DIRT: The Series

DISCRIMINATION AT COUNTY FAIRS

According to mommy and daddy August is not just the month most sane people flee the heat and humidity of DC it is also the month of county fairs here in the mid Atlantic. Boy did they sound exciting…fried Snickers, fun houses, and farm animals. You can’t really top that troika.

All in all the fair was everything that mommy and daddy had promised. A day of clean (well clean-ish…we did spend an awful lot of time in less than sanitary smelling cow barns) family fun. We started by attending the Hambone Express piglet races, although there was a brief detour to sample corn dogs. Mom made a dubious claim that this was only the second corn dog in her life. I don’t mean to call mom out or anything, but the way that she approached that corn dog stand made me seriously doubt this claim.

The day took a turn for the worse though when mom, dad and I attempted to partake in the age old tradition of carny rides. (Don’t worry Cooper was being held by our friends Dan and Lil) There were several that I had my eye on for my virgin experience. I was itching to get on the “Freak Out” a super cool looking ride where you were spun around flipped upside down and generally just freaked out I suppose. Got to the front of the line only to find I didn’t meet the height requirement. I was a little disappointed but not daunted. We can try the Scrambler I thought. That doesn’t throw you upside down so maybe it has a more reasonable height requirement. No luck again. I could go on naming all the rides at the carny that wouldn’t let someone of my stature on, but it would take too long. Instead I will tell you which rides my vertically challenged-self was allowed on…Dizzy Dragons and Dunebuggy Dinosaurs (pictured here). Now having names with dragons and dinosaurs would seem to imply a ride fraught with excitement, but I will have you know that the d alliteration in both names was really just preparing the shorter set for a capital “D” dull ride.
I am currently designing a diet and exercise regime so that I can attain the extra 12 inches I need for full access to the rides at next year’s county fairs.

COUSINS ROCK!

Having a sister is pretty darn cool, but she doesn’t really do much yet. When I spent two weeks with my Root cousins in the Adirondacks I did get a sample of how much cooler Cooper is going to be after she has a few years to grow up. The accompanying photos illustrate my findings…COUSINS ROCK!

**Co-Editor's note

Now that Cooper has arrived, I’ll be sharing this space with her – and even though she’s been very busy getting adjusted to her new surroundings and life outside mommy’s tummy, she did want to share a few thoughts. So I’m pleased to introduce…Ms. Cooper Elizabeth Smith!


WELL HELLOOOO WORLD!
Happy to meet you! As Henry mentioned, I’m still getting used to life ex utero, but Henry assures me there are lots of fun things to see and do, and already I’ve met lots of interesting people. I especially like my brother, but he’s starting to bug me a bit – he insists on pointing to and identifying my feet, my hands, my belly, my eyes, my ears…you get the picture. He’s very proud because he can say the words, but from my perspective, I end up just getting poked a lot.

Other than that, life is good. Apparently I’m very cute – it seems to be the one thing everyone agrees on when they first meet me, even if they differ on whether I look more like Daddy or Mommy. I’m also psyched to go shopping with mom…she pretends not to be a girly girl, but I seem to be in an awful lot of pink cutesy outfits.

I DIG CHICKS (a companion piece to my “CHICKS DIG ME” series)

You regular readers know that chicks do indeed dig me (see earlier entries) but I have recently discovered that I dig chicks. Actually there is one particular chick that I am into right now. Her name is Cooper Elizabeth Smith and she is my newly arrived little sister. She officially joined our family at 3:01 PM on May 19th, though she had been living inside mommy’s tummy for several months now. She weighed in at 8 lbs., 8 oz. and measured 21 in. I may be biased but I think she is the cutest newborn I have ever seen.

Here are the things I dig most about Cooper Elizabeth:

• Her soft fuzzy head. She has thick black hair covering her perfect pink head. It is the softest hair I have ever felt, tough mom and dad do not give me much chance to explore it freely…always mumbling something about soft spots, rambunctious 18 month olds, etc.


• She began her life living in a magic room. This room looks pretty normal when you first enter…a bed, a few chairs, a window, you know the usual stuff. Upon closer inspection you see the magic though. The bed can move up and down and backward and forward all with the press of a button. Very cool! You can also press buttons that make nurses magically talk to you even though they aren’t in the room. They usually sound a little annoyed to be buzzed again.


• Jello! Little known fact I think but with babies comes this thing called jello. I arrived to greet my newborn sister for the first time only to see this shimmering wiggling mound of goodness in the aforementioned magic room of my sister’s. It was sitting untouched on mommy’s tray of similarly untouched hospital food. I don’t know how mommy missed this yumminess, but I dug right in. It is slimy, but not too slimy; sweet, but not too sweet, finger food, but messy enough to have fun getting it all over your face and hair. Every time I visited Cooper Elizabeth in her magic room there was a plate of this stuff. I had never heard of this delicious concoction but boy do I know how to ask for it now.


