I’m going to throw caution to the wind and declare that L. is the happiest baby ever. This comes with some risk, since each time for the past 2.5 years I’ve praised C. for sleeping through the night, she would immediately go back to her old ways. But I’m confident L. can shake the curse of the blog.
L. just went through that hyperspace mode of development where, before Christmas, she was just starting to look around and gurgle a bit and now suddenly she’s laughing, chatting, and trying to get your attention.
In case you missed it, and chances are you did, Indiana is now home to Miss America, ending our embarrassing 77-year drought. Now I no longer have to hang my head when I return to Kansas City and hear from friends who live both in Kansas and Missouri, “What kind of state can’t even claim a Miss America title?”
We’re off the shnide. Suck it, Iowa.
And, more importantly, my daughters finally have a real role model to pattern their lives after.
A long-winded attempt to steer you towards a cool television channel and speculate on whether weird hobbies could derail a budding relationship.
I spend a little time each day watching Current TV. If you’ve never seen Current, it is a citizen journalism outlet that lets pretty much anyone submit small videos, which they call pods, of 2-5 minutes about just about any issue. Some pods are about serious matters like the economy, the war on terror, or child labor while others focus on cultural or technology issues.
A post that is (mostly) not about what you might think it is about.
I’ve slowly, over the past three months, been making a very important change in my life, and finally completed that change yesterday. I have ditched my contacts and am wearing glasses exclusively for the first time in 23 years.
Why on earth would I do something like that? If you were at my wedding, you know that my transition to contacts back in 1986 was a big deal (Thanks for bringing that up, Mr.
I need to give our four-year-old some credit. As maddening as her behavior has been much of the time since L. was born, she does have her moments of pleasantness. And, apparently, usefulness.
She may be potty-training C..
For a few weeks, any time M. was using the bathroom and, to put it delicately, required a few minutes to complete her work, she would call C. to come in and watch.
In which a game goes down to the wire.
My high school basketball reporting experience this year has been decidedly one-sided. Other than two games that featured two local teams, and thus had me covering both the winners and losers, just about every game I’ve done this year has been a comfortable win. More often than not, the team I’m writing about has been on the wrong side of the blow-out.
In which I listen to the music of my youth.
Those of you that follow my Facebook status may have caught that I spent Sunday morning listening to a 25 year old American Top 40 rebroadcast. Our local retro hits station began reairing AT40s from the 80s last fall and, life with a newborn and two preschoolers being what it is, this was my first chance to sit down and actually listen to one of the shows.
I’ve never had a problem changing diapers. It’s part of being a parent, and when I decided to be a stay-at-home parent, I signed myself up for a lot more diapers than the average dad. No worries. My one technique to make the process a little more tolerable, though, has been to pull my shirt up over my nose when changing dirty diapers. It’s not that I can’t handle the smell.
A few quick updates on little L.
She’s actually not so little anymore. All of a sudden she’s looking big to us. Part of it is because, well, she is getting big like a healthy baby should. But I think some of it is because she’s moved into that second phase of infantdom where she actually keeps her eyes open and interacts a bit. When the personality begins to present itself, they just suddenly seem a lot bigger.
The B’s have joined a gym.
Since we’re allegedly done procreating, both S. and I thought it would be a good time to drop some of the weight we’ve added during her three pregnancies* and try to find some of the muscle we both had when we started dating eight years ago. So, we joined a gym.
(For the record, I gained ten pounds during this pregnancy. A lot of that actually came after L.
2008 was up there. 1971 was good, at least for me. 1980 was great, with the Miracle on Ice, George Brett chasing .400, and my family’s move to Kansas City. 1992 was fine. 2003 excellent. And 2004 and 2006 important years for extending the B. brand, which we of course did again this year.
2008 also had Aqib Talib and Barack Obama coming up big on January 3. February brought a family trip to Colorado and news that a third child would be joining the house in October.
Tuesday night I get to cover my first ever college basketball game as a professional sports writer. That sounds pretty cool, at least to me.
The team I’ll be covering made the D3 tournament last year, but is sitting at .500 so far this year. It’ll be a little easier than high school, since I won’t have to keep stats. But that means I’ll have to do a better job of finding the narrative within the game than I’ve been able to do on the high school side.
Christmas seemed to fly by faster than ever this year. Some of that probably had to do with M. being sick around the big day. She had a stomach bug beginning on the afternoon of the 23rd all the way through to Christmas Eve morning. We spent a big chunk of that night running into her room and holding a bowl in front of her face. She was miserable, but sweet at the same time.
Busy times here in La Casa de B. First, all five residents are saddled with colds. At least one person in the house has had at least the sniffles, if not a full blown cold, since September. This is getting seriously old, and we still have two-plus months of winter left.
Family members start trickling into town tomorrow. This year we’re having slightly less complete representation than in the past. Three of the in-laws won’t make it home this year.
Hey, it’s time for my annual listing of the songs that moved me and/or stuck with me the most this year. Enjoy.
Honorable Mention
“Buildings & Mountains” - The Republic Tigers. A lovely song by a fine band from Kansas City. This sounds like a warm, early summer afternoon.
“Northern Lights” - Science For Girls w/Boots Ottestad. Mellow brilliance.
