4 Happy Family The personal blog of Kevin R. Hoffmann

Maya’s boyfriend

How young can you be and have a crush? It appears Maya has become smitten with a young fellow and she can not keep suppress her feelings at all. It gets to the point that she, eats, sleeps and breathes thinking about this object of affection.

F’ing Elmo Monster. That little, red bubbly piece of marketing has giggled and laughed its way into every facet of our home. Some of you may remember the Xmas video of her running to me away from the mechanical version, well it turns out she was just being coy. Books, dolls, enema kit, videos, clothes everything is Elmo. I can’t even go to the bathroom without Potty-time Elmo staring back at me checking to make sure that I shake. His ping-pong ball eyes staring back at me, just stuck to his head without any kind of ocular stalk to hold them into place.

Courtney and Maya had a little throw down over her shoes last week. Courtney was checking through Maya’s shoes (up to 19 pairs now) to coordinate with her outfit; she picked out a pair and proceeded to try and put them on Maya’s feet. The kid wanted nothing to do with it.

M: Melmo

C: No, I am going to put these on you now, honey.

M: (Pointing) Melmo, melmo, melmo, melmomelmomelmo…

The shoes that she wanted were Sesame Street brand kicks with little Elmo characters on the side and a couple of the letters of the alphabet thrown in so that it at least seems somewhat education related. Oh, and they light up with every step she takes. She thinks they are all flavors of awesome, but I think they look like a Toddler version of Vegas. They are bright and flashy and obnoxious. Yet, there flash patter is somewhat alluring. Every step she takes a step I expect to start hearing techno-dance music being piped in and Big Bird turning 20s on a stripper pole. (Hmm- note to self – gag gift idea – Stripper-pole Elmo – comes complete with pole wax, singles, and a built-in microchip that plays Def Leperds “Pour some sugar on me” )

Just kidding. It is actually cute watch her bang the shoes together to make the lights go on; because the majority of the time the shoes are on her hands and she has been walking around like a quadruped. For the past couple of months she has to have shoes or socks on her hands; I just take it as a sign of intelligence.

When she watches her Elmo DVDs she has a little dance that I need to upload at some point. She really is quite musical. Though, I may not approve of her crush, I am sure she could do worse. I hear that that Handy Manny is a little gigolo.

Prozac Polly and the bed whore

Haven't said much about the dogs lately. See what happens when you have a kid. We have two greyhounds and 99% of the time they are the most lovable and laid back animals ever. Since we have been back with Maya they were a little jilted at first but now they put up with her stabbing them in the eye with her finger and being chased. Generally they give her a wide berth.

Before Maya our dogs were the de facto kids. We didn't like to have pictures of ourselves so we used the dogs on our Xmas cards; we always provided updates on them to our friends and family and they were generally stand-ins for a kid. This was not sad, just the way things were when people tried to make small talk.

We could never talk about the dogs and get away with some of the cute behavior that is acceptable with children:

Friend X making small talk:
How is the dog?
Great. I was getting her out of the path and she pooped on me. (True story-abot Maya)
That is so cute!

The dogs really are doing well still. They are suffering from less walks because of the cold and general lack of time, How come you people never told me that I would never have time again? Polly (the white one) has always been a little skittish and generally huffy when she does not get her way. C took them to the vet to get their annual nail trim (it really isn't that long) and she mentioned this to the vet who went ahead and prescribed Prozac for the freaking dog.

Yes, wonders of wonders, human drugs for our dog. She had to go to Walgreens and get the presciption filled which went like this:

Walgreens guy: Can I help you
C: This is sort of odd but I need to get a prescription filled
WG: Well you came to the right place.
C: I need to know how much this is going to cost first....because well you know...it is uh, prozac... for my dog
WG: (raised eyebrow and hiding a smirk) I see.

So, it was $60 for a one-month prescription. She has been on it for a couple of weeks and we are trying to decide if we want to trick ourselves into thinking that it works to justify spending a recurring fee.

The other dog is the super mellow dog but he has been jumping into bed with us lately. This is an 80# dog that takes up the amount of space of a frozen turkey at first when he jumps in so he tricks you into thinking that he will not be a nuisance, but throughout the night he expands himself like a reverse shrinky dink (am I dating myself) until he pushes you into a fetal position at the end of the bed. In fact that is why I am up right now writing this post.

Mundane

Just to tell you how boring things have been lately; the highlight of my Sunday was getting my head caught in the freezer. You know how you sometimes just have to get in there when you are looking something. Well, I was full on all up in the freezer when the door closed on my neck and I panicked and instinctively pulled back and caught my head in the shelf.

 If C would have been behind me she would have seen me flailing my arms as my body went into "Fight or Flight" mode. Damn you Hoff mann head.

The aftermath

Yes, the snow was as heavy as I thought it would  be, not in accumulation (about 5" instead of the 14" forecasted) but in weight. We passed the baton about 9PM and I met the neighborhood crew for delicious thick micro beer. I had a couple of boozy snakes swimming in my head this morning which made shoveling fun. I can have just a couple of thick, heavy beers and I am done.

Eskimos really do not have hundreds of words for snow, but if they did; they could call this stuff "Heart Attack" snow. It was so heavy and thick and water-laden that everyone that had bought a simple two-cycle snow blower would get half a foot and their machinery would jam. Everyone was resorting to shovels and you could tell all across the neighborhood people were not that happy.

 So, I shoveled and and shoveled. Still waiting for Spring.

About Us

We are Kevin, Courtney and Maya and soon to be Kid X once the Chinese governement gets finished with our paperwork for our second adoption. This is a space meant to update friends, family and rubber neckers on what is going on in our lives. It is poorly written with bad grammar and updated when there is free time. Feel free to E-mail us.