Ida Akiko Rock, cinematographer

In the past, we've treated you to some of Ida's photography. Well, she's branching out and making full-fledged movies, now. Sometimes, it's documentaries, like those made by Uncle Arthur (we think that's what he's doing, wherever he is--hey, bro, I've had to start doing the Davey Crockett dance since you're not here to do it). Here's one about our cat, Ichiban. Some of you know him to be a fierce and combative feline; for the rest of you, you might just want to skip this ferocious display:



Ida's desire to have a little more control over the drama is evident in this clip, in which she directs two "cows" (rocks with eyeballs that she made at an Earth Day celebration she and I stumbled into last Friday. To make these "cows" cost about $300). There's also some talk about Percy and Jack, trains who come to save the day:



"This movie...is really good!"

RISEN

Hard-boiled eggs, chocolate bunnies, jelly beans. Many questions about the Easter bunny and how often he tells people to do things, how he knows as much as he knows. Which is a lot.

Ida, 4

4...


...3...


...2...


...1...


Miki likes cake. So does Kaito.


A very short film taken just before I went to get a hairband for Theo and Elsie and Ida smeared mud all over our back windows. "We're being bad guys!" they said. Uncool.


After all the action died down, and after about four hours at Berkeley Park (Ida mistakenly called it "Birthday Park") (it was sunny, for Ida), we got to have some sweet, quiet time at home:

Days in San Diego

Now that we're back in rainy PDX, it seems all the more surreal, those sunny days in San Diego...

That first night, after Miki, Ida and I took a pretty non-dramatic flight (thanks, suicidal makers of the iPad) by ourselves, we got dolled up and went to a fancy dinner at old friend Alison's restaurant, Cafe Chloe. Check it out the matchy-matchy:



Miki was excited!

Miki was also quite excited about the BUNKBED in the house ERV procured for us!


So was Ida, who slept (wearing clothes) in the Top Bunk!



As my best kindergarten friend John Aldous said, "Lots of bird-watchin and beefcakin going on on that boardwalk."

This is a rare picture...


...since it turned out that Miki's beach-tolerance was about five minutes. Then she said "I want to go inside" and toddled off toward the beefcake-intensive boardwalk. Ida, on the other hand,



spent about seven hours on the beach and could have lasted longer.


She got real sandy.

Ida and Miki in San Diego, California

MAV vs. 41

Yes, yes, yes.



Some would like me to only work on my novel about Arthur and blog about him relentlessly. Of course, one reason I do all this work on Arthur is just to win over Maggie, something I've been trying to do for about fifteen years. It's tough.

But she had a birthday! Everyone got excited about it, for certain.



It was a nice, sunny day and of course Maggie herself was working late and then riding her bike across town while wearing her famous (to other bike commuters of PDX) tennis skort. Meanwhile, we were trying to keep these scalawags somewhat under control. Cocktails on the deck!

A Surfeit of Technology

Back when I wrote that last blog about Miki, I wanted to include a little section on how often--ten times a day?--she requests that we try to contact GrambeeJim. This is via Skype. The funny thing is, Miki insists on calling them every hour or so, and then gets afraid of them, or over-excited, and proceeds to run circles around the house, screaming "GrambeeJim! I far away! Far away, GrambeeJim!" so I hang up and then she cries.

I tried to recreate that, but maybe she's growing out of it



or maybe Ida's presence gives her courage.



We're getting our swimsuits ready for San Diego...

Miki Frances Rock, reconsidered

It's true that Ida's joke book was pretty hot, and she says interesting things like "I'm in charge of Baby Matthew; Miki is charge of Oh Baby; Daddy, you're in charge of Mama . . . and Mama is in charge of you." Then again, she chews on the ends of her hair so they smell like dried spit, and that's gross.

So let's spend a little time with Miki Frances. Here she is, dominating her pal Sawyer at Tumbleweeds:


She and Talu are part of the "clean plate club." And the "dirty clothes club."


Miki is kind of famous for the amount and ferocity of affection she doles out. Talu might be her favorite:



But she's into babies, too. This, I believe, is new baby August, who was crying on his first day.


Miki is quite boisterous, and has a lot to say. For instance, the other day she played a joke where she grabbed my butt and said I had a poopy diaper and ran away, laughing. Does she wear diapers? No. She can really string the sentences together, too. She and Ida are starting to have some good conversations--documentation a-coming. And yet she is quite shy around strangers (unlike her sister, who is still quick to hug the pantlegs of strangers, particularly dirty, bearded men).



In the wild, though, she's as fearless and omnivorous as the magnificent honey badger (*link NSFW and NSF most kids and many adults if you are Maggie).


