What an amazing eight years!
Category: Amy
Making a girl’s 8th birthday wish come true
Amy has her mind set on a club house for her 8th birthday (tomorrow!).
The Fantasy
On Saturday morning, Ty Pennington and his crew from Extreme Makeover Home Edition show up with a bobcat and the materials to build The Queen Anne or the Spoiler. By Saturday evening, a portion of the yard has been contoured, landscaped and become home to Amy’s new playhouse in which we celebrate her birthday inside.
The Reality
Saturday I build the Little Miss by myself leaving landscaping for a different weekendlifetime. Sunday afternoon, we celebrate Amy’s birthday inside and around her clubhouse.
Cathy’s fear
The construction will be delayed and problematic and Amy will go without any semblance of a birthday present until the end of the summer or worse.
The Wishful Desire
Any volunteers want to grab hammers and shovels and help me put this together in one day on this coming Saturday? Does beer and pizza still work in exchange for labor?
And you can bet there will be a timelapse of the build.
My Future Vlogger
Amy’s Earth Day Lunch
Update: This update for Jim, the no good deed goes unpunished commenter. The students discussed healthy eating for lunch today, not conservation. The landfill packaging may or may not have presented the students an opportunity for discussing organic eating.
The secret is to turn the 2 pieces of bread into a rectangle. My first attempt I put one slice directly on top of the other and that did nothing. You want to overlap them ever so slightly before using the rolling pin. Work the seam really well so that you end up with a good bond between the two slices.
When putting the ingredients on, cheat it toward one of the narrow sides to leave some bare bread at the end for keeping the roll together (bread on bread after rolling). Roll it tight but not so tight as to tear the bread and at the end go back and forth over the final seam with slightly increasing pressure to try to keep the bread together.
I picked up the sushi tray from Kroger’s deli.
The sushi is: white wheat bread, ranch dressing, 2 slices of ham, shredded carrots, 1 slice of swiss cheese, and 2 sweet baby pickles
From the mouths of babes
Amy, seven years old: "Thanks for dinner Daddy. Without you, we’d starve to death!"
Me: "Well, you’re welcome."
Evan, four years old: "You can say, ‘my pleasure.’"
From the mouths of babes
Amy, 7.5 years: "Evan’s got a bloody nose!"
Evan, 4.5 years: "Dad! My nose is bleeding!"
Evan: "Oh, it’s just a boogie."
Amy’s Christmas Present
Amy wants a puppy for Christmas but we already have two large German Shepherds so I’m getting her this instead:
Picture borrowed from Picture is Unrelated without permission.
Science!
As I held infant Amy, rocking her to sleep, I’d talk to her and tell her how much I looked forward to having conversations together. You know the joke: We spend the first part of their lives teaching them how to talk and the rest of their lives trying to get them to shut up. As I held infant Evan, rocking him to sleep, I’d have the same discussion. Eventually they did learn to talk and we’ve had some fascinating conversations.
Today Amy, 7 years old, asked, "What is radioactivity? Is it bad?" So I proceeded to talk to Amy about radio waves, the visual spectrum, light, ear drums, we drew an atom, and a water molecule. She listened and questioned and conjectured. That was fun!
Parenting Tip #423: Use a tape recorder to record a minute of your infant’s sounds every week. Their noises change from week to week and you will enjoy listening to the tape when they are older. Also, they love to hear their own noises so that tape in a Playskool tape player (vintage? Okay.. get a digital recorder) is good for about 20 minutes of babysitting or so I am told. This was some advice from a friend that I failed to follow with some regrets.
How cold is it?
It’s so cold that my lip froze to my coffee mug while waiting at the bus stop with Amy.
The Magic is Gone
One of the thrills of the single digits is raiding my desk. Often I come down to find my organized chaos in a disarray. To Amy and Evan my clutter is their treasure trove, as it should be, so I try to keep it child friendly. I fidget with my magic from time to time. My nickel to dimes trick currently lives on my desk in a ziplock bag so the money doesn’t accidentally get spent. I found the ziplock open. The nickles and dimes are accounted for but a critical piece of the trick has gone missing. Nevermind…I’m stupid. This reminds me of the time I purchased my first rainbow rod. I was in Disney World and the magician at the magic shoppe performed the trick so well that I understood exactly what to do. I purchased my own. I was so excited that back the hotel I pulled the wand from its container and tossed the instructions aside. I had enough prop magic to understand how these worked. I did exactly like the performer from the magic shoppe and my heart wrenched from my chest as I immediately broke the wand! The result of my actions had produce an outcome unlike anything the magician had done. It was totally unexpected and nothing I did seemed to fix it. That is, until I read the instructions and laughed myself to tears. So, the nickel and dime trick…it’s kinda like that.
Of Being Dad – Do what you say
One of my mantras is "Say what you are going to do then do what you say." A child never forgets. If you promise a child you will do something, do it! Our calendars says that the movie Up is released on DVD today. When we saw Up in the theaters, I promised Amy she and I would go see the 3-D version as a father/daughter date. Life got in the way. The movie came and went. And today, she reminded me that I failed to deliver on that promise. Not a good feeling.
Clot II – Return of the Nosebleed
Producer: Amy
Lead role: Amy
Supporting cast: Dad
Clot summary: At 2:30am, 7 year old girl will erupt from bed with nose gushing blood leaving small drip on favorite pink pillow and a bit of a puddle on the sheets. She will try to deal with the problem herself by sitting on the toilet (lid down) and rocking in a half daze to make sure that blood drips cover as much of the wooden, where linoleum was before the dogs tore it up, bathroom floor as possible. Only when nose bleed subsides will she wander downstairs to rouse the sleeping father who will don his bio-hazard suit and begin to console the weary child…
Planned releases: Rumor has it that Colt III – Revenge of the O Positive is in production and scheduled for an early release.
From the mouths of babes
I dropped the milk. The cap popped off and poured all over the floor.
Me: "DAMMIT!"
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad said dammit."
Mom: * gives Dad eyeballs *
Amy, 7 years old: "Moooom! Evan said dammit!"
Evan: "No, Dad said dammit."
Amy: "Don’t say dammit."
Noah, 13 years old: "Evan, don’t say that. It’s a dirty word."
Evan: "No! Dammit. Dammitdammitdammitdamitdamitdamitdamtdatmdaaaaammmmmmmit!"
Mom: covering her face in towels to hide her laughter.
Dad: hiding in the fridge unable to breath laughing.
Uncle already! I get the message. Mouth meet soap.
From the mouths of babes
Amy, 7 years old: "I’m not going in my room because Sarah is asleep in there."
Me: "Sarah isn’t in the house."
Amy: "Then what’s that big lump in the bed?"
Me: "Personally, I wouldn’t call my mother a big lump."
Amy loves the nurse’s office
School began yesterday with a half day. Today was the first full day. Amy came home to cheerfully report falling off the monkey bars and getting to spend time in the nurses office with an ice pack made out of a rubber glove. I should start a poll to see who can guess how many visits Amy will have to the nurses office this year.
