oh, what a week!
May 29, 2007, 1:49 pm
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Yesterday we returned from a wonderful week’s vacation in Illinois. Most of the time we were with Jeni, Nathan, Noah and Lily in their beautiful home and fun back yard. Huck got to go to the zoo twice and he also went fishing for the first time. Now that we're back he's enjoying telling everyone about the snake (worm) and the cirlcle (bobber) and winding up (reeling in) the blue fish he caught (lie).
Everyone had things to do (work, school, trip to Chicago) except for the two year olds, so Lily and Huck spent a lot of time hanging out together. There were several moments when I realized that toddlers remind me of the extremely senile elderly. They would sit side by side in the sand box doing their own thing, sort of mumbling and talking to each other occasionally but never actually hearing each other. Once they were swinging and Lily asked Huck if he wore diapers or underwear and he said that he wears diapers and she said that she does too and then Lily asked him if he was a boy and he said that yes he was a boy and she said that she was a girl. That was the most intense conversation they had. One day Lily came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, "Yesternight Huckleberry took my grape." Another time they were watching the strange "Potty Time" video, chuckling and sort of singing along when Huck turned to Scrapper (my nickname for Lily because it describes her so well) and pointed out that blue is azul, as if that had anything to do with anything. She looked at him like he was from another planet and then they probably wet themselves. We people start off as completely dependent and somewhat confused and most of us end up that way, too.
While swinging one day Huck was introduced to poo-poo humor. I was pushing the two drunken cavepeople when Lily shouted, “You’re a poo-poo, JJ!” Huck laughed so hard he almost fell off his swing as he joined in the game screaming, “Mommy's a doo-doo! Mommy's a soo-soo! Mommy's a boo-boo!” Oh, this game never, ever got tiring!
Huck also learned about blood (stubbed toes) and death (roly poly) and at one point had two six year olds shooting at him with their pretend machine guns while he quietly watched and ate goldfish crackers. Quite honestly, I think it was thrilling for him to have such attention paid to him by his cool cousin Noah, whose birthday we got to celebrate on the 22nd.
Aunt Jeni and Uncle Nathan took very good care of Huck while Troy and I drove to Chicago and stayed in a hotel as an anniversary treat. We were gone for a total of 30 hours, certainly my world record, and we all did quite well. I knew Huck would be fine without me but it was wonderful to hear how well he did. And Troy and I had a fantastic time in our old town. First we drove to the neighborhood where we lived for two years, Bucktown, and went to look at our garden apartment at 1838 Wolcott Avenue. It was a little heartbreaking to see in its place a brand new mansion. After gasping and taking lots of pictures of the spot where our house used to be, we headed over to the Northside Café and ate a delicious lunch in the sunshine while looking at the glowing review for CHALK in the Chicago Reader, a paper we used to read all the time. We even excitedly showed our server the article and our pictures and she promised she would go see the movie.
Our friend Dan took very good care of us during our brief stay, even sending a stretch limo to pick us up at our hotel on Michigan Avenue and take us to the movie theater. The place was packed and we couldn’t have been happier with the response to our little film. We got to do a Q&A afterwards and people seemed genuinely determined to invite everyone they knew. Leading this group was high school teacher Julia Magana, a friend who we haven't seen since she gave us our eight pound puppy Max 13 years ago, right before we moved to Austin. After the movie Dan and Michele threw us a party at their amazing home, filling our bodies with wonderful food and drink. We also got to do three radio interviews in Chicago, including their local NPR show, and I've decided I would like to be a professional radio interviewee.
CHALK played for a week in LA and is still playing in Austin, Dallas and Chicago. The box office numbers are good – we were #4 in the nation on a per-screen average last week – and our hope is to get it all over the country. San Diego, St. Louis, New York and Atlanta are next. We’ve gotten almost all good reviews and you can read some of them here:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chalk/
Anyway, fun as Chicago was, it was even better to get back to Huck. Now here are a whole lot of pictures documenting our amazing week away!
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[ 4 comments ] ( 44 views )fifteen
May 16, 2007, 2:01 pm
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Fifteen years ago today Troy and I skipped our college graduation ceremony and got married instead. We had just turned 22 and were positive we wanted to spend our whole lives together. We were not sure about having kids but we were definitely sure we wanted to be actors. And as I think back to that long ago time, no one discouraged us. Everyone seemed to be as sure about us as we were.
