Papa tomber?

In Lucas' world there is nothing worse than if you tomber (fall down). Falling down is the root of all evil. Near misses on the falling down scale are met with the bilingual warnings "Attention! Be careful" from him, accompanied by a very solemn look. If you do fall down you are meant to do one of two things:

1. Cry your head off
2. Announce that you are ok "Lucas correct!"

Both require kisses to make you all better.

Recently he has been asking Christine "Papa tomber?" even when I'm in the room. This is a bit freaky. I'm getting that "does the boy know something I don't feeling".

On the same tip, we are now forced to face the fact that he is paying attention to a bit more than the ads when the TV is on.

In an effort to get to bed a bit earlier on Tuesdays, we watch NCIS at 6:30 via a feed from Newfoundland. In last nights episode a Marine came home from deployment to beat someone who had mb killed his wife. Lucas noticed and for the next hour he wanted to know if the man was ok.

So it's no TV or soothing nature shows for us until he goes to bed.

Separated at Birth

One of the blogs I read daily, even if the little bugger doesn't update nearly that often, is OnTheFence, the blogging home of J. Kelly Nestruck, National Post arts guy, political muser, bon vivant (I actually have no idea, but I like using that term) and periodic inpromptue coffee break at my house visitor. I read his blog even though his politically agnostic worldview sometimes makes me irate because he always has some interesting tidbit that makes me think (or freak out) I also have the honor? (?¿?) of knowing him in meatspace and have happily watched his transformation from goofy student arts guy to goofy semi-adult arts guy (I say semi so as to not insult). I mention this as what is known as foreshadowing (another example is the title of this entry, please pay attention now).

Anyway, every morning as Lucas and I get ready for the trip to the daycare we watch TLC's Ready Set Learn a show that has a number of half hour shows bracketed by Paz, the 5 year old penguin that Lucas loves. One of the shows is called Hi 5. Honestly I am alternatly annoyed and attracted by it. Their are 5 (duh) performers who sing and dance and do skits and all sorts of stuff. It's cute in that "omg please make the singing and dancing and colours stop before the brain damage is permanent" kind of way.

So, for a long time now it's struck me that Kelly:






Looks a lot like one of the cast members, Curtis:


Just a random thought.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

Rebel Dad is one of my must read blogs, not super chatty, just filled with a good round up of stuff and stats and news. It always makes me think and I always feel a bit smarter when I'm done. Recently he did his annual round up of the US Census Bureaus stats on stay at home dads. You can read it here.

I started thinking about it again last night on the way home from another overeating extravaganza family gathering at my mother-in-laws. We got a lift there and took a cab home. The cabbie was a gruff sounding/looking guy who, after about a block of Lucas prattling away with his taxi riding chant ("on est dans le taxi, le taxi est la" and repeat), asked how old he was and offered that his daughter was 16 months.

This lead to a conversation about kids, hospital trips, colds and, as is always the case, childcare arrangements.

Because he is the owner of the cab and can work 24 hours a day, he takes care of his daughter until his wife comes home from her job at the Dorval airport in the mid afternoon.

This got me to wondering, does the Census Bureau in the US or Stats Canada here closer to home count people with this kind of arrangement? Because it my mind he is at least as much the SAHD as the mother is stay at home...

I'm going to look into this a bit, stay tuned.

UPDATE:

Apparently my reading comprehension sucks before 9am on a Sunday

Rebel Dad has this paragraph in his comments on these stats:

"Let me quickly lay out two caveats. One is that the number is still a gross underestimation of our numbers, the same reasons I harp on every year. By excluding part-time workers, shift workers, seasonal worker, students, husbands of maternity-leave-taking working women, etc. etc., the overall number remains suppressed by a factor of 20. Two is that the because the number of at-home dads counted remains small, there's a larger margin of error. For all I know, the real jump was more modest. But with a 53 percent increase showing in the stats, I'm confident there was some sort of real jump"

So, now I know about the US, I'm still going to look into this for Canada.

Microwave!

Around here Lucas is sometimes called Lulu. It's a silly little name and will probably require hours of therapy.

I tell you this by way of explaining why I'm amused by his newest word.

Lately he's been running about saying "microwave" and then grinning like a goof, the tone, the sort of disconnect of understanding of what he is saying and the grin makes me think of The Fifth Element scene "Leeloo Dallas, MULTIPASS!"

So all week, in my head and, sadly, outloud, I've been thinking "Lulu Daviault-Campbell, Microwave!!!"

Dumb? Oh yes.

Funny? As all get out.