Melissa is 5

Our merry little sprite is now 5. Every day for the last 2 months she has asked us, "how many more days until my birthday?" After we'd answer, she'd complain, "this is taking way too long!"

No, my dear, it is going way too fast...

Happy birthday to my spunky, determined, loyal, free-spirited, cheerful, loving, gentle, lively, charming, strong, funny little girl who makes me laugh and gives me gray hairs.

05/06/05
8 lbs 3 oz with a healthy set of lungs
I wrote about her birth here.

One week old and eating daddy's finger, num, num!

Five months old and flashing a gummy grin.

05/06/06
First birthday!

Summer in Washington

05/06/07
Second birthday!

Fruit loop fun!

Two and a half.

05/06/08
Third birthday!

My little warrior.

Dancing with Dad.

05/06/09
Fourth birthday!

At the fire station.

Styling in the kitchen.

05/06/10
Five Years old!

The gift that keeps on giving

Two years ago, I wrote a program to download the archive of the Thinking Aloud radio program, and put it onto cheap mp3 players from woot. I gave several of these away as Christmas gifts. (This is as close to giving something "handmade" as I'll ever get.)

My sister in law Lisa liked it enough that she requested an update when she finished all the original episodes a few months ago. I had my original code, but BYU changed the format of their archive -- a lot. I ended up having to learn enough lxml to do the job since BeautifulSoup was now puking on something. But I got it done, and started transferring files to Grant via a free Dropbox account, 2GB at a time. (This turned out to be only about 6 months' worth of weekly-ish shows, since they are inexplicably encoded at 320kbps, 10x what you need for a non-musical podcast.)

But, there was a problem: something in the new shows didn't agree with the firmware on the [now] ancient Sansa player I'd given Lisa. It would play a few seconds and then give up. So after weeks of fruitless troubleshooting, Lisa sent me the Sansa with a package of birthday gifts.

I couldn't get the Sansa to play the new files either, but if I re-encoded the files with lame everything just worked. As a bonus, as long as I was re-encoding I could cut the bitrate down to 32kbps and with the addition of a cheap 2GB microsd card, I could fit the entire show archive up to the end of 2009 on it at once.

But first, BYU had changed their archive format again, and I hadn't kept the files that I'd already transferred to Grant. So I rewrote my downloader for the third time.

This is a long way of saying that: I am a pretty awesome brother in law. And, this totally makes up for the flowers on Lisa's birthday being delivered to the wrong address the first time.

P.S. to Lisa: I left the Sansa where Isaac could reach it and he ate the foam off your headphones. So that is why it will be coming back with a different set, than what you sent it with.

P.P.S.: more for my own use than anything else, the magical transcoding invocation was
find . -name "0*" -print0 |xargs -0 -n 1 -P 2 lame -a --vbr-new --abr 32 --lowpass 15.4 --mp3input --quiet

Peanuts

• I'm old enough that I still reflexively hit the spacebar twice after a period.
  
• Rachel: "I think Isaac is more stubborn than Matthew and Melissa combined." Matthew: "I'm not stubborn at all!" Cue disbelieving laughter from his parents.
  
• Sometime in late March or early April, Matthew learned to roll his eyes when his parents say something dumb or obvious. He's been rolling his eyes a lot.
  
• Isaac kept trying to climb into my lap while I was signing legal papers. I thought he was being affectionate. No: he just wanted my pen.
  
• I'm lying on the couch with a blanket over my head. I hear Matthew approach: "Dad?" I ignore him. "Dad?" I ignore him again. "Dad?" I decide he's not getting the hint, and answer, What? "Dad, what does this thing go to?" I reply that first, I can't see the thing with a blanket over my head, and second, do I look like I want to answer thing-questions now? "No?" Great moments in parenting.
  
• I was teasing Matthew that we were having boiled monkey brains for dinner. He didn't believe me. Then I told him that Rachel and I ate snails on Friday night. He didn't believe that either; truth is stranger than fiction.
  
• Isaac really liked the Richard Scarry VHS tapes Rachel got, but then our VCR died. I torrented some to our ps3 to replace them. Kind of amazing that VHS-quality rips are only about 0.5GB/hr.
  
• Filed for an extension on my federal taxes again this year. Rachel was not pleased, but last year was my easiest return ever: called the IRS around September, had them fax all the forms they'd received about me over, filled them in on the return, no sweat.
  
• My toddler-level French is mostly pretty good -- I picked up a surprising amount by osmosis when my father was speaking to my youngest sister. But I lapse into English with Isaac when I am frustrated with him, because I haven't heard enough examples of idiomatic French for those situations. Guess Dad was more patient than I am.
  
• Dad: explains how to demonstrate CO2 density by pouring it over a candle. "Matthew's old enough to enjoy that." Me: "I'm not sure how Rachel would feel about Matthew and flames." Dad: "Are you kidding? I was playing with firecrackers when I was five!" Me: "I'm not sure Rachel will find that line of reasoning convincing." (On investigation, Rachel is "probably" okay with Matthew lighting a candle, with supervision.)
  
• I started using Google Calendar but I still get surprised by appointments because I draw the little boxes on the wrong days.
  

