Everyone wants me for a husband

My wife gave me a hug the other day and my two-year old put her hands in the air and said,

"Stop! No Hugging!"

And my wife said,

"I can hug him, he's my husband."

And my daughter said,

"No, my husband!"

My daughter and the Mars Rover

So I've already established that my daughter likes dirt. A lot. She incorporates it into her digestive system at every opportunity. And she does so with fervor. I can only compare that soulful, rapturous, reverent look she gets on her face with a moment that people usually describe in religious settings. When Addison crunches a surreptitious bit of grit between her teeth, she stares off into the distance, communing with the land, contemplating a sacrament.

So what does this have to do with the Mars Rover? I've been following Curiosity's journey pretty closely, and I spend long moments ogling shots like the one pictured above (I grabbed it from panoramas.dk, where you can get an interactive 360 degree visual). There's so much detail in the pictures the Rover is sending back, and they're so tantalizingly familiar for such a distant, foreign place. These NASA photos mesmerize me.

Addison walked in while I was looking at this photo and she stopped, as though in awe, and said,

"That a yot of dirt!"

Yes, yes it is. If my daughter makes it onto the first manned mission to Mars, we'll know that she was after a taste of the exotic delicacies paving a planet from horizon to horizon.

How to improve your marriage without talking about it

My wife is currently reading a book titled How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It. She reads it, and then she talks to me about it. Which seems to me to defeat the point. But whatever. We've been to marriage counseling before, and I'm on board with improving things, whether through talking or the silent treatment. It's just that Lindsay sometimes makes it confusing about which we're doing.

This was the conversation that we just had:

Lindsay: Take this survey.
Me: What for?
Lindsay: It measures your fear and shame in our relationship.
Me: I'm busy right now.
Lindsay: Let me explain why you are not too busy to take this survey. 

Lindsay proceeds to talk about our marriage.

Me: I thought we weren't supposed to be talking about this stuff.
Lindsay: We're not talking about it.
Me: We are. We're talking about it right now. I remember, because I was here when the conversation started five minutes ago, and it's still going.
Lindsay: I'm just saying words. They don't mean anything. (sudden silence)

She actually said that. And it's definitely going to come back to bite her. I don't know much about history, or biology, or a science book, or the French I took, but I definitely know a good button to push when I come across it.

So I took the survey, and I look forward to deconstructing it with Lindsay later tonight, perhaps paired with a little defensiveness and stonewalling, after which we'll try some active listening and then we'll hug it out.

On giving the Universe the finger

A split second after Addison screamed I was out of my chair and moving. By the time I realized I was moving, I was already through the doorway of my office (also my bedroom) and dodging stuffed animals and cloth diapers and sippy cups in the hallway on the way to Addison's room. My body responded to some subconscious cue before I realized what I was doing. It was weird.

Eating dirt

Addison and I were at the playground today, and for a while we played in the dirt in the shade underneath the slides. We made all sorts of dishes: dirt oatmeal, dirt pies, dirt smoothies, dirt spaghetti. And then we ate it.

Just kidding, I didn't eat dirt. Addison did.

In the last couple of months, we've learned that Addison has a new favorite snack. It's called nature.

Lazy

After spending the morning with Addison, I was really hungry, so I passed her over to Lindsay and went to the kitchen. What does it say about me that it suddenly seemed like too much work to make a peanut butter sandwich? All that spreading, and getting out multiple ingredients...

I hate lots of food prep when I'm hungry. When I start feeling a little empty, my tummy needs food in it, and it needs it in it now. If I had low blood sugar or something, you might not fault me too much, but the only diagnosis that really sticks to me is: laziness. Also, that I don't care much about food. I'd just as soon eat cold cereal as anything else for three meals a day.

Too bad Lindsay doesn't like to cook either. Addison's gonna have to get used to cold refried beans sandwiched between little pieces of tortilla, at least until we make enough money to hire a personal chef. That's what I served up for her last night. I did ask Addison if she wanted her gourmet meal warm or cold, but she said cold, which felt like a gift from God. And then she ate it. My wife and mother-in-law try to get her to eat much fancier stuff all the time, which she refuses more often than not. So, I win.

Also, I did end up making the peanut butter sandwich. I have a great capacity for doing hard things.

Chestbursting babies

I finally went to see Prometheus last night. It was the film's last showing at the dollar theater. Alien is one of my favorite films, so I'd been really looking forward to seeing this "prequel." I enjoyed it, though it didn't live up to the original. Especially loved the landscape shots at the beginning of the film -- I'm a sucker for beautiful landscapes. I even started a blog once devoted to landscapes in film, which I'll warn is kinda boring and academic.

Usually I go to the dollar theater with Addison as a special date, and she gets to run the halls of the mall before and after. We saw The Secret World of Arietty several times there, and we're looking forward to Brave. Lindsay suggested I bring Addison to Prometheus, too, but I had to gently explain the "good parenting" thing to her. No, this movie night was all for me.

I did, however, note sadly that there were several other young kids in the theater, and they cried during the scary scenes. Maybe there are some films made for adults that could debatably be shown to toddlers . . . but this movie really doesn't qualify. Poor kids. My dinosaur nightmares are nothing compared to xenomorph nightmares.