Fathers Day

slippery slope

"Dylan, they just changed the law in our state so girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys!"

"What about people in your house?"

"Do you mean like your brother?"

"Yes!"

"Uh, no."

Street Cleaning

We've doubled our workforce

And again with the child labor

Ollie, phoning it in

a few things, before i start

Well...orientation has been more intense than predicted. I thought I wouldn't drop off the face of the earth just yet, but next thing you know we've done so many activities that I'm one sandwich short of an orientation picnic. Neither Aaron nor I can keep track of what day it is and Ollie's taken to getting up at 5am and we haven't had access to the kitchen in three days or the shower in a week, as I required tile work to start residency.

You know what is surprisingly convenient? Having all the toiletries in the kitchen.

***

Ollie has always been an eater. He has never willingly stopped nursing, he inspires Dylan to try new things, and I'm pretty sure he can detach his jaw when needed to fit more food in. Give him a banana and it's like a spaceship docking, with one slow relentless path into his face. We were at a restaurant recently, with a long wait because they had dropped our dinner on the floor and started over without mentioning it, so we fed Ollie a lemon slice to entertain ourselves because: ha! He made an amusingly puckered face, shrugged, then ate the rest of it.

***

I have had the worst time finding Dylan underwear in the correct size. It was mystifying to me (hi! I'm your new doctor). The options are: 4-5T, 4, or 6. The 4-5T were too small, and the 6 was way too big. Turns out, it's 4. Sounds so simple, when I say it there. It's just...she's a size 5! Why would I think to try a 4? I was wrong though, I know that now.

***

Ollie: is a HAM. He is hilarious, with an on-purpose awesome silly sense of humor at 19 months. We're so proud, except for the part where he PRETENDS to put all sorts of random stuff in his mouth just to mess with us.

He also says EEEEEEEEEEE ("cheese") whenever I get my phone out, and now says EEEEEEEEEEEEEE whenever he wants: cheese.

***

These kids! just get an endless kick out of each other. They are really opposites in a lot of ways and it works for them.

***

Dylan has ALWAYS been very clear when she is going through a developmental spurt, much more than Ollie usually is. She's clingy, klutzy, and generally high maintenance, then: she's not. It's harder as she gets older because she can verbalize her irritation in a much more excruciating manner. Anyway, the point is: now she can swim like a fish. It was sort of weird.

I know kids are mostly concrete thinkers at this age, but she can't wait to not be. She's always telling me she feels like she might not really exist and asked the other day if maybe we were just a dream (after she said something about rowing? a boat?)(not really).

***

Starting in the hospital Friday...

not, technically, tin

120 is Dylan's go-to number for expressing something really big, second only to spewing a random stream of digits. As in, "How many beans do you think Ollie can eat? ONE HUNDRED TWENTY?!!!" Or, "I weigh 34 pounds and Ollie weighs 26 pounds, and how much do YOU weigh Mommy? One Hundred Twenty?!" Exactly, Dylan.

She's always saying that Ollie is Happy Like a Clam.

I confirmed with Ollie's teacher's today that he does not have a problem with clocking the other children at school. At home, in contrast, Dylan has trained him, via the Big Sister Shriek method, to whack her with kitchen tools.

At one point, early in our road trip, Dylan captured me singing Wind Beneath My Wings (Aaron: I didn't even know that song HAD those words) on one of the many iDevices scattered about the car. I thought she would squirrel it away for future (HIGHLY EFFECTIVE) blackmail use or to launch her blogging career. No, she had shorter term plans and broke it out during a jaunt to the grocery store in Boston. I had my hands full with groceries and Ollie while she trailed ten feet behind me and played the video, loudly, in its entirely. They always say we learn from our children and in this case the lesson is: don't be so narrow-minded that you can't embarrass people without the Internet.

Residency orientation starts tomorrow. I'm expecting BleisenPosting to be downgraded to quarterly, so I would HIGHLY recommend a feed reader if you read even one other blog or website on the world wide web that updates routinely with content. I'll probably be around and posting for about another week since orientation lasts many days and I am hoping not to find orientation, at least, too overwhelming.

Don't worry, the children are prepared. No one is going to mess with their brain waves while I'm at work.

Boston II

Okay, where were we? Tooling aimlessly around Boston? Indeed. So, a new hotel room, which is right up there with cardboard boxes in entertainment value.
In adhering to the "children should be neither seen nor heard" philosophy, this is where we put Ollie. That's a soundproof comforter, right there.

Now, down to business. The REAL reason we were in Boston was to celebrate Uncle Ducky's graduation from PsyD School. I say "celebrate" and not "attend graduation" because my planning skills petered out around New Paltz. Let me assure you, at this point the trip descended from "seemed like chaos up to this point" to "pure chaos."
Dylan and cousin Noah were on the same page, celebrating-wise.
Here, let me help you feel some of the chaos yourself. Ollie would please like to nurse now, thanks.

The Brain Trust in Action
I believe we established legal residence at this shoeshine booth.




Please ignore the Photographer In Action.





Ollie, friend of dogs. ("Daddy!")





Dylan and Ollie got to swim with eight or so relatives. No pictures there because Ollie needs like three people to prevent him from climbing out of the pool and hurling himself back in. I finally put one of those floaty backpacks on him at the Y yesterday and hey, all the wild kicking actually works for him.

And then we had to drive back home, all at once. The End.

Boston I

So I'll pick up with us on the road again, to Boston. I thought to myself, Kate, what would be a good toy for the road? And I said to myself, Kate, I know! A percussion kit! Yes! We even made up our own song. "We're in a band. We're in a band." And so on, for three hours.



I don’t know if you can tell, but the children have gone feral at this point. I don’t know about the prospects for redomesticating them.


Here Ollie has thrown himself on the map I was looking at.
I don't know how this worked out, but we got the coolest hotel room, complete with Goody Dylan herself.


We did leave the hotel room at some point.




I have a picture to prove that we saw a mother mallard with eight ducklings while walking through Boston Public Garden.

We were feeling unabashedly touristy, and went right for the Duck Tour



That's the top of Dylan's head and her little hand as she DROVE THE BOAT.
And the rest of the pictures are still on the camera, so I'll save the grand finale for tomorrow (where tomorrow = when I get to it).