More to come as Miki approaches two years of age.

Jokes, Jokes, Jokes: Ida vs. Arthur

Okay, so Arthur's great. I mean, if you need him to carry something heavy or reach something on a high shelf, and you can find him, he's great. Also, sometimes he's funny. You want him to split the cost of a bunch of pizza pies? He's gone missing. Anyway, there's a calendar on his blog that documents his alleged whereabouts, but that keeps changing, so don't depend upon it much, I sayeth.


So, Ida decided to construct a "joke book" for Arthur, but he left town before she could construct a cover that pleased her sufficiently.


So I thought I'd send the jokebook over the interwebs so he would access it, whereever he is. Page one:


Page two:


This joke above is the one that started the whole idea. Ida and I were eating lunch and she suddenly stopped talking for a moment before we had this conversation:

Ida: Hey, I heard an airplane.
Pete: Let me listen. Hmm. Your ears are better than mine. I can't hear it.
Ida: That's because there isn't an airplane, right now. That's a joke!

Some would say that Ida's sense of humor, or her definition of a joke, is very close to saying things that aren't true, or lying. Where would she pick this up? Ella?


Anyway, here are some more jokes! Get ready!

(Julia is our neighbor and sometime babysitter.)

Flim-flam is actually a serious problem around here:


Despite the joke below, Baby Matthew cannot really walk.


You may wonder, did Ida, in fact, draw all these pictures? Well, she described very precisely what must be drawn, then colored them in. It was enough work for her to conceive of the jokes, after all. Who did the drawing? Well, it was a professional, but not Ida's famous teacher Aron Nels Steinke. And that reminds me of another kind of joke that Ida knows. Impersonation. I found this picture of Ida on the Tumbleweeds website:



Underneath it, it said, "Hey Briana, I'm Steinke."

Fridays: Girls vs. Dads

Friday a lot went down. First, Ida and I emptied my piggy bank and netted (no kidding) $112.73. We celebrated by riding from the bank over to a "Frozen Yogurt Lounge," where we happened to run into Elsie, Theo and Arthur, all eating 45 oz. of yogurt with cookies, chocolate, sprinkles, etc, mixed in. They had just been on an important covert operation wherein they purchased a piggy bank of their own. Shaped like a rabbit, in fact. A little later, after I'd procured Miki (more or less recovered), the girls all had to get settled down by watching a gigantic television:


This is a really helpful engine:


Theo has her doubts.


Anyway, many people in Arthur's family are dominating the airwaves these days, but we're happy to have him around just being Arthur (even if he's about to desert us to seek his fortune). For instance:



If you were here and saw the movement and heard the sounds, it would be more like this:


Action:


This hints at a shocking post to come. Hint: Ida has written a joke book for Arthur!

badonkadonk

Here's a new trick Ida came up with last night. She's such a big girl, she can get her own monkey pajamas on...


...she can also put a blanket inside the back so she has a really big butt.


Boy, was this ever fun!


What was not so fun was the fact that we made fun of Miki's rash and then she just got sicker and sicker because she actually


ATE the plant, so a few days after her face cleared up she started having all kinds of other problems. (As Ida said, "hey, that's what your poop looks like if you eat a poisonous plant!") But she went to the doctor today and appears to be fine. Let me also say that Miki's toileting is phenomenal, even when she has to go four times in ten minutes. She's quick to the toilet.

afflictions

It's not exactly like we haven't been doing anything interesting--we have, kind of--or that we lost our camera; we didn't. We've just been running around.


Besides, on Friday, which was a very nice day, Miki joined one of the parents on the bike to go pick up Ida from Tumbleweeds. It was such a nice day that the parent let the girls play in the front yard with the neighbor boy Evie for quite some time. Alas, in that time, Miki not only dabbled with but tried to eat a poisonous plant!


It was just poisonous to her face. She looked like Jojo the Dogfaced Boy or some other miscreant. The other parent was not at all happy about this. (These images, taken two days later, don't really capture the devastation, but whatev. We were too shell-shocked to document it.)


She is healing, however. And Ida took a slightly less drastic beating from this plant, but was not left unscarred.

Miki, while running past the cat on the way to the bathroom, says:

"I need to pee, Ichi!"

Ida remarks, upon reading about Frog and Toad for the five hundredth time

Ida: "Hey, it seems like Frog is a Frog!"

Pete: "Yeah, and Toad is a toad."

Ida: "Come on, Dad. We already know that."

Ella says

"I'm so tired of all these dirty and wet clothes...we might as well just have boys."