how to start your weekend.

Most of San Mateo County’s operations are in the county seat, but for departments that don’t have a lot of traffic with the downtown offices—the county library system, the coroner—are up the hill in San Mateo in what I can only describe as a citadel. It’s cleverly set in terrain that offers remarkable privacy, and chunks of it are somewhat fortified, because the biggest occupant is Juvenile Court, including detention, and a variety of things that look like they’re there for the children of juvenile offenders.

When I picked a date for the hearing, they told me all adoption hearings are on Fridays, and it didn’t occur to me to wonder why until we were there, and the staff was relaxed and happy. There are signals of what a more ordinary day is like: signs like "NO HATS IN COURTROOM" and "GENTLEMEN, TUCK IN THOSE SHIRTS.’ Adoptions are obviously one of the most joy-inducing things they do, so it makes sense to just pick a day of the week where people show up for court and they’re there to make a family.

The courtroom blew my mind. There’s the usual judge…podium? pseudo-throne? pulpit?…arrangement, but when the judge entered, she brought a giant smile down to a floor-level lectern. The walls had two-foot wide emojis, lined up like shields in a medieval great hall: "To acknowledge that all emotions are valid in this room." There was a five-foot tall teddy bear, with dozens of smaller bears surrounding it.

And in a final surprise, by tradition, adoptees pick a bear to take home.

just like that.

I’ve never really looked at the child adoption procedure. In part this is because we’ve had no adoptees in the extended family until my cousin adopted her stepson. Normally at this point I would say "Right, suuuure you don’t," except that the genetic variation goes from this:

all the way down to this:

Good luck telling the guys apart on the telephone.

Adoption results in a new birth certificate, which is obvious when you think about it, since the entire purpose of a birth certificate is to legally define the parent-child relationships via the circumstances of birth. I find it weird for a bunch of reasons:

• Rewriting history is not really something my brain will do. I can usually remember what we’re supposed to say about the past (true or false), but I also remember the past.

• I’ve never been a legal parent before, and I always very carefully avoided the word "father." (And still will, really: the birth certificate will list us both as "parent." J’s word for "adult male who shows up with patience and kindness" is just "Chris.")

• A birth certificate will now attest that I had a kid a few years before I met the kid—the form said "Enter your name as of the date of the child’s birth." I remember that year very clearly, and the most I could claim was being uncle or uncle-like to a marvelous trio or two of girls.

In my world growing up, birth certificates were static, authoritative documents, not just because I come from a line of lawyers, but because our genes allow no doubt about where we came from. We look, sound, smile the same. When my grandmother died and I went back to the Rust Belt village my grandfather settled in after leaving Pittsburgh, I went into the one coffee shop, and the owner, Marit, came out from the back and said "You’re a D—, aren’t you." (My cousin tells me Marit loves telling the story as much as I do.) All but one of Generation #4 is through high school. My uncle was on the School Board for a bunch of years. His father was a judge, whose portrait is in the courthouse.

I tell a story, and I hear the more or less uniform voice the men have. I make an expression with my face, and it’s the same smile gifted to a few dozen other people on the planet. 

So in my life to date, a birth certificate is a set-in-concrete record of past events involving biological parents, the ironclad thing you use to sign up for soccer teams or get a passport. It’s wonderful that we can alter the law’s view on our relationship, but it’s also just viscerally odd.

sleepy now

We returned from an epic college road trip up to the delightful greenery of Oregon, and we will be launching J to college up there for the coming year. It's a transitional program, with a couple dozen students, where they take a couple courses to learn How To College, and spend the rest of their time learning the many skills of How To Adult, like interpersonal and life skills stuff. It was amazing to watch J show up as himself, and the program staff really love him for it, and everybody all around settling in to the idea that he will live and thrive there. It was so perfect that we decided that we don't really need to be nearby while he's there, as we've always figured we would: having us available has always been the surest way for him not to need us.

