Last night as a two-year old, last post on the blogspot for awhile

Bug was born three years ago Friday, and from the start we sang her songs off the White Album because this is what we could recall in our sleep-deprived state. She's now a Paul-singing, nose picking person. Here's her song before bed tonight:



Over the past year, I've done a shit job of doing my Daily Bug, but I've done a relatively consistent job of updating that Tumblr microblog on the right side of the page. I've just gotten too damn lazy to keep using this blogspot product that Google refuses to improve. So, starting on Bug's first birthday tomorrow, I'll be posting updates here.

It won't be just about her and the family: there will be occasional embedded 10-minute videos of Spanish translations of the "Dental Plan" scene. But it will be more regular content about her and the family than I've been able to put up here, because I can just point my phone at her, tell her to scream DONKEY POOP and there see that's a post. It's consistency of a sort. Come over and give it a look.

I Spy With My Little Eye

From Junebuggin' Plus

Daddy Day Is Nutrition Day

We've all been sick with the sneezevomits, and on Sunday it was Damn Wifus' turn to come down with the full blown zombie eyes. My solution: Take Bug to a playground by the Upper New York Bay and introduce her to pig-in-a-blankets. So what if she had a fever 12 hours ago and was constipated all weekend? Doctor Chinstrap says 4 ounces of spiced meat and some fresh air is all the cure a growing girl needs.

Yeah, she had a fever again today. But she's wreaked havoc on her diaper in a manner that would do a Visigoth proud. Once I find a way to fry hot dogs in Children's Motrin, we'll have every symptom of this virus cornered.

Ready to Pounce on One of the Slower Bubbles Straying From the Herd

Let the Wookie Win

Posting pics of your kids oughtta be obligatory after a Louie finale.

Labor Day Weekend

Playing with the new iPhone app. I'd be honored if you'd send any of the more pretentious shots to FYSP.

This is Bug at the Philly zoo, taking in the kittenpup magic that is sea otters.


This is the view from the front door of one of two Marriotts sitting next to each other in front of City Hall. The blue filter reflects my mood upon realizing I'd gotten parking validation info from the wrong one.


She met a man who lived in one of Philadelphia's many murals. She tried to pay him $80 to cover our share of the dinner, but he snuck it into Damn Wifus' purse. Bug swore sudden, bloody, anvils-from-a-window revenge.


HAIR.


This is my niece. She can kick the ball so hard it takes the shape of a jelly bean.


Nothing relaxes like a stroll in the field while soiling one's capris on a ninety degree day. This is the only time Daddy's grants us such freedom.


It was a great game. Bug celebrated/prepared for her Halloween costume with handfuls of broccoli


My niece enjoys a well-deserved Italian ice. My daughter projectile vomits zero point five seconds after this picture is taken.


She sleeps her way home, but Guard Shark, a token from our Philadelphia hosts, never does.

Fridays Home With Dad Are Boring

She lays across my lap and her bones disappear, she's that bored.

We've Settled on Paddington

Did you hear? It's raining

She's a Lady, Woah Woah Woah

Socks on the beach, y'all.

This Is Why We Use Two Hands

"Yes, you can ride with the big girl. Just make sure you hold on."


"Good girl."



"That a girl."



The following is only visible after photographic review. Notice the one finger off the chain:


Notice the two fingers off the chain:

Notice the five fingers off. Also notice the guy in the gray shirt looking at me like I'm an asshole father.

And then, predictably:


Note: This picture above accurately portrays how reality warps the first second you see your kid take her first faceplant.

(This happened a week ago on plastic foam flooring. The kid was/is fine.)

Lake Half Empty, Lake Half Full

Fatherly duties for the night

Things accomplished:

• Watched Louie.
• They say if you've got one roach you've got a million, but that's a damned lie. We've has this 8 ounce roach running around our living room for a month, and it's just him. He made another run for it tonight out of the corner of my eye, and the only tool available was my wife's guide to Rome. He tried to bolt under the loveseat, which was a mistake. I can slide a loveseat, you stupid inspect. Splat! [Limping away.] Splat splat!
  
• Produced this video for my old best friend's wife who's trying to have her daughter challenge Bug to a danceoff. Clearly he and she understimate my ability to waste a night editing videos sampling songs we used to listen to ironically in 1993.
  

This Is Important

I'm not proud to admit that, until Saturday, I needed to dust Bug's pancakes with confectioners sugar to get her to eat them. I don't like being anecdotal evidence of the kind of parent that couldn't serve a balanced breakfast.

But, you see, the kid wouldn't eat.

So, once a month out of guilt, I would try and slip in a natural alternative. And Saturday was time to try again:



(Small captions. I know.)

Fucking Acid Jazz

They're playing 2:4 time, but she's clearly only equipped for a 4:4 polka or similar.

No Time For Daddy

When you come home during the kid's prescribed 30 minute of TV dance time, you can't expect much.


She had another moment of fear going to bed tonight. Not sure what's going on. Daddy no like.

