Under normal circumstances this is what we would have done for Memorial Day weekend: go to the Clifty Falls Camping Extravaganza, listen to the Indianapolis 500 on a vintage AM radio from the 1980s, and then return to Cinci or Tosa to celebrate Memorial Day in proper style with parades and cookouts and a tribute to those who have served this country. However, these are not normal times. We’ve written many times on this blog about the unpredictable nature of spring in Wisconsin. Consistent with this, Memorial Day 2013 was rainy and 50 degrees. The sign at Hoyt Park Pool says it best:

More importantly, Melissa can’t really travel because of her gravid state. So we forwent camping and instead spent the weekend puttering around. On Monday Chris worked on his upcoming grant submissions while Melissa and Everett prepared the house for our new arrivals: the next major step is to move Everett into his new bedroom to make room in the nursery.

Despite the cool weather on Memorial Day it is really starting to feel like summer. Everett is spending much more time outside, and has significantly more dirt under his fingernails and toenails. He is also developing a new level of independence. He has a growing sense of confidence in his navigation skills, and comfort with the idea of venturing further from his parents without direct supervision. Twice during our recent Y-Tribe camping trip he hiked across camp without Chris (who was secretly following him). Since then he has asked if he can walk by himself to other houses on the street such as Joseph’s and Maddie’s or Adam’s and Jacob’s (those of you who are questioning apostrophe use in this sentence are advised to checkout the Apostrophe Protection Society and consider listening to Apostrophe Apostasy in full stereo). When Melissa expressed concern about him venturing out on his own he said “Now remember, Mom.  If you can’t see me, just relax yourself, take a deep breath, and know that I’m still alive.” Another sign of independence is his desire for less supervision when he is with his friends. One day recently Melissa told him he was going to Mary’s house for a couple hours during errands. “Oh, you mean a one Mom play date?!?” It seems that play dates are good, and one Mom play dates are better. We can probably infer that zero Mom play dates would be best.

All of this outside time has cut into roughhousing. In fact, the last time we recall major amounts of roughhousing was during Matt’s & Katie’s wedding weekend with Uncle Boy. Boy is a very experienced roughhouser, which is likely the result of three children and nine grandchildren. Everett must have sensed this and they got into it repeatedly over the weekend. One thing Chris noted from watching them is that Uncle Boy was very good at tiring Everett out without expending a lot of energy himself. They played a game where Boy would cover his eyes with a pillow and try to catch Everett on the couch.

They also played another game called “got that bug!” with a lizard. Not sure exactly how this worked but there was a lot of running involved and a rubber lizard that flew through the air often.

One year at the Sundance Film Festival Chris saw the documentary Ski Bums which was so memorable that he later shared with Melissa. From that movie we learned the term “ground score”, which was used to describe all of the valuable things that are found under chairlifts at ski resorts after the snow melts. The term applies equally well to bicycling. Chris has been finding stuff for years and now Everett has joined in: cell phones, keys, tools, garden implements, workbenches, ladders, etc. In the past week we have found a new baseball, four baseball gloves and a pair of biking gloves. One of the downsides to riding the Bakfiets is that we have room to carry all of this stuff, and therefore we have one less excuse not to pick it up.

On a potentially related subject, we have noted in the past that in Everett’s view the world is filled with treasures that are waiting to be collected. One recent morning during our ride to school we stopped a couple times so that he could put handfuls of rocks, gravel and dirt into the cup holder on his trail-a-bike. Another example: as we started clearing the lawn a few weeks ago, tears were shed because we were putting too many sticks in the yard waste recycling bin. Our neighbor Dennis attempted to help the situation by showing Everett his giant pile of sticks, providing assurance that we are unlikely to run out, at least in the next few months.

During the Y-Tribe camping trip a few weeks ago Everett and Chris hiked the boardwalk across the marsh. Along the way we discovered cattails and experimented with different ways of releasing spores. At the end of the boardwalk we climbed a hill and threw rocks for a while. We found a fallen tree that was decomposing in a curious way into roughly prismatic chunks of wood (and we took some samples home to show Mom).

In that same area we found a 20 foot rope tied to two trees, which we freed and which Everett took everywhere with him for the rest of the weekend.

For the most part this worked out fine except for the 10 minutes that Chris left Everett alone and he came back with rope burns on his neck from riding down the tube run (in his defense, Chris didn’t know this is what Everett was planning, or that the Dads at the tube would let him take the rope along with him (assuming any Dads were present)).