But, we also know that he's capable of amazing things without us around, especially these days, and this place will help him as needed. The student:staff ratio approaches 1:1, and each student has 5 case managers in different areas, meeting with of them through the week. Sending him off on his own feels odd, but the core parenting goal is to raise a functioning adult, so...here we are.

It's a lovely college city, and it's entirely possible J could just continue there, since the university has good programs for what interests him, and he'll have spent a year getting to know the place. Plenty of time before that decision, though.

We brought the dog, because we were driving, and Leela's been getting older (obviously) and a bit more anxious lately, and not really in a good brainspace to be separated from us for 4 days. This was the first time we traveled with her since right after we got her in 2016, and she totally nailed it. We stopped every hour or so, to switch drivers and let her have a sniff and pee on things, and as we got up to the Oregon forests, you could see her tiny, tiny inner wolf perk up at all the new sights and sounds. We stayed in a very comfy 2-bedroom at the Marriott Residence Inn, which loves dogs in addition to having full kitchens.

Happily, we'll be back.

so that happened.

Despite my lawyerly heritage, I didn't grow up around actual litigation or other court proceedings: more stuff like tax/zoning/real estate law. As a result, like so many Americans, my impression was that of the Law & Order TV series, where you see the lawyers doing motions and depositions and whatever, but of course they don't show the months in between when you're just waiting for the next court date.

There are months in between court dates. But ours finally arrived!

I say "ours" even though I'm not named anywhere, and by the strictest letter of the law, I don't exactly exist. In fact, Angry Biodad (ABD) has always reflexively thought of me as some sort of backup babysitter in J's life, which has often been useful, especially in the times when J was struggling with the tension between his biological parents. I'm an alternate category of parent, called a "Chris": a poorly defined but highly reliable source of unconditional love.

The hearing was a little nerve-wracking, since the judge got progressively (and mostly justifiably) crabbier as it unfolded. I see where they're coming from: they don't know us, they don't know J, they just have the ruling from two years ago, and a new pile of papers with a bunch of contradictory claims in it. This whole motion was J's idea, so the filing had a ton of his statements in it, and he needed to vet it before filing (and in fact had some corrections); buuut, the previous ruling was very clear that no one should show J any court paperwork! (Because ABD had done exactly that, last time.) And Anna had taken faithful dictation for a couple of angry emails J wrote to ABD, because J's had a headache for nine months limiting his screen time, and that also bugged the judge. There wasn't really a better way to do this, though.

The goals were:

1. Let J stay with whoever he wants without hassle, which means ABD stops showing up at school or the house to pick J up as though everything's fine.
2. Get a court-appointed person to talk to J (and his doctors and therapists and whoever) and get his voice into the record.

The judge's summary went something like this:

1. For fuck's sake, none of you people have abided by the previous court orders. You suck.
2. The child is 6'1" and is clearly not going to comply with the existing custody order, and there's no point in my ordering something a 6'1" child isn't going to comply with, so: 
• the original custody order stands, but
• my interim order is that no one will try to force the child to comply with the original custody order.
3. Contact (phone calls, whatever) with the non-resident parent must be initiated by the child.
4. To unravel the parents' clusterfuck of conflicting hearsay and sketchy document serving habits, Family Court Services will interview the child and everybody with "Dr." in front of their name, so I can be sure of what this kid actually wants and if there are good reasons for it.
5. Family therapy with ABD and J continues, with the mom if the therapist wants.
6. None of you will talk to the kid about court stuff.
7. See you in August.
8. Go away.

If you're going to be rebuked by a judge, the best kind of rebuke is certainly the kind where you get the outcome you wanted along with it. Success!

Father's Day

We went to the Father's Day breakfast at the lake, and I ate a couple of pancakes and some orange juice, thus proving that age does not magically bestow wisdom. It's been a sleepy afternoon.

It's been a fine decade of parenting J, though of course he'll take some more time to grasp and accept the extent of my father-figure presence in his life. His biological father is a walking storm of issues--in his Magnanimous Mode, he said he could pick J up at the lake, allowing that I "might have some fatherly feelings" for the boy--who, like a toddler enforcing his ownership of a toy he doesn't actually like, guards his "father" place in J's world by assertion rather than by, I dunno, being a good father.

