Sunday, June 29, 2008
Who Wants Applesauce? Me!
Kellen continues to add more words and almost words to his verbal repertoire. He enthusiastically says “applesauce” and is always begging for “more Cheerios”. I remember when Aidan reached this stage and sometimes the parents know exactly what their kids are saying while others know they’re saying something but are not sure exactly what. Kellen likes to mimic what he hears and is doing a great job of using those same words later. He’s also copying his big brother raising his hand and shouting “me!” when I ask “who wants (fill in anything they love)?” Additionally he’s adding (can I use two “add” words that close together?) more and more animal sounds to his list. Sheep, rooster, pig, horse…the list is growing. Now if we can just ensure he doesn’t knock any of this newly expanded verbosity out of his head while diving off the furniture. A few bumps and scratches on his head has become quite normal.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Hooray for Free Ice Cream!
Aidan certainly shares his grandfather’s (Christensen) appreciation for Culver’s. Before he was old enough to care one way or the other, we could get him excited about going solely with the promise of their blue straws. At that time Culver’s was simply known as “The Place with the Blue Straws”. Now at the sophisticated age of four he is able to spot any Culver’s location quickly (there are many here in the Minneapolis area) and his new found desire for frequenting the restaurant with the blue straws (and the blue roof) is the free ice cream that comes with the kids meal.
Tonight he was sporting an especially impressive Oreo beard after downing a heavily topped scoop of custard (our thanks to the young lad behind the counter who was more than generous with the toppings). Rachel and I also partook in some free desert thanks to our two out, one in system. We generally hit the drive-thru on two visits and then take the boys inside on the third thus allowing us to bank two tickets from the kids meal bag and earn us all free desert on the third visit.
Outside of the custard, Kellen put on an impressive chicken eating exhibition as he chose to suck several of the pieces directly off his placemat rather than using his fingers. He looked like a little vacuum cleaner. Aidan also blessed himself twice consecutively on the ride home jumping in with a “bless me” after a sneeze and then simply a “me” on the aftershock (perhaps he was saying “bless” during the second sneeze).
Tonight he was sporting an especially impressive Oreo beard after downing a heavily topped scoop of custard (our thanks to the young lad behind the counter who was more than generous with the toppings). Rachel and I also partook in some free desert thanks to our two out, one in system. We generally hit the drive-thru on two visits and then take the boys inside on the third thus allowing us to bank two tickets from the kids meal bag and earn us all free desert on the third visit.
Outside of the custard, Kellen put on an impressive chicken eating exhibition as he chose to suck several of the pieces directly off his placemat rather than using his fingers. He looked like a little vacuum cleaner. Aidan also blessed himself twice consecutively on the ride home jumping in with a “bless me” after a sneeze and then simply a “me” on the aftershock (perhaps he was saying “bless” during the second sneeze).
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Word Puzzles and Fearless Toddlers
Aidan’s new daily interest is Wheel of Fortune…in high definition (or he wouldn’t watch, right?). He’s quite good at sounding out words and we’re working on polishing up his letter writing skills but I do question his claims that he solves every puzzle before I do. I will give him credit on sounding out some pretty lengthy words (the multi-syllabic seven or eight letter variety) but he’s going to have to become a more seasoned viewer before he solves Pat and Vanna’s game the way I do. He seems to solve everything else we throw at him so perhaps he and I can qualify for some kind of family edition together before the summer is over.
I'd like to solve the puzzle!
Big brother’s also got a new default number. The one he uses to indicate a large amount of whatever is sixty hundred and fifty. I translate that to mean 6,050 and I’m not sure where it came from but you can be sure if there are sixty hundred and fifty of anything that’s a lot.
I’ve got something all planned out for his next featured blog video to follow up on our super hero project. Kellen’s nap schedule being cut down to one a day makes it a little difficult to film though. Little brother is in the precarious transition stage where two naps doesn’t happen and one nap has him testy and falling asleep in his lunch. We’re trying to find the right balance that keeps him chipper during the day and resting peacefully (for everyone’s sake) during the night.
Kellen continues to impress with his animal noises. The parts of the body are a different story. He says eyes, ears, nose and mouth but he’s usually tugging or poking at the wrong part of my face when he says each one. Nothing beats sitting wide eyed without my glasses on as he says ears and sharply thrusts his finger into my pupils.