Matthew likes public speaking

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

Matthew likes to volunteer to give talks in Sunday School. I guess he likes the attention, but his mom and I are tired of it, because we (well, mostly Rachel) do 90% of the work preparing the talk.

This time I sat him at the table with a paper and pencil and told him to get started. He complained and complained about how he couldn't do it. "If you don't want to prepare a talk, volunteer to read a scripture or say a prayer instead," I told him.

Rachel rescued him eventually, but with luck that will be enough to get him to think twice next time.

The fair that wasn't

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

We drove to downtown San Antonio yesterday for the King William Fair, part of Fiesta. We thought it was supposed to run from 5 to midnight, but when we got at 6 there the traffic looked like this: all heading out the way we were going in.

Turned out it had run until midnight yesterday, but today it was from the morning until 5 PM.

To add insult to injury, the kids were hungry and all the local restaurants had closed, except for a very second-rate hamburger joint that was the 4th place we tried.

The mother of invention

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

One of the neighbor kids, Franco, tied a rope to his jeep and was giving wagon rides with it. Isaac and Melissa both loved it.

In the car

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

Isaac is an optimist. Whenever I tell him, "on monte en voiture!" [time to get in the car!] he can't wait to get in, because maybe I'm going to let him drive.

99% of the time, of course, I buckle him in his carseat, and he kicks and screams. I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm the king of bait and switch.

Updates

Easter

Easter was lovely this year. The kids were up well before the crack of dawn (how do they do it?) and were dancing all over the house. Melissa and Matthew raided their Easter baskets while waiting for Isaac and Daddy to get up, but I made them eat bananas and boiled eggs before candy. Isaac got the first shot at the egg hunt with Matthew and Melissa pointing the eggs out for him. It didn't last long. Once Isaac realized that there was candy in the eggs he plopped himself down and started shoveling candy in his mouth. At that point we set Matthew and Melissa loose to find their own eggs and approximately 1.5 minutes later they'd found all 50. As usual, the Easter bunny left a new tooth brush in each basket. Smart bunny.

We took them to the church to hear Conference hoping that the atmosphere would inspire them to listen to at least part of it. Isaac was ready for a nap though, and bored so either Jon or I spent the majority of the time in the hall entertaining him. Matthew was asked later by Grandma Linda if he heard the Conference address. "Yes, my mom made me." Sigh. Perhaps all they'll learn right now is that it is important to their parents. Hopefully the rest will come later. The afternoon session we just listened to over the internet while the children played and were able to hear much more of it.

For dinner we had our traditional "Easter rolls." I made up some dough and placed a large marshmallow in the center. When cooked the rolls are hollow and sweet inside. Jonathan was explaining to the kids that the rolls are like the empty tomb- Jesus was no longer in the tomb because he'd been resurrected. Melissa took a bite of her roll and exclaimed, "There's no Jesus in my roll either!" Theology is a bit lost on 4 year old thinking. :)

9 Years and Counting

Jonathan and I just celebrated our ninth anniversary on April 6th. Aunt Andrea and Uncle Jeremy watched the kids for us so we could go out to celebrate. Thanks guys! Here's to many more great years together!

Working from home

As Jonathan posted earlier, he's working from home. The older kids mostly leave him alone when he's working, but if Jonathan or I ever leave our bedroom door open, Isaac makes a beeline for the office/closet. He bangs on the office door and hoots in babyese, "Play with me Daddy, play with me!"

Another trip to the ER

I was making dinner and left Isaac watching cartoons with Matthew and Melissa. I poked my head in a few minutes later and he wasn't in the living room. I hunted through the house and found him in our bedroom with a bottle of ibuprofen and pills and pieces of pills scattered around him. Oh no! It was just the perfect storm. #1 the bedroom door is usually kept closed. #2 the pill bottle is ordinarily kept up high in the medicine cabinet. #3 the bottle was supposed to be childproof. Upon calling poison control they advised a trip to the ER since we couldn't tell for certain how much he'd eaten. Jonathan was in the middle of a conference call but I interrupted him to say we needed to take a kid to the hospital. He promptly packed Isaac up with some toys and off they went! (Isaac is fine by the way). I'll let Jon tell the tale of their hospital adventures.

Peanuts

• Melissa gave a talk (her third?) in Sunday School about "God talks to us through prophets." Rachel wrote the talk; I helped. "Write about how God told Lehi to leave Jerusalem and it totally saved their butts," I suggested. "And put it in the talk like that: 'saved their butts.'" Rachel: "See, that's the reason I'm writing this talk, not you!"
  
• Rachel: "You know, some of your family can laugh at themselves, and some can't. Matthew got the side that can't."
  
• Matthew: "When nobody's talking, it's pretty quiet in this house. Quiet, and boring."
  
• Matthew: "Guess what I had for lunch?" I couldn't guess. "It started with an I." I still couldn't guess, and gave up. "Enchiladas!"
  
• Matthew: "How do you start the next episode on this [VHS] tape?"
  
• Matthew: "There are three homophones for 'ranch.'" Me: "What? No, there's two." Matthew: "No, there's three." Me: "There's ranch-the-farm, and ranch-the-salad-dressing." Matthew: "And ranch-the-tool!"
  