Fatherhood has granted me some priceless, heart-warming moments.

Around age 6ish, I was driving J somewhere by myself and he was angry I hadn't brought an iPad for him (or whatever), and he yelled "AAAAGH! YOU'RE THE WORST DAD, I MEAN STEPDAD, EVER!!".

But the all-time winner, even though it's second-hand:

One of J's birthday parties was at the place in Half Moon Bay where he took pony-riding lessons for a few years. His oldest friend, the son of Anna's oldest friend, met Bio-Dad, who introduced himself as J's father.

"I thought Chris was J's father."

And that's what happens when you don't show up.

inter alia.

Evidently I don't write blog posts these days. I started the blog when I went to Chile, and happily my life is not so eventful as it was in Chile; I'm unraveling a bunch of emotional stuff that I don't want to blog about, and then I have this fabulous job, but I'm a manager and that comes with an extra need for discretion. Even the dog has settled into a routine, as long as that routine involves alternating between "lying on hot pavement," "lying on Chris," and "lying next to Chris," with food scattered throughout, especially if the humans are thoughtful enough to drop bits of cheese.

Walks are also important.

(I've considered assembling some sections of fence just so she can stick her head through them.)

Work is quite nice, on the whole, although I have 14 direct reports across 4 different teams, and both those numbers are too big. I mean, I can do it, inasfar as it can be done, and I'm doing it successfully, but it's far from the best thing either for me or for my army of dreaded minions. I can't track the work very deeply, or get much into the product/business end of things, and it turns out that with this much scope, it can be very difficult to catch little problems before they become medium-size problems.

Anna got the house painted! It was a horrid, peeling taupe, and now it's a nice light sage with a purple door. It spruces up the whole intersection. She's currently mulling over plans for our small back patio, and advancing the garage replacement as quickly as possible, which is not very quick at all: we didn't know this at the time, but if replacing the garage were going to be easy, someone would have paid cash for the house long before we got to it.

The boy! The boy is very large, scarcely qualifying as boy-sized, now. He's scarce months away from being taller than me, and he's 12! We may end up putting bumper-foam on our doorway lintels, until he gets the hang of whatever awe-inspiring height he ends up at. (I don't think he's gangly or awkward. He's always had his own quite distinct manners of movement, and so far he's just a bigger, adolescent version of that.)

The Snugglehaus abides.

history.

One thing I do like about Facebook is that it reminds me of stuff I said years ago, and very often it's about J. (Not sure if that's because most of my Facebook posts are about J, or if their magical computers pick them more for some reason.) There are many, many Great Moments in Chris-J Conversation™.

March 27, 2014:

"You shouldn't have let me sleep so long, now we're gonna be late for school."
"It'll be fine, Mama will handle it."
"But we're gonna be late!"
"Do you trust Mama?"
"Well, normally I trust Mama, but this time--"
"So, here's the thing about trust. It's really easy when things are going well, and it only becomes really valuable when things are hard."

That was at least sufficiently confusing to stop the complaining for 30 seconds.

March 26, 2011:

Mama goes for a run, and I am quickly informed that I do not have as fun ideas as Mama and am not as good as Mama. Hopefully I can at least boil hot dogs as well as she can.

Last night he had some kind of scary dream or thought--he didn't want to talk about it--and when I laid down next to him, fell asleep about 30 seconds after putting his hand on my arm. (Chrises are very reassuring.)

We're turning out pretty well, I think.

your day in court, episode 2.

I missed the first custody-related court date because, perhaps ironically, I had to watch the kid. We don't have him this week, though, which freed me to go observe, and to make Anna laugh by writing snarky comments in my notebook.