I’ve got something all planned out for his next featured blog video to follow up on our super hero project. Kellen’s nap schedule being cut down to one a day makes it a little difficult to film though. Little brother is in the precarious transition stage where two naps doesn’t happen and one nap has him testy and falling asleep in his lunch. We’re trying to find the right balance that keeps him chipper during the day and resting peacefully (for everyone’s sake) during the night.
Kellen continues to impress with his animal noises. The parts of the body are a different story. He says eyes, ears, nose and mouth but he’s usually tugging or poking at the wrong part of my face when he says each one. Nothing beats sitting wide eyed without my glasses on as he says ears and sharply thrusts his finger into my pupils.
N'yuk, n'yuk, n'yuk.
The little man is very into books and standing on things. There are two kinds of books. The ones you read three or four times in one sitting and the ones that have him diving off your lap to grab a different one after three or four sentences. Speaking of diving…Rachel turned and found him standing on the end table on Sunday. She shouted at him to get down and he promptly swan dived onto the couch. He’s fearlessly finding things to climb and dismount in a variety of heart-stopping ways.
A glimpse at Kellen's future?
A string of warm weather has us thinking swimming pool. We picked up a new inflatable backyard model and I’ll have to empty my lungs into it for a half hour some night and turn the hose on it. Aidan also starts swimming lessons the week after the 4th so we’ve been practicing things in the tub like submerging our faces without freaking out. Yesterday I joined the practice session leaning over the edge and showing that it was nothing to fear until he made some of his own bubbles. That quickly ended our face dipping lesson.
Rachel’s got a few business trips in the next few weeks. It looks like several three to four day stretches of guys only time await us. I do hope Aidan takes the absence of his mother better than he took my guy outing on Sunday. I got a call after about two hours from a weepy four year old saying he missed me. I guess when you’ve been together all day every day for three months you get used to having each other around.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Confessions of a Wireless Signal Thief
Our internet provider suffered a local outage recently leaving us disconnected from the internet for a week. The solid green lights of much anticipated web access returned after a few days but we discovered we were still not able to connect. Ninety minutes on the phone with tech support suggested that their outage did more than frustrate us, it killed our modem. A new hub is scheduled to arrive today or tomorrow along with a few weeks of free service. Until then I will continue to feverishly search for an open line to sneak onto for a few moments at a time, but I no longer need to call the automated help line * every 15 seconds to see if the service is back up.
* Incidentally, a recorded message that says today is June 18 and we anticipate that service will be restored by 11:00 pm does little to instill confidence in a customer when it is June 20 and you’re still not connected.
It has not been all gloom and internet doom for an entire week though. The last two weekends were very enjoyable. The neighboring town was holding their summer festival last week and we hit the barbeque and the midway on Friday night. The food was great and the midway was…expectedly overpriced. We let Aidan blow some cash on the rides that looked the least sketchy including a trip down the giant slide* with his dad.
* Note to those burlaping down a traveling carnival’s giant slide…check the seams on the way up. The middle lane was as fast as we anticipated but a nasty gap at the bottom threatened to separate my tailbone from the rest of my person. I thought for a moment that my coccyx was dislodged.
We returned to the festival on Sunday for the parade. Having grown up in Pella, Iowa with all that is Tulip Time during a six-parade weekend each year, my standards for a town parade are perhaps a bit higher than the national average. I will admit that the local parade was impressive in length and in the sheer volume of candy tossed from passing parade units (there were 100+ units). Aidan made out with more candy than he’s consumed in his lifetime and we were introduced to roughly 20 Minnesota town festival princesses riding the route with their runners’ up. They were all saluting us with a uniform I-am-the-teenaged-queen-of-(insert town here)’s-(insert festival here) wave while some musical treasure from the Spice Girls blasted from their float. Overall it was very nice and a beautiful Father’s Day afternoon.
* Incidentally, a recorded message that says today is June 18 and we anticipate that service will be restored by 11:00 pm does little to instill confidence in a customer when it is June 20 and you’re still not connected.
It has not been all gloom and internet doom for an entire week though. The last two weekends were very enjoyable. The neighboring town was holding their summer festival last week and we hit the barbeque and the midway on Friday night. The food was great and the midway was…expectedly overpriced. We let Aidan blow some cash on the rides that looked the least sketchy including a trip down the giant slide* with his dad.
* Note to those burlaping down a traveling carnival’s giant slide…check the seams on the way up. The middle lane was as fast as we anticipated but a nasty gap at the bottom threatened to separate my tailbone from the rest of my person. I thought for a moment that my coccyx was dislodged.
