Farmer's Tan

Troy was helping me finish off the vegetable garden today. We were at the last stage of pouring the dirt and planting the plants. So, I gave him a rake and told him to smooth the dirt out.

I would pour a bag of dirt into the garden, and he’d move it around with the rake, then let me know that he was ready for another bag. I’d pour another and he’d do it again. I couldn’t keep up with him. He obviously doesn’t have the same meticulousness to perfection that I have, or maybe he likes that more natural look. But I had to help smooth out the lumps a little, so we’d have enough dirt to go around.

Afterward, we planted the plants. Or rather, I planted, and Troy attempted to stomp them to death and pull them back up again. I had to cut the bottoms out of the plastic containers that they’d come in and put them around the plants to protect them. That seemed to suffice for now until I can get those tomato cages.

Hopefully, Troy will get to enjoy the fruits, or vegetables, of our labor. He likes salads, so we planted bell peppers, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and romaine lettuce. Now, the hard part...we wait for God to make them grow.

Cock Fight!

We took Troy over to our friend’s farm tonight. It was an unplanned trip. We were out for a family drive to enjoy the weather, and I guess the car led us to the farm. My foot hurt, so I was giving Troy a little more freedom tonight than usual. He was chasing the chickens and ducks, and occasionally heading over to the cows or geese next door. At one point, he got a little too far ahead of me, as I struggled up the hill. Too late, I saw him approach one of the roosters and try to grab it. Unlike the hens, which would just scurry away from Troy, the rooster stood his ground. I screamed at Troy to leave him alone, but true to a “I know better than you” two-year old, he ignored me and kept trying to pick up the rooster. That’s when the rooster leaped into the air and went at Troy with his claws. Troy immediately got scared and started crying, running away in terror. He came straight for me, and I scooped him up in my arms.

At first, I didn’t think the rooster had actually gotten him, but he kept pointing to his leg and saying, “chicken booboo.” So, I pushed the leg of his shorts up and saw red, puffy scratch marks on his thigh. Luckily, the shorts were thick, so the rooster didn’t break skin, but it was a heck of a scratch anyway. And luckily, the rooster hit him on the thigh. If it has been on the bare leg, he would have torn Troy open, and we would have been headed to the hospital for stitches. God was watching out for my little boy tonight.

Driving

This evening, after my wife picked up Troy from his daycare, Troy climbed into the driver's seat, as he likes to do every day. He likes to pretend that he's driving the car, turning the steering wheel and pushing the buttons. Usually, she lets him play for a few minutes and then coaxes him back to his car seat in the back before heading home. But today, she decided to treat him and let him actually drive! So, she plopped him on her lap and let him steer the car around the relatively empty parking lot. He was in heaven, turning the steer wheel back and forth, as they weaved around parking barriers and in between cars. The smile lighting up his face rivaled the evening sun coming through the front windshield. Troy would have been content going around and around, but my wife finally had to park the car, so that they could go home. I'm afraid that now he's going to expect to drive every night!

Greek Independence Day

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Greece's independence from Turkish rule.  Obviously, it's a big deal in this family.  So, I worked up a makeshift flagpole for the front flower bed, and we proudly flew my wife's Greek flag to celebrate with her countrymen (and women).  We took Troy out to pose with the flag on this historic occasion and to represent the next generation of Greeks in our family.  I don't think he quite understood the importance, but he definitely enjoyed playing with the flag and watching it whip around in the wind.

Tornado Warning

Tonight, we had severe thunderstorms blow through the Dallas area. It started with heavy rain, then it was followed by thunder and lightning. Next, we got marble-size hail that ricocheted off the windows and roof of the house. The raucous was so loud that Troy couldn’t sleep. As we tried to distract him, so he could relax, the tornado sirens started going off. We decided not to chance it, so we gathered some pillows and supplies and barricaded ourselves in the laundry room.