Really, nothing in particular is happening except for the evaluation that we knew was going to happen. Nothing happened at the previous hearing, either, except that everything was deferred until today, when everything was further deferred until after the evaluation. I have realized that while my lawyer-parented childhood does qualify me to read and write legalese without fear, and to see Law and Government as meta-concepts fluidly manifesting in a specific sociohistorical context--not sure if that's what Dad meant for me to learn, but whatever--my lawyer-parented childhood did not include actual participation in court cases. This was obviously for the best all around, but the things they don't show on Law & Order include the endless possibilities to delay and distract the judge and the other party, and the interminable legal hoops that might need to be jumped through before the case is allowed to actually treat the issues involved. Lawyers have scheduling conflicts that magically disappear! Someone stomped out of mediation? Go back and try again! Ask for an expedited hearing? Granted! Will I admit or read any of your evidence at this time? I will not!

The wheels turn more slowly than I could have imagined. I think I have successfully re-calibrated my expectations.

None of this means it wasn't the right thing to do, because it was. It has already had noticeable benefits, and if it traded in for some new suckage, the previous suckage was wholly unacceptable. You can't make an omelet without shaking a few trees. It happens sometimes that the most right course, or the least wrong, is simply to go Fuck Some Shit Up™, even if you can't predict the outcome or consequences.

high praise.

Anna was away this evening, so I did bedtime.

"Figure out what you want for bedtime reading?"
"Well, Mama's reading X and Y, and it's always a pain for her to find her place in those, so..."
"How about Z [which I was reading from]?"
"The thing is, I've read Z a bunch of times, and no offense, but you don't read that well."
"Okay. Pick something to read for yourself, and get tucked in."

Minutes pass. I check on progress.

"All I could find was this book, but I already read the e-book, so...it's not that interesting."

I scroll through my Kindle app.

"Hmm... Moby-Dick, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life...have you read all the Earthsea books?"

I just re-read the first three, and read the last two for the first time. The boy has only read #2, so I start in on A Wizard of Earthsea.

Third paragraph.

"Wow, you actually do have a good reading voice. I must not hear it so often, and I forgot."

drama!

Our epic Family Court filing, years in the making, finally happened! Effects have been immediate and dramatic, both in the boy's experience at the other house--better, though the bar is low--and in the quantity and toxicity of emails to Anna. We've had one close call, which made my pre-filing purchase of pepper spray look wise, but since no one actually used the pepper spray (or dialed 911, though both were minutes away), we'll chalk that up as a win.

J's third parent has dragged him into the middle of the thing, showing him the court filing (WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT) and ranting about Mama's sneaky lies and dishonest tricks employed in bringing things to this sorry pass.

And I've learned things about myself!

I have always encouraged your husband Chris to be a partner in J's Parenting,

Wait...that's not true at all...

and I am hurt and a bit frightened by Chris, "grunting" at me and semi lunging across the table at me at J's IEP Meeting at School today, 4/20/16..

I did whutnow? Since when do I have the energy to lunge across a table?

This was unacceptable aggression in an IEP meeting or any other meeting involving J's Education or parenting. This issue really MUST be addressed, or I will feel uncomfortable having Chris attend our IEP, Parenting Planning Meetings or any other meeting or mediation where Chris and I have to sit down face to  face.

Those don't happen too often, but you're welcome to bring bodyguards if the fact that you're bigger than me and surrounded by credible witnesses isn't reassuring enough.

Your husband Chris makes no secret of his years of martial arts training; so I DEMAND THAT HE ACKNOWLEDGE his understanding of the basic rules of conduct in regards to what might be interpreted as physically aggressive behavior.  His has a particularly strict duty in this regard.

Yeaaaaah so it wasn't me they were about to call 911 on...

Also he hasn't bothered to learn what it is I have a black belt in. Aikido isn't that thing where you suddenly go all Bruce Lee on somebody. Chuck Norris? Jet Li? Tony Jaa? Not aikido.

Good thing he wrote in ALL CAPS, though. The Internet assures me that imbues your words with legal force.

At this point I trust you both acknowledge that his recent aggressive behavior was inappropriate.  He is, after all, a guest at these conferences. No loud aggressive growling and aggressive lunging across tables allowed!

