It’s hard to believe L.’s been with us for a week now. It’s been a busy time, with two of my out-of-town sisters-in-law coming to visit, the in-town relatives coming over often, and of course many more visits from friends and neighbors. It’s been fun but we’re happy that things are slowing down and we can begin taking some deep breaths and establishing our new normal. Here’s an attempt to update you on what we’ve experienced over the past week.
Things are going well. L. has slept quite well the past two nights, waking to eat around 11, 3, and 6 each night and often going back to sleep quickly after each feed. I’ve mostly kept the MacBook closed and in the office, but I have been adding some notes to a full update post on the events of the past week that I’ll share soon. I did want to go ahead and share this story, though.
Brought the girls (mom and baby) home yesterday, right on schedule. Everything is going well with both. L. prefers to lay on us, rather than in her bed, which meant it was about 4:30 this morning before I finally got to sleep. And S. spent much of the night in bed with M. and C., who were having their own issues. We’re missing the send the baby to the nursery option.
We’ve been busy around the house, getting everything cleaned, sorted, and stored in advance of the arrival of Baby Sister, some house guests, and the inevitable flood of visitors that will want to stare at the baby. In the rush, I forgot to put together my patented, much anticipated baseball playoff previews. As with my football previews, which are already about 75% worthless a month into the season, take these with a generous helping of salt.
The Royals finish fourth! The Royals finish fourth! Thanks to a blistering September, the mighty Kansas City Royals avoided the cellar in the American League Central. Believe it or not, this is the fourth time this decade the Royals have finished fourth. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all! It’s funny how the length of a baseball season can color your judgement, though. This was going to be yet another desultory R’s season, another year when the rebuilding project showed no signs of progress.
Another great list from the Onion AV Club. Naturally, it begs the question, what movies are on my list? In no particular order: Star Wars. I probably watched this 50 times between 1977 and 1984. I’ve seen it once all the way through since then. Chevy’s Classics. I’ll bundle the classic work of Chevy Chase together, since watching one often meant watching another immediately after. Includes Caddyshack, Vacation, Fletch, Fletch Lives, Spies Like Us, and Three Amigos.
If you didn’t flip by ESPN at any point on Sunday, you may not know that the final baseball game has been played at Yankee Stadium. ESPN devoted approximately 800 hours of programming to this historic event. The Yankees are missing the playoffs this year, so they had to fill their Yanks quota somehow. Anyway, lots of people shared their memories of Yankees Stadium over the past few days. I’ve never been there, but I have watched a game or two that has been played there.
M. took a bit of a tumble the other night. We were talking with the neighbors while our kids chased each other around and heard a solid smack, followed by screaming. M. caught her toes in the sidewalk as she was running and ended up face-down on the sidewalk. Not only did she skin her knees, but also her forehead hit the ground, leaving a nice, bloody welt. Just in time for her class' circus at school on Friday.
Going back to the first album I purchased with my own money for a moment, I’ll admit thinking about Def Leppard’s <em>Pyromania</em> made me a little nostalgic. So I fired up the iTunes Music Store. No <em>Pyromania</em> available there. Jump over to the Amazon MP3 Store. Not there either. So one of the biggest selling albums of the 80s - one of the top 100 selling albums of all-time for that matter - still isn’t available on either of the two biggest, legal, online music stores.
I don’t know how to feel about Lance Armstrong’s return. I tend to want my retired athletic heroes to stay retired. Call me old fashioned. But, I read an article during this summer’s Brett Favre drama that convinced me that the whole idea of legacy and pleasing the fans is a little silly. Each athlete should do what makes him or her happy, not what keeps our mental image of them intact.
Four hours of sweet freedom. That’s what we got today with the girls both going off to school. What a strange thing to have a completely quiet house in the middle of the day. I had to shut off my music junkie switch for awhile so I could enjoy this rare time of no noise. C. did great at school. S. had a meeting this morning, so I dropped C. off by myself.
In honor of M. starting school Wednesday, here are some stories about the kids. As promised, I will now reveal the curse word that C. has been using from time-to-time. When I drop something, knock something over, etc. my default curse is “Dammit.” I’ve learned to more mutter it than exclaim it since becoming a father, so I say it in a low voice, often through clenched teeth. Not too long ago, I noticed when C.
Admit it, you were glued to VH1 Classic’s 80 Hours of the ’80s this weekend (That is if you have VH1 Classic). Lord knows I was. I thought about e-mailing each of you individually to make sure you knew it was on. In between shows for the kids and doing things outside, I tried to check in on the A-Z run-through of some of the decade’s best videos all weekend. Most nights, while I was reading, I used it as my background music instead of my usual iTunes library.
Something very disappointing happened while my attentions were dominated by the Olympics: the Royals completely went into the tank. It wasn’t that long ago that they had a four game lead on the Indians for fourth place, and Detroit wasn’t too far ahead in third. Keep things going, and there was a chance for 75 wins and a third place finish, a perfect building block for next year and beyond. Instead, they’ve lost 15 of 18, have sustained some crippling injuries, and now look poised to continue the tradition of anti-excellence the franchise has forged over the past 20 years.
Sigh. The Olympics are over. What the hell do I do now? Actually, the Olympics didn’t dominate my time this year the way they did four years ago. But I had a two-week-old baby then and we just kind of sat on the couch for about 20 hours a day anyway. That year, the Olympics were a God-send. This year, once the girls watched their fill of morning TV, rather than switch to the games, I was trying to get them outside to do something fun and active.
Usain in the brain! Sweet baby Jesus. As I said earlier, my favorite run ever was Michael Johnson’s 200M world record in Atlanta. Second, before this week, was the 4x100 relay in 1992, when the U.S. destroyed the field, Carl Lewis ran away and hid, and Dennis Mitchell went nuts after he handed off to Lewis.* Bolt’s two world records this week are suddenly in the mix. I shudder to think what the Jamaicans are going to do in the 4x100 relay.
Trying to keep these things shorter. I’ve never been a gymnastics guy, and this year has reinforced the wisdom of that decision. Not that I understood the scoring before, but it’s even worse this year. I’ll be the one millionth person to ask, how can you fall down on your dismount and still win a gold medal? My favorite technical aspect of the Olympics might be the curve cam in the long sprints.
I’ll try to do these more often this week, to avoid 1000+ words of rambling. I forgot to mention in my first Olympics Notebook that I’m thrilled with NBC’s coverage in one big way: we have five channels of high definition coverage. S. laughed at me on the night of the opening ceremonies when I got terribly excited when I saw there were four new channels. Of course, two are fairly limited in what they show, mostly basketball and soccer.
With seven weeks to go, we’re finally cranking up the baby preparations. Of course, when you already have two girls, there isn’t that much original preparation to do. We moved the crib back up to newborn level today. We moved all of C.’s clothes out of that room and into her current room as well. Sometime this week, we’ll start pulling out all the infant clothes and restocking the dresser. We officially have a nursery again.
10 “Paid In Full” - Eric B. & Rakim, 1987. I’ve told this story before. In the fall of my year in the Bay Area, I discovered a hip-hop show on Stanford’s campus radio station, KZSU. The only problem was we lived way across the Bay, and I could only pick the show up on a small, portable radio that had a three foot antenna. So, to record the shows, I had to run a cord to an old-school tape recorder (this was 1987, so it wasn’t so old school at the time).