The Tao Of Childcare
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Actually, I don’t think this is tao at all, but I’ve noticed something in recent weeks: The more kids you have, the harder it is to keep your house clean.
Uncategorized
Reader's Notebook
Monday, July 16, 2007
Burmese Days - George Orwell. I read this book primarily because I saw an interesting looking travel book at Borders that is about following Orwell’s trail in modern Burma. I figured I needed the background before I could justify buying it. This is no where near as good as Orwell’s more famous works - 1984, Animal Farm - but still presents an interesting and remarkable critique of the British empire during its final glory days during the inter-war period.
Fun Day At The Pool
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Posting as I listen to the new Crowded House album… We took the girls to the magnificent, opulent, new city pool here in Carmel Monday. I think the city spent something like $800 million on it (slight exaggeration) and still has the nerve to charge residents to use it. Anyway, it’s loaded with all kinds of stuff: a kiddie pool, a lap pool, a hybrid pool that is for bigger kids and feeds into a normal pool, a dive and slide pool, a lazy river (which of course was not working), and then a huge water slide.
Shitty Day
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Literally a shitty day. We went through at least a dozen diapers and pull-ups today. I’m expecting anti-pollution people to picket our house tomorrow because of all the waste. When we got the girls out of bed this morning, they had each managed to remove their diapers. M.’s bed was just soaked. I’ll spare the details, but C.’s was far worse, and at 5:00 AM to boot. Not every day of parenthood can be lemonade and cotton candy, I guess.
Ed
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
I tend to get stuck on specific memories occasionally. I’ll call up some image from the past and it becomes a dominant thought for a couple days. I’m never sure if this is a sign, and if it is a sign what it means, or just how my brain works. For example, last fall I went through an extended phase where I kept thinking of the fall of 1994, when my roommate got a Mac and we were discovering the strange world of AOL.
On Fireworks
Monday, July 2, 2007
I have to say, no matter what people who vote red in each election might claim, I love America. But I hate fireworks. Big, pretty fireworks that can be seen from miles away are fine. It’s the ones that regular people decide to fire off at 10:45 in neighborhoods that I hate. Is it wrong that I secretly hope the idiots who shoot off their fireworks long after little ones have gone to bed lose a finger or hand in the process?
Silence
Sunday, July 1, 2007
We had a few minutes of silence tonight. We ordered a two-screen portable DVD player for the van last week and decided to fire it up for the girls for the first time, just to make sure it worked. We got everything working, put the girls in their seats, popped in Finding Nemo, and for a few minutes, we had glorious silence. M. could only go so long before asking 1000 questions, “What’s that?
Kids
Saturday, June 30, 2007
As we begin this holiday week, some catching up on the kids. I’ve got a couple big projects in mind for this week, which figures since most of my readers are probably on some kind of reduced work schedule this week. But, S. is working days this week, so I probably won’t get around to them anyway. M.’s first real haircut was Thursday. I say real since S. just took off an inch or two on her own awhile back, and Thursday involved going to a hair cuts for kids place and dealing with strangers with scissors.
NBA Draft
Friday, June 29, 2007
Well, the kids intervened a little, and some household chores kept me from watching as much of the draft as I would have liked. By the time I was able to sit down in front of the TV for good, I was just too tired to rewind and watch the entire thing from the beginning. So some truncated thoughts, or I guess some thoughts based on my truncated viewing and reviewing of the picks.
Draft Preview
Thursday, June 28, 2007
It is my hope to continue a small tradition of the blog and provide some kind of commentary on tonight’s NBA draft. Conveniently, S. is working, so I’ll have the TV to myself. Inconveniently, we have two kids, so I’ll be DVRing and watching after bedtime, hoping I don’t get interruptions from upstairs. A quick preview seems in order, though. Oden vs. Durant. It’s not even a question in my mind.
Little Reader
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
As an addendum to my Reader’s Notebook entry, a funny update on what C. is up to these days. My wee girl loves her some books! We’ve got books scattered all over the house, and one of her favorite tricks to to round them up and bring them to me, one-by-one. She’ll dig through them, looking for one that grabs her interest, then picks it up, and scurries my way, giggling and shrieking the entire way.
The Lost Art (A Rant Of Sorts)
Monday, June 25, 2007
Lost arts: The bounce pass. The stolen base. Good customer service. As we were working on our various projects around the house this winter and spring, I kept a mental list of customer service issues we had with the various contractors and businesses we worked with. There were a lot of unreturned phone calls, which are always annoying. To be honest, though, I lost track of my big list because one business' especially poor performance.
We Must Look Nice
Sunday, June 24, 2007
This weekend, two different times while out for a family walk, we were stopped by people driving through the neighborhood looking at houses to answer some questions about living here. If it happens one more time, we’re contacting the home owners association and asking for some kind of compensation plan, because we talked it up! I’m pretty sure houses are going to start flying off of the market thanks to our good words of advise.
Trip To The Lou
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Very good trip to St. Louis Tuesday and Wednesday. I headed over with a friend from Indy who had business in the area and generally takes in a Cards' game when he is in town. He dropped me off and headed to his meeting, I did some walking and shopping and picture-taking, then caught lunch with Mr. N at a favorite from St. Louis trips past, Rigazzi’s. A little Sicilian lasagna and a nice fishbowl of Bud Light for lunch is hard to beat.