Isn't it great that we can all laugh about it? Especially with the passive-aggressive swipe that I'm just "a guest." 

I don't want to suggest anger management because I am loathe to interfere in your domestic relationship with Chris, but You can forward this email along to Chris if you'd like.

Thank god, I just got done being sent to anger-management classes by the last cowardly douchenozzle who couldn't handle it when I stood up to his violence.

There was a follow-up, of course.

As your Petition to Modify Custody is pending, I have to take a formal legal approach to this issue.  Chris has no legal right to confidential meetings involving J, that includes Mediation, IEP, parent-teacher conferences or any other school meeting not open to the public.  I am not comfortable with Chris attending any such meeting.

I hate be the bearer of bad news, but "formal legal approach" does not mean "declaring your unsupported interpretation of the law in email as though it were fact." You know how on Law & Order the attorneys are always communicating using carefully-typeset pieces of paper stapled to blue backing? You might start by Googling that. Also search for terms like "why won't the police just do whatever I tell them" and "why can't you practice law without going to law school."

(I get to come to any meeting Anna invites me to or delegates to me, subject to rules not listed in mean-spirited emails by random guys with no legal training.)

And just in case Chris was planning on attending any such meetings, you should know that the police and the courts would not look favorably on his trying to force entry into any such meetings.

This sounds like a really bad TV show. S.W.A.T.: Parent-Teacher Meeting.

Unless your last name is "Obama," no one is standing guard outside school meetings. Because they're boring. I will simply walk in and sit down, and everyone except the author will be happy to see me.

Because I am not a "guest." I am a parent.

all parents, all the time

I'm writing about the kid a lot, because I'm not interested in publicly writing about work or my well-being right now, and the kid is growing up in that way kids do where they suddenly get 3 feet taller and even more interesting to talk to (to the extent they'll talk to you). Because I acquired him partly-grown, after the bodily-fluids phase, I am probably not quite so astonished that he no longer weighs 15 pounds, but he was still 4 years old when we met, so, yannow. We've had some time together.

(I could write about the garage, I guess, and how it's mostly held together by termite vomit, so now we've bumped up the priority of rebuilding it, but zoning laws mean we can't build an apartment over it, only rebuild it exactly as it is, and then the cost estimate also had one more decimal place than we expected. But that's really the whole story in one sentence, and there's nothing funny or insightful about it.)

The boy is endlessly interesting, because we can scarcely imagine his experience of the world, and his brain is just a black box: we feed stuff in, and there is only failure in predicting what comes out, or when. He routinely repeats conversations verbatim from years ago, but then sometimes he'll be in the middle of a conversation and you'll have to repeat half of your second-to-last sentence, because not only did he get distracted by something inside his head, his distraction was so total and so short that he just checked out completely somehow.

At age 11, he is now differentiating from his parents, which (for many reasons) I've been looking forward to for years and years. This is about when the world starts treating kids like human beings with emotions and opinions, and kids get used to responding as such. (I think most kids are not treated like full human beings, and when I try to do that they get confused and it's all awkward because I've deviated from the script.) He's getting the hang of numerous social interactions, and is being duly prepared for the whole new level of academic and behavioral keeping-his-shit-together he faces in middle school.

Despite his concerns about managing some future life without his parents, he has not shown much urge to learn the necessary skills, so more and more we burden him with the parts of his dinner that involve taking stuff out of the fridge. He can take on the aggrieved air of a hedge fund manager who is forced to take a limo to the Hamptons, instead of a helicopter.

"I have to get the turkey and juice myself?"
"Yep!"
"Next you'll be making me make the macaroni and cheese!"
"Someday, that's the idea!"

I'm sure he can imagine the table service declining to that point, but chooses not to dwell on it and hopes the issue goes away. And really, can you blame him?

noooooo

J has an irrational rage about babies. It started with a weekend's exposure to one exceptionally loud and long-running baby 5 years ago, and while he no longer runs away as though they were rabid mountain lions, nor does he start walking over to pre-emptively shout at them before they can annoy him first. That's real progress, but he still gets annoyed at any talk about babies, to babies, near babies, anything he thinks is for babies, or any reference to the fact that he did used to be much smaller.

