DadRock

The little girl

Our daughter, Ruby Kathleen, was born 1-5-09 at 3:03. More info soon. It was a wacky day.

Things 2-year-olds do

1. Sneak up on you while you're using the bathroom. Everything's quiet, then there they are, grinning at you and saying "poopie! teetee!"

2. Stick stickers all over the couch. Like dozens of them.

3. Color everything.

4. Dip everything in ketchup.

5. Want to watch the same thing over and over and over. In our case, it's the Tigger And Pooh Super Sleuth Christmas Movie.

6. Tear the covers  off coloring books for no apparent reason.

7. Constantly try to push their luck by doing things you specifically tell them not to do in varying degrees, such as grabbing an ornament on the Christmas tree, then just touching it, then pointing at it, then starting over with a different ornament.

8. Chase the dogs.

9. Love beans, then refuse to eat beans. Love corn, then refuse to eat corn. Love chicken, then refuse to eat chicken. Love grilled cheese sandwiches, then refuse to eat grilled cheese sandwiches. Love waffles, and pretty much always love waffles.

10. Face the harsh reality of giving up the pacifier. We're on night number two, and it's (so far) going *far* smoother than night number one went. Fingers crossed we get through this thing in another day or two.

Things I've Been Doing Besides Blogging

It's been far too long, so I figured I owed you an explanation as to what I've been up to since we last spoke. Make no mistake, I've been moderately busy a considerable amount of the time.

1. Brewing
About a month ago I cooked up a batch of Extra Pale Ale. It's my first shot at home brewing, but I've got high hopes. If this one goes well, I'm going to try something a little darker next time around, like a porter or a winter ale. I brewed it and moved it to a fermenter, then a week or so later siphoned it to a secondary fermenter. Two weeks after that, I bottled. As we speak, there's a Rubbermaid in our kitchen with 45 bottles of beer in it, conditioning. I could crack one as soon as Monday, but I'm going to hold off until Wednesday since it's been cold (the carbonation process happens slower in colder temps). I'm also considering holding off until Tuesday the 4th as a celebratory gesture. I'll keep you posted.

2. Cramming My Face with Politcs
As alluded to in the previous post, I've been downright obsessed with the impending election as well as political stuff in general (see #3). I even hung out with my 12 grade American Government teacher a coupl'a weeks ago. That was a hoot. I suspect he may become a bit of a comrade down here in the Republican stronghold we call our home town.

3. Watching The West Wing
Aaron Sorkin's masterpiece, The West Wing has four solid seasons of fantastic tv with some of the best characters ever to grace the small screen. By season 5, things start getting a little shaky (I'm sure it's no coincidence that Sorkin left after season 4), but even through the hit-or-miss later seasons, there's some great stuff. The liberalism is a little heavy-handed at times (even for me, and that's saying something), but excepting that, it's fantastic.

4. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
I installed Windows on my iMac specifically so I could play this game. It's glorious.

5. Being Amazed by Our Son's Progress
He started pre-school back in August, and it's doing wonders. His vocabulary is up to 7 or 8 clear words/names, and a good handful of beginning sounds accompanied by signs. He's picking up things quickly now, and we're feeling very confident that the verbal breakthrough we're waiting on is just around the bend. He's in pre-school two days a week for three hours a day, plus his weekly speech therapy. We're feeling good.

6. Getting Ready to Have a Daughter

 

 

It's a girl

Baby #2 is due in January, and we found out today that it's a girl. Holy moly.

Like a cat presenting a dead chipmunk

A few minutes ago, I was sitting here minding my own business, and the boy walks up to me holding a cave cricket by one of its legs. He was presenting it to me, as if to say, "Look what I got!" The thing was still alive too, so I'm totally amazed that he was able to just reach down and pick it up. Those things jump like crazy.

As a kid I was terrified of cave crickets because I thought they were spiders. Both of my brothers' rooms were in our basement at the time, and therefore you were pretty likely to find these little buggers jumping around down there. We called them jumping spiders, and they were almost enough to keep me from spending too much time down there alone. Of course, the Nintendo was also down there, so I managed to overcome my fear most of the time.

When Kelly and I lived in Lilburn, Ga, for a few years, we had a big basement that was just overrun with these things at certain times of the year. I grew to not really mind them, as long as they didn't jump directly on me. They're just crickets after all.

But still I was caught off guard to see him presenting this thing to me. My first instinct was, "Drop that!" but then I realized it would likely hop off. So I managed to grab the trashcan and hold it out to him, where he gladly deposited the cricket. I then dumped him outside, where he'll live to hop another day. He's lucky neither of the dogs found him.

Family Heirlooms

My brother and I go to my grandmother's house each Friday to eat lunch and mow the grass. Her house is sitting on like three or four acres, so it's a bit of a job. We divide it up, me on the riding mower, him on the tractor. It's actually sort of relaxing, though, and it gives my mom and grandma some time to play with the kids, which they really enjoy. And, of course, we usually get a good home-cooked lunch. Today we had fried chicken, fried okra, black-eyed peas, cornbread, pasta salad, and big glasses of sweet tea. I had two plates full.

Anyway, there were two cast-iron skillets sitting on the stove when I arrived. I'd remembered a while back my grandmother telling me that she had a skillet that was given to her by her grandmother, so I asked her about it. Basically I knew it was something that no one else in the family would probably have given a second thought to, but I figured when the time came it was something I'd like to get. At any rate, much to my surprise, she pulled it out from the drawer under her stove and offered it to me. I was honored to take it.

