Yuletide sushi, and it's free!

Okay, I had to squeeze out this post before the New Year. Intuit, where I work, held their holiday party in SF's city hall this year. It's a fancy event (the dress code was "fabulously chic" -- if someone can tell me what the heck that means, I'd be grateful) with amazing food and dancing. Sheila and I are all over that sort of thing. In fact, we love weddings (dressing up, dancing, food), and consider ourselves to be amazing wedding guests. You might think otherwise if you watched us inhale sushi at the party, but certainly from a dancing perspective, we really like to cut a rug.

Oh, wait, back to the kiddos. So what does this have to do with them, you ask? Well, a couple of things come to mind:

I was hoping to post a picture with Sheila and me in our fancy clothes and Roel (Susanna was asleep by the time we were ready). But I don't have one with the three of us. We tried, but the little guy was uncooperative. If we had better anticipated his behavior, and perhaps employed some reverse psychology, it might have worked. But instead, the photo session went something like this: Sheila's sister Chris and her husband Rich were on baby-sitting duty (more on that later). When Sheila and I finished dressing, we wanted a picture of the two of us in front of our Christmas tree. As Chris got ready to snap the photo, Roel comes running in between us to get into the action. Normally that's great, but in this particular instance, we wanted a shot of just the stunning couple in the fancy duds. We did manage to get the shot (I can't remember exactly how we got rid of him -- either we bribed him or pulled something else out of our rapidly shrinking bag of get-the-kid-to-do-something tricks), but then we wanted another photo with him in it. So when we asked Roel to get in the shot this time, OF COURSE he now doesn't want to be anywhere near us. To recap: we don't want him in the photo, he tries to crash; we want him in the photo, he runs away. What's up with that? You gotta ask yourself, given the schizo behavior, what exactly are his motives anyway? And in some ways, this is not unusual behavior these days. If he weren't four years old, and if we didn't already know that Roel is really a lovely, compassionate, well-mannered kid, wouldn't you think that a person that acts this way is kind of, well, a jerk? Sheila and I have this joke between us that whenever Roel acts out in a similar, but perhaps more egregious way that ends up in either his stomping off crying or us sending him to his room, we turn to each other and and say under our breath "what an a**hole!"

To be absolutely clear, of course we're kidding and we totally love our son, and we recognize that this kind of behavior is not uncommon for little kids as they test boundaries and discover their independence. And we know they eventually grow out of it (please, God, tell me they do indeed grow out of it!), but can you imagine if they didn't? An adult that acted this way really would be a jerk. There's other kid (or baby) behavior that would be pretty funny if we didn't grow out of it. Like staring directly at people, even after eye-contact has already been made. Kids can get away with that. When adults do that, it can be kinda creepy. Another example is stomping your feet from sheer delight. I love it when little babies or toddlers do that, especially when accompanied by shrieking. We lose that one pretty early on, though I'm not sure if it's because we think it's no longer acceptable to do that in public, or if it's because we just stop being that delighted by anything.

The other kid-related thought I had during the holiday party is that the second child thing is great. Specifically, the relative lack of anxiety that had been a big part of many experiences with the first born. We waited until Roel was 2 and 1/2 years old before attending the first Intuit Holiday party, partly because prior to that, the thought of leaving him alone with someone else for such an extended period of time was a bit nerve-wracking back then. This time, even though Susanna was only 6 months old, there was no way we were going to miss this party. We even considered driving to Oakland to dump the kids off at Sheila's sister's house if need be, but fortunately Chris and Richard very generously agreed to watch the kids at our house (thanks guys!). As it was, we kinda pushed the baby sitting to the limit by arriving at the party shortly after the doors opened and staying to just about the very end. But can you blame us -- fancy clothes, free sushi, free booze, dancing -- Mommy and Daddy wanted to have some fun!

That said, one of the best kid-related moments of the evening was when we got home. Both kids were fast asleep (and I suspect one or both of the sitters might have been too). Peering into each room, and watching how peaceful each one looked, seeing Roel all curled up, and Susanna with her arms spread wide as she slept -- you want to hug them, but even more, you don't want disturb something that is just so perfect, so you just stare at them for a bit. It's hard to describe the feeling, but as trite as it sounds, basically there's nothing else in the universe that you love more. How can anyone say that with a straight face, you ask? Just wait until you're a parent -- it makes you do and say all sorts of crazy things!