Sooper Geeenyus

What I think they mean to say is that it would take a Genius to decipher what I'm trying to say...

Round 2

I am very proud and excited and tentative to announce that The Wife is pregnant! We go to The Dr. on Monday to get the official word.

It seems like so much else has happened that I haven't posted about. We moved to a new house. The Boy did not handle it well for the first 3 or 4 days. He wasn't sleeping or napping well, and was just all out of sorts. But he's settled in now and doing great. Except this week it seems like he might have allergies or a sinus infection.

Oh, it looks like he may be getting ear tubes and also possibly having his lingual frenulum snipped to prevent "tongue-tied".

The new house is great and we're slowly but surely getting things the way we want them.

I'm thinking of getting my MBA. I'm not sure now would be a good time - but I don't know if it will ever be a "good time".

Where's The Mouse?

The Wife taught The Boy a new game when reading Goodnight Moon. On a handful of pages, there's a little mouse.

He says, "Where mouse?" as he holds his hands out in a shrug. Then you can watch his eyes scan the page and his finger kind of drift around the page. Then he points, "There Mouse!".

It's just the greatest. There's just something about it that makes me realize how much I love him and how much I love being his daddy.

And In Bad

At those times when you're stressed to the max and completely frazzled and don't have any happy points left - How do you work together instead of turn on each other?

Shave And A Haircut, 2 Bits

I'm so proud of The Wife. She gave The Boy a haircut this weekend and it looks great. Until now, we had just trimmed above his ears and his duck tail once. But he got a full-on, real-life, haircut. She did a great job. Now he looks like such a little boy instead of a baby. Heck, once she cuts his hair a couple more times, she'll be ready to start cutting my hair too! :-D

VisualDNA

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Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

Here I sit. Waiting for the tow truck. 3 years, 39,000 miles. Just outside of warranty. The clutch just drops out from under my foot. So the hydrolics get their fluid from the brake master cylinder. But there's also a reservoir for transmission fluid. It's empty. I tried adding fluid, but to no avail. There's no forcing it into gear - which is probably a bad idea anyway. So I'm looking at a $112 tow bill because my insurance agent sucks (it's actually probably my fault, but I'll blame her) and only has me covered for 3 miles.

So ugh.

I shoulda gotten the extended warranty. And I shoulda had better insurance.

Putting It To The Test

We watched our friend's 15-month old for a few hours this weekend. It really put our Conscious Discipline principles to the test. As I may have said earlier, most of it sounds like common sense when you read it, but it's not the first thing that pops into your mind when a situation arises. I feel like we did pretty well, and it was good practice.

We put them both in the rickshaw (bike trailer) and went pedalling around for a while. That was quite a bit of fun. We also went swimming, which was a blast.

Poop

For as long as I can remember, when The Boy looks like he's pooping, I either ask him if he's going, or tell him he's going - and I use the word poop or pooping.

Tonight we were in the bathroom and he was brushing his teeth. He stopped, leaned over and squatted a bit, gave a good grunt, and then stood back up straight, grabbed his diaper, and said "poop". Then he proceeded to finish pooping. I was floored and amused.

Hi Da-Da

I was talking with The Wife on the phone the other day. I didn't think much of it when she started asking The Boy if he wanted to talk to me, that's pretty standard and always fun to hear him babble.

The Wife: "Say hi to daddy"
The Boy: "Hi Da-da"
Me: "WAS THAT HIM?"

It was so cool. He strung some words together and actually said something in his little boy voice. That's a sound I'll never forget.

Conscious Discipline

We're in a workshop on Conscious Discipline. I've found it quite interesting. What I've gotten out of it so far is focusing on the difference between commands and requests, and when to use each. Also the subtle difference between thanking the child for doing something and giving them specific praise for the action they performed. In this realm it gets into the difference between raising a "people pleaser" versus raising someone with good self esteem. Other things include focusing on being assertive instead of passive or aggressive.

I don't do a very good job of explaining it. But it's good stuff and I would definitely recommend taking the workshop.

Part-Time Student

So The Boy went to "school" today. As mentioned earlier, he's going to go on Mondays & Wednesdays. The Wife dropped him off around 8 and picked him up about 4:45. I called them around 11:15 to see how he was doing. They said he was doing good and eating lunch when I called. Nap is supposed to be from 12:30 to 2:30, but I guess he didn't nap. We were worried about that part. For one, most days he still takes 2 naps, but some days he only takes one. The other thing is, he always naps in his room, in his crib, by himself, and it's pretty dark in his room. So we probably created this problem ourselves. Well, it was only the first day, so hopefully we can get this fixed.

I'm not sure how much he'll wear his hearing aids there. I'm not sure how much he or the other kids will try to take them out. I guess we'll just play that one by ... ear.

Our vacation starts on Friday. And although I'm very excited, I really got myself bummed out thinking about being away from him for so long.

He's getting so big. At night, when I go check on him before I go to bed, sometimes he's all stretched out in his crib, and I just can't believe how much of the crib he takes up.

