Year: 2004

I started bouncing my legs with Amy on my lap and sang “bum bumb bum bum dum bum bum” and she looks up at me making eye contact, covers my mouth with her tiny hand and says “Da da. Stop!”

Wow Amy is so talkative this morning! She has given a strong hug. Grab an incredibly firm pat on my leg to get my attention and tell me she wanted in my lap. Is giving nice kisses and keeps telling me about her “cereal.”

Hehe. She just identified a yellow circle on a poster on the fridge as “look daddy, a moon!”

She is such a pleasure. I can’t put into words how good it feels to have this little person sit on my lap as I type this.

Amy says “Dada! Ceriel[sic]”

I just changed the messiest diaper I’ve ever had. Ok. “Messiest” isn’t right. “Gross” would be better. It was like dried spinach on her cheeks with fresh spinach juice running out the legs of the diaper down to the backs of both knees. Yuck!

hehe! I got scolded (in a happy way). Amy was behind Sarah’s door playing with her magnetic calendar when I opened the door disturbing her play and she smiles, looks up at me with those beautiful blue eyes and says “Daaa Da!” as if saying “Hey! I was doing something.”

I forgot to mention that last night when I came upstairs to investigate a noise, I found Amy asleep in a fetal position with her rump in the air and cheek on the hardwood floor. I felt so bad. I wanted hardwoods for the ease of cleaning and their beauty but with kids it doesn’t seem very practical. Now I can’t afford carpet. I must work harder!

Anyhow, when I came up I disturbed the cat on a hunt. We obviously have a mouse in the kitchen (I’ve found evidence). I know where it lives and the cat does too. She is staring down the gap in the cabinets where the mouse enters and exits. The cat must have been on alert all night long. Earn your keep cat!

Amy is awake.

A New Day!

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This Morning

Had trouble getting to sleep last night. At 1am I finally drifted off. I was torn between sleep and staying up and cleaning. I knew if I stayed up the morning would be hellish but the productivity would have been great.

Got up on the 2nd bell at 6am. Never heard the first bell. I suspect the volume has been turned down.

Expectations. Are they wrong? I keep a reading light on a specific spot on the head board of our bed. That way if I need light in the night I can reach up and grab in and in seconds I can have light. This reading light keeps getting “cleaned” and this morning it was so well hidden that I had to turn on the overhead light, disturbing the wife’s sleep, to find it. My wife has an expectation to not have a cluttered headboard (really a built in book case at the head of the bed). So how do we find a happy medium here? Simple answer. She needs to pick a spot that she likes the reading light to be and I need to know where the spot is.

Must stay away from the wife tonight.

Morning was spent typing and blogging.

Afternoon was spent at the inlaws with Cathy’s brother, his wife and kids. A good time was had by all.

Evening was spent accomplishing nothing but irritating the wife.

I have so much in my head that I want to type. I could happily spend the rest of the day blogging, journaling and composing.

I also could happily spend the rest of the day cleaning and throwing stuff away.

She says: “Why haven’t you gotten the paper?”

He retorts: “I haven’t been outside yet.”

She ponders.

She says: “I wonder if Sarah’s glasses got returned [to the mailbox] last night.”

He hears: “Get your lazy ass out and get the paper! Bring in the glasses while you are at it!”

He submits.

They have happy marriage!

“The secret to a happy life is a happy wife!”

A New Day!

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This Morning

The alarm clock went off at some ungodly hour. I never recovered a deep sleep after that.

7something Tommy begins drumming on the walk for attention. It’s one of his announcing techniques: “I’m awake but I don’t want to bring my medicine to down to you.”

I decide to get some coffee going and give Tommy his medicine. He either returns to sleep or lounges in bed. Half an hour later Amy is playing happily in the room she shares with Sarah. A bit later I decide to open the door and she looks up at me from her sitting position in her toy box with Toy’s piled all over her as if to say “what? I’m busy” so I leave the door open and return to Blogshares and she continues to play finally emerging 20-30 minutes later. What a happy well-rounded confident child!