• Rachel: "I'm a little distracted. Genghis Kahn is invading." Civilization is cool that way.
  
• Rachel: "Dear, I just looked at Melissa's bed. You made her bed with my tablecloth?"
  
• Rachel [also to me]: "Before you get any ideas, cupcakes are NOT a breakfast food."
  
• When typing quickly, I sometimes spell things phonetically. I recently corrected spelling "case" as "kays." Hope this isn't a sign of early-onset dementia.
  
• Isaac has a ritual: whenever we let him out of his high chair, the first thing he does when his feet touch the floor is buckle the (now vacated) seat. He can't unlatch it yet, but buckling is something Big People do.
  
• We were slow to get the toddler-proof doorknob covers with child #3, and Isaac made us pay. One morning he helped himself to a fruit cup from the pantry, and opened it with his teeth. I discovered him kneeling in a puddle of high-fructose corn syrup, digging out fruit pieces with his fingers and making pleased noises. (Bath #1.) A few hours later on Rachel's watch, he helped himself to a soda can from the pantry and pried it open with his teeth. (Bath #2.) Then that evening he made the usual mess with his dinner, for Bath #3. That night, I bought doorknob covers.
  

Working for the man

My last day at Rackspace was April 2. As of the 6th I'm officially the co-founder of a Delaware C-corp, Riptano.

On the one hand, I'm a lot more nervous about this than I've ever been looking for a job. Partly because, with one exception -- two if you count the company that didn't pay me for my last 3 months of working for them -- I've always found a new job before quitting the old one. Riptano doesn't have funding yet, and if and when it does, my co-founder and I have agreed to pay ourselves far below market rate to leave more to hire other people. But I think more because with job interviews, if you don't get an offer, there's always other places to try. If Riptano fails, it's going to be a lot more public.

On the other hand, it's only been a week and I already have trouble imagining going back to working for someone else. (This could be problematic in that public failure scenario!)

We don't have offices yet; we're just working from home so far. In my case I am literally working out of a closet. It is actually a nice large closet, and I will post pictures if I ever clean it up a little more. It has an air vent, so when I need to close the door to keep out marauding one-year-olds I don't bake to death. All it needs now is a mini-fridge.

Leaving notes for the kids

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

Rachel put this on Matthew's door on Saturday night so he would read it when he woke up.

Easter basket: yes!
Eggs: no!

A grumpy Matthew

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

Peanuts

• Me: "Matthew, you have wiggles. Do 50 jumping jacks." Rachel: "You're doing them backwards! This is how you do it!" ... and that's where Matthew gets his compulsion to correct everything.
  
• When my RSI flares up (from spending too much time on my laptop keyboard at home) I take 800mg of ibuprofen every 8h until it goes away. And I get religious about using my Kinesis again, temporarily. 10 year old medical advice, but it works for me.
  
• It sucks, as a Mormon, when conferences offer a choice of two drinks: coffee or iced tea. (I blame the obscene profit margins hotels like to make on these things.) But! usually coffee has jugs of milk next to it. Better than nothing!
  
• Matthew: "Why did you turn off the sound in civ4, Mom?" Me: "So you wouldn't come bug her." Matthew: "Well, it didn't work."
  
• Rachel found a German bakery that makes the best apple strudel I have ever tasted in my life. Actually I think it's the best pastry I've had in my life, period.
  
• I'd put "Matthew, don't experiment on your sister" in the things-I-didn't-expect-to-have-to-say file, but actually, I did kind of expect that one.
  
• Woke up at 8:35 for an 8:30 meeting. I got ready in record time. After the meeting was over, I realized my shirt was on backwards.
  
• Matthew was very grumpy about going to Sea World Wednesday [March 18]. "Today is an unjoyable day." He sulked for hours.
  
• Me: "Are you ready to come out and help?" Melissa, in the bathroom until she picks up the living room: "I just don't want to because you don't love me to do what I want!"
  
• Took the kids to McDonalds for breakfast. Isaac refused with prejudice pancakes, eggs, biscuit, sausage, and hash browns -- but he kept climbing up to the table and complaining he was hungry. Rachel explained: "When he goes to McDonalds, he expects chicken nuggets."
  

Melissa sets an example

I took the kids with me to help babysit for the Relief Society dinner.

Melissa saw a challenge, and took it. The lid against the cabinet there was all she needed to climb up.



Pretty soon she had company.

Isaac sets the table

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

Chasing Andrea's cats

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

Isaac *loves* cats. Imagine his delight to discover that Aunt Andrea has *three*. He chased them all over, and when one allowed itself to be caught he'd lean up to it carefully and give it a kiss. (Something he only very rarely does with his dad. Rachel says I should grow more facial hair.)

Too bad Melissa and I are both allergic.

Dance! Dance! Dance!

We crank up the music when we do dishes. After clearing the table Matthew and Melissa got into the swing of things.




Isaac kept trying to grab the camera, so it's a bit shaky in parts.

Mad Scientists

Matthew checked out a book from the school library titled Kitchen Science. He loved it so much that he rechecked it out 5 additional times. I finally told him that if he liked the book that much I'd find a copy for him, so I did.


