2 and a half

Audrey's recipe for making Nerds

Get some warmed up ice

Sprinkle some sugar on top

Cover them with colored icing

Add lemon juice (for the sour taste on the outside)

Put them in a package

Sell them.

Barry gets a word in edgewise

Foodie

Sammy must have gotten stuck in a strange netherworld when he vanished at light speed yesterday. The picture seen here was transmitted – by him – overnight, although his exact location cannot be determined. It appears he landed atop the hood of a stove and that spices, condiments and other savory flavors surround him – I can just make out tarragon, Ghirardelli baking cocoa (one of his faves, I'm sure), garlic powder, chicken bouillon, sea salt, various olive oils, salt and pepper shakers, and a host of other goodies for creating a tasty dish. Looks like Sammy is a foodie... Who knew?

Right before take-off

In a rare and startling moment today, I witnessed Sammy the Elf just as he was taking off for the North Pole for the evening. (As fortune would have it, I happened to be snapping a picture at the time.) The room got very bright - almost blindingly so - and suddenly everything became twisted and contorted as Sammy geared up for the millisecond trip that covers more than 3,000 miles between our house and the North Pole. Even before the camera finished its click, he was gone.

Black Widow

I kissed a fish, and I liked it

Disney princesses as superheroes

Disney princesses as superheroes, posted at Deviant Art. Audrey's favorite princess is Cinderella, although it's my lease favorite graphic here (assuming the girl in blue is Cinderella - I think it looks like Princess Diana but then, that's not Disney).

It's an interesting take.. But if you ask me,

- Ariel looks like she's ready to leave the water and spend a day at the beach

- Belle looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones but with a cape

- Aurora may be the next audition for the Jetsons

- Jasmine is cool and could be cast in the next Matrix movie

- I've already commented on #5

- Mulan looks like.. Mulan

-  Snow White looks like Velma (from Scooby Doo) but taller with an even worse haircut

- Tinkerbell-turned-superhero has already been done - see Poison Ivy from Batman & Robin (1997)

Top 11 worst things about your girls growing up

I like top 10 lists. Or 11 in this case. They help me sort through and organize my thoughts around what matters and what doesn't. Here's my crack at what gnaws at me about my daughters growing up. (#11 is kind of a throwaway - it doesn't bother me much.)

11. Their poo begins to smell.

10. One step closer to dating (hence, the fake shotgun that will be next to my front door.)

9. One step closer to driving.

8. One step closer to dating (oops, did I say that one already?).

7. They learn how to talk back to you.

6. They're older which means you're older too.

5. They aren't cute little awkward babies anymore (they're still your babies though).

4. Other people and things can begin to have more influence than you do.

3. Loss of innocence.

2. You look back and worry you won't remember what they were like as little ones. (Although a baby blog can mitigate this.)

1. They'll leave home. (But they'll come back sometimes too.)

Lightning storm

Somewhat off-topic but super cool to watch. Let's see... How does this vid apply to my blog?

10. There are three people other than me in our household - my wife, Audrey and Grace - which is the same number of lightning bolts hitting the buildings you see here.

9. 2.5 (the name of this blog) rounded upward equals 3 which, again, is the equal to the number of lightning bolts.

8. Audrey thinks she can run as fast as lightning.

7. If he could talk, Barry would say the same.

6. Audrey and Grace are both very bright - so are these bolts!

5. Audrey was born in a suburb of Chicago, whose cityscape is seen in this footage.

4. During one of our first nights living in Chicago, while we slept on the floor because our furniture had not arrived yet, there was a severe lightning storm just like this one. It felt like the lightning was in our living room, much like it must have felt for people on the viewing platform of the Sears Tower during this storm.

3. Chicago nightlife is electric (ok, that one is lame).

2. Lightning is a form of static electricity, which causes Grace's thin, whispy hair to stand on end when she plays with balloons. 

1. Lightning results from the attraction of objects, like me and my wife, who, in the end, were the reasons this blog began in the first place.

Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.

2 and a half debuts on Alltop

If you don't know Alltop, you should. I'll just take an excerpt from their site because they, better than anyone of course, understand what they do:

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that we answer.

Alltop does this by aggregating stories from the best sites and blogs, by topic. Other ways to describe it? An online magazine rack. An information filter to help you find your nuggets of gold. There's an illustration here.

How does 2andahalf.com fit into all that? Well, included in "'all the topics' that interest you" are kids, parenting and the like. So if you click here you will find us, and others too. Just scroll the page.