The other Dads watched Everett walking around camp with his rope, sticks and rocks. One of them joked “Don’t you buy him any toys?”, and Chris replied that many people had but he was more interested in outside treasures.

Matt and Katie got married this weekend in Cincinnati.

Our entire family was part of the wedding party: Melissa was a bridesmaid, Chris was a groomsman and Everett was the ring bearer. It was a beautiful event, and an honor for each of us to be a part of the wedding. Matt and Katie both seemed calm, confident and happy throughout the entire weekend. On Monday morning they left for the Caribbean for a couple weeks. Congratulations Matt & Katie!!!

We left Wauwatosa on Wednesday evening around 5pm and made it to Indianapolis before stopping for the night at one of our semi-regular La Quinta locations. We woke on Thursday morning at 6:30am to an actual alarm clock (not Everett) that was set at full volume. Afterward, Chris attempted to walk with Everett to Starbucks, and Everett made it clear what an incredible burden it was to walk that far. Rough start. We arrived at Gabby and Grandaddy’s house later in the morning. Family and friends trickled in, and most of the day Thursday and Friday was spent visiting with people, which for Chris was interspersed with the two grant applications he was working on. Trinity came over Friday morning, which ensured that Everett had almost nonstop entertainment.

On Friday afternoon we went to the church for rehearsal. It’s the first time Chris has been to a Catholic church where the pews had cushions on the seats (when we were kids the pews were made of wood or stone with spikes on the seats). Everett’s job was to carry the ring pillow and walk down the isle with Trinity, who was a junior bridesmaid. He did a good job in his role in the ceremony, but he and Trinity both had a lot of difficulty sitting still otherwise (to be fair, Chris still has a very difficult time sitting still in church). On the way to the rehearsal dinner afterward we (Chris & Melissa) were in the front seat of the car, and Everett was in his carseat in the second row, and we had a talk with him about what constitutes good behavior for a wedding, and how this differs from appropriate behavior in other situations. One nice feature of the new car is that the front passengers and rear passengers can listen to different audio sources. So when we were finished talking to Everett we looked in the back seat and found he was watching a movie with headphones on. Good talk.

For his role as a ring bearer and for his upcoming birthday Everett received several gifts at the rehearsal dinner: a legend of animal tracks, a magnifying glass, a lantern, a compass, binoculars and a bug holder. Soon afterward he announced that he was a paleontologist. He went around the room collecting T-rex eyeballs and teeth from the confetti on each table. He also informed us that one of the bowls on our table was filled with T-rex nose hairs, which sounds much less appetizing than grated Parmesan cheese.

The wedding was on Saturday evening. During the day on Saturday the women got ready at Gabby and Grandaddy’s house while the men went to Mark Auer’s house. Around 3:30 we all met at the Centennial Barn for pictures, and then to the church for the big event. During the rehearsal the photographer had pulled Chris aside and said that some ring bearers freeze halfway up the isle once they realize how many people are watching them, and if that happens that I should be prepared to walk down and help Everett finish. Chris replied that he would be very surprised if this happened, and he was right. Everett and Trinity did a great job – they both appeared calm and confident as they walked down the isle together. Honestly, the biggest problem was that Everett was overheating (it was a very warm day both outside and inside the church) and his wool tuxedo didn’t help.

After the ceremony we returned to the Barn for the reception. Melissa did not tear it up on the dance floor, which certainly goes against her nature. Being seven months pregnant can do that to a woman. In contrast, Everett was a wild man. He showed us his spins and got right into the crowd. He got very upset when Chris left the floor and went upstairs. Fortunately, Chris redeemed himself by bringing back some wedding cake.

During the garter toss Matt shot off a confetti cannon. It turned out that the confetti consisted of strips of paper with the phone numbers of single women who were present during the bouquet toss (not sure how he managed to pull this off). The maid of honor was Becca. Everett danced with her off and on all night, and somehow he found the piece of paper with her number on it and held onto it. At around 11pm he told us that he wanted to go home. Before we could leave he found Becca and said “I’m tired and my feet hurt, but I’ll call you on Monday”. On the way home he asked “Can we invite Becca over for a play date? Or can she watch me sometime?” He also wants to get her a birthday present.

Everett woke up Sunday morning and said “We hit it hard last night, and it hit back!” Next he asked “Do we still have Becca’s phone number?”

Here are some photos from the rehearsal dinner, and here are some of the wedding. As always, these are disproportionately of Everett, with a few of other people mixed in. Anyone who comes to this website knows what they are getting into.