We were in there for about half an hour before the weather passed us by, and that was plenty long enough for Troy to get into everything! He thought it was a game. He pushed the buttons on the dryer, pulled all of the shoes out of the mud bench, smacked my wife with a pillow, and played with my feet. It was hard to get him to sleep after that, despite it being almost two hours after his bedtime. But he did eventually drift off as the thunder continued to rumble in the distance. I'm just thankful that the tornadoes passed us by. I'm reminded of a quote from the movie Twister, and even so it was a little too close for comfort.

"You've never seen it miss this house, and miss that house, and come after you." - Helen Hunt in Twister

On the Count of Nine...

We were putting Troy to bed tonight, going through the usual ritual of changing him into a fresh diaper. All of a sudden, he starts counting. One...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight...nine. My wife was squealing with happiness at his sudden mastery of the numbers. She’s been working on it a lot with him, counting the stairs as they’re going down. So, this was a huge moment for both of them. And just to show it wasn’t a fluke, he started counting again. One...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight...nine. Always to nine. He can say ten if you say it first, but he stops counting at nine. I guess there’s no doubt that he’s my son!

Coprolalia

My son was home sick today after having woken up with a 100 degree fever. And while I tried to move as many meetings as I could to accommodate, I couldn’t completely take the day off. My wife went to work, so that meant Troy and I had to figure out how to play and work together.

We did all right for the most part, at least until my afternoon meeting with other members of the leadership team. Troy was in my office reading a book about farm animals. He was completely engrossed and entertained, which was perfect since I had to occasionally talk on my call. I got to one of those times, came off mute, and started to explain the process of evaluations for the integrations team. When all of a sudden, Troy starts yelling out farm animals at the top of his lungs. Now, I’ve learned that toddlers really only have two volumes, so there’s no asking him to say it quieter. It’s either completely off or full volume.

This is what was heard through my phone: “So, we started out...COW...by evaluating who has not...PIG...had a raise in a while...GOAT...and then we added...SHEEP...those to the list that...DONKEY...have been performing above and beyond...HORSE. Then, we ranked them...TRACTOR...by priority of needing...CHICKEN...to occur first.”

The sad part is that I just kept talking right on through it, so used to it that it didn’t even phase me. But I imagine the people on the call thinking that I have some “clean” (or maybe “farm”) form of Coprolalia, which is the involuntary utterance of obscene or inappropriate words, often associated with Tourette’s. I guess I’m glad that it was an internal call rather than customer-facing, although that might have definitely livened it up a little!

The Diaper Genie

I put Troy down for a nap today, and as I’d usual when he’s home in the middle of the day, I laid him on the bed instead of in his crib. He was wearing a t-shirt and pants rather than a onesie, and he asked me to take the pants off. So, I did with a little reluctance. I covered him and left to let him drift off and sleep.

He was unusually restless, flopping around and moving the pillows from one end of the bed and back again. After 45 minutes of laying there with his eyes wide open, he stopped. The next moment, he stands up on the bed, and all I see in the baby monitor is his bare buttocks in full view of the camera. He had taken his diaper off and mooned me! He stood like that for a minute, and then he laid back down. So I went in to put his diaper back on. Apparently, the freedom and cool air of going diaperless had struck him with the notion to pee all over the bed and pillows. And that’s how I found him, laying on the only dry spot on the bed and complaining that someone, he wasn’t sure who, had wet the bed. Why does he only do this stuff when I’m home watching him by myself?!

Chasing the Birds

My wife and I took off early from work today and took Troy to the park. It’s early Spring, so all of the birds that were waiting out the Winter somewhere else are back now. The park had Robins scattered about in groups, eating bugs in the grass and enjoying the Spring weather. As soon as Troy saw them, he took off in pursuit. When he got close, the birds would hop a few feet away. He continued to give chase, and the birds stayed just out of reach. So, Troy picked up the speed. Realizing that Troy had a good chance to catch them, going as fast as he was, the birds took flight into the trees.  Which frustrated Troy to no end.  He'd look back at me and just put his hands in the air like, "What can I do about that?"  I agree that being able to fly gives the birds an unfair advantage.