Here he is filling a balloon with carbon dioxide. After he tied it off, he played with a regular balloon and his carbon dioxide balloon. "Hey! This balloon falls faster! Carbon dioxide must be heavier than air!" The kid is smart.

Happy Birthday Nolan!

While visiting Nolan turned the big 3-0!

The kids were busy making pictures and cards.

Happy Birthday!

The Walthers come to visit

Several weeks ago Jonathan's sister, Telitha, brother-in-law, Nolan, and their crew came to visit. Their boys have gotten so big! We were so glad to have them come all the way to Texas.

Here we are on the train at Brackenridge Park.
We made a stop to see the Japanese Tea gardens. It's been on my "to-see" list and we'll definitely go back once it is in bloom. Still, it was pretty even in February.

Melissa, Mark and Aunt Telitha checking out the Koi. Melissa upon seeing the picture: "I miss Aunt Telitha. I wish we were with her all the time. "

Uncle Nolan, James, Melissa, and Jonathan at the falls.

(Cute cousins)

Check it out! Something caught Isaac's attention.

Uncle Nolan with Mark. Melissa and Matthew loved rough housing and playing games with Uncle Nolan. Uncles are great!
A bigger view of the park.
Melissa found a throne.
Matthew was in school during this trip so I didn't get pictures of him with the cousins.

As usual, I wish I'd taken more pictures.

Isaac Forages

Isaac found an unguarded pot of rice.

Want some?Isaac loooooves rice.

And markers. Yum!

Last but not least...Dessert!

He had a bath.

A letter to Uncle Brian

Dear Uncle Brain,

I love you. I want to play with you and I want to know which day is your birthday.

I like to play "throw me in the air" game. And tickle me. I want to draw me and Matthew and Uncle Brian. I like to play "where is me?" and "where is you?"

I learned about bugs. Some bugs have wings and some bugs don't. Caterpillars are a type of bug and butterflies and ladybugs and all kinds of bugs. There are all kinds. Worms are a type of bug. Right?

At the primary activity I ate food. We talked about Jesus and prophets and all kinds of good stuff.

Goodbye.

Love,
Melissa

Peanuts

• When Rachel blogs, it's something she does to get closer to her friends and her kids. When I blog, it's an achievement: "Pow! I kicked that post's butt!"
  
• The Snack Filing Cabinets at work have turned into a Snack Conference Room. How this is supposed to deal with the Snack Shrinkage that introduced the locks on the cabinets, I don't know.
  
• Matthew is convinced both Mom and Dad insisting that there's no such thing as "the largest numbers" means either (a) we're playing a joke we're on him or (b) we just don't know.
  
• Trading lunch ingredients is verboten at Matthew's school. <3 Nanny state.
  
• Me: "Gratuitous Space Battles! Sounds interesting." Rachel: "You're supposed to be working on your church talk."
  
• I met a guy at PyCon who likes to take his family to go live in Germany for 6 weeks at a time. Explore during the day, work at his normal job during US business hours (~4 PM to midnight). That's a pretty awesome idea.
  
• Speaking of PyCon, in four days I gave one tutorial, one official talk, one open space talk, and participated in one panel presentation
  
• Had to sign a liability release to use the company gym. Ahh, red tape.
• My sister: "how do you get a two year old to take a bath if he doesn't want to?" Me: "you take off his clothes and put him in the tub." I don't think that was the answer she was looking for.
  
• Isaac was falling-down tired and cranky, so I took him for a drive. Amazing how slowly the world goes by when you are consciously attempting to stay under the speed limit. (It worked: Isaac fell asleep, and I didn't get a ticket.)
  
• It's a little depressing how quickly Matthew has ossified into English-only. Watching one of Isaac's videos showing hippopotomuses playing and a voiceover intoning "los hipopotamos," he asked, "what does that mean?"
  
• I believe I am now the only member of my immediate or extended family to have a warrant issued for his arrest. (Citation for no front license plate that I went to court, took care of, and some data entry clerk typed in the wrong resolution. Four months later a warrant was automatically issued. I kid you not.)
  
• I was about to get a CD as a birthday present for the sixteen year old son of a friend. But then I thought, "Wait, he probably doesn't know what those are."
  
• Me, after watching the princess and the frog: "Melissa! Did you know Mommy is my princess?" Melissa: "No! I'm your princess!"
  

But ... cooties!

Matthew had a church activity this morning, and afterwards all the kids were in the primary room for snacks. Matthew wandered over to the blackboard, and, apparently spur-of-the-moment, wrote, "I like you," underlined it, then finished, "Haly" [Halie]. I couldn't read the last part -- it was more of an H scribble L Y -- and asked him who he liked. He told me, and I was about to take a picture of Matthew's first love note when he lost his nerve and erased it before the object of his affections returned.

But Melissa had been paying attention. When Halie appeared, she grabbed her excitedly. "Kiss Matthew! Kiss Matthew!" she told her, bouncing with excitement. Halie declined the invitation, puzzled, and apparently thought no more of it than Melissa was being her usual energetic and occasionally eccentric self.

When we got home, I told Rachel the story. "Already?" she asked. "Well, it's nothing serious," I said. "No," she replied, "but he wouldn't write that about Conner or Christian."

No. No, I might have to take away his man card if he did something like that.