Pick A Winner

The Boy had a huge booger in his nose the other day. I tried using kleenex to wipe his nose to get it out, but nothing doing. So I gave up. A few minutes later, we were just hanging out, and I asked him where his nose is. He reached up to touch his nose, but accidentally stuck his finger in his nose and pulled out that enormous booger.

I was so proud!!!

I'm So Happy I Could Cry Myself To Sleep

It's the emotional roller-coaster that is parenthood that I have a hard time dealing with. The Boy goes from happy to sad to angry to screaming faster than a MacInnis slap shot. That just drains me. But at least this night has ended positively (so far - hopefully Murphy isn't listening).

In the interest of the health of The Family, we've enrolled The Boy in daycare for two days a week. He'll start next week. I think it will be good for all of us - The Wife will get some regular breaks and The Boy will get some socialization and variety.

New. Improved.

So this is the new Blogger? Well, the labels are cool. So far, I don't see much else different.

EDIT: Wow, the customization is great! What I used to have to do with javascript is now drag and drop with my mouse. Way to go, Blogger!

We're going through a major layoff & re-org at work. Very stressful. Hard to stay focused.

The Blues are like 8-2 in their last 10. Quite a turnaround. Hopefully they can keep it up. And hopefully Pittsburgh pisses off Lemieux and he brings the Penguins to KC. Of course, if I don't have a job I'm not sure I can justify season tickets.

The Boy is doing well. He knows a ton of sign language and a few words. Except that for most the words you have to be Mom or Dad to understand. But the tantrums have started, and they are rough.

Let's Wrassle

The Boy loves to wrestle. It's amazing how rowdy he is, without ever really having been taught to be rowdy. It sure is fun, I love it. Of course, it's not all that helpful when I'm laying on the floor trying to fix the sink. And it's even less helpful when The Wife goes to get the camera instead of getting him off of me. But I'm not complaining, especially since I would've done the same thing.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Search This

What's a baby gotta do to find a search engine that works?

Hat Trick

We know Detroit couldn't manage to beat St. Louis in baseball. But did you see that they can't even beat them in crime? Now if The Blues can get their shit together and start whipping the Red Wings - that would be the icing on the cake. I don't recommend holding your breath for this.

FILE UNDER: SPORTS

Here's Your Sign

The Boy has definitely picked up on some of the sign language we've been working on. He knows "eat" - which isn't surprising since that seems to be his favorite thing to do. Within a couple minutes of waking up in the morning, he's giving the sign for "eat", and saying "na-nana. This kid is banana-crazy. Although I haven't seen him use it in a while, he used to know "more". He definitely knows "out", except he made up his own sign for it that looks more like an "I don't know" shrug. Along with his sign for "out", he gives a little grunt that actually sounds a little bit like "out".

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD

Steppin' and a Chuckin'

So it seems I've lost some interest in blogging. But here are some blogworthy events.

It's his birthday today. That's blogworthy.

For quite a while now, we've been giving The Boy things to hold and tempting him with items to get him to take a few steps. We've had very limited success. Last night, we were getting ready for bed and he had a binky in each hand and one in his mouth. We stood him up and leaned his back against the chair and put the big stuffed "riding" elephant in the middle of the room. His eyes kind of lit up, he used his butt to push off and stand on his own, and then took about 5 steps all on his own to get to the elephant! How fun! He did this about 5 separate times, and we managed to get one of them on video. Although we thought he was going to pull his "no trick pony" act, because once we got the camcorder out, it seemed like he wasn't going to do it. We felt kind of silly that we hadn't thought to try binkys before, he's always seemed more comfortable, safe, relaxed, and confident when he's holding binkys.

Speaking of binkys, this is pretty cool. When he wakes up and we get him out of the crib, if he still has a binky, about half the time, he takes it out on his own and throws it in the crib. The other half we just have to say binky a couple times and then he does it. He pretty much never gets or wants a binky except for sleeping.

He got a lot of cool stuff for his 1st 1st birthday party (with family). And I expect he'll make a decent haul at his 2nd 1st birthday party (with friends). Don't ask why we did it that way. Or if you really want to know click here.

He vomited for the first time last night in the middle of the night. That sure is a bummer. I woke up to him crying about 12:30am and knew something was wrong because that's so rare. I went to check on him and couldn't see very well. As I am feeling around for him so I can pick him up, my hand goes *mush*. Hmmm, that's not good. Hey, what's that smell. Oh god, that smells really bad. Oh wow, this stuff is everywhere. I'm going to need some help. So we went to get The Mommy for help, but she was already on her way. So we got him cleaned up. We started laundry. He puked once more. We cleaned him up again. We added more stuff to the laundry. And then I went to Wal-Mart at 1:00am to get some medicine, more sheets and another mattress pad in case there was more puking, and some other stuff. He slept through the rest of the night and was doing quite a bit better today, but still not 100%.

The Wife and I got to go on a date last week. That was nice. We went to a dinner theater. The play was so-so, but we had a great time. It was nice to be husband and wife for a while instead of mommy and daddy. I hope we get to do that more often. It's tough to lose your identity as a man/husband and woman/wife to the identity of mommy and daddy.

FILE UNDER: PARENTHOOD, THINKING