M. finished up her first year of preschooling yesterday. Her school year went out with a bang with a big bike parade for all the three year olds followed by a cookout/pot luck lunch for the kids and their families. The parade was pretty funny as it clearly demonstrated the differences in ages amongst the two classes. The bigger kids, who turned four last fall, were flying around on their bikes, some of them on pretty big bikes with training wheels.
We’ve been trying to sign the girls up for swimming lessons using the city’s parks & rec website. We kept getting an error saying we were already registered in their system that we couldn’t work around. So S. called and got a fairly young guy on the phone. After a couple minutes of fruitless explanations of what she wanted, basically to have our password/account reset, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Three lines. That’s what the sonogram showed today. For those of you who have never been lucky enough to sit in on a sonogram, those three lines indicate you’re growing a little girl. I believe we’ve officially debunked the Chinese Birth Calendar and proven that S. and I are only able to produce girls. As I said last week, what was important to me wasn’t the gender of the kid but that it and S.
Please note a more important post will be coming later today. Remember, we’re making a trip to the doctor this morning. I did not stay up late enough to catch all the drama last night, but I followed some of it. Ironically I was thinking, before results began coming in, that there aren’t any surprises in politics anymore since 800 different polling groups are constantly surveying voters before each election. But last night was a surprise, and perhaps the effective end of the Democratic nomination race.
First off, happy belated Cinco de Mayo to you all. I hope you enjoyed a bag of Doritos or perhaps had some Cinnamon Twists to celebrate the occasion. Oh, and happy birthday to the iMac, which was announced ten years ago today. Well, the big day is finally here. Indiana, for the first time in 20 years, gets a real say in who our next president may be. While it appears Indiana is about as muddled as the rest of the country is and neither Barack or Hillary will end the day with a commanding victory in this state, it has been an interesting six weeks or so as the candidates have showered our fair state with attention and ad dollars.
M. has a new thing where sometimes after coloring, she’ll wad her paper up, throw it onto the floor, get off her chair, and go put the paper into the trash. If I ask her what’s wrong she just whines and walks away. Apparently she has very high standards.
I’ve only obliquely discussed the impending addition of a third kid to the Brannan fam on the blog. Part of that is despite our broad e-mail and phone broadcast of the news awhile back, we were waiting to tell a few folks less directly connected to us. Although I doubt they have access to the blog, I wanted to be sure. But I think everyone who needs to know knows now, so it’s no longer off limits.
If someone could invent a sippy cup that didn’t stink all the time, they would be a kazillionaire, because I would pay any price and buy at least four. Even the cups that we just put water in are already stank-stank-stanky just four days after they were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected for several hours.
Keeping with the kids theme, rather than busting out a long, disjointed accounting of all the cute/funny/infuriating things about the girls I’ve jotted down in recent weeks, <span style=“text-decoration:line-through;">I’ll offer up a few at a time</span>. Today: B. Girls Say The Darndest Things. (OK, it ended up being semi-long and disjointed anyway.) When we got home from preschool today, M. refused to tell me what she had done. That’s not unusual; she’s usually tired and a little off when she gets home.
I’m working on some new content, don’t worry. Last week was a busy one in and around the house. I power washed and then re-stained/sealed the deck. Worked in the yard. We reorganized the garage, including adding some new storage devices. Had some car repairs taken care of. And did some reorganization inside as well. This week, it’s me and the girls. So hopefully the five or six drafts I started last week will be completed.
I promised one more KU post, so here goes it. Feel free to move along to other/better things if you’re sick of it all. Well, the hangover remains, although this is an extremely pleasant hangover. I’m down to a relatively normal number of e-mails related to KU again. I was getting about 1000 a day, or so it seemed, most of last week. It’s a little sad, I think, that they don’t constantly replay the game on some easily viewed network.
It’s bad enough when the two-year-old gets out of bed, opens her door, goes down the stairs, and starts running around the living room at 5:30 AM. Then the house started shaking. Apparently we had a nice 5.4 earthquake this morning. I don’t remember anything from my days in southeast Missouri, right on top of the New Madrid fault (early reports say our shaker this morning was on the New Madrid fault), but I never felt one this big in my one year in California.
As I try to come up with all the funny things the girls are saying these days, here’s a quick teaser. M. refers to anything that is brown as chocolate. She wants to wear her “chocolate” shoes or shirt or likes the chocolate dog or whatever. Her sister is following that example, although C. says “chock-u-late.” As you can imagine, there are horrifying possibilities for this. Some day when we’re out in public one of the girls is going to say something about a “chocolate” (or chock-u-late) person.
More Jayhawk talk. And lots of it. I promise, only one or two more of these for my non-Jayhawk readers. It’s been an odd couple of days. I still don’t feel great. Much better than I felt Monday, but my stomach is still giving me fits. So I’ve continued to kind of lay around the past couple days. Of course, I read every article about the game I can find, watch every YouTube video of the celebration in Lawrence, and just sit around staring at pictures of the game.