A hungry Isaac is a grumpy Isaac

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

I took Isaac to wal-mart with me about 6 tonight, and we'd barely gotten started when he began crying and trying to climb out of the cart onto me. He is too big to carry for a whole shopping expedition so I sat him in the cargo area where he continued to cry.

Besides the food Rachel had on my list, I was also getting Good Cereal, because Rachel never buys that. So I was pulling down cereal boxes and when I got to Oatmeal Squares, one of the cereals Isaac likes to eat for breakfast, he started reaching out his hand and going "mmm! mmm!" And when I put a box in the cart he started trying to tear it open with his teeth.

At first I did what I usually do when Isaac gets into something he shouldn't, and took it away. Of course he started crying again, so I did a quick cost/benefit calculation and opened it up for him and gave it back. He sat down with his box of Oatmeal Squares and ate them happily for the next half hour.

Potty- kinda gross

Even though we haven't started potty training Isaac yet, Melissa still provides plenty of fodder for the blog...

I was putting Isaac down for his nap when Telitha tapped on the door. "Melissa needs some help, I think she dropped something in the toilet."

No problem, I've dealt with this sort of thing before.

I get to the bathroom, "Mom! I dropped it! The letters just fell into the potty!" Great. I look in and find not only the scrabble tiles, but she's already done her number, and it wasn't #1.

Sigh.

I search the garage for the gloves, no luck. So I get a trash bag to wrap around my hand and I go fishing. After I retrieve and disinfect EVERYTHING I ask how the tiles ended up in the toilet.

"I was spelling my name and they fell in! It just happened."

Naturally.

I found the 'M', 'E', 'L', 'I', 'S', and 'A' so we are missing a letter 'S' from our scrabble set. *FYI, if we ever invite you to play scrabble, I did use copious amounts of bleach. Kids!

..................................

Last night at the dinner table, Melissa trumpeted quite loudly for such a small person. "Melissa! Was that you?" "No! It wasn't me! It was just my bottom."

Take me out to the ball game

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

My sister Telitha and her husband Nolan took me to a Spurs game tonight. We congratulated ourselves on getting a ride from one of the parking lot attendants on an electric cart -- since Telitha and Nolan were each carrying one of their boys -- but then found we'd left the tickets back in the car and Nolan had to run back to get them. I told Telitha, "His birthday present just got twice as expensive."

This is the first time I've been to a professional sporting event. There were a lot of people there. Even from the very last row of seats (I kid you not), it struck me how TALL the players were. You miss that on a 2D television, somehow. And it was loud, with lots of flashing lights.

As with college sports, seeing that many people take a game so seriously seemed like a form of collective insanity to me at first. 20,000 people boo-ing at once is kind of a shock. CONFORM, it commands! I don't do conform.

But after a bit I got a little more acclimated to the noise and relaxed. Saw some good plays and hot cheerleaders. We left before they got to the "foul on every possession to stretch out the clock" stage.

Insanity doesn't seem too strong a word for the prices, though. Just one section below us the tickets listed for $100! (Telitha recommends stubhub to save money. Ours were $5.) I'm still boggling, a little. Telitha and Nolan's strategy of "get cheap tickets so you don't mind arriving late and leaving early to avoid the parking lot mess" seems like a winner.

Turning into my dad

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Originally uploaded by jbellis

CCP had this demo of their MMO Eve Online at Pycon. I saw it, and my first thought was, "This is way too complicated."

I remember when my father started saying that about my video games.

Kind of a bitter moment for me: I've aged out of the target market for games.

One of those days

I took Isaac and Melissa to Wal-mart yesterday while Matthew took a much-needed nap. Isaac is a handful at the store now -- too big to want to stay in the cart, too little to be trusted out of it -- but Rachel needed a break, so I took them both.

Isaac lasted a few minutes in the Kid Chair part of the stroller, but as expected he quickly tired of that, so I sat him down in the business compartment, trusting that I could confiscate anything he looked close to ruining and move it to the underside of the cart before it was too late.

Butter: he tore it open, but I got it before any butter was actually eaten. Heavy cream: saved. Simply Lemonade: hahaha, good luck opening that one kid. Pork chops: I knew better than to give him the chance; those went directly to the underside. Can of frozen grape juice: saved, with the opening zipper half opened.

Can of frozen orange juice: not saved. Oh, and it wasn't frozen, either.

Isaac spilled a third of it down his pants, where it dripped through the cart mesh onto everything I'd stashed underneath, including Rachel's valentines day cards. (Crap!) I took the juice from him and just stood there, at a loss. There was so much sticky, everywhere, that I didn't know where to start. So I cursed a little, in French. If you're going to raise a child bilingual, you might as well be thorough! I didn't yell at him, but he could tell I was upset. (Ça ne va pas, non? Ça ne fait pas! Merde alors!)

Eventually I decided that there was nothing I could do to ameliorate things, so we got moving. Fortunately we only had Rachel's flowers left on our list. When we got to the checkout counter, trailing orange dribbles, the cashier saw the puddle we'd formed while waiting but didn't realize the source immediately. She bustled over with a roll of paper towels, and had satisfactorily contained the mini-puddle when she noticed the cause standing in the cart, watching her. "Oh, it was you!" she said, in an aren't-we-cute voice. Isaac was in a friendly mood, and rattled his cart at her in approval. This knocked the rest of the juice off of its perch, right at the cashier's feet. Now that was a real spill. I think even she was daunted, momentarily.