We returned to the festival on Sunday for the parade. Having grown up in Pella, Iowa with all that is Tulip Time during a six-parade weekend each year, my standards for a town parade are perhaps a bit higher than the national average. I will admit that the local parade was impressive in length and in the sheer volume of candy tossed from passing parade units (there were 100+ units). Aidan made out with more candy than he’s consumed in his lifetime and we were introduced to roughly 20 Minnesota town festival princesses riding the route with their runners’ up. They were all saluting us with a uniform I-am-the-teenaged-queen-of-(insert town here)’s-(insert festival here) wave while some musical treasure from the Spice Girls blasted from their float. Overall it was very nice and a beautiful Father’s Day afternoon.
Proudly representing their town in traditional Dutch attire, not donning prom dresses to promote a barbeque. These are certainly not the Spice Girls.
The week between Father’s Day and the one just passed is when our connection to the internet was interrupted. I felt disconnected from the outside world as I use the internet heavily for communicating with friends and family, exploring my current job options and such immensely important and life altering things like fantasy baseball. You know you’ve got a certain level of dependence when you’re searching for a neighbor with an unsecured wireless signal to “borrow” for as much time as you can before loosing the connection (and I do thank them for leaving that line unencrypted). The signal would come and go so I never knew just how much web time remained leaving me to open only emails that looked potentially life altering and acting quickly to grab the online information that was vital to surviving the day before loosing access. I was also made to call Rachel once at work late in the afternoon requesting that after her peers had left perhaps she could set my fantasy baseball rosters for the evening.
On to the present (or recently completed) weekend…
Being without internet meant Rachel was inhibited from completing some of the usual work related tinkering that she normally does in the evenings. That opened the door for causal time with friend Scott watching movies on Friday night with brownies and ice cream while cursing the neighbor’s fire pit that made the air a bit smoky. Saturday night we played four-person Mario Kart and Aidan was thrilled to have three live competitors. He had been waiting for this opportunity for some time and was allowed to stay up until 10:00 racing around the virtual track. I then stayed up way too late playing cyber golf with Scott (or way too early…how should I classify 2:30 am?). I might have been able to catch a little extra sleep on Sunday morning had I not made a promise to Aidan that we’d run out and find him a freshly sprinkled donut for Sunday breakfast. He woke me during the eight o’clock hour reminding me of my promise and announcing that he was hungry at that very moment. The event described in the next paragraph also nixed a potential Sunday afternoon nap so the short night ended with me crashing on the couch last evening shortly after my Cubbies swept the cross-town White Sox (it’s always nice to go to sleep smiling).
On to the present (or recently completed) weekend…
Being without internet meant Rachel was inhibited from completing some of the usual work related tinkering that she normally does in the evenings. That opened the door for causal time with friend Scott watching movies on Friday night with brownies and ice cream while cursing the neighbor’s fire pit that made the air a bit smoky. Saturday night we played four-person Mario Kart and Aidan was thrilled to have three live competitors. He had been waiting for this opportunity for some time and was allowed to stay up until 10:00 racing around the virtual track. I then stayed up way too late playing cyber golf with Scott (or way too early…how should I classify 2:30 am?). I might have been able to catch a little extra sleep on Sunday morning had I not made a promise to Aidan that we’d run out and find him a freshly sprinkled donut for Sunday breakfast. He woke me during the eight o’clock hour reminding me of my promise and announcing that he was hungry at that very moment. The event described in the next paragraph also nixed a potential Sunday afternoon nap so the short night ended with me crashing on the couch last evening shortly after my Cubbies swept the cross-town White Sox (it’s always nice to go to sleep smiling).
I blame this pastry (not my video gaming) for my exhaustion.
Free access to excellent Sunday afternoon Metrodome seats (the one’s where you duck a lot of foul balls) presented themselves and Scott and I hit the Twins/Diamondbacks game. It was not an afternoon at Wrigley to be sure. The air conditioning inside the dome had me considering the need for a jacket and you could only see the sun outside of the ballpark. I did enjoy vendor #37, a maestro of cotton candy concessions, and was impressed at the immensity of the ½ pound hot dog. There will be a future picture of this colossal wiener after our next visit to the Dome but for now I conclude with a photo of one of my Father’s Day gifts…
Aidan took me to see Kung Fu Panda at the local theater on Saturday and we enjoyed the show with a reminder that just because the animated character’s kicked and twirled around on the screen we would not be replicating such actions back at home.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
My Profile: Interests
The list goes on…
Outside of the previously mentioned music, movies and readings there are a few other key things that occupy my time.