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Thirteen years later and we were new parents, finally feeling as sure about this decision as we had about the original one. I remember toward the end of my pregnancy saying to Troy something about it being hard to imagine that this baby would be with us all the time. Would we get tired of him? Would we look back on our pre-baby freedom and miss it? As soon as we met Huck we knew we would never get tired of him. And that pre-baby freedom was fine, but everything with Huck is better.
So happy anniversary, Troy! And thank you, Huck, for making our life together even happier.
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[ 10 comments ] ( 81 views )
not a pie
May 11, 2007, 9:43 pm
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This evening after his bath Huck walked up to me looking exactly like this picture, holding his beloved chapsticks that he almost always has in his hands. I shouted, "You are a cutesie pie!" And he very seriously and non-cutesy-like stated, "I am not a cutesie pie. I am a CHILD."
He eventually admitted he was a cutesie child but not a pie.
Yesterday at the playground we shared a popsicle and after one of my turns he said (also very seriously and non-cutesy-like), "That was a big bite, Mommy. Good job. Wow." It really made me feel good about my popsicle eating skills. [ 3 comments ] ( 35 views )
the latest
May 7, 2007, 12:13 pm
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In the last few weeks Huck has become absurdly articulate. A friend said he sounds like a foreign exchange student trying really hard to be understood, which is probably how a two year old feels most of the time. A drunken foreign exchange student caveman. He’s also beginning to sound like us, saying things like “what are you thinking about?” and “what is going on in here?” and “good job” and “be careful,” and “that is dangerous” and “this is quite a mess” and "don't say that" and “that was funny” and "darn it" and "look at my wonderful, wonderful hair-cut." And this last weekend he happily declared, “I hate worms.” THANK GOD!
In sports news, Huck has become a world class champion Frisbee thrower, shocking all passers-by with his unbelievable skills at throwing and sometimes catching his beloved orange circle. He’s also crazy about “basing the ball,” which is to say hitting balls with his tiny maraca as a bat.
When we’re inside Huck and I design beautiful Legos houses together. Unfortunately we don’t always see eye to eye on where the bathroom should go, say, or where Michael’s drawing office should be. (Michael always lives in our Legos homes.) Huck loves to put trees in very inappropriate places, like on top of the door or right in the living room, and I’m beginning to think he’s doing it to make me crazy. Sometimes when he’s not around I will secretly build a house all by myself. Yesterday when Huck woke up from his nap I excitedly showed him the house I built and he said, “I am going to knock it down,” as he violently destroyed my creation with a slightly evil smile on his face. Since I’m in my late 30s I held back the tears and tried to be strong, reminding myself there will be more naps.
Meanwhile, Huck is much, much younger than I am and not always able to hold in his very real emotions. When he’s genuinely sad and vulnerable he does this thing that just about kills me. He looks down and stares at the ground for a few seconds. Then his little mouth becomes the saddest frown you ever saw and his lips begin quivering. It’s like he’s trying to be strong, trying not to cry like a baby but he just can’t help it. And then the uncontrollable sobbing begins. Oh, it breaks my heart every time and I just hope he doesn’t start figuring out how to do this in a discipline situation because I cannot resist grabbing him and doing whatever it takes to make him happy again.
Something that makes all three of us happy is the arrival of Tiffany’s parents (Mimi and Poppy). They moved to New York last week and are living in a beautiful apartment just around the corner from us. They’re like surrogate grandparents to Huck and it’s so much fun to have them here. While we were preparing for their arrival I asked Huck what he was going to do when he saw Mimi and he said, “I will kiss her on the lips or the chin or the mouth.” And he did.
We are still anxiously awaiting the arrival of baby Rosie Guy, due any time now! We are very excited to kiss her on the lips, chin and mouth, too. Happy birthday tomorrow, Tia Rosie!
In non-Huck news, one of my essays got published in our church denomination’s national magazine “The Church Herald” this month! (The original, unedited version of it can be found here on our website and is called “Paying Attention.”)
And lastly, tonight Morgan Spurlock will be on the Conan O’Brien Show promoting CHALK! That’s on NBC at 11:30 CST/12:30 EST. I for one will be watching it on my VCR Tuesday morning. Also Troy was mentioned in yesterday’s New York Times in a little blurb about the movie, and it officially opens this Friday in LA!
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[ 6 comments ] ( 59 views )