She got the "hazardous floor" flags, closed her counter, cordoned off the spill with the towels, and paged the mop guy. Unfortunately he was busy with a spill over near the floral section. Gee, wonder who could have done that?

We were at a lull in the action, so I took Isaac off to wash off his hands. For a kid who likes to get into stuff as much as he does, he actually hates having sticky hands, and he'd been brushing at them futilely trying to get them clean(er). So I hoisted Melissa into the cart with instructions to load stuff onto the conveyor belt while Isaac and I washed up. He was happier with his hands clean (his clothes were a total loss), and kept patting me anxiously to see if we were still friends. I reassured him that I still loved him, and we collected our groceries.

Fortunately, the woman in line in front of us whose shopping we'd interrupted by showing up and leaking all over had a sense of humor about it. I think she might have worked there, since she and the cashier were chatting away the whole time like old friends.

I took Isaac's clothes off before depositing him in the van.

Then we got home and Melissa broke the silverware drawer by dancing on it too hard, but that's another story.

More peanuts

Odd how whenever I go to make one of these posts I either don't have enough to bother with, or I have too many.

• Post-church Sunday afternoon wiggles: "Matthew, I don't want you tying your sister up!"
  
• More wiggles: "Stop climbing up that wall with your rope; there are pictures hanging that I don't want you banging." 20 minutes later, I have to break up climbing the wall with piles of couch cushions. Yes, pictures were banged.
  
• Matthew is outside sharpening sticks, in case he runs out of sharp things to poke bad guys with. He gave one to Melissa, who showed it to me: "Matthew gave me a stick! It's pointy! It's cold. I'm going to make it a bed for it to get warm. I'm going to keep it in my room and take care of it; that will be its home. It's a girl stick, because that's what I want. I will give it a pink blanket."
  
• Matthew: "I can't find my stick. Where was the last time you saw it -- the one that I sharpened on both ends?" Me: "Downstairs, when you made me admire its pointedness." Matthew: "Well, what did I do with it after that?"
  
• Melissa's breakfast of champions: honey nut cheerios mixed with cocoa puffs.
  
• My co-worker's daughter, on learning to drive with her father: "It wasn't THAT big a deal. It's not like there was anyone on the sidewalk when I went over the curb." I'm really, really not looking forward to teaching Melissa to drive.
  
• Rachel signed Matthew up for a bank account; now he's getting junk mail. He is, of course, thrilled.
  
• Working at a BigCo has its upsides. I asked, "How do I send out these dozen t-shirts?" and was told, "Just give the addresses to Assistant X and she'll take care of it." That's pretty awesome.
  
• Matthew: "Why is 'buttocks' more polite to say than 'butt?'"
  
• I noticed Melissa squatting by her scooter. "Melissa! Do you need to go potty? Go!" Melissa stood up. "I don't need to! I already peed!" I didn't understand at first: "Go potty!" "I already peed!" and she pointed to the puddle on the sidewalk. Then I realized that she had, in fact, peed through her tights and onto the sidewalk, and I changed my command to, "Go change your clothes!"

Peanuts

• Matthew: "how many feet are in a mile?" Me: "5,280." Matthew: "What!? That doesn't make sense!" Matthew discovers the virtues of the metric system.
  
• Texas grammar lesson: the possessive form of "you all" is "your alls."
  
• Good news: one month after joining the corporate mother ship, the Snack Closet has not disappeared; it just became three Snack Filing Cabinets. Bad news: we had to padlock it to keep other divisions from raiding our snacks. This puts a damper on rummaging. (Evil corporate plan all along?)
  
• Isaac broke the ps3 by jamming multiple DVDs into it. Good news: Sony "fixed" it by sending us a replacement unit. Bad news: the replacement unit wants to format my hard disk--which fortunately I did not send in to Sony--presumably to prevent me from pirating my own videos.
  
• Had my laptop open when Matthew asked why popping your fingers makes noise. Thank you, Google.
  
• Matthew would really love to learn French with Isaac, and he tries hard to mimic me. So far, he is still comically unable to make a French r sound, among other phonemes. Melissa is more linguistically gifted but does not care.
  
• Melissa is in love with tights, but sometimes her judgment is questionable. One outfit: black shirt, black tights, lime green skirt.
  
• It bugs me to see Watterson is doing his best to pull a Salinger: achieve success, then spend the rest of your life hiding from it. I got a bootleg Tracer Bullet shirt on eBay to give Watterson the metaphorical finger. What a waste of talent.
  
• Played Primus too loud for Melissa, who asked me to turn it down. I'm totally going to remind her of this when she is a teenager. Repeatedly.
  
• Melissa: "The stars are really giant? They must be far away since they don't want to crush people. Those are nice stars."
  
• Let the kids stay up late Friday night so they could sleep in Saturday, but they both both got up at 7 to watch cartoons. Crankiness ensued.
  