I am of course interested in my kids. That shouldn’t need to be mentioned but the current situation that has us together from six or seven in the morning to eight or nine at night means they are in and around everything else (I guess we do sleep in the same house too, but you knew that). Hanging out together makes for good blogging material and has hopefully aided in their transition to a new state. I do wish to move myself into the appropriate career turn soon and it will be good to get them interacting with other kids before my creativity runs out. Until then we are here for your entertainment.
Aidan has become a little video game wizard which makes for a legitimate new playing partner in my continuing appreciation for gaming. The Wii is our outlet for father/son games and the PS3 is my wind down activity before bed. Having my #1 college gaming buddy back in the vicinity means I can keep up my skills against a more seasoned player and spend a night here and there playing way too late into the night.
My seasonal obsession is fantasy football. I’m working on three straight fantasy baseball championships at the moment but the world stops for three hours the week before Labor Day so I can hop online with my league mates and draft my football team for the year. This year will mark the ninth year of fantasy football for me allowing me to obsess about trying to win my fifth title staring now (yes, I’m strategizing two months in advance) until the end of the NFL season. Perhaps the fact that I’ve been thinking about this year since the end of last year means I should retract that “seasonal” suggestion and admit that I am ready to play now…whenever now may be.
Sticking with sports…Go Cubs! Go Bears! Go Cyclones! I’m very much enjoying the Cubs current success hoping that “Wait ‘til next year” is finally “Wait ‘til this year.” There are many Cubbie fans that have suffered much longer than I, but I feel we all deserve at least one title to celebrate each century and we’re running out of century. The previously mentioned obsession with fantasy football stems from the fact that Chicagoans are football crazy and having been a Chicagoan for eight years so too am I now crazy about that oblong pigskin. The Cyclones are the Cyclones good, bad or otherwise. You don’t change your colors after spending four years on campus so Cy is forever my guy.
Outside of the previously mentioned music, movies and readings there are a few other key things that occupy my time.
I am of course interested in my kids. That shouldn’t need to be mentioned but the current situation that has us together from six or seven in the morning to eight or nine at night means they are in and around everything else (I guess we do sleep in the same house too, but you knew that). Hanging out together makes for good blogging material and has hopefully aided in their transition to a new state. I do wish to move myself into the appropriate career turn soon and it will be good to get them interacting with other kids before my creativity runs out. Until then we are here for your entertainment.
Aidan has become a little video game wizard which makes for a legitimate new playing partner in my continuing appreciation for gaming. The Wii is our outlet for father/son games and the PS3 is my wind down activity before bed. Having my #1 college gaming buddy back in the vicinity means I can keep up my skills against a more seasoned player and spend a night here and there playing way too late into the night.
My seasonal obsession is fantasy football. I’m working on three straight fantasy baseball championships at the moment but the world stops for three hours the week before Labor Day so I can hop online with my league mates and draft my football team for the year. This year will mark the ninth year of fantasy football for me allowing me to obsess about trying to win my fifth title staring now (yes, I’m strategizing two months in advance) until the end of the NFL season. Perhaps the fact that I’ve been thinking about this year since the end of last year means I should retract that “seasonal” suggestion and admit that I am ready to play now…whenever now may be.
Sticking with sports…Go Cubs! Go Bears! Go Cyclones! I’m very much enjoying the Cubs current success hoping that “Wait ‘til next year” is finally “Wait ‘til this year.” There are many Cubbie fans that have suffered much longer than I, but I feel we all deserve at least one title to celebrate each century and we’re running out of century. The previously mentioned obsession with fantasy football stems from the fact that Chicagoans are football crazy and having been a Chicagoan for eight years so too am I now crazy about that oblong pigskin. The Cyclones are the Cyclones good, bad or otherwise. You don’t change your colors after spending four years on campus so Cy is forever my guy.
Oh, and I like to laugh. I love a good comedian. Granted they are better in some forums than others as is evident by my guy Frank Caliendo who is hilarious on the radio in spontaneous situations and not as much on his cable TV show (hopefully it comes back next season tweaked for the better). Unfortunately when you start following a comedian and have heard all their material it can get repetitious. All the more reason to uncover additional favorites.
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