Luck of the Irish

Today was a marathon bonding session between father and son (i.e., Mz. went out all day).

We started our day by going out to "run errands". Number one was getting the boy some proper shoes to wear. We have a nifty little kids' place nearby, so LJ and I paid a visit. The sales clerk was a bit weird (some shoes fell off the rack and he shouted, "It's a shoe-i-cide!"), but extremely helpful. He seemed about as relieved to end the sale as I was. The owner (also super nice) creeped over and tried to sell us a $30 pair of socks, but I was already gone. Jr's new kicks on the right:

Lunch was the first of several blunderous moves by yours truly. I got the sliced bananas together no problem, but the frozen chicken 'n squash cubes were more like solving cubics using Cardano's method. Actually, I totally know how to do that, so the chicken cubes were a lot harder than finding the roots of a cubic function.

Anyway, all you have to do is put the damn frozen cubes in the microwave for the right amount of time and let 'em cool off. Of course, I got distracted and burned the shit out of the damn things. Not exactly burned, but really really hot.

I kept LJ at bay with the bananas, and thereby broke a cardinal rule of feeding (anyone!)-- save the dessert for last. He gobbled up the banana chunks like a chimp, but just couldn't get into the chicken. BTW, my wife's chicken and squash is absolutely delicious, so don't even go there. I promptly ate LJ's entire little bowl of it as soon as he foolishly rejected it, in fact. I tossed the kid a couple of cookies and called lunch quits.

We went back to playing in the living room, which I'm quite good at. I managed to finish up the Saturday crossword (OCEANIC!!!) while keeping LJ from ripping our entire internet hookup from the wall. We even caught a bit of the Jets game along the way.

Diaper duty was difficult today. He hadn't crapped in a day, so I faced the big payback. Let's just say Favre's total INT's were nowhere near LJ's total SHT's in that 150-minute span. WOOOOOOOO!!!! I WOULDN'T GO IN THERE IF I WERE YOU!!!!!!

Dinner was a lot worse than lunch. The kid was light in the nap department (real light!) today, so he started winding down a bit earlier than usual. He bitched his way through whatever the hell I was feeding him, and then nodded off a la Scarface at the dinner table. This could get ugly.

I pulled an old trick out of my bag, and brought him in to watch TV for some "cool down time". Thank the good lord, Celtic Woman was on channel 21.

I watched my wee lad slowly fall asleep as he let the gentle tones of Chloe, Alex and Lisa take him to the end of the rainbow. Luckily he passed out before the terrifying violinist Mairead Nesbitt hopped out onto the stage like an extra from Lord of the Rings.

All I had to do was one last diaper change, slather his skin and get him into PJ's. Of course, I picked the smallest and most challenging set of pajamas in the drawer-- the french horn of nightwear. Getting him in there was like squeezing a dog into a golf bag. As always, things worked out just fine.

I'm watching the Giants now.