• She is not a girly girl. Once I got the news that we had a girl child in the family I had some apprehension. Was the house going to be filled with sugar and spice and everything nice? Would daddy, Rufus and I have to start being sensitive, putting the toilet seat down and wearing pink? As far as I can tell no. Little Cooper Elizabeth is cute as can be and does tend to wear pink, but she is no girly girl. This girl can burp like, well, like my mommy.


• She takes up a lot of mommy’s time. This may seem to be a funny thing for an older sibling to like about a new baby so let me explain. Mommy has her hands full with Cooper lately. That leaves Daddy to look after me. We two men have had so much fun together. We have gone to museums, to the play rooms at IKEA, to Eastern Market, Lincoln Park, to Congressional Cemetery with Rufus, and shopping at Pentagon City. We play fun games like “Crazy eyez daddy” (see also curb your enthusiasm), WWF Super Slam, and our afternoon “scream-off.” And, like me, my dad really appreciates a good afternoon nap.


• She makes mommy and daddy really happy. Though mommy and daddy both have bags under their eyes right now and I have seen a significant drop in the occurrence of showers by both, I really have never seen them happier.

NEW PHOTO GALLERY OF LITTLE OL' ME

Another edition of the Henry worshipping that my parents take part in.

STAYING WITH GRAMMY AND ANDY
A few months back my parents started talking about a vacation in the Keys. I got really excited. In my short life I have heard something about the Keys and knew there were sunny, lazy days spent snorkeling, lounging and snoozing in my future. We all got packed up, found two saints to care for Rufus (believe me it is a two person job!) and headed to the airport. After an uneventful plane ride, we arrived at the airport to my Andy’s and Grammy’s open arms. It was a nice surprise, I hadn’t heard that they were going to be in the Keys too. We drove back to Grammy and Andy’s house and proceeded to pack up the car for our trip down to the Keys. I was a bit shocked when the next morning, mom and dad gave me a hug and a kiss, hopped in the car and toodled off for their vacation from ME! Don’t get me wrong staying with Grammy and Andy (and Phelps and Jackson) was a blast, but why in the world would mom and dad plan a vacation without me. Grrrrrrr….once my little brother or sister arrives we will have to do some serious renegotiation of their parental contract. My sibling and I will require the right of first refusal of any vacation plans at the very least. Anyway here are some photos of what was probably a very boring non-Henry vacation. I guess they each caught a big shark (one 90 pounds, 5 ft; one 200 pounds, 8 ft), slept a lot, lounged around a lot.

HAIRSTYLE IN CONFLICT
So as is probably pretty obvious from the attached photos I have little to no say in my hairstyle right now. It is pretty much up to my mom and dad. Lucky for their marital bliss, they seem to agree that they want to keep me au natural right now. No barber shop or salon in my near future. I guess I am ok with that and am glad that they can agree, but there seems to be some disparity in what exactly au natural means. My mom likes my long wavy tresses to play dress up with in somewhat questionable ways. See attached photo with my ponytail sticking up like a cute baby girl’s.

My dad on the other hand thinks my uncut hair looks like a skate rat's (I think he is try to “reclaim” his imagined cool teenager years through me). If you notice in the attached picture I really just look like a rat minus the skate. I had a glimmer of hope that I would get a decent haircut when I recently grandparentsat for my Grammy and Andy, but both were made to sign a document swearing not to touch my lovely lovely locks.

CHICKS DIG ME, PART TWO
An update to my Dec 5, 2005 posting. Now I have the photographic evidence. The girls just can’t get enough of me. I’ve got the young ones bathing with me, the medium ones fighting over who gets to hold me and the more experienced ones just gazing at me lovingly.

A PHOTO GALLERY DEDICATED TO LIL' OL' ME
So here are some photos of me taken over the last few months. I'll be updating again soon if my copy editor picks up her pace. If you are interested in seeing some of the best from my first 12 months check out a little photo montage (with accompanying music!) I put together at Henry's first year.

VISITING WITH CAMILLE
I recently got to visit with my cousin Camille in Arkansas. She is three months older than me and boy can I tell. She knows so much. For instance she knows how to climb to the top of a slide and go down and which way down is the most fun (tummy for sure). She also knows how to open and close doors on play houses and how to ring the doorbell. She also happens to be a great teacher, tough but fair in her critique of my execution of all activities. I learned a lot and can’t wait to visit again.

MY DADDY'S FUTURE PLANS

Drunk with power from his recent detail to the White House budget office, my father has been considering the next logical step in his career (at least if you are a democrat in this election season) and may be announcing his plans to form a presidential exploratory committee. He stumbled upon this portrait (see photo to the left) during our recent attendance at the White House Christmas open house and viewed it as a further sign that now was the time to make his big move into national politics. Mommy had her doubts until she stumbled upon another portrait (see photo below) and began to envision all the pet causes she could back, the State dinners she could host and her own eventual bid for the highest office in the land after daddy serves his two terms and she finishes raising me. Given the photo albums I have perused from my parents high school and college years I have some serious concerns about the viability of their candidacies.