Tommy rises and watches Amy while I bath. The wife is up shortly after and I decend into the basement for blogging, mental review of yesterday, planning for today, and coffee!

Cathy returned home and the boys and I went to UT to watch the Orange and White game with their grandfather and uncle.

I wasn’t really looking forward to this as I’m not sports buff but I do enjoy watching the game. However, this event turned out to be a very special treat. In college I was a huge fan and went to all the games. I never went down on the field. This was my first time ever on the grass. It was pretty cool. I stood as center in the stadium as I could (players were signing autographers dead center) and imagined myself as a football player. Funny thing is all I could imagine is how fun it would be to be playing the game and the rest would seem so irrelevant. I remember playing shirtless, tackle football as a teenager. It felt good.

We let the kids run all over the stadium unattended. I was never nervous and they handled themselves well. Tommy eventually got bored and started being mean to his brother so he was separated. Bill let Tommy hold the money then would let the kids run around the stadium and after they left would remember “oh! Tommy’s got the money!” which was quite humorous. Despite frequent restroom breaks Noah still wet his pants. I don’t understand why or when it happened. He did have a 20 oz Coke which was probably a mistake but there weren’t many other options.

We returned home and I had a moment of upset with Tommy for his rudeness and sent him to chill out on the porch and I got mad at Noah for lying about his pants. He doesn’t understand that I don’t get upsetting over the wetting of the pants but I get furious over lying. I need to take a lighter approach with all the kids. Overall I have backed off tremendously but I still have my moments.

A moment of forgetfulness

Just a note on parking. Right now we park the station wagon (which is beginning to have a transmission problem) in a gravel parking space level with the road in the front side yard. The Jeep (which has a dead starter) gets parked at the top of the driveway so that I can roll it down the hill, pop the clutch and get the engine going. Right now, we are borrowing one of Cathy’s parents cars because they insisted I have something that started with a key for my last business trip (we haven’t returned it yet because its been convenient and I want to wash it); that car moves twice a day. In the morning it blocks the station wagon so that the postman can get to the mailbox; in the afternoon it blocks the mailbox so that the station wagon can be used. Having it in the road has reducing the amount of traffic using our cove as a turn-a-round. Yesterday that car was parked in the grass in the middle of the cove.

After Cathy and Amy returned we had a break then loaded everyone back into the car. Started the Jeep and parked it on the other side of the loaner car in the grass (engine running of course or it wouldn’t move again until I put a starter in it). We backed the station wagon down the driveway and attached the trailer then sped off to try to go to Sam’s Wholesale club. Cathy realized that most things we would buy would be frozen and that it was a silly trip so we re-routed to meet her mother at Lowe’s where she was buying a new grill. We decided to make a quick stop at Walmart for dry goods which proved a convenient rest stop for Noah then met Cathy’s mother at Lowe’s and secured the new grill in the Jeep. About .4 kilometers (1/4 mile) from Lowe’s a piece of the grill blew off. Fortunely Cathy’s mom was behind us and recovered the piece. Even more fortunately it did not hit her car. I am still furious with myself for allowing it to happen. I’m a much more skilled mover than that to make such a stupid mistake. The damage was superficial and to a hidden part so it is kinda irrelevant. We visited with Cathy’s brother and sister in law (in town for the weekend) and her parents briefly then headed home. We arrived home and backed the trailer down the driveway, parked the station wagon then moved the Jeep back from the center of the cove to its position at the top of the driveway note: It sat in the middle of the road with the keys in the iginition and the engine running for about 4 hours unattended! Thank goodness we live in a low crime area!

Was too exhausted to do anything productive or even recreational and just passed out. Tis a shame as it was “Nosy Neighbor Awareness Day” and I could think of a couple of adult activities in the front and/or back windows or out on the trampoline that would have made for a fun celebration of just such a day!