Lake George Fun

I have had a great family vacation at Lake George this summer. It is incredible to be here and to really take some time off of work. I have told Heidi that this is the most I have not worked in over 2 years. As much as I love education it is great to take a long and I hope well deserved break.

Some great memories from the last few days:

• Hiking Buck Mountain with Amelia, Yoda, and Seth. Amelia, Yoda, and I had hiked it 2 summers ago. It was great to recapture the moments where we got to the top and Amelia ate blue berries right off of the bushes. This year she tried out going pee on the top of the mountain. She found a good spot and didn't even get her under ware wet. She was very proud of herself.
• "I had a wonderful time with you!" This is a familiar refrain that Amelia has uttered in various formulations over the last week. She has had moments where Heidi and I had to re-evaluate if we could even be parents because she was behaving so bad. But she has, for most of the time, been a very cute and very good 3 year old.
• We were swimming with Caroline Safford over at the Safford Horton dock and Amelia decided that she needed a tube. At the time she was swimming naked and she ran through the woods to get the tube. It was touching to see her little naked bum running as fast as she could to get to the tube and then running back. What other level of happiness could there be? What other level of safety and fun could there be?

On the Zoe front she has been incredibly cute. She has become a ravenous eater and today at lunch ate a cheddarwurst, a cheese stick, about 50 blue berries, and a peanut butter sandwich. She becomes cuter and cuter by the day

Sleep

Heidi gave me an amazing gift last night--sleep. I slept from 8pm to 4am and it was amazing.

The previous 2 nights had involved almost none. Wednesday night Amelia was up screaming, coughing, laughing, sobbing, and hitting me in the face. Thursday night it was Zoe who was inconsolable. For her it was much worse and I don't think that I slept at all from 3:30 am until 8pm last night. Agony.

Thursday night was bad enough but on Friday both kids were sick at home. Amelia with a temperature and croup and Zoe with just croup. I would get one to sleep and then the other would wake up and wake up the one I had just gotten to sleep. At one point I finally had Zoe sleeping and I had begged with Amelia for 1/2 an hour to let me get a