HerdingChaos

Today Tracy was playing with a viewmaster when I got home. She was flipping the disks in and out and one of the disks had a huge picture of Dora on it. Loren saw Dora and got all excited and said “DDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” as she pointed to the disk. I borrowed the viewmaster from Tracy and popped in the Dora disk. Then I chose the frame that showed Dora the clearest in the viewmaster. Then I held the viewmaster up to her eyes. She got excited when she saw Dora and kind of jumped. Then she moved her hands up and pushed the viewmaster to the side and looked around for Dora. She did this several times. It was very cute.

Loren has broken both arms at separate times. The right arm first above the elbow and then the left across both the ulna and radius. We will not be getting the parents of the year award. Actually, I am a bit surprised CPS has not been by to ask a few questions. Both of the breaks happened because she fell from someplace that she climbed onto. Our current theory is that she sees the older kids doing things and wants to keep up. I really don’t care about the reason… I just want her to stop falling and hurting herself. I felt like I was going to throw up both times that I found out she had broken her arm. I think her broken arm is bothering mom and dad more than her. She seems totally fine most of the day. At night she is a bit more restless, but that could be the cast, or teeth, or gas or God knows what else. The real bummer is that she broke them about a month apart and she is still in the cast for the second arm. I suppose it could have been worse and they both could have been in casts at the same time.

We did buy a cast water bag vacuum thingie. It allows Loren to swim and play in the bath and keep her cast dry. It is a bit of a pain because you have to keep a close eye on her bag to make sure the vacuum is holding, but it beats trying to hold her back from a bath or swimming.

Becky went out tonight with friends. Loren was doing very well most of the night until she got a little tired. She cried until I let her down to crawl around. She made two loops around the main house loop of kitchen->office->living room->kitchen. Then she looked at me with a defeated expression. Next she headed out for the stairs. Since she has only been doing stairs for a month or so, I decided to watch and spot her on the way up. I was curious to see what she did at the split level. She headed to our bedroom.

After she moved into the room and looked at the bed, she sat very quiet and looked around. Then she turned to me and started wailing for what would turn out to be about a hour and a half of screaming. She was looking for mom and pissed that she could not find her. 

I was never interested in learning how to play the guitar when I was growing up. I played percussion in middle and high school and that was pretty much it. Andrew who is now 6 basically only wanted one thing for Christmas this year: a guitar. Well santa delivered. He started playing with it right away. I do not have a good ear for pitch and was unable to tune it for him.

 Today after work I headed over to the music store to get a nifty little electronic tuner. On the way there I was thinking about how I was going to help him learn the guitar. We had purchased a DVD to help him learn. But I had tried playing around a bit with his guitar and my fingers were too big. So here I am looking around in the music store and I find a beginner’s guitar kit.

 The prospect of learning to play the guitar was never really something I was all that interested in pursuing. But now that Andrew wants to learn it, I think it would be fun to learn it with him.

I was showing Andrew the Astronomy Picture of the Day today. The picture is of the crab nebula. I was explaining to him that the nebula was formed when a star exploded. This lead to quite a few questions about stars and astronomy type things in general. Eventually we made our way around to talking about our sun.

Andrew: "Is our sun going to explode?"

Me: "Yes, but probably not for something like 10 billion years. Do you understand how big a billion is?"

… long discussion about grains of sand in the sandbox etc…

Andrew: "Wow! That is a long time. Dad, this is sad to say but you are old. Mom is old too, but not as old as you. But I am not that old. So it’s sad to say, but people die when they get really old. And you and mom will be dead before our sun explodes."

Me: "Yes, yes we will."

And for the record, I am only 3 months older than my wife  

I made it home from work in time for dinner. Loren was eating some finger food in the high chair. Andrew and Tracy were munching on some corn on the cob. Becky and I were eating some Frito Pie with Wolf brand HOT chili.

I felt a large burp coming. Trying to set a proper example for the table I just opened up and let ‘er rip. The burp was a masterpiece. Andrew and Tracy started laughing right away. Becky looked impressed but kept quiet. Then it happened: Loren started laughing. I mean really laughing. Not the half scream half large breath that most babies use to express joy. This was a full on guffaw. Of course Loren’s laugh at my burp was too much for Becky and she started to laugh as well. That burp was 4 for 4. It’s always fun to cause a "baby’s first"

Tony and I always ask Tracy about her "My Little Pony" toy. Tony started it and I seem to do it also. Every time I see her with it I ask her, "Is that my little pony?" She then insists that it is not mine and is in fact her little pony. I have been doing this for a couple of months now.

Today when I asked Tracy "Is that my little pony?" she said, "This is just a toy." And the conversation ended. Then Andrew tried to mimic me and told Tracy, "That is my little pony." Tracy then said, "It’s mine and it is just a pony."

I got home from work today at around 7:30pm. After giving me a hug and a kiss Tracy told me: "You know what daddy? I wish daddies didn’t have to work."

Me too.

I have not updated to blog in forever. I have not seen my kids as much as I want to. I have not had too many chances to do any photography. I have not been on my bike since… uhm. wow! I just looked in my log and I have not been on my bike since 4/26. wow.

This stops tonight. Tonight I ride. 

Andrew started school this week. He has been doing really well at drop off. When we ask how the day went he is always positive. Becky was asking him about what types of things he had been doing in school and which activities he enjoyed.

Becky asked, "What type of things did you learn today?"

Andrew responded, "It’s not really a learning kind of school."

I guess the first week of school always felt like that to me as well. You just end up spending all of your time getting used to the way this new world works. 

I always go through cycles at work. When we are in the middle of development for a project I travel very little. When we are working on the design of a new product I tend to travel all the time. We are in the middle of design. I spent the past two weeks traveling. Earlier last month I was also in London and the south of France for a while. I am very happy to be back home. The kids have been doing cute stuff and I usually find out over email from my wife.

The good news: I don’t think I will be traveling for at least the next two weeks. Andrew starts school in around a week. This will be his first day at a real school, but he has been going to pre-school since he was 2 so I don’t think this is going to be too hard on him. I think his sister Tracy is going to find his absence difficult to deal with. Andrew and Tracy have been playing together all the time. They get into the normal spats between brother and sister, but they also seem to be the best of friends. Tracy has always been a little shy in new situations. We have signed her up for pre-school  but it starts two weeks after Andrew starts school. I fear that the adjustment to loosing Andrew as a playmate during most of the day followed by thrusting her into a class that does not have any of her old teachers is going to be a problem for her. I hope she is strong and self-confident when we start her pre-school.

I am looking forward with apprehension to both first days at school. I am really happy I am going to be home for them.