If B. Baby #3 is a boy, Mario is getting some serious consideration. Now I just have to find a way to convince the Mrs. that Mario is somehow Irish/Welsh to fit our Celtic model we’ve used on the first two.
The day after. Feeling about 80% better, although it was a rather restless night of sleep. I thought a lot about what winning a national championship would mean to me, as a fan and alum, over the weekend. The reality, of course, is that it really only gives me a chance to buy a bunch of new t-shirts and ultimate bragging rights on anyone else until the next championship is won.
Sick on the couch all day, laid on my back for the game, but managed to get upright after Mario C saved the day. Not afraid to admit I’m shedding some tears of joy right now. What a team what a season what a shot what a game. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!
Woke up on what should be a great day with flu-like symptoms. Have been rolling around on the couch for three hours and maybe, finally, felling a little better. Need some major improvement before 9:30 tonight. In case I don’t get a chance, I will say, Memphis is way too good for KU. If KU is a really good college team, Memphis is like a mid-tier NBA team. How can we guard Chris Douglas-Roberts?
What a freaking game. I kept thinking, “There is no way you can blow a lead this big,” when KU started to run out of gas in the first half. As Carolina crept closer in the second, I kept thinking, “Surely not.” As KU kept throwing lazy passes, taking quick shots, and otherwise making it easy for UNC to get back in the game, I thought, “Oh no.” When Tyler Hanbrough clearly committed an offensive foul yet Darrell Arthur got rung up for an and-one foul, I thought, “Oh shit.
Well, I guess I have to say something. On this, the 20th anniversary of KU’s glorious victory over Oklahoma in the 1988 NCAA championship game, I will offer some thoughts on KU-UNC and the Angstfest once known as Roystock. I’ve done my best to avoid much of the national media coverage of the background story to the game. I didn’t want, for the second time in five years, a week leading up to a KU Final Four appearance to be all about Roy Williams rather than the team.
We’ve entered the Mary Poppins phase of M’s life. If anyone knows how to get “chimchiminee chimchiminee chim chim cheree” out of my head, I would appreciate it.
If your kid pukes on their bed/floor in the middle of the night, and you just toss all the soiled clothes and sheets into the washing machine, expect to see the half-digested grapes and raisins clinging to the insides of the machine after the cycle is over. Apparently neither kids nor washing machines can process them fully.
Wow. I thought about posting just that one word and the picture, and leaving it at that. I don’t know that you ever apologize for getting the the Final Four, but little beyond the victory itself was worth celebrating about KU’s victory over Davidson in the Midwest Regional Final. For me, it was an unprecedented game. Why unprecedented? I left the house with around 10:00 to play. I’ve turned a few games off over the years, but never have I been so tense that I had to leave the house.
Gorgeous day today, so I was able to get the girls outside for a few hours. The neighbor kids also came out and eventually playground chalk made an appearance. 20 minutes later, C.’s face was completely covered in pink chalk, M.’s in blue. Hopefully the pictures turn out. Their normal Thursday morning bath came about 14 hours early. S. got called into work unexpectedly tonight, so I had to scramble a bit to keep the girls occupied through the evening.
Like a lot of parents, I struggle with how and when to push my kids. To be honest, I don’t push much: if they want to do something, I let them do it. If they aren’t interested, I’m not going to force them to kick a soccer ball for two hours. But I do think a lot about how I’ll handle these situations as they get older and begin getting into activities.
For now, I’m not going to talk about the NCAA tournament. I need to find the right tone so that I don’t anger the Woof Gods. I still have a few superstitions left. I did want to quickly recap M.’s first trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s last week. You may recall that she was invited to a birthday party for a classmate in January, but the flu beat her down that day and we had to stay home.
Some quick thoughts on the tournament before I head to Gymboree. Regarding KU, I’m surprisingly zen about them. I’d love it if their fulfilled their potential and went deep; it would certainly be a lot of fun. But, if they lose early, I’m not going to let it ruin the season for me as a fan. I know that’s a familiar refrain around here these days, but I honestly believe it.
The last time I attended a political rally was in 1992. I figured I was overdue, so I checked out Barack HUSSEIN Obama’s visit to Indianapolis Saturday. The Senator visited in advance of the May 6 Indiana primary, which given the closeness of the Democratic nomination race, is suddenly very important. Here are some observations and thoughts. The event took place at a high school on the far west side of Indianapolis, near the airport, and was open only to people who had a ticket.
I was watching the Backyardigans with the girls today and wondered, do people outside of circuses walk on tightropes anymore? I’m talking about real tightropes, not metaphorical ones. Maybe it wasn’t as often as it seemed, but when I was little, back in the mid-70s, it seemed like some joker was walking across Niagara Falls or between the TwinTowers on a tight rope every other week.
First off, I watched shockingly few hours of basketball during championship week. Part of that was because S. was on the day shift, so it was just me and the girls. By the time the games started each day, the girls had seen enough TV already, and I really needed to get them doing something active, rather than just switch to hoops. So, outside the KU games, I watched probably a total of an hour of basketball.