It was given to her by her Grandma Seeney (I'm guessing on that spelling and to be honest I'm not even sure which great-great-grandmother this is from, and none of the names on the family tree I referenced fit with Seeney. I'm going to have to do a little more investigating), who used it over a wood-burning stove back when electricity was something city-folk had. She died when my mother was very young. My mom says she only remembers this grandma, her great-grandma, from stories. I'd guess the skillet is at least 100 years old. And it's in wonderful condition. Cast-iron skillets are a special thing; the more you use them, the more durable they seem. As long as you treat them with a little love and care, they will outlast you every time.

I'll use this one, for sure. And even more so, I'll protect it, so that some time, many years from now, I can offer it to one of my grandchildren as a piece of our family from a time they'll barely even be able to comprehend.

 

Congratulations 2: Electric Boogaloo

Congratulations to my lovely wife, Kelly, for nailing a job at CNN.com as a senior designer. In addition to being a good career move and a more stable work environment (chances are they aren't gonna close CNN.com any time soon), it means that we won't have to file for bankruptcy and move in with friends or family any time soon. Yay!

I must also express my disappointment with typepad, who made me type this post twice, as the first time I finished and hit save, it did the exact opposite of saving; it deleted. Boo!

Congratulations

Somehow or another I forgot while posting yesterday to congratulate our good friends Bryan and Jennifer, who welcomed a beautiful baby boy, Cooper, into the world on June 1st. Check out Jennifer's blog, where you'll find a whole mess of pictures of the little guy.

Seriously, congratulations guys, and welcome to the bizarre, wonderful, and often times frustrating world of parenting.

Greetings From the Other Side

Wow, it's been almost a month since my last post. I apologize. Big things have happened, though, and for the sake of efficiency, I will now switch to bullet points.

• We got approved to rent our loft.
• We found a house in Peachtree City and made an offer.
• We listed the loft for rent, and after 3 people came to see it, we found our renter. She's nice.
• After a brief round of negotiations, we went under contract on the house.
• We found out we've got another baby on the way.
• We packed like crazy.
• Kelly found out her division at work was closing, meaning she was out of a job.
• An hour later, we closed on our house.

Let me break from the bullet point format for just a moment to talk about how amazingly terrible the timing was on this. Thursday night, Kelly gets an e-mail saying there's a mandatory meeting at work the next morning from 11-12. Our closing was from 12-1. Nothing like going into a house closing with the knowledge that you'll now have two properties and no jobs. It was pretty terrifying, I must say.

• Nonetheless, we moved.
• We are slowly but surely unpacking.
• Kelly got an interview with another division at work.
• The interview went pretty well, but nothing's official yet.

Living in a house again is strange but cool, as is living in Fayette County, only 10 or 12 minutes from where I grew up. It's great having the boy's grandparents so close. They've already been a huge help. So far, suburban life is calm and quiet, which is exactly what I was hoping for. The first night we were here, I ran to the supermarket to pick up a coupl'a things, and I saw an old student. At the same store, I've since seen my 9th grade pre-algebra teacher and some girl who went to high school with me. I guess this is what moving back to the county you grew up in is like. Pretty weird.

1 Year Down, 17 To Go

Our son's first birthday is Thursday. Crazy. We had a birthday party for him this past Sunday, and it was lots of fun. Nothing fancy (no giant inflatable animals to jump around in, no clowns or magicians), just family, pizza, and cake. Of course, given our current living situation, it looks like the day after Christmas in here, with toys strewn all over the place. But that's part of the fun. Of note is the toy xylophone his Mumsie and Pops gave him, which I've already had lots of fun playing with (I've been playing the theme songs to "Jack's Big Music Show", "Little Einsteins", and "My Friends Tigger & Pooh" for the boy, but he doesn't seem to recognize them. Or maybe he's just not impressed).

The rite of allowing the 1-year-old to dig into his/her own cake proved enjoyable for all, and our boy was in total sugar heaven for a few minutes, with icing and cake smeared all over his face and clothes. His nose was completely caked (no pun intended) with icing. The poor kid could hardly breathe. And holy moly, you should've seen his reaction when I took the cake away.

It's funny; a lot was said about how we don't let him eat lots of sugary or fatty food at this point, and how he was going to go crazy over getting to eat cake. Of course he did. But as we were all eating pizza beforehand, he was eating tofu and pears, and people joked about how "the poor kid didn't get to eat good food" or whatever. It's all in good fun, but it got me thinking about our eating habits, and what's considered normal or acceptable. People joked about the healthy food on his tray, but if I'd cut the pepperoni pizza up into little chunks, no one would've batted an eye. Of course, I'm not saying he should always eat tofu and pears instead of pizza, but at this age it seems really silly to me to not feed him the healthiest stuff we can. Especially since he can't talk yet to complain, haha.

At any rate, we made it through one year of raising this little person that lives with us. During that time we only went to the emergency room once (false alarm when he was like 2 weeks old), he's only had minor bumps and bruises, and and he's, as far as we can tell, been developing at a perfectly normal rate, turning into a little boy before our very eyes. Now if we can just keep it up for 17 more years, he'll be a normal, healthy, fully functional member of society, right?