearly the orchestrator, and was liberally doling out orders to pen, who he regularly employs as the arm of his myriad dastardly schemes. for example, if you catch eli saying "pen, say it... say it nice and loud," you are almost certain to catch pen saying a potty word. as i was privy to the minutiae of the clandestine conversation on this particular morning, however, it became clear that the aim of the trick was far more innocuous than initiation of crude bodily humor. the two were to garb themselves in similar selections from eli's wardrobe, then enter my room, leaving me utterly bamboozled, and otherwise unable to discern one child from the other. of course, i played into the game, but i couldn't help but notice how much pen really did look like a little boy in need of a haircut. i suppose it's true what they say about "the clothes making the man." (that they do.)

pickin' & grinnin'

the local berry patch is a great place for families to pay an extra $5 a pound for produce, and the extraordinary opportunity to spend hours in the scorching sun picking the fruit through a thicket of thorns and nettle. the sunstroke and crippling scaring below the elbows are a small price to pay for not having to deal with the inconvenience of purchasing prepared, packaged foods at the nearest grocery store. letting the kids run laps up and down the strawberry rows is a great way to set them up for an early bedtime, which means i get a 6am wake-up call in the form of a 4 year old jumping on my bed trying to come up with some arbitrary task that will force me out of my room (getting a penny off his shelf, catching a fly, etc.).

a particular highlight was an unplanned frog sighting in the carrot patch. we've since had countless requests for trips to the farm, as it is widely believed to be the only place in the western united states where frogs can be found.