New House, Old Camera

4, 5, Fun for 500

This is the 500th blog post, which is a pretty good clip since Anders has less than 800 days under his belt. Anders' code for water in which he can play is 4, 5 since he fixated on the 4 and 5 ft signs at our local pool.

Someday I need Anna to write a post about what goes down at the library each Wednesday or at a SLAM (Sugar Land Area Moms) playgroup.

Anders now likes "news, sit, nuck," which means sitting on the couch and watching the news as he drinks his milk. He's a fan of the CBS Sunday Morning trumpets and the John Williams' NBC Nightly News theme. He of course likes the weather. Anders would not be my son if he did not.

Some of the senior girls in my econ class stumbled out the picture of Anders at my desk, which led to cuteness-related shrieking. It was pretty funny, but startling.

Yesterday, I dusted the stroller off and took Anders to a duck pond near our house. We brought some stale bread with which Anders and I fed the ducks. Anders figured out how to get a little distance in his bread throws, along with noticing the ducks on all sides of him. Some of these ducks could start in centerfield for the Royals with their ability to snatch bread out of the air. But the goose...not so much. Every piece of bread I threw at him hit him in the neck.

We picked up our new camera, so we will have some decent pictures to post soon of today's trip to Galveston. I like Galveston, maybe not as much as Glen Campbell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIUPCfIihQ4 but I like it. Anders enjoyed having the waves crash into him. I took him out a bit deeper. He enjoyed having the waves crash into both of us. He walked with Anna along the shore, but once he realized that they could write letters in the sand it was all over for him. At one point, Anders looked out, pointed, and said "clouds, water."

But what kind of water? I'm a Carlyle-Group-Trilateral-Commission-One-World-Ocean guy. Anna, meanwhile, maintains that we were not at an ocean today, rather we we left our pink house for a vacation down by the Gulf of Mexico. I believe that geographers or oceanographers have just named different facets and corners of our one world ocean. This argument continues.

We might have to try the Kemah Boardwalk next time. If you don't know what that is, look it up in your Southwest Airlines in flight magazine next to the Landry's Steakhouse ad, which Galveston also has.

Funny No No

I wanted to get this one down before it got away from me. Last week as Anna was disciplining Anders in a stern fashion for throwing his food. She looked him in the eyes, he made a funny face, and she lost it. As she removed him from the table for a timeout in his crib, she was shaking with laughter. Anna hauled him away as he repeated over her shoulder "Funny No No, funny no no." It's the Anders and Anna Show now. They are a laugh per minute together. Anders is totally dialed into Anna. Sometimes I think he forgets I'm here, but that's the way it should be.

Well, our dish washer broke on Thursday. We should be getting another this week. I now openly discuss what will break next. My money is on the stove. It's pretty old and if you want to use the front two burners, they must be lit manually. Our air conditioner sounds like a trapped cat is trying to get out when it cycles off. Meanwhile, we are headed back to triple digits this week. Last week was nice with cool mornings of low humidity. It felt like Fort Collins.

Iowa lost to Iowa State and the Vikings lost the Chargers. It could be a long football season. I might jump on the Texans bandwagon. They have a very 2009 Vikings feel with good skill position players, suspect glue guys, and a mentally over-matched head coach.

I finally took the advice of my 10th grade English teacher, Ms. Cantine, and got involved in high school dramatics. I played an off beat creative writing teacher in a series of webisodes. I want to be on the ground floor for the next Wes Anderson. I could be the next Kumar Palina aka "Mr. Littlejeans" from "Rushmore."

My Anders Favorites

My favorite Anders Book is "Put Me In the Zoo."

My favorite Anders Song is "Old King Cole."

We finally dropped below 100 degrees on Saturday and we should remain so for the near future. It's truly amazing how nice 90 feels after a month of 102 and sunny, with the odd 109 degree day sprinkled in there.

Houston is no where near getting over losing out on having a space shuttle placed in H-Town.

Since we moved in, we have had put in a new hot water heater, two new bathrooms sinks, a new toilet, a new garage door, a sprinkler system in the lawn, and a newly reinforced foundation for the house. Our landlady paid for those things. Tomorrow, our new recliner is delivered, and after that I hope we will be truly moved into our "new...house! (as Anders says).

dinner conversation

Last night at dinner, Anders was going around the room naming us, "Daddy! Ah-ners! Mommy!"

Anna: Oh, Anders, you're just so...

Anders: CUTE!

Anna (laughing): Yes, so cute!

Anders: Funny!...Laughing....