Peanut butter is a staple in our house. Chris has eaten prodigious amounts of it for years. Everett has it on his waffles in the morning, and he now eats peanut butter and jelly as often as he can, though he has recently started to branch out a little. Tonight he had a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich for dinner. The other night he added capers to his dinnertime peanut butter and jelly…and he reported that it was delicious. Interestingly, this type of dinner is not enough to fill him up. Last weekend at Ella’s Deli he ordered the peanut butter and jelly platter with french fries, apple sauce and a vanilla shake he shared with Mom. When he was done he reported “I’m full. But my dessert tank is empty!” In lieu of any of the 26 flavors of ice cream, he walked over to the treat section with Mom and picked out some rock candy, which as Chris pointed out comes in a very natural blue color. “Dada, are you using sarcasm?”

Everett has recently been trying to more specifically identify our roles. He know that Chris is a scientist and an engineer. He also knows that Mama is a scientist, though he isn’t quite sure what kind (we have noticed a similar level of confusion about bioethics among adults). Occasionally when Everett is explaining the workings of the world around him he will start sentences with “Well Dada is a scientist and an engineer and he says that…”, and this can be used to explain anything from the laws of physics to why you shouldn’t wear socks at night (or at any other time really – they cut off circulation).

A few months ago Everett got a glimpse of an iPad app that I (Chris) developed at work with the help of some colleagues. It’s a clinical decision support system for physicians who treat Parkinson’s disease. I was moving his finger toward the Home button to switch to a more child-friendly app when Everett said “Woah woah woah!” and asked me to explain what we were looking at and how it works. When I was done describing it he put his arm around my shoulder and said “You are a great scientist.”

Today Everett was conducting experiments with food coloring, salt and suntan lotion. In the midst of his experiments he told Melissa “I’m probably going to grow up to be a scientist.”

Sometime in the last couple years Everett became interested in Jimmy Neutron. One funny part of the original movie is when the alien king’s assistant decides that he will be the one to examine a toaster that has arrived from earth, at which point he announces “I am the official checker of new things to be checked.” Everett mistook “official” for “efficient” and it stuck, which explains the malapropism in the title of today’s blog entry. We have been celebrating Mother’s Day for the last 24 hours with a trip to the Wisconsin Dells. Chris sprung this on Melissa late Saturday afternoon. We spent about 30 minutes getting ready and then left around 5:30pm. First stop: Ella’s Deli in Madison. It’s been our tradition for the past two years to eat there on our way to the Dells for Mother’s Day. This year we took a close look at the menu and realized there are a few items we just aren’t familiar with such as Phosphates (some kind of drink) and Boolkies (presumably some kind of bread since it is listed in the “Bagels or Boolkies” section). Other notable things about Ella’s are: the vast collection of kitschy animatronics including the backlit mechanical aquarium under the glass at our table; the carousel, which we rode after dinner.

This year we decided to change our tradition a bit. The past two years we have gone to the Great Wolf Lodge and have loved it. However, water slides are frowned upon for pregnant women, so the things that Melissa could do in the water were limited. The Great Wolf Lodge has a tiny lazy river for floating, while the neighboring resort to the east has the longest indoor lazy river in the country (or so their website says). So this year we decided to try the Kalahari Resort. We arrived around 9pm, got settled in and everyone went to sleep a little after 10pm. The next morning we had breakfast at the Log Cabin in Baraboo. By about 9:30am we were in the water. Everett is just over 42″ tall, which means he is eligible for many more water slides than in past years. There were only a handful that he couldn’t ride this year. Among them were a couple where you stand in a vertical chute and a trap door opens under you (we didn’t try this). Another was a tube that shoots you into a spiral flume. Once you lose speed and slide toward the center you are dropped several feet into a pool of water, and as Chris demonstrated there is simply no way to do this gracefully. We stayed the day and headed home around 4:30. We adhered to our schedule remarkably well.

It was a lot of fun and definitely worth the trip. However, all three of us independently came to the conclusion that the Great Wolf Lodge edges out Kalahari as our favorite. Melissa and Chris feel that both places take safety seriously, but we also agreed that the employees at the Great Wolf Lodge did so to a greater degree. They were vigilant, bordering on obsessive. Everett liked the fact that the wolf howls before the wave pool starts. Lastly, floating on the lazy river didn’t quite work out the way we imagined. Melissa gets great relief from being in the water, but it turns out to be quite difficult for a woman who is seven months pregnant to get into an inner tube and get comfortable.

