Decisions

Max contemplates keeping the jack to go for the more likely knobs cut or keeping the inside double run possibility and going for the big score.

Hat Fashion Show

Two Months!

Max turned two months old on August 8th!  He weighed in at 12 pounds 3 ounces at his check up.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame...

Max attended his first baseball game on Thursday, August 2nd.  Our hometown Minnesota Twins were in town for the weekend and we were excited for Max to experience some great baseball.  And it didn't hurt that the Twins showed Max how the game should be played by beating the Red Sox 5 to 0.

Max loved Fenway!  He "talked" to the people around us and stared at the lights.  He didn't exactly pay attention to the game but was content to take in all of the sights, smells and sounds of the ballpark.  When he had had enough, he cuddled up to his mom in his Baby Bjorn and slept.  Next year should be even more fun!

One Month!

It's hard to believe that this was just a month ago...

One Month (July 8th)

Family Picture Time

Coordinating a family picture just got a little more complicated...

Visitors!

Max had a very busy June and early July with visitors from Minnesota.  We are hoping that he listened to their Minnesotan accents...

Grandma Nancy came to visit first. While she was here Max took his first visit to the Roslindale Farmers Market and his first nature walk at the Stony Brook Reservation.  She was a ton of help around the house and got lots of snuggle time in with Max.

We had about a week by ourselves and then my sister Kris arrived.  Kris is an excellent burper and even took over a couple of the night time/early am feedings!

Then Grandma Patty and Papa Mitch arrived.  They helped us catch up on our yard work and babysat while Phoebe went to the vet.

Baby Name Thought Process

(Theme music) Maa-a-ax Sherva, he's the maximum level of Sherva in the world...

Chief, the terrorists are holding the hostages in the nuclear power plant!
I know, it looks grim.
We need Seal Team Six!
Yevchenko and those terrorists would eat Seal Team Six for breakfast, plus we can't risk causing a nuclear meltdown...I hate to say it, but the only chance we have is to go to Max Sherva.
But Chief, the Sherva level in the reactor is already dangerously high! I don't think we can risk any more Sherva!
I didn't say we needed more Sherva, Judy, I said we needed Max Sherva...

 
Oh God, surely you don't mean...
He's the only chance we've got.
But Chief, he's a sexy, dangerous maverick who plays and poops and loves by his own rules!
That may be true, Judy, but he's the best damn hostage negotiator slash terrorist killer slash nuclear reactor defuser the world has ever seen.
But Chief, the last time we used him on a job, infant and toddler pregnancies went up 37 percent!
And if it weren't for that crop of abnormally brave and sexy newborn commandos we'd all be speaking baby Taliban right now.
But Chief, Max Sherva is...
 ...Two hours past needing a fresh diaper, Judy?
Max!

Long time no see, Judy.

You've got a lot of nerve showing your cherubic face around here!
Sorry about the way things went down in Helsinki, Judy, but are we going to sit around all day debating who threw which terrorists into which nuclear reactors and saving which hostages slash creating which radioactive terrorists or are we going to get Yevchenko slash free those hostages slash secure that plutonium?

(Later, teetering on the edge of the cooling tower)

Mwahaha!  Don't you see, Max?, you already lost!  The hostages are buried in cement and reactor mass is already critical!

You're forgetting four things, Yevchenko.  One: I gave all the hostages cement snorkels when you were busy overriding the automatic reactor failsafe valve.  Two: that cement will shield them from the radioactive fallout.  And three: I invited every terrorist in the world to a fake terrorist rave party...at this very nuclear reactor...tonight...which means every terrorist in the world is currently receiving one million millirems of ionizing radiation per minute while they're dancing the terrorist Macarena.

Curses!  Well played Max, but I still have gun which means I shoot you dead and...wait, what was fourth thing?

You're standing in my soiled diaper, Yevchenko...and I had pureed bananas for dinner.
(Yevchenko slips and falls into the reactor core) Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax! Sherva!     
Adieu, Yevchenko, Adieu...Or should I say, "Agoo."  

Maa-a-ax Sherva, he's the maximum level of Sherva in the world!

And scene.  

Yep, Max Manford Sherva it is.

Nursery

The guest room has been officially transformed into the nursery.  Don't worry, we still have room for guests so come visit us!