"The Mexican Food Sucks North of Here Anyway"

That's a lyric from a mediocre pop song from the middle of last decade, which I used to hear while working out at the Ping Center at OU.

We finally made it to the mighty Galleria today. What a mess. That place was hot, flat, and crowded. Despite being flat, it made no sense. We ended up eating at a Mexican restaurant by an ice skating rink. The important thing to know, which you could easily guess, is that mediocre Mexican restaurants down here are better than good ones in the Midwest. That, and the table salsa is much hotter. Anna allowed Anders to dip and eat chips, after warning him about the salsa. It didn't phase him. Mind you, if this salsa was served at a gathering of my in laws it would be sampled by one person who would stage such an elaborate production that no one else would touch it again. Anders just nonchalantly chowed down.

The other funny thing is that Anders loves to say "Dallas." We try to get him to say the name of other cities including Houston, but he keeps coming back to Dallas. This won't help Houston's inferiority complex. It's the Milwaukee of Texas. Austin is the Madison and Dallas is the Chicago. People are always trying to explain why Houston is better than Dallas. I like Houston, but I find the chip on its shoulder amusing. Now, Anders adds fuel to the fire as he can't get enough of Dallas, his new favorite word.

Anders Rallies Fingerprintees

Anna has most of the good Anders Adventures since she is with him during the weekdays. The best stories are now second hand to me. Yesterday, Anna took Anders to Katy to get her fingerprints in her long quest for a Texas Teaching License. Texas is an interesting paradox because they require an unreasonable amount of documentation and paperwork to due anything official but their dearth of government offices to attain this paperwork makes attaining that documentation difficult. So, that's why Anders was in Katy while Anna attempted to get fingerprinted. And no, Katy is nowhere near Sugar Land. So the computer system was out and there was a two hour delay in Anna's finger printing appointment. The waiting room lost some of their humanity and they became Waiting Room People. Anders then turned it on and worked the room. One woman said he'd lifted everyone's spirits as they waited. Another woman openly declared he was smarter than her three year old. Another guy left, came back with fries, and shared with Anders. He also showed Anders his phone with pictures of his dog on it. Other people were showing Anders their phones and letting him play with them, but that's a dangerous game, as I know. One woman said, "I could have been in Lake Charles by now!" Lake Charles, LA is a gambling hotbed whose motto is "Like Vegas, only hotter." So Anders owned another room and after the two hour wait as Anna and Anders were leaving Anders turned to the room and said, "Bye, bye Friends."

Of course Anders is 2 so he followed up that virtuoso performance by come home and eating dirt. He got it way in his mouth, crunched around some small rocks, the whole deal. Anna was mad at both of us as I was watching Anders. Usually before Anders does something wrong he makes a football move toward the "no no," looks back for disapproval, and then does it. I lost my head as I opened his mouth and saw just brown. I started making short, choppy, spastic moves around the kitchen without actually accomplishing anything, and somewhere in the back of my mind I realized I had become my mom. Whenever I did something similar as a kid, my mom hustled around for a couple of minutes without actually doing anything before she regained her wits. Luckily I had Anna to think clearly and suggest I brush his teeth, which worked well. His toothbrush was just black. What did I try to do? I lifted him up over the sink, grabbed a sippy cup with a little milk in the bottom, filled it with warm water, and tried to force Anders to drink it.

I had a busy week so I didn't see Anders as much as usual. We are going to make up for it this weekend. We'll go swimming this afternoon along with visiting the Galleria for Anna's birthday today. I want to take Anders to the Astros game tomorrow as its the Dog Days promotion, meaning people bring their dogs to the game, which he will love. Monday we will attend a SLAM (Sugar Land Area Moms) BBQ.

One of the interesting thing about living in a new region is the different critters. We have an alligator preserve about 20 miles south of us. I've heard that it's not uncommon to see gators around the water even in Sugar Land. Even crazier is that Texas has a feral hog population of over 2 million! There is a large javelina population in Fort Bend County, where we live. One of my students, who lives in Sugar Land, said there was a stampede through his neighborhood a few years ago. As a result, a new law came into effect on Sept. 1 making it legal to kill feral hogs from helicopters with high powered rifles. If my friend James, a former subscriber to New Zealand Pig Hunter (http://www.amazon.com/New-Zealand-Pig-Hunter/dp/B00007KZKY), reads this, there is no doubt that he will visit us on his next trip to the states. Businesses have sprung up in the past couple of days to take advantage of the new law.

I've gone off topic enough and Anders is waking up, gotta go. Happy Birthday, Anna!