A few weeks back, I took the kids out to run a few errands—Julie wasn’t feeling well, so they were pretty much all mine that afternoon. The errands themselves were pretty typical: we went to the grocery store to pick up a pizza for dinner that night, and I think I mailed a letter, as well.

Things got a little more interesting, however, when we stopped to get gas. The van was looking pretty grimy—we don’t have a lot of free time on the weekends to begin with, and certain chores have a tendency to fall through the cracks—so I decided run it through the car wash. I’d actually sought out this particular gas station, since a recommendation on the Internet indicated that it was brushless. This turned out to be a complete fabrication, but that’s neither here nor there.

After filling the tank, I pulled up to the car wash entrance. I skimmed the instructions quickly, then hopped out to fold in the van’s mirrors, lest they be ripped from the car and cast into the sea (or so the dramatically worded warning implied). Satisfied that the vehicle was safe from dismemberment, I hopped back in and pulled into the squat structure. As the van settled into place and the interior grew dark, motors began whirring outside, and a bluish mixture of water and soap sprayed over the car’s windows. Julia or Joseph were apprehensive. “What’s that noise?” Joe asked. Then came the brushes.

In all honesty, the brushes really weren’t anything out of the ordinary: just strips of rubber or some unidentifiable material affixed to a rapidly turning spindle. But as far as they kids were concerned, they were the instruments of the devil himself. WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP, went the brushes as they began slapping the hood of the car. WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP, the sound growing louder as they made their way along the sides and over the top, moving closer to the kids’ seats in the van’s middle row. Right about then, the screaming started.

Julia kicked things off. She let out a terrified wail that dissolved into fearful cries and helpless sobs. “Make it stop, Daddy! I want to get out!”

Joe, naturally, was not OK with this. I think he was affected as much by his sister’s reaction as by the action of the car wash itself, but the end result was the same: terrified bawling, interspersed with helpless pleading. “No, Daddy, no car wash,” he said over and over again.

The whole episode lasted maybe a minute and a half—I’m cheap and got the bare-bones express wash, naturally—but it took four times that long to get the kids calmed down and coherent again after we pulled back into the sunlight. From now on, I think I’ll stick to washing the car by hand, schedule constraints be damned.

Update, 9/3/2008: To this day, Joe still says, “No car wash,” about half the time we get into the van.

No new pictures yet—with Easter in the rear-view mirror, we’re now three or four major holidays behind, depending on how you count. We do, however, have a very cute video clip from February showing a part of the kids’ nighttime routine.

We discovered two disturbing facts this past weekend. First, it’s getting close to three months since we last posted anything; this brings us perilously near our previous record for futility of four full months, set at the end of last year. Second, we’ve got a batch of pictures from Grandma and Grandpa Wong’s visit to California last Spring that we haven’t posted yet, meaning that we are very nearly a full year behind (though we have, of course, posted more recent pictures in the interim—we’re bad, but we’re not that bad).

These frightening realizations spurred us to action: there’s a new (we can’t exactly say “fresh,” can we?) set of pictures online here.

Julia stopped wearing diapers to bed overnight and and nap time last Friday evening. This was something of a Big Step, especially given that her daytime track record—especially for BMs—has been less than perfect. Thus far, however, she’s done really well: she’s only had one nighttime accident, on Sunday night, and even then, she came sheepishly into our bedroom the next morning to tell us what had happened.

My biggest concern was that she wouldn’t be able to get the door to her bedroom open if she decided she needed to use the potty—the door to the kids’ bedroom sticks, and she’s never been very good with doorknobs under the best of circumstances, but she hasn’t had any problems yet.

On the Joseph front, he apparently decided he no longer needs his bedtime bottle last night. I was in charge of putting him down on Sunday, and he wasn’t being particularly cooperative, chewing on the nipple and playing with it in his mouth. Last night, he flat-out refused it when Julie offered it to him, and I didn’t even try tonight, yet he still went to bed without a hitch both times. I have no idea what we’re going to do with all the kitchen cabinet space we’re about to reclaim.

A few months ago, Julia made one of her sadly infrequent visits to story time at the library. She picked a good day to go, however, because the nice story time lady brought favors for the children: small tomato plants and corn seeds, which the kids planted in paper cups.

Being parents in possession of large, open spaces in our yard that desperately needed filling, we waited for the corn to sprout and then dutifully transplanted the seedlings into a flower box behind our bedroom. Then, learning that we couldn’t expect the corn to actually produce corn without other plants to facilitate proper pollination, we bought several more stalks and planted them, too.

The rest is history. Or, as Julia says, “My corn is getting bigger and bigger and bigger!”