“Got It Bad” - The Broken West. Not enough people use the Minneapolis drum sound from 1985 these days.
A few notes, anecdotes, and thoughts from my travels across central Indiana covering high school sports.
Morning update. The team I cover that always loses? They won by 24 last night. No, I did not attend the game. I’m definitely a jinx. This began with the idea of being a short review of a couple stories. But I guess all the tight writing I have to do for the paper - my stories normally run between 300-400 words - means I have to go crazy here.
I’m giving the Facebook another shot. If you’re on the Facebook, you may have noticed I started updating my status, I think for the first time ever, over the past few days. I’ve received a slew of friend invites in recent weeks, thus I’ve been going in and approving/ignoring them a lot. And, while doing so, I’ve noticed a lot of friends are updating their status, posting news, and uploading pics on a regular basis.
It’s been a bit of a crazy week. This is S.’s first week back on the day shift, so I’m in the midst of seven straight days with the girls. Monday was a breeze with the big sisters gone and L. at Mimi’s house in the morning. Tuesday was a monster, as L.’s nasty cold meant she had to be held for eight of the nine hours S. was gone. Then today was a little better.
What a freaking game Saturday.
My Mizzou friends can just skip the rest. Lord knows I would if things were reversed.
I’m not going to act like my feelings about the game changed from two weeks ago, when I said it would take an STD running rampant through the Mizzou locker room for KU to have a chance.* I expected KU to get hammered to begin with, and then as our key offensive players seemed to be dropping like flies over the bye-week, well, I was worried the Arrowhead scoreboard wouldn’t have enough room for all the points Mizzou was going to lay on us.
I hope all y’alls had wonderful Thanksgiving weekends. Ours was good, if busy. I worked Wednesday night, we went to the in-law’s for a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner, and then S. went back to work Thursday night. The night was ok. The older sisters were beat from their busy day, so did well at bedtime. L. did pretty well, also, although she decided she couldn’t sleep more than 2.5 hours at a time.
The high school girls basketball season has started here in Indiana, and I got to cover my first game of the year last night. It was kind of a big deal because my editor handed me an official newspaper laptop and told me to keep it for the season. Which means I’ll be covering at least one game a week for the next three months. I’m moving up in the world.
It’s time to unveil the details of the great naming dilemma of ‘08. I did inform you, dear readers, a couple times that we were struggling greatly with choosing a name for B. Baby number three. We would compile lists, look at them, not feel strongly about any of the names, then chuck them all and start over. For about three months, I think S. spent most of her waking hours either reading baby name books or cruising the Internets for baby name sites.
Some commentary on two of my favorite teams in the world below the jump.
Just finished watching the DEFENDING NATIONAL CHAMPION Kansas Jayhawks open their basketball season with a win over mighty UMKC. An ugly first half ended with the teams tied at 32. The Jayhawks got some rhythm in the second half and pulled away for a relatively easy win.
One word sums up what I expect from this season: fun.
I promise I’ll get back to a regular schedule here eventually. If only I could get back on a regular schedule around the house.
In the interim, another funny saying from one of the girls.
When I was putting C. down for her nap today she was super wound up. She looked at me and said, “Dad, I’m going to play with the Diego game that Santa Claus is going to bring me.
Both big sisters have a funny catch phrase at the moment.
M. uses the word “imaginate” a lot. As in, “Dad, I was imaginating at school today about being a princess.” Or, “C., let’s imaginate that we’re princess fairies.” For some reason I prefer that word to pretend.
C. is pointing out how she carefully considers everything by adding the “I think” qualifier to many of her statements. “I hungwy, dad.
What follows are some meandering thoughts on Tuesday night’s events. I don’t promise that they’re particularly interesting or insightful, but they do represent how I feel about that historic evening. Oh, and way less then the 18,000 words I wrote four years ago!
The front page of Wednesday’s Indianapolis Star blared a one-word headline: HISTORY. I thought, couldn’t they have at least interviewed me if they were going to write about me?
I guess there’s some big thing going on tomorrow (or more likely today, depending on when you’re reading this). All I know is I voted last week but for some reason I still won’t be able to buy beer tomorrow, which I think is garbage. This country might be a better place if you could get loaded before you voted.*
I think I use this line after every election. I must say, early voting is the greatest invention since democracy itself.
Another successful Halloween for the B. girls. M. went as a ballerina, while C. recycled M.’s pink octopus costume from two years ago. We planned on taking L. in a pumpkin hat and onesie, but she demanded a bottle just as we were heading out so she stayed home.
M. was really into it. She’d march right up, say “Trick or treat!” and select her candy, chatting people up along the way.
And thus ends the World Series I’ve watched the least in the past ten years or so.
But that was a spectacular ending. Suddenly baseball is like the NBA, and you only need to watch the last three innings (or two minutes) to get the important stuff.
Despite my long-time hate for all things Philly, it was kind of cool that they won. I learned after the Series started that Ryan Howard’s brother is in the athletic department at KU.
We had the girls at Target today and experienced an interesting phenomenon. We had just arrived, so L. was safely and snuggly strapped into her car seat in the main part of the cart while her sisters rode along on the back (we had one of those big-assed Target carts with the two seats that face forward behind the “normal” part of the cart. These things are awesome, except when you need to turn them.