• Good thing Christan's parents sent Matthew home at 6, because I get Christian and Conner mixed up and it would be embarrassing to call the wrong house to ask for my son.
  

Mr Mom again

160 years ago, Nathaniel Hawthorne (yes, that Nathaniel Hawthorne) was left in sole charge of his five year old son while his wife visited her parents. His journal entries have been turned into the under-appreciated book, Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny, by Papa, offering "a meticulous, blow-by-blow account of a man taking care of a young child by himself." Hawthorne spoke for all parents since Adam when he lamented, "it is impossible to write, read, think, or even to sleep, so constant are his appeals to me in one way or another."

Hawthorne had some advantages (his full-time cook and housekeeper) and a big disadvantage (no television). But fathers today still approach watching young children for days alone with the same trepidation. ("Every father should have some alone days with his kids," Rachel comments. "It's good for you.")

But when Rachel left for a long weekend in Washington for her great grandmother's funeral, I wasn't worried. Partly this was because I had Rachel give me a long list of activities before she left (although she ended up taking the zoo and Sea World passes with her). Partly because I was an Experienced Dad, no stranger to the rigeur of being harried to my wits' end. But mostly because Rachel was taking Isaac, so I would only have the older two. Two kids is easy... compared to three.

What does half a week with Dad look like?

We went to McDonald's every day, except Sunday. (But, I add, "only" once a day: breakfast Thursday, lunch Friday, and dinner Saturday.) I've said before that one of the drawbacks of San Antonio vs Draper is that McDonald's is the only fast food with a play area, so it was a near-monopoly. Bonus: free wi-fi, so I even got some work done.

I bought Melissa some flowers -- pink ones -- Thursday morning when we went grocery shopping. She was extremely pleased, and insisted they go on her dresser so she could see them in the morning.

Without Isaac to watch in the morning, I had pretty light duty on school days: after getting Matthew ready and out, Melissa usually wouldn't get up for another hour, and she had a great attention span for art at the table -- suitably protected with newsprint -- or reading games on the netbook. After picking up Matthew from school the fights^W sibling interaction would start and then it was substantially less peaceful.

When Melissa spilled red soda on her green skirt at lunch, I threw it out rather than attempting stain removal. It's a good thing Rachel was only gone a few days or her daughter might not have had many clothes left. Melissa spills very near to every single meal, no matter what kind of drinking vessel you give her. (And yes, it was an older skirt with the flowers peeling off it, for the record.)

Matthew and Melissa got chocolate chip cookies whenever they asked for some. But I did not neglect nutritional discipline: "you have to finish your pudding before you can have cookies!"

With Isaac gone, I could leave headphones or DVDs out and be reasonably sure they would be where I left them, intact, when I came back for them. This was awesome.

Unlike last time, I didn't save all the cleaning for the day Rachel got back. But, also unlike last time, the kids can actually help with the picking up now. At a glacial pace, granted, but with my laptop at hand, glacial progress is good enough; they picked up the downstairs on Friday and the upstairs on Saturday. I still got to do anything more complex than putting toys away, though.

The climbing wall

While Rachel was gone, I took Matthew and Melissa home teaching with me. When we arrived at Jasper's, we had to knock several times to be heard over the roar of the vacuum cleaner: a bad sign. Moments earlier, their three and five year old had been discovered industriously carrying packing peanuts from a shipping box upstairs, to shred them on the carpet. Apparently they'd been at this for some time before they were caught.

Jasper's wife was pissed ("do you know what your children have been up to?") and Jasper, who was no dummy, knew what to do: stay out of sight until the storm blew over. So Jasper decided this would be an excellent time to show us his climbing wall, safely out of the combat zone in the garage:








For scale, Jasper there is 6' 4". (He's also struggling to gain more weight than his current 160 lbs. Just to make all you people like me with the opposite problem feel worse about yourselves.) Not shown: the other half of the wall, off to my right.

After we left, Matthew asked when I was going to build a wall like that. "Maybe when Grandpa Ellis visits next, he can show us how to build one," I offered. "But first we have to buy a house instead of renting."

Grandma Sloan

May 30, 1905 - January 26, 2010

These are always the hardest posts to write. My last great-grandma, and the only one I knew very well died last week. Not only did she live a long life, but up until about 5 years ago, a very independent and healthy one. She had her shotgun, she had her dog, and so felt quite content to live on her own. Grandma really loved her great-grandkids, and we adored her in return. I remember many summers spent playing cards with her on the back porch and eating ice cream or cookies. She always had something for us and delighted in feeding us. I remember helping her in her vegetable garden, collecting the fallen apples in a wheel barrel, or tossing a ball for her beloved Pomeranian, Toto.

When my family moved to Washington, we stayed with my Grandma and Grandpa Van Duker for a few months while my parents looked for a house. Grandma Sloan lived at the bottom of the hill right by the bus stop, so we'd stop by her house first after school before heading up the hill. She was always waiting for us and we'd spend an hour or so chatting about our days, "helping" her clean up any pesky leftover cookies, and running around her yard with Toto.