Anna's nailed down a cookie recipe that everyone can eat (gluten-free flour, no refined sugar, no chocolate) and with the irresistible d20 cookie cutter:

there's been a consistent stream of cookies. As yesterday's were baking, Anna said "C is for 'cookie'," which got the boy's hackles up and he made an annoyed growling noise.

"What's wrong?"

"Sesame Street is for little kids!"

"Actually, a big chunk of it is made for adults."

"No, it's for babies!"

"Seriously. Little kids will watch the same thing over and over,  and Sesame Street was made so that adults could watch it too and not go crazy, so there's all kinds of stuff in there that only adults can understand. That's why Blue's Clues came along: it's better for little kids because it's just the same thing over and over, and adults go insane trying to watch it."

Anna chimes in: "Blue's Clues, or Caillou. Ugh."

"My friends and I used to watch it back around 2000. We called it 'Stoner TV'. It was made for adults."

I turned to look at him. He was unhappy.

"NO! Stop being silly!"

"Hey. Hey. Look at my face. Is this my silly face? Look at the muscles around the eyes, corners of the mouth."

He looked and sounded exactly like this. It was uncanny.

  Learning is hard, sometimes.

where does he get this stuff

J calls me "Chris," and always has; there's never been any question of calling me "Dad" or whatever. I've always been scrupulous about trying to respect the fact that J's father is his father, and I've never tried to be a father replacement. That's sort of happened anyway, because I'm a much better match for J than his father is, so "Chris" in J's mind occupies this huge father-space.

It's still weird for me, and I've talked about it with Anna a lot; it's just an inevitable part of being a step-parent, that you didn't have the kid in its larval stage, and you have to build a relationship like you would with any other sentient human. I'm not sure what he could have called me, since "Daddy" is taken. Maybe "Papa" or something?

We once did offer that if he wanted to use another name for me, he should say so, and that was years ago, but this morning:

"Um, Chris, is it weird for you that I just call you Chris? Do you wish I called you something else?"

"That is an excellent question, and I've thought about it a lot. I think that since 'Chris' holds for you all of the loving Chris-stuff, we should just stick with 'Chris.' Plus, as much as I think about it, I think I would find it strange for you to call me anything else."

Did he think of this himself? Did he overhear a conversation? Is it just the culmination of years of clues? I have no idea.

Philosophy 101.

From May 29, 2015, I've been sharing this with people. The three of us had all come home in the car from something or other, and J told me about something, and I decided it was a boring conversation and I would make it more fun for us.

"Nope. I don't believe it exists."
"Of course it exists!"
"Well, I can't see it, therefore it doesn't exist."
"It still exists even if you can't see it!"
"Really. Someone needs to take a philosophy class. How would I know it exists if I can't see it?"
"Someone else can see it, it still exists."
"Sure, but then it only exists for them, not for anyone else. How would you know?"
"You're being silly."
"Am I? Look at my face."
[examines my face closely. look of wonder.]
"Whoooa you're *not* being silly."

I treasure that moment for a few reasons, not least of which is that J is both cynical, highly intelligent, and autistic, and looks of wonder are hard to come by around here.

parenting achievement of the week

The boy gets ranty, which is not that unusual for kids, but his father has a serious conspiracy-theory bent, and then we have worked to channel his obsession with justice and fairness with an education in history and systematic oppression. (Things read to him at bedtime have included Critical White Studies and Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States. Anna carefully edits as she reads, since he's not emotionally ready to handle the graphic horrors of history. He knows they're bad, and he's going to be extra angry when he learns the details.)

He was extra ranty and non-listening yesterday, so I looked up from my book mid-rant.

"...and then they're lying to kids in school! It's evil, they're brainwashing them by telling them that anybody can make it in America if they just work hard!"

You'll have enough problems trying to promote justice in the world, even if you don't talk like a socialist version of Rush Limbaugh.