The state of things now

Life moves pretty fast - if you don't take stock of things every once in awhile, you could miss it. So I thought I'd take a snapshot of what Audrey, at 4 years and 3 months, and Grace, at  1 year and 9 months, are up to, right now.

Audrey

Making concoctions. There's nothing like inventing things and letting loose your creativity. Yesterday Audrey came up with a delightful brew of water, hemp milk, squirt soap and rosemary. But I've seen her get more elaborate than that. If we're cooking a meal and lots of ingredients are lying around, she'll help herself to flour, eggs, juice, fruit, plant leaves, chips, raisins, spices, etc. - whatever she can get her hands on. It's up to us to clean up, of course.

Drinking creamer. Odd, yes, but true. Audrey loves creamer and will add it to most any drink. We buy the healthy kind (Silk French Vanilla) so it's generally fine with us, as long as she only adds a little. The problem is she likes to add a lot so we tend to be out of it when we go for our cup of java in the morning.

Gardening. If there are strawberries or flowers to be picked, Audrey is all over it. The problem has been that the ripe strawberries in our small garden outside are in limited supply right now so she resorts to picking the hard green ones. That makes for even fewer ripe ones down the road, but instant gratification trumps that. She'll eat both - the fun is in the picking! Naturally we have few flowers in our yard because those have all been picked too. The spring wildflowers got yanked first, followed by the lilacs and then the daffodils the other day. Not much left except dandelions.

Fashion and getting dressed. Audrey plays the independence card as much as she can nowadays, and I'm continually dazzled at her ability insistence at picking out her own clothes and dressing herself. She has a distinct style that centers almost exclusively around dresses (fortunately it's summer) and prefers two dresses layered over each other. Lately it's been too hot, however, and she's content with one dress. If it's of the princess variety, even better - she has compiled a nice collection of Disney character dresses and even though they seem incredibly scratchy and uncomfortable, she'll wear them with pride. Oh, and shorts and tops are out unless there's a dearth of dresses available due to the laundry cycle.

She's particular about pajamas too. They must be pajamas, for starters - daytime clothes that masquerade as pajamas are right out, although that doesn't stop me from trying when I can't find a matching set. She's working on wearing no pull-ups at night too (and doing a darned good job of it) so yesterday evening we ruled out footie pajamas for the time being - they are too hard to put back on because the arms turn inside out (don't you wish these were the biggest of your problems?).

Sometimes we combine the two - dresses and pajamas, that is - because the air outside might be too chilly and an extra layer is required. She's not a fan but if she insists on a dress, we insist on the other layer. Regular pants and shirts generally don't do because they are less comfortable under a dress but thinner pajama tees and pants work great, provided the color or pattern meets Audrey's fashion sense.

Dilly dallying. This may have more to do with Audrey as a person than her age, but she's good at getting distracted. As in, really good. This morning she had to use the bathroom before we could rush out to daycamp and after 10 minutes we found her in the bathroom goofing around, having not even gone yet. It's mind boggling sometimes. If you ask her to put her shoes on she'll find 10 things to do instead on her walk across the living room. If you ask her to eat or brush her teeth or get in the car or clean up, she's got 101 reasons why an alternative activity would be better. But we love her.

Grace

Babies. Grace, at 21 months, loves babies. Two months ago she could have cared less about dolls, but now she won't go to bed without one. Her favorites are the hard plastic ones with the soft white torsos. She takes their clothing off so they all look like that. At night, when I lay her down, her last request will be "beebee" - once baby is lying there next to her it's all good.

Blankets. Grace didn't used to love her blanket, but she does now. It's like an addiction - she'll grope for it desperately, especially around bed time, while we're otherwise trying to brush her teeth, get her dressed or read her a book.

Ba-bas. As in bottles. It used to be a way for us to get Grace go to sleep. But now it's a pre-requisite for Grace being willing to go to sleep. The magic of warm milk...

Pacies. Ditto the ba-ba thing. This is a pre-requisite to going to bed and I can see exactly how habit-forming pacies are in light of having had to wean Audrey off one. For this reason we refuse to let Grace have one except at naptime and bedtime. That, plus Barry likes to grab it from her mouth with his own which must be quite frightening and kind of gross.

Where's Audrey? That's the question of the day. Or the hour, rather, since she expresses it as frequently. Grace needs to know where Audrey is at all times, and will ask even if Audrey is sitting right next to her. I'm sure Grace's eyesight is tip-top, though - I just think she loves her big sister. Fortunately, Audrey is there for her nearly all of the time.