Later, my parents moved to Puyallup. Due to the school situation, I opted to stay with my grandparents to finish off the school year. One of the highlights of my day was seeing grandma. She always had a big smile. We'd talk about the news of the day- she was very well informed about the latest in the news- or read the jokes in the Reader's Digest together. Sometimes she'd tell stories and other times she'd ask me to play my viola. Now I wasn't any great talent, but she liked to hear me play anyway and I'd oblige. She loved the few Irish jigs I knew. Grandma's mother was Irish and her father a Scotsman, and she told stories of how as a child she had to wear the family plaid. The 11 children lived in Canada on a farm and rode horses into town to school. She truly saw many remarkable changes in her lifetime.

At the funeral, Grandma Van Duker reminded me of one of the stories she'd tell from her childhood. Apparently her father had a mean goose that would chase them all over the yard and hiss at them. One day four of the youngest kids were left home alone while their parents were out and about. They decided to teach the goose a lesson. They captured the goose into a great big butter churn and then started churning the goose around and around. The goose made a huge ruckus and when they felt it had enough the let him out. The goose staggered around the yard and became quite docile from then on. Never bugged them again. Unfortunately for the butter churn, the goose was loose- leaving a horrible mess to clean up. They hurriedly scrubbed it with soap and bleach before their parents got back. From then on they never ate butter again from the churn and their father would puzzle why they never wanted butter with their bread!

Within the last few years it got harder to see grandma. Her mind started to go and sometimes she'd remember you and other times not. Visits tired her and I would stay for a short while until she fell asleep. Her body was just slowly giving out on her. You could tell when she was there though. Her blue eyes would just sparkle.

Four years ago, when I told her the name of our second child she got excited. "That was my mother's name! You named her after my mother!"

Melissa and Grandma July 2006

I know it was time for her to go. Her spirit was stuck in a broken body. Her friends, siblings, parents, and only child all died before her and she missed them terribly. It is hard to be on the side saying goodbye though, and I miss the grandma and person that she was and regret that my children won't know her. For them, all I have is a few stories.

Miss you Grandma.

Isaac Cleans Up Part 2

We keep our garbage can on a 2 foot high ledge in the kitchen. Recently the little man has discovered that he can now climb the ledge and access the garbage. Yesterday he took all of his unused diapers and deposited them into the trash can. That evening he helped clear the table of all the used napkins. He was so pleased with himself.



Today he has been putting his dirty diapers in the trash. Hmm, this can be useful! Still, we're keeping a close eye on the garbage can. When I dressed him this morning he vigorously protested the shirt I'd picked out. While I was getting another (more acceptable) shirt, he toddled off with the rejected shirt and tried to put that in the trash too!

The princess party

Melissa attended the Disney Store princess party at 11:00 today. The run-up was grueling:

Melissa: "What time is it?" "9:30."
"What time is it?" "9:35."
"What time is it?" "9:38."

(And that's not even counting all the "is the princess party today? questions this week.)
At the party there were lessons (curtsying 101, princess posture, etc.), paper tiaras, a tea party, and cookies. Melissa was very pleased.

a quickr pickr post

Peanuts

* Rachel: "How festive! We have Matthew underwear on the stairs!"
* I'm sitting in the bathroom. Matthew knocks on the door: "Dad? Can I see what you're doing?" I suppose more creative people have multiple uses for a bathroom, but for me, it's pretty single purpose...
* Melissa: "Do you want a musical instrument that is a bass?" Me: "No. I don't know how to play one." Melissa: "You use a bow! Like this! [demonstrates bowing motion]"
* Matthew: "If Melissa bothers me, can I flip a spoonful of melted ice cream at her?
* Matthew, paging through the phone book: "Wow, there must be over a hundred people in San Antonio!"
* My father, here for the holidays: "You don't look as out of shape as I thought you would." My family is _all_ good at damning with faint praise.
* Rachel: "Matthew can't close one eye yet." Melissa: "I can close _two_ eyes!"
* Rachel: "Did you know you can buy agar and petri dishes on Amazon?" Uh-oh.
* Every morning now I play "move all the chairs to the living room so Issac can't use them to climb on the table." I hate that game.
* Isaac's job is to keep the house from getting too clean. He takes his work seriously: when he escaped from his high chair with yogurt on his fingers, he didn't just go over to a window and start whacking sticky handprints on it. No, he ran down the wall whacking each windowpane once. Then he went back and started on a second pass before I caught him.
* Isaac will answer "where's your head?" in French and English.
* Melissa, as I carried her to bed against her will: "You stupid dad!" They grow up so fast.
* I've done some complaining about the new office Rackspace moved us into. It's pretty spartan (bare cement walls, open seating, metal ceilings apparently _designed_ to spread noisse), but when Rachel visited she was pleasantly surprised: "Hey! you have carpet!"
* Me: "Do your parents know you're inviting Matthew over?" Matthew's friend: "My dad knows, and he's the boss." Matthew: "My mom's the boss. My dad's like the joker."
* Rachel and Matthew had a blast making slides of cheek cells today. They got some really clear views, "so clear even Daddy can see it!"

Isaac Cleans Up

The floor receives a well-balanced diet three times a day curtsy of Isaac. More than once I've wished that we had a drain underneath our table and could hose the floor after a meal. Either that or just feed the kids in the bathtub.

Moping up the stickies. Isaac loves to help.

More playing with the the photos.