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 Ian gets ready
for his first birthday celebration with a thumb's up and an
assurance that he "did not drink milk with that woman, Miss
Lewinsky" ... later found to be a blatant lie |
 Ian is destined to discover just what it is that the wheels on the bus do ... this singing bus made sure none of us forgot |
 Like the proverbial deer caught in the proverbial headlights, Ian stands frozen in place in his new down vest |
 Ian leads with his left and that poor sap Pop-pop never saw it coming; he wound up kissing the canvas seconds later, out for the count |
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 Not realizing what she's starting, Mama points and sez, "Ian, what do the wheels on the bus do?" Thanks, Mama ... |
 Shet thet mouth, Mama! Don't bring up the wipers on the bus and what they do! We don't need to know! ...Uh-Oh, too late! |
 Mama, blankie, and Ian |
 Um, did someone just punch Mama in both cheeks? |
 Irish-sweatered Ian, disheveled after a hard night out at the pub |
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 This is Ian on the morning of 11/19/01, his second birthday. |
 Ian had a lite breakfast that morning of blankie and milk... |
 Adrienne snapped this picture of Joey Moore, who has his own purse, but was so taken with Adrienne's, he simply had to look it over. |
 "Hey, Joey, there are trucks there, too, right next to you ... no? Just the purse interests you, huh? Your dad must be so proud..." |
 Ian is subdued by the power of one tickle finger. But at least he's clutching a truck. | |
 Ian at his grandma's on Halloween: "Hey, paparazzo! Snap that picture and I'll make sure the next thing your lens sees is a place where the sun don't shine!" (I think he was threatening here to ship the camera to Seattle.) |
 Ian rolls up his sleeve and sez, "Whud ya think I meant? That I was gunna ship the camera to Seattle? I'll show you what I meant by 'where the sun don't shine'!" |
 Grandma restrains Ian, so we never did find out what he meant. |
 "Waddaya mean I amuse you, that I'm funny? Am I some kinda clown? ...O...O, yeah, right, the get up." |
 Caelin Hoye has managed to remain a star for lo these many years by following one strict rule: never let 'em catch you smiling. We almost got him here |
 You can't tell from this angle because Ian stuck his big head in the way, but Mama took this picture because Ian and Caelin were holding hands. Hey, did I mention Joey Moore has a purse? |
 Tom Moore (whose son has a purse) looks on as Charly ("Madonna") Detwiler gives the bowling alley performance of "Like a Virgin" that made her a star when it was later rebroadcast on Nick Jr. |
 Charly's performance went on for some time but when it was over, the troops went wild. |
 Ian stands next to an old-time tractor at the National Museum of Farm Implements and Ears Wax Sculpture |
 Meanwhile, back at the bowling alley, Ian patiently waits for Charly to finish body-mopping the floor. |
 Ian chews on a truck, Matt smiles, while in the background lurks shadowy Man of Mystery, Mike Detwiler. (This is one of the only known pictures of Detwiler, aka, "Our Man in Nicaragua"...) |
 Pictured: Matt, Sushi, Tristan, Weird Circus Geek, Ian and Caelin after a nice walk during which Tristan, lashed to the wagon, did all of the work pulling the kids. He babysat them most of the weekend, too, as I recall. |
Not being prognosticators, we have no idea what Ian will become when he grows up; but he's given us a pretty good idea what he wants to be when he finally gets to school: a bully.
We came upon this revelation quite by accident. It's not a very long story, but I'll do what I can to make it one.
In our quaint town of Flemington, the borough, in autumn, lets you rake the leaves that have fallen in your yard into the street where a roving band of men driving a leaf-vacuuming machine that Ian has noted looks exactly like a giant Noo-Noo (from the Teletubbies: if you have no idea what this means, lucky you) come by and suck up the leaves, in much the same way that the Noo-Noo sucks up all the empty vodka bottles and cigarette butts after the Teletubbies throw one of their many "Uh-Oh! Come-As-Your-Favorate-Sex-Pistol" parties. But the borough Noo-Noo wranglers only rove till the end of November, which the borough evidently assumes is enough time for even the most stubborn of trees to give up, if not the ghost, then at least all of their leaves.