Bad Idea Genes

Last night, about an hour after we put her down, the kid woke up like a shot and was screaming like bonkers for "mine pink things." Damn Wifus went in and tried to console her, but she kept screaming for her pink things.

She riggled out of the arms of her mom's nurturing but viselike grip, made a run for the closet, and started tearing her toy chest apart like a dog digging in the yard. Wifus and prior roommates have been subjected to this type of quasi-sleepwalking from me before: At times in the wee hours I'm like one of the shellshocked patients in Ted Striker's hospital room in Airplane.

A few years ago work got stressful, my wife would catch me using my pillow like it was a computer with a mousepad. I would warn the college roommate who was up at 3AM studying for a Spanish final that there were snakes hanging from the ceiling and they would fucking bite him. In high school, I would sit up in bed and do my best to keep from falling asleep because I was convinced I was actually in the middle of a lacrosse games. All fucking asshole wastes of time.

(MINE PINK THINGS turned out to be Mr. Potato Head's tongue and ears, which she needs to complete her Cthulu-style designs like the one above. Why she was terrified of not having these few particular pieces at 11 PM, I don't know. They've become more important to her since she saw Toy Story 3 and decided that the tuber and Jessie were friends. [PS. No time for your french fries, Daddy. It's time for Jessie to fly.])

Before my wife can console her or I can ever react, she breaks free and comes tearing around the corner screaming into our room screaming NOOOOO MINE PINK THINGS.

We didn't find them. She was consoled, brought back to reality and put back to bed. I'm sure this won't come up again repeatedly over the next 80 years.

Father's Day Weekend Went Boom

Went to independent league opening day on Friday, got to experience the rare experience of cheering for Brooklyn. Fireworks thereafter. Saw Toy Story, gave silent thanks for 3D glasses that block view of my watering eyes, got a bike for father's day, gave Bug Saturday and Sunday rides around Prospect Park in it, which delivered some minor trauma to some bones. As long as I don't have to sit down at work on Monday I should be fine.

Read a few very nice remembrances of people's fathers online, don't have anything similar to write about Dad. No notable traumas to speak of, and picking out spots where he influenced me is like asking a fish to describe the water. "Thanks for everything," seems like boilerplate statement, but that's what I've got. Thanks for everything, Dad.

This Is a Two-Year Old Singing "Rocky Raccoon"

In this video from Thursday, she's playing with her new Toy Story cowgirl doll ("Jessie. She love me,") and helping me sing the anthem of a couple of murderous cowboys who shoot at each other over a woman. As I'm sure you know, you the story wraps up with an inebriated doctor performing a botched surgical operation.

This was not the darkest storyline she's was exposed to this week, as we just took her to see Toy Story 3 which, I can attest, provokes mass audience sobbing.

Her time in the theater went kinda like the video above: With her engaged but also doing her own thing. It was a pre-noon show, so she could switch seats two dozen times and dance on the stairs as needed.

As for the movie: It'll bake your noodle. I was just thinking about the last 30 minutes of it and I kinda went off into space. Those Pixar guys aren't just great storytellers -- I've watched the first two at least 6x each with Bug, and as far as I can tell the series has always been about making peace with loss and the inevitable -- but with this one they really leveraged the fact that you can probably remember who you were when you saw the first one, and what's changed in your own life in 15 years since.

On that front, it completely shames a piece of hackery like the Star Wars prequels. The film itself was preceded by some ugly moichandizing commercials -- one for a video game that Pixar executives actually had the cynicism to come on screen and claim that "This game really lets kids play with toys the way kids play with toys," and one for a set of Toy Story-themed sticker book that would have fit right at Al's Toy Barn -- something I don't think Lucas was ever crude enough to do.

But the movie (Spoiling. Spoiling. Spoiling.) hit its climax in a volcanic wasteland that will be familiar to anyone who saw the third Lord of the Rings movie or Episode III. All three of these movies tried to evoke the end of all things, and only the animated one really made you look at the abyss.

If I was Brett Ratner staring into that abyss and I'd just call it a career.

... There were a two bits -- the worst bits in the movie for me -- that were derivative of other digital animated movies. Ken had a montage of outfits that set to "Le Freak." According to the internet they used the song in Shrek 2, but even beyond that -- and I may have been in a humorless mood because this was the approximate moment when Bug went from sitting to a full sprint toward the screen and managed to grab the curtain skirt below it before I was able to grab her -- the comic timing of the whole thing was pure Shrek: quick cuts, irony on steroids.

And then they went to the stock character of Aughts digital animation, the muy caliente sidekick, previously played by Antonio Banderas in the Shrek franchise and by Robin Williams in the god damned dancing penguin movie.

Again, unoriginality aside, I thought we were done with the whole cartoon ethnic humor thing.

I would have enjoyed the whole thing more if they'd abandoned the whole Buzz-goes-loco subplot once they realized that Tim Allen's limited range would require them to hire an entirely different actor to play "Spanish Buzz."

(I'll be editing and adding to this piece all day, I'm sure.)

The Ghostess With the Mostest