Before

After

The Great Baby Gear Heist of 2012

(To be read in the slick-talking east coast criminal voice of your choosing)

We left real late at night, see, under cover of darkness...harder for people to see our plates. Packed light, would need the trunk space later for "the goods." Headed east on the Mass Pike, crossed into New York sometime around midnight. Started raining. Made it real hard to see since our wipers sucked. Hadn't needed them all winter. Harder to drive but harder to see our plates too, gotta cover your tracks, don't take no chances. We drove all night and through the next day. Laughed at a sign for Fangboner Road in Ohio.

Heh heh hee...Fangboner. C'mon, even us hardened criminals like a good laugh. Ok that's enough. Back to the caper. We thought about stopping to see some of our "associates" in Chicago, but we had bigger fish to fry. We pushed on and rolled in to my brother and Danita's place outside Minneapolis exactly 23.5 hours after we left Boston.

The next day we had Liz's mom do our taxes. When the great criminals go down, it's always for tax evasion. Ya gots to have a good tax person if you don't want to end up in the pokey, blind and syphilis-ridden.

That night we met up with some of the old gang at Town Hall Brewery to cool our heels a bit before the capering. The Schulz's came all the way up from Northfield, where they are more feared than Jesse James and his gang. The Neshes (who are planning their own baby heist), Reeses, Walkowiaks, Kovalas, Peiks, and Kerns showed up too. We had some laughs.

The loot grab began in earnest on Saturday. It's almost too easy, like taking candy from babies except for the candy is actually things babies use and you take it from other people and not actual babies and all's you have to do is have a pregnant lady show up somewhere, throw a few bucks worth of chicken chili in a crockpot, and everyone gives you tons of free stuff on their own free will and you don't have to "take" so much as "receive." Got it? Even people who can't show up for the free chili SEND gifts in the mail. My aunts Lori and Lois sent us an entire baby stroller and got not a single scoop of chili! There's a sucker born every minute, as the saying goes. The best part: I didn't have to do nothin'--I played some golf with some "associates" while Liz worked her magic.

Saturday Shower at Alli's

We pulled a second job that night at Amy and Andy's place. We haven't been on that softball team in 7 years and they STILL gave us a bunch of loot. We also got the most hilarious gag shower gift ever designed by Kristy Rolig. It's too hard to explain bu t it was "from" a couple we used to bowl against, Herb and Vicki. Herb killed a guy after 'Nam and was in the St. Peter hospital. The gift included Winstons, lighters, and defaced stuffed animals.

The final phase of the operation was on Sunday at a nondescript community room in a senior citizens condo. Might have been Liz's grandma. Not sayin' for sure so as not to implicate her. After bowling a few games, I showed up at the end to help load the loot into the getaway car...during which time we notices a little problem: there was no way we were going to get all the loot into our '78 Challenger (car year and model changed to protect the innocent). We stuffed everything we could into space bags so as not to transport air across state lines. We ended up having to return a bunch of stuff, get gift cards, and re-buy them once we got back to MA, which if you think about it is really like stealing gas. To really top things off, my brother, a legitimate businessman, gave us a free new set of wipers that "fell off a truck" at his legitimate business. And since no self-respecting caper wouldn't involve the transport of alcohol, we got some discounted wine and Surly from Vinifera Wines and Ales, along with a discounted bottle of scotch which I later sold to a co-worker. OK, now here's the best part...the thing that's really gonna put us in the criminal hall of fame along with Bonnie and Clyde and and the diaper astronaut: we grabbed three Diet Cokes for the drive home from my mom's place...you see where I'm going with this? That's right--street value in Massachusetts: 15 cents. yep, 3/5th of two bits, allllll profit.

Sunday Shower

In short, it's good to have family and friends...you know, to fleece.

St. Pats in Southie

We crossed another item off our "things you have to do to be considered a true Bostonian" list* when we finally attended the annual St. Patrick's day parade in Southie earlier today. It was an experience to say the least. Just getting there was an adventure; the trains were packed. Like, India packed. Like European football game stampede packed. Like one toxic fart away from killing an entire subway car full of people packed. But we finally made it onto a train and soon joined the wasted throngs to watch the parade. Luckily Liz's friend Erin from school and her opera singing boyfriend David were there to protect the fetus from any Irish jostling.


Well, we saw things. Bad things. Five year old boys fist fighting while their parents watched? Check ("You need to stop fighting and cussing," said one of the moms as they walked away. At least she was trying). Extreme intoxication? Oh yes. Thirteen year olds smoking? Yup. Public drama? Oh you better believe there was public drama. Hoochies? As far as the eye could see. Sunburned gingers? Yes. Weeping? Also yes. We saw a belligerently civic minded girl spot a discarded paper bag (among a sea of litter), pick it up, and yell "Who! FU#KIN!' litters!?" "YOU'RE littering the streets...with your profanity!" yelled a clever guy. Liz and I were discussing whether this event or the St. Louis Mardi Gras bacchanal was trashier. We deemed it a draw.