As we were leaving the resort tonight Everett announced to us and to Gabby (who was on the phone) that he was NOT tired, but he was very hungry. Chris gave him a cup of yogurt and a spoon, and since this was a long trip he got to watch Finding Nemo in the movie car on the way home. We discovered that movie watching and eating might not be a great combination for the new car. Everett is normally pretty tidy when he eats, but within a few minutes his shirt, carseat and even the car headphones were covered in yogurt. The good news is that this was our first food spill and that the car has now been christened!

Curiously, 30 minutes later Everett was snoring, which continued until we were a few minutes from home.

Here are a few photos and videos from the trip.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Moms in our life!

Spring is springing, at least in the halting manner that it does in Wisconsin. Some days are very warm, and some days (like today) the temperatures are back in the 40s. On a distantly related subject, Chris has been growing his hair since last fall, partly in the hopes of joining the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). However, he recently had to get it trimmed for two reasons. First, Matt and Katy are getting married next week (!!!). Chris and Melissa are both in the wedding, and we wanted to make an effort to look presentable. Second, he just gets too hot while bicycling. Yesterday when we rode to school it was in the 50s, but even in shorts, a t-shirt and sandals he was sweating profusely (perhaps this could be an excuse to get a lightweight, custom-made titanium Bakfiets?). How do the Dutch handle this problem? To understand this issue, first note that there are two major differences between cycling in the U.S. and the Netherlands: 1) The Dutch embrace bicycling in everyday life; 2) Americans wear helmets. If you have any doubt about either of these then take a look at this. Only in the Netherlands would someone object to a hill with a 3% grade! The combination of flat terrain and greater ventilation from the absence of helmets might explain why Dutch bicyclists never appear to to be sweating, and why a bike as heavy as the Bakfiets sells so well.

Bicycling to school and work is part of our daily routine. However, this week has been a little rough in that regard. On Monday Everett did not want to get on the bike. He was crying and whining from before we left the house until we were more than halfway to school:
“I hate the bike.”
“I hate riding the bike.”
“I want to go in the car.”
Chris: “Why do you want to go in the car?”
“Because I like my carseat and I want to listen to kid music and I just don’t want to be on the bike!”

So for the rest of the week we made an effort to leave a little earlier each morning and have an adventure on the way to school. On Tuesday we went to the Hippo Playground for the first time in many months. On Wednesday we went by the three ponds with whale spouts (Daddy, Mommy and Baby) and looked for ducks. We didn’t find any ducklings but we did find four adult mallards (we aren’t sure yet where the babies are this year). On Thursday we went geocaching and then fed the geese at a nearby pond.


Since we started riding the cargo bike a couple years ago, Everett has had zero interest in learning to ride his own bike, and to be honest we don’t really blame him. But as we approached school on Thursday morning he asked a question that Chris has been waiting years for: “Dada I want to learn to ride my own bike. Can you teach me?” Yes!

This morning as we passed the village on the way to school there was a strong smell of bacon wafting through the air. They must have been cooking up $1.99 BOB (Baskets of Bacon) at the Chancery, and I am now wondering if we can place a to-go order and share it during our daily commute, and if so why we haven’t been doing this for the past couple years. Anyway, Chris mentioned the smell and Everett immediately said “That smells like the bacon at Gabby’s house!”. And after being asked for details, he went on the clarify that the smell is different from our house. The boy knows his bacon.

This morning was a little rough, perhaps because Everett woke up early (around 6am). He did not want to go to school or ride the bike. Tears were shed when we told him he had to pick up the garbage he left on the stairs. Nonetheless, Chris wanted to reinforce the fact that bicycling encourages adventures and diversions as long as we get to school on time. Everett found a golf ball on each of our last two geocache searches, and this led to two things. First, we cut one of the golf balls in half with a hack saw last night (a bit explosive but fun!). Second, Chris told him the story about Bryon, a friend from graduate school who had amassed a huge collection of golf balls during his daily bike commute and put them in a bowl next to the hors d’oeuvres at his dissertation. So this morning as we were passing Hansen Golf Course Everett asked if we could hop out and look for golf balls. The first thing he wanted to do was satisfy his curiosity about the tee markers. Next we tromped around for a few minutes looking for balls (didn’t find any). Fortunately, by the time we got to school (with one minute to spare!) he was back to his normal self.