At that moment, on the other side of the park, another flock of Robins dropped down into the grass. And Troy took off after them, full speed, little legs moving in a blur. They barely escaped his Blitzkrieg attack, flying to another patch of grass and settling back into the grass. Back and forth across the park, Troy was running after whatever birds were brave enough or playful enough to land. His cheeks were bright red with the effort, but it didn't stop him. He'd pause for a water refuel and then be off again.

Throwing Dada

For some reason, Troy likes to come up behind me, wrap his arms around the outside of my thighs, and stick his head between my legs. He then attempts to push me around the room, like he's carrying me, while I tiptoe along to oblige him. I'm not sure why he does this, but he does it ALL THE TIME. I can be making a sandwich in the kitchen, or doing laundry, or washing dishes, or working, or simply watching TV; and a little curly, dirty blonde head will come poking between my legs. And the next thing I know, I'm being pulled and pushed away from whatever I was trying to do.

Today, I decided to have some fun with him, so when he started to push me, I pretended that he had actually lifted me off the floor and thrown me on the couch. He loved it! Each time I stood up, he would "throw" me again, laughing uncontrollably the entire time. My wife videoed the interaction, and it's amazing to see Troy actually lift and roll his shoulders to disengage me. It's like he perfectly understands what he's trying to do and the technique to accomplish it. It's amazing. He's so strong already that it won't surprise me if he's throwing me for real in a couple of years.

The Thagomizer

"I got hit in the eye by a thagomizer." I never would have dreamed those words would ever come out of my mouth, and yet I uttered them not once, but twice tonight. Troy and I were upstairs playing with his inflatable dinosaurs, when all of a sudden his stegosaurus started going MMA on my spinosaurus! It was a brutal battle, but my spinosaurus was holding his own against the relentless onslaught of the stegosaurus’ vicious tail attack. Bobbing and weaving to avoid the deadly thagomizer on its tail, and going in for deadly bites of his own. It was back and forth until I caught the thagomizer in the eye, and it took me and the spinosaurus out of the fight. After a short break to recover, I was back in it. Until a short time later another wayward tail swing caught me again. After that, my spinosaurus was mostly just running around the room away from the stegosaurus, avoiding him altogether.

A fun bit of trivia about the thagomizer. Up until 1982, the tail spike on a stegosaurus' tail was simply called a "tail spike." In 1982, Gary Larson coined the term "thagomizer" in his comic The Far Side, which depicted a cave man teaching a class and naming the tail spike after the late Thag Simmons. Who we can only imagine met his end at the hands of one of these spikes (not unlike me in my epic battle tonight). 

About ten years later, the science community began to informally adopt the term "thagomizer" when Ken Carpenter, a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, used the term to describe a fossil. It caught on, and the term has since been featured by the Smithsonian, the Dinosaur National Monument, the book The Complete Dinosaur, the BBC documentary series Planet Dinosaur, and most recently in Netflix's Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous.

Gary Larson later addressed critics who indicated that most likely stegosauruses and humans did not exist in the same era. He wrote, "there should be cartoon confessionals where we could go and say things like, 'Father, I have sinned. I have drawn dinosaurs and hominids together in the same cartoon.'"

Just...sing!

Troy really loves to sing now. He may not know any of the lyrics, but he belts out the melody, complete with rising and falling notes in time with the music. He memorized several songs so that he changes at the exact right parts and sounds perfectly in tune. With some songs, he’ll even sing some of the chorus. For example, on Katy Perry’s “Firework,” he’ll sing the “boom, boom, boom” and “moon, moon, moon” parts. And in Idina Menzel’s hit song from Frozen, he’ll sing out “leh go, leh go!” 