The parade itself was, in a word, shitty, even by parade standards. The first thing in the parade, a recycling truck, really set the tone. This was followed by several SWAT trucks and paddy wagons, many of which were likely occupied. A show of force right off the bat was probably a good reminder to all the Southie hoodlums and their kids.

OK, the bagpipers and world war II reenacters were cool, but that was it.

There were all these weird gaps in the parade flow, as if it was planned by hungover Irishmen or something. They didn't even have port-a-potties or food for sale. We did see Scott Brown, so there's that.

"The Emperor says if I lose fifteen more pounds a Speederbike will be able to hover with me on it. Then I'll get deployed to Endor for sure. Finally kill me a coupla' them Ewoks."

We were glad we went but it might be our last time. Since we were all dead sober, I told Liz we owed it to ourselves to try it one more time hammered. You know, after the kid is old enough to drive us but too young to drink. I reckon that would give us a narrow window between age 14 and 14.5 by Southie standards. After an arduous bus trip, we retired to the relative calm of Roslindale for corned beef, cabbage, and a Murphy's. Real dignified like.

*Other list items include: finishing the Boston marathon, bayoneting a Redcoat, sexual intercourse with an Affleck and/or Wahlberg, beating up a MIT geek, Truck Day (yes, this is an actual thing), getting tossed out of Cheers before noon on a Sunday, having a verbal altercation with someone in Yankee garb on the Green Line, murdering somone on Craigslist, and summering on Nantucket.

I'm a bad bad man

Things have been quite good of late. Liz's oven timer is over half way to indicating the bun is done, and she's been generally feeling pretty good. She's been going to pregnant lady yoga and still hits the treadmill regularly. Except for the ever growing bump (which now kicks), the biggest difference is that she's been snoring a lot more than usual. The things I'm expected to put up with. Sheesh. The most recent series of ultrasonic waves bounced off a (what appeared to my untrained eye to be a quite impressive) penis so there's that. Other than the stockpiling some baby equipment, which I'm sure Liz would be happy to tell you all about, that's all the baby news.

I try to be nice but sometimes I'm not. Last night I went to a concert with a friend from work. The "band" is called Die Antwoord and they're a South African hip-hop duo but it's really more about performance art. The members are "Ninja" and Yo-landi Visser, pictured below.



Their schtick is that they act super tough and gangster but then say and do highly un-gangster, un-tough things. The hip hop is mediocre but the overall persona is pretty fun. Anyways, it was an interesting crowd and although we weren't the oldest people there, we were in the upper percentiles. I was packed in behind a tall, thin, person with about a two-inch-long afro. This person was jumping around with abandon, and in order to prevent him from spilling my beer, I was holding out a hand or elbow to absorb the shock when he jumped into me. After a few minutes of this, he turned around, revealing himself to be a girl, and said "If you put your hand on me again I'm going to punch you in the face." I just laughed. A few minutes later she started jumping into my friend Mark, and yelled at him when he started jumping right along with her. I then said to her "If it makes you feel any better ma'am, I thought you were a dude." She said, "Oh, nice, nice" and walked away. I felt proud of myself.

I also try to not use ethnic stereotypes for comedic value but sometimes I do. Today we went to Costco. We have this running joke about Costco and it revolves around the fact that usually about half the people in Costco at any given time are Asian. "You know who loves Costco?" I'll say. "Who loves Costco?" Liz will say, making no attempt to hide the fact that she's humoring me. "Asians love Costco," I'll say. Costco can be a pretty big cluster on the weekends, but it was snowing a bit earlier today and I was wondering how that would affect the crowd levels. I wondered out loud whether the weather might have the Asians hiding out in their ramen bunkers. Liz called me a racist. When I saw the parking lot full of Toyotas I knew I was out of luck. For the record, I love Asians. Best behaved kids in all of Costco. Now the Greek guy that smashed Liz's pregnant belly between his cart and ours, that guy sucks. Later, in what can only be described as a Valentine's Day miracle, went to go buy our annual Valentine's Day steaks and found two big juicy prime porterhouses erroneously labeled and priced as choice flank steak. I probably should have notified someone in the meat department about their error, but as I said, I'm a bad, bad man.