"'Brainwashing' isn't really the right word there."
"But they're lying!"
"Right, but...well, the American school system is designed to produce obedient citizens...it's really 'indoctrination' rather than 'brainwashing.'"

(See John Taylor Gatto's glorious and epic essay, "Against School.")

"Right, to make them do what the government says. So that's brainwashing."
"So, the context behind 'brainwashing' mostly goes back to the Cold War, and the fear that people were being captured and turned into secret agents. There was this movie The Manchurian Candidate...anyway, 'brainwashing' is where an enemy captures you, and tortures you until you believe what they want you to believe."

(I wanted to use Orwell's 1984 as a better example, but if he reads that book he'll go catatonic.)

"Some of my classmates say school is torture... joking, I guess."
"Yeah. Real torture. And being held captive."
"Captive, like a place where you try to leave and they bring you back?"

(Touché! Time to stop quibbling.)

"More like you try to leave, and they shoot you."
"Oh. Okay. Indoctrination."

We'll see if it sticks. If he stops saying "brainwashing," then when he rants at other people, I can stop (mentally) holding my head in my hands and explaining that my kid who wants to make a genuinely better world just happens to sound like he's about to sell you a tin-foil hat.

Seattle.

We just got back from vacation a few weeks ago! In Seattle.

I was already in Seattle for work, of course, about 2 weeks before that, and then maybe 5 weeks before that. Sea-Tac Airport and I are old friends. I've been flying in and out a lot since July of last year. Most of the power outlets in Terminal A still don't work.

Anna went to her corporate client's offsite, for which they pay airfare and hotel for everyone's families, and we decided to bring the boy along and combine that with a visit to my in-laws in the area.

The offsite was at the Four Seasons Hotel. I'd never stayed at a Four Seasons, normally deciding I have better uses for the extra $500 per night, so I didn't really know what to expect.

It's really nice.

That seems obvious, but I have never stayed in a hotel that nice, so the level of niceness was a bit beyond my previous understanding of hotels.

First we're in the lobby, and the boy is saying something about how this is a really expensive hotel that only rich people would stay at. (In his other household, "rich people" is a unified and negative entity in the world, and it can be hard for him to keep his paradigms straight.) He wasn't into a class-war rant just then, but you have to catch these things before they build up.

"Okay, so while we're here, we need you to keep any snarky comments about the hotel or the people here inside your head, okay? If you need to let them out, do it when it's just us in the room."

That...worked. Immediately, and for the duration of the trip. I didn't have to remind him even once, which is rare.

Our room was pretty cramped, and had a single bed, and faced the big neon sign of the Seattle Art Museum. Even on someone else's dime, I wasn't looking forward to three nights there. Clearly there had been a communications issue, so Anna started on getting us moved to a different room. J immediately started doom-and-gloom about how we'd all have to sleep on the floor or something.

"Oh, man. It'll be just like that time in Grass Valley, remember? We couldn't get the key to the house, and just like you predicted, we had to go back into town and sleep in our cars?"

"That's not what happened!"

"You're right, you're, right. I forgot. We had to sleep in the street."

'That didn't happen, either."

"Right. We didn't panic, we got the key, and everything was fine. So. The way to think of this is that all these dozens and dozens of people working in the hotel, their job is to help us have a good time. So they're all going to be very nice and helpful. They'll set us up with another room, because that's their job."

Thus ended the doom, more or less.

Our new room was just a couple degrees short of palatial. The bathroom was literally the size of our bedroom at home, only coated in marble. There was a TV embedded in the vanity mirror. There was a telephone next to the toilet.

Instead of a bright neon sign, our window looked out on the pool area, over Pike Place Market, and out to Puget Sound. It was a much, much, much nicer room. I was boggled. J was literally speechless for several minutes (as common for him as it is for me).

I could have sworn I took pictures of the room, and lots of other things besides; maybe I deleted them without actually taking them off my phone first? I'm not at all sure what's going on there. Just imagine the kind of hotel room that comes with this view.