I used to be worried, because he’d only dance to music videos, but he’d never attempt to sing. But I guess he just needed time and confidence. I’m glad my unhindered example for him has finally given him a love for music. He has a beautiful voice after all, and the world should get the privilege to hear it.

Hey, you!

Troy has started to say, “Hey, you!” whenever he comes into a room and sees us. It’s so much cuter and more endearing than a plain old, “Hi.” Even though he does it all the time, it still catches me off guard and makes me smile. I don’t know where he picked it up, but it’s cool.

Little Messi

It was another beautiful day outside, so we took Troy out into the backyard to play. I had pulled out my old soccer ball, thinking (or maybe just hoping) that he might enjoy a different activity from whacking dada with a stick. He wasn't sure about this new thing at first, but once I showed off my pathetic attempt at ball handling, he quickly picked it up. He was running around the yard, kicking the ball out in front of him, and then chasing after it to kick it again. He's such a natural at everything he tries to do.

Splinter Cell

Troy and I were out playing in the backyard today, enjoying the nice weather...well, Troy was playing, and I was cutting back dead plants that didn’t make it through the freeze. All of a sudden, he came up to me, calm and quiet, held his hand out and said, “booboo.” I said, “okay, let me see your booboo.” Usually, his booboos are nothing, he bumped his hand a little too hard with something, or he just wants attention. But today, it was something. He had three large, long splinters embedded in his finger. I’m guessing that they came off the stick that he was playing with. Two were barely in, and I was able to pull them out with my fingers. But the third was completely under the skin.

I took him inside and engaged the extra services of my wife to assist. While she held his finger straight, I had to push the splinter with my fingernail to slide it enough so that the head poked out of his skin. And then while I held it like that, my wife quickly grabbed the tweezers and pulled it the rest of the way out.

Now, while Troy had been calm and quiet outside, he was the exact opposite inside. He was screaming and crying the whole time we operated on him. Even after it was over, he wouldn’t stop. Although, I’m sure the alcohol we put on his finger didn’t help much. We finished him off with an Olaf bandage, which he immediately took to trying to remove, crying the entire time until he’d finally managed to rip it off. Then, he was suddenly okay. I’m just thankful it was an easy operation and not one that required us to have to use a needle to break the skin. I’m not sure how we would have kept him still long enough for that.

Dinosaur Graveyard

Since he got those inflatable dinosaurs for his birthday, Troy has exhibited some strange behavior. He is constantly dragging all of his dinosaurs and stacking them in a huge pile. It looks like a dinosaur graveyard or something. But he’ll stack them all up in top of each other, then he’ll drag them to another part of the room and do it all over again. His stuffed elephant even got roped into the pile-up. And if I’m laying up there on the floor, well, he’ll just stack them all on top of me!

I tried to look up if this was common behavior for a toddler, and they said that stacking is a way for them to understand size and organize things into like characteristics. Although, they were talking about blocks and other stackable toys...nothing in there about stacking dinosaurs.

Gate OCD

Troy has become obsessed with closing the baby gates on the stairs. I used to worry that he’d try to go upstairs without us, but he doesn’t. If he finds the gate open, then he closes it with a loud, resounding clang!

Some mornings, he’ll go straight to the stairs to check the gate before anything else. It’s like he doesn’t trust me to keep things safe, so he has to follow around behind me. Most nights I’ll leave them open just in case he has a bad night, and I have to walk him up and down the stairs. It’s not that easy to open the gate when your arms are full of toddler.

But it’s really annoying when I’m going up and down to haul stuff to the attic, and after every trip, Troy will shut the gate behind me. And when I come back down, he’ll shut it again. I have to constantly set things down to reopen the gate before proceeding through. And then two steps up, I hear a loud, resounding clang behind me. Followed by the retreating patter of little feet.

Some days he’ll be trying to close it WHILE I’m still coming through it. If I try to force my way through, then he’ll just push harder. Nonetheless, we always try to tell him thank you. Thank you for closing the gate, and thank you for keeping us all safe.