UPDATE: How could I have forgotten? Grace's latest pastime is wrecking kitchen drawers. Her favorite drawer is located in mommy's kitchen nook where there are all sorts of fun things like paper clips, note pads, pens, markers, crayons, stamps, envelopes, stickers, miscellaneous makeup and jewelry - pretty much all the stuff you'd expect a busy mom to stash in her "home office." Grace will walk over and just help herself to things and when she's done, toss them on the floor. If we're lucky she will have forgotten to draw on an important piece of paper, or worse yet, the wall or the wood floor. She wrecks other drawers too - by now, when we hear things crashing on the floor, we just glance over, realizing we'd just be delaying the inevitable. We could put locks on them, but hey, that would ruin all the fun.

Chemicals. Eating stuff she's not supposed to is Grace's other obsession. You may say that all babies do that but I'd disagree - Audrey rarely if ever did. Yesterday Grace ate a big chunk of dark cherry lip gloss. Several days ago she found a tube of lip stick and literally at the whole stick before we found her (you can imagine what her face, hands and clothes looked like.) They say women consume an average of 6 pounds of lipstick in their lifetime, both through skin absorption and from eating and drinking. I think Grace will be above average.

Why having a toddler is like being at a frat party

Brenna writes a hilarious post over at Suburban Snapshots - I got a good laugh so I thought I'd put it here too. (She claims to have been to only one frat party but, based on the below, I would beg to differ.)

10. There are half-full, brightly-colored plastic cups on the floor in every room. Three are in the bathtub.

9. There's always that one girl, bawling her eyes out in a corner. 

8. It's best not to assume that the person closest to you has any control over their digestive function. 

7. You sneak off to the bathroom knowing that as soon as you sit down, someone's going to start banging on the door. 

6. Probably 80% of the stains on the furniture contain DNA. 

5. You've got someone in your face at 3 a.m. looking for a drink. 

4. There's definitely going to be a fight. 

3. You're not sure whether anything you're doing is right, you just hope it won't get you arrested. 

2. There are crumpled-up underpants everywhere. 

1. You wake up wondering exactly how and when the person in bed with you got there.

180

I did a 180. Or a 360, really. Sorry for the confusion but I decided to re-name the blog back to 2andahalf.com. Call it nostalgia, plus concerns that a different name would potentially confuse readers. Welcome back. 

Baby samba video

Either this Brazilian baby is a natural or this is a fake. But it's Friday so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

How BP deals with a coffee spill

The BP oil spill irks me to no end. When one considers how long it will take to clean up the mess it seems inevitable it will impact my daughters' generation and then some. That said, the silly catch phrases like "Junk Shot" and "Top Kill" used to describe (futile) clean-up techniques mean that BP deserves to be made fun of. Oh, and that Kevin Costner is testifying on clean-up methods as well. That's what this video is about. And it's funny. Yet sad.

Hey Soul Sister 'Lip Dub'

Seeing as how this is Audrey's favorite song, well, I had to post this. Plus it's pretty fun to watch.

Thanks to Yi Shun for the link.

Comedy relief

This is not real. But it could be. So be a good parent and then hope you're lucky.

---

A father passing by his son's bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to "Dad." With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter. 

Dear Dad,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with you and mom.

I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice. But I knew you would not approve of her because of her piercings, tattoos, tight clothes and the fact that she is quite a bit older than me. But it's not only the passion... She's pregnant. 

I know that's big news but Stacy says we will be very happy. She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children. 

Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone. We'll be growing it for ourselves and also trading it with people who live nearby for even stronger, more eye opening drugs. In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She's such a good person and deserves it.

Don't worry Dad. I'm 15 and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I'm sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know our kids.

Love, Your Son

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I'm over at Tommy's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than the report card that's in my center desk drawer. I love you. Call me when it's safe to come home.

Stuff my daughter thinks is funny

Like putting her Dorothy Gale shoes on my work bag. Ha ha ha. That's funny stuff.

 

Seeing is wanting

A bottle.

A cup of coffee.

A wine glass.

A piece of paper.

A hairband.

A pen.

A remote.

A toy.

An earring.

A cell phone.

A cup.

A book.

A tissue.

A brush.

A spoon.

A bowl.

An avocado.

An apple.

Whatever Grace sees, she wants. Seeing is wanting.

American Baby

Look - my girls made the cover of American Baby Magazine!

Just kidding. 

But you can create a cover at Parents Magazine's webiste that looks (almost) like the real thing. Here's one I created in a matter of minutes.