To The Lou
Monday, June 18, 2007
Just a friendly reminder that the new White Stripes album hits stores on Tuesday. As I type this at 11:07 PM, I’m seriously considering staying up until midnight to grab it from iTunes, even though my alarm is set for 5:50 AM tomorrow morning. (That is one thing I miss about the non-Daylight Savings Time days in Indiana. During the summer, you could buy new albums on iTunes at 11:00 PM on Monday nights.
Very Quiet
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Quiet here on the blog and elsewhere. It’s been kind of a strange week. I’ve been doing some data migration (that’s fancy talk) which has disrupted some of my normal routines. C. is being a royal pain at night, which makes mornings tough. I’ve got thoughts, just not always the motivation to post them for you. Several folks have asked about what the job prospects are looking like. To be honest, there’s not much going on right now.
Dumb Kids
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Not my kids, although there are moments where I’m thinking that. No, I’m talking about the kids who edited the paper down at campus the past two semesters. I’ve been digging through the stories I wrote to make copies to send out to prospective employers and thus reading through everything I had published. Oddly enough, I don’t always like reading my stories once they’re printed. I can’t explain why, it just works out that way.
The Deep End
Thursday, June 7, 2007
We took the girls to the in-laws' pool today. It was a pretty good demonstration of how different my daughters are. M., nearly three and a two summer veteran of the pool, threw a couple fits because she didn’t want to get into the water. When we finally coaxed her in, it took her forever to relax and have fun. When she was in the water with me, she wrapped her legs and arms around me, clinging tightly, and always had a nervousness in her voice.
Big Day For M.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Hey, all those words in the subject line have three letters. How about that? Anyway, today was a rather large day for M.. Her first trip to the dentist! We’ve been educating her with a Dora goes to the dentist book for a few weeks, and for the past couple days she seemed really excited to go see Dr. I. (Long-time reader may recall that our family dentist is an extremely attractive woman.
Occupational Hazard
Thursday, May 24, 2007
The potty training had been going really well this week. Then, today, poop on the floor. Not a top five moment in my parenting life.
Family News
Monday, May 21, 2007
No, not that kind of family news. A couple big events over the last two weeks in my extended family. First, one of S.’s sisters got engaged. So far, we’re the only married folks in the family, so it will be cool to have another guy around on holidays and whatnot. He’s a really good guy and we get along great whenever we’ve been together, and the sister-in-law seems happy, so that’s all good.
A Day At The Races
Saturday, May 19, 2007
It was a, how shall I put this, fast paced Saturday for us. First, I ran my second 5K of the year in the morning. The last race I ran was longer than 3.1 miles, and this one might have been shorter because I came in at less than 27 minutes, and I wasn’t running hard enough to clock that good of a time. Oh, and I’ve been running like once a week, so it’s not like I’m on some great training regimen that cut my time down.
The Birthday Girl
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Well, somehow C. turned one today. Was it really a year ago that we dropped M. off at her grandparents' house and took S. in for a c-section? In some ways it seems like a lot longer than that. In others, the time has really raced by. The last two or three weeks have been pretty amazing. Not that she was developmentally delayed in any way, but she has suddenly blossomed.
The Lure Of The Fancy One
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Last week I bought a new cell phone. Not a huge deal, since something like 180 billion cell phones are sold each day. My old phone was actually in fine shape, for the most part. But after almost three years, it took as long as 30 seconds before an out-going call would connect with the network. I spent a ton of time last week scrolling through Verizon’s site, looking at the phones that are available, the discounts I qualify for, and then reading reviews of the phones on about a dozen different sites.
Stepping Up
Monday, May 14, 2007
We’re in the midst of having quite a bit of work done around the house. It should all be wrapped up by the end of the week, and then I’ll share what we’ve done and post some pics to Flickr so you can see. So we’re pretty busy and I haven’t had a chance to wrap up a few posts I’ve started. But I did want to share some news on the girls.
Reader's Notebook
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
9 - Not On Our Watch - Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. A book, and I know this will surprise you, about Darfur and activism, written by two of the most notable and active members of the movement. Don Cheadle you should all know. Actor in Boogie Nights, the Oceans movies, and Hotel Rwanda. Prendergast has worked in the White House, Congress, and UN with a focus on African issues and now works with several NGOs that are attempting to end the genocide in Darfur as well as near genocides in Somalia, Uganda, and Congo.
More On The Brainwashing Of My Kids
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been working hard to get the music of the Beatles deeply ingrained in my daughters' heads. I figure if they get a solid base of Beatles, even with whatever regrettable music they listen to in their teen years (Hey, I’m just as guilty as the next person), they’ll eventually gravitate towards good music and be better people because of it. We now have a new lunchtime routine, at least on the days when S.
You Talking To Me?
Monday, May 7, 2007
Even though it’s been nearly three years, when I hear M. yell out to me, “Daddy!” it still sounds a little strange. Me, a dad? But it also sounds magical, magnificent, amazing, etc. etc. etc.
Getting More Official Every Day
Monday, May 7, 2007
I am now in possession of business cards that identify me as a writer and editor. Yikes, that sounds a little strange. More about the process of actually getting the cards in a second. I realized when they were delivered Sunday (Sunday delivery, very nice!) that this was kind of a big deal. I had business cards back when I worked the The Big C Corp. However, those were a bit of a let down.
IBM Presents You Make The Call
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Every baseball fan remembers You Make the Call. I think it should apply to real life as well. So here’s my conundrum. Friday, I was out running errands and sitting at a red light near a middle school as the kids were getting out. A series of buses were making the left turn onto my street. After my light turned green, the next bus continued through the light and made its turn.