We are fortunate enough, however, to have two weirdo trees in our front yard - valuable ones, too, I'm told: Red Maples or some such (as if I care: as I have said before, the only bigger joke than giving me the surname "Gardner" would have been conferring the first name "Taciturn" on me) - that don't even begin to defoliate till after Thanksgiving. One year, those two bastard twins simply didn't let go of their leaves at all; I went outside and rattled my rake at them; shook them; climbed into one and leapt out (in case the problem was that the leaves had forgotten how to fall and needed reminding); imposed sanctions; held a gun to the trunk of one and threatened the other with turning my front yard into a sap-bath the likes of which had not been seen since the last time the Republicans got control over who gets logging rights to old-growth trees in the Pacific Northwest ; I even threatened to report them to the Arbor Guild - let me tell you, not only can trees laugh, they can laugh snidely. (And yes, it hurts.)
So a week or so ago, some of the leaves, maybe about a tenth of the total, fell.Figuring the rest, for sheer spite (O, yes: trees can be spiteful!), might well stay on those trees till after the Noo-Noo Wranglers said their Tubby-bye-byes for the year, I went out, rake in hand, and proceeded to rake the leaves in the street. Adrienne stayed inside with Ian, but pointed out to Ian that if he looked out the window, he could "see Dada!" Normally a good thing, for the Boy loves his Dada. But he just got pissed that Dada had not thought to include him in the fun and frivolity that is raking leaves. I could hear him crying and carrying on inside and Adrienne trying, unsuccessully, to console him. When I got inside, he was still mad that I had not included him and said, in his own way, I was bad. (I hope he still feels this way about raking leaves in about 7 or 8 years when it's gonna be his job, and Dada's new job will be to make all that neglected beer, left over from last night's "Uh-Oh! Come-As-Your-Favorite-Clash-Member" party, go 'way.)
Well, as it turns out, two days ago, about another tenth of the remaining leaves got depressed and made the leap. This time I let Ian come out with me. I gave him a small rake that I made myself (I carved it from a larger rake) and we went out there with his tractor and a determination to tame nature or die trying. (We accomplished a little of both.)
It took us about two hours, but we not only raked all of the leaves into the street, but we also cleaned up the driveway and completed a few other small outdoor tasks, like watering the mud (where the plants used to be and no longer are, but Ian insisted we water them anyway). We took a break when Mama brought us drinks (a cola for Dada and a sippy of apple juice for Ian). Ian was having a great time, but I warned him far in advance that we would be going in when we were through so he could have his lunch and a nap. Though I didn't mention the nap part because I'm not an idiot.
But when the time came to go in, he spared no effort in repeating his latest newly-learned word: "No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no...!" etc. (You get the pojnt.) But the power of Dada's one "yes" is greater than all of Ian's "nos" - or so I thought. I grabbed his rake from where he dropped it and began to walk toward our one gardening shed (I was thinking of getting a second shed, but didn't want to live with the inevitable taunting nickname: Taciturn "Two-Sheds" Gardner), when Ian ran up, grabbed the hand that was holding his rake, and bit it - hard!
I'm no girlyman, but, Reader, I am not ashamed to say, I cried - hard. No, wait...I am ashamed. Wait again...I guess this makes me a girlyman, too. In any case, click here to hear what Ian said after he committed this act of naked aggression against his own Dada!
THAT'S RIGHT! Just like Nelson Muntz!
So, to make a short story long, that's how we know he wants to be a bully.
Here are some other things he can say:
Mama
Dada (background vocals: Merry
Clayton; Taciturn "Two Sheds" Gardner)
Although we took pictures yesterday of Ian enjoying himself on his birthday at the fine children's French Restaurant Charles du Fromage (Chuck E. Cheese), those pix will probably not be sent out to be developed until some time around his fourth birthday. (This estimation is based on a complex formula mostly derived by extrapolating from our previous photo-developmental lags and dividing the result by pi (mmmm ... pi...); I am erring here on the side of conservative time estimation, possibly the only time you'll ever catch me going conservative publicly; in reality, the photos probably will not be available till sometime around his High School graduation, especially if Adrienne "puts the film in a safe place".)
So ... in lieu of actual photos of the real birthday event involving Ian at the age of two, I will supply all of you voraciously visual foax (A-hemmmm! BethAnn? are you listening?!) with a picture of Ian at birth. But I will first run the picture through a sophistomacated computer aging program, so that if you run your mouse over it, it will slog through its computational aging algorithm (O, yeah! Like Al Gore has rithm! We all saw him and Tipper dancing back in '92 when Clinton first won the presidency! Shouldn't the word be algorstiffm?) and spit out the result, giving us a pretty good approximation of what yesterday's antics would have been like. So here it is (yeah, yeah, yeah - it looks like him at birth now, but run your mouse over the picture and see the incredible transformation rendered by the sophistomacated computer software; PREPARE TO BE AMAZED - it'll be as though you were THERE at Chuck E. Cheese yourselves!):
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