They have a Coffee Concierge. Dial 4505 in the morning, and they will bring you coffee and/or tea service. It's good coffee.

Anna was actually working, which meant that J and I had two whole days together, and confronting me yet again with the fact that compared to her, I am a bit of a slouch as a parent. I don't think I forgot to feed and water the kid, but I did have us on sort of a long adventure the first day. J navigated us to the MONORAIL stop, which goes up to Seattle Center, where we went to the Experience Music Project, then ate some pretty solid pizza, then went back to the Experience Music Project, then went back to the hotel and gratefully spent a few hours not talking.

Day 2 was "let's play Chris Sits Around By The Pool While People Under Age 11 Splash Around In The Water For A Few Hours." The game of kings, handed down from my ancestors.

If you can stay at a Four Seasons, I highly recommend it. Extra delicious if you're not paying.

not to be confused with the Swiss rhinoceros.

When we got J back, I asked him what he did with his week away from us, and said there had been a very long and annoying "knot-tying lesson." This turned out to be a failed attempt to teach the boy to tie his shoes, which not only left him unable to tie his shoes (his fine motor control makes it a high-effort, low-return investment, easily bypassed with cord-locks on his laces) but anxious about his inability. We were discussing when Anna had gotten around to shoe-tying.

"Yeah, I dunno, there was some story that's supposed to make it easier to remember--"
"The rabbit goes down the hole, and around the tree, or the other way around."
"--right. It's very confusing."

The child continued to perseverate.

"There's also the second part about the rhinoceros coming back up the hole to drink tea and eat flowers."
"What? It doesn't say that!"
"Sure it does. The whole story goes back to Germany in 1542. The Middle Ages. "
"No it doesn't!"
"1452, I guess it's the Renaissance, actually."
"That's not true!"
"The Reformation was a really confusing time for Europe."
"You know, if you wrote a book of all the fake history you make up, it'd be really funny."

My hope is that education will leave him sending me indignant text messages about a childhood filled with semi-plausible half-truths.

Or, as Anna put it after he'd read a few Calvin & Hobbes books: "Okay, Calvin's Dad."

leveling up

One fine Sunday morning at the end of November, Anna and I were having a lazy morning on the couch. Being adults, we can last a while without breakfast, so we'd stuck with lazing for the moment.

J walked in.

"Um, I need breakfast."
"How about you make breakfast for all of us?"
"Um, I don't know how."
"You could make your own breakfast."
"Umm..."
"Do you think there's an art to pulling the turkey slices out of the package or something?"
"Ummm..."
"Take your time. I can wait, I've got coffee."
"Ummm... Oh! Okay!"

(That's me responding, of course.)

And he went into the kitchen and assembled his own breakfast for the first time ever. (He doesn't eat many things, so most breakfasts involve turkey slices for protein.)

Needling him into a moment of independence is really more than I could have hoped for. I just didn't want either of us to have to get off the couch.

eponymous.

The boy was sad at the end of the day: bored with all his books, bored with the iPad, annoyed at his admittedly near-useless unreliable laptop. After forcing him to go back outside the bedroom and knock, I dragged him down on the bed where Anna and I were talking, for a hopefully quieting snuggle.

"I just knew it was going to turn out this way. Nothing you can do will change anything."

"Now, if I were a better parent, I would make you laugh."

Giggling commences.

"Unfortunately, you have the worst Chris ever. Possibly the worst Chris in the history of Chrises."

Smiling, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world: "There's only one Chris."

 That is a nice feeling.

parenting by annoyance.

"Hey, monkey. How was your weekend?"
"Good."
"What'd you do?"
"Stuff."
"Did you go for a hike?"
"Yeah."
"Did you play basketball?"
"Um...no..."
"Did you go water-skiing?"
"No. You know I don't play basketball."
"You're not giving me any information, so I'm going to ask you about every possible thing you could have done this weekend until I find out."
"Oh, okay, fine. I did a bunch of stuff without screens. We went for a couple walks, and we played some non-video games. I read a bunch of books. There, are you satisfied now?"
"Yes!"