Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Greyson on His Way

I am the happy and proud soon-to-be father of Greyson TBD Mardock. Sometime between September 25 and October 5, Grey will complete the Mardock family: dad, lovely wife, and two spry little boys. I can’t wait. Greyson, we’re waiting with great anticipation for your birth in the next few weeks! Love, Dad

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Ferrari of Tricycles

This past Saturday we woke up with a great idea to buy Jude a simple tricycle for his 2nd birthday. Novel, says I; nothing says easy lovin’ than getting a simple ready-to-ride trike from Toys R Us. This from the family who researches so long into what kind of baby carrier to buy that by the time we get it he’s too big for it. But oh, life for the Mardocks isn’t as easy as simply going to Toys R Us and getting a $20 Radio Flyer.

At Toys R Us we discover that tricycles have actually “devolved” over the past 20 years into cheap, breakable plastic garbage heaps and cost $60 and up. (Of course when I was a kid, they were American-made solid steal and rubber). Rachel and I reconsidered the simple notion of buying a trike. We decided to search around the Tacoma area for other options to no avail. All garbage. Then we discovered there was this uber-fancy German trike company called Kettler. Hand forged by real Teutonic engineers, with all the bells and whistles. The particular one we were interested, I called the “Ferrari of Tricycles.” The Air Navigator. This bad boy has real air-filled tires, plus a push handle for the parents. But then it gets better: the Air Navigator's petite frame belies the fact that it’s approved for up to a 400 pound human. Its rear wheels swivel like a shopping cart so that the parents can push the trike seamlessly without lifting and repositioning the trike (lest it veer off the sidewalk and maim the poor child). And lastly, its front wheel locks so that the wheel is always pointed straight ahead. Another must as parents push the lazy child up and down the block.

I must tell you, I had stars in my eyes. Clearly I wanted this trike so much more than Jude could ever care. At $250 though, it was just a hard justification to make. Didn’t we wake up that morning just wanting a simple $20 trike? How did we get from Junker to Ferrari? After much introspection and consideration about whether the trike should be a family heirloom or just a toy, we decided to keep the money and get the trike from Toys R Us. At $60, it’s still more than we want to pay, but I feel like we avoided an epic frivolous purchase. Certainly Jude would appreciate that money towards his college savings plan. Although with a weight limit of 400 pounds he could still easily ride the trike to college.

So ends our trike story, and onto another story: whether or not Rob and Rachel will invest $700 on the swankiest duallie stroller on the market, or whether we’ll ever get it through out heads that humans have been raising babies for millennia without the aircraft aluminum frames, Baby Bjorn carriers, and video baby monitors…

Monday, August 23, 2010

Big Boy Bed

This morning at 1:30 Rachel and I awoke to a toddler-sized sneeze, mere inches from our heads. Both startled out of our sleeps, we looked over to find Jude just watching us. Clearly he had arisen from his big-boy bed, walked silently down the hall, and was waiting for an opportunity to get our attention.

Jude took to his big-boy bed much better than we could have anticipated. A couple of days after setting it up in his room, Adam and Dani put him down for a nap, not knowing we weren’t yet using the bed (we were more just getting Jude used to the idea of having it in his room). Later that night we were having a heck of a time getting Jude to sleep in his crib. Out of exhaustion, Rachel sat down on his bed to hold him, but Jude quickly slipped out of her arms onto the bed and he promptly fell asleep for the night. And that is the story of how Jude transitioned to his big-boy bed. All the discussion, concern and scenario-planning and he simply took to it like a fish takes to water.

The crib is now ready for little baby Greyson (ETA Sept 25 – Oct 5). We hope that Grey sleeps better than Jude. We like to think of Jude as being borderline colicky as it helps us justify how tired we were for the first year; and they say your second child will have the opposite level of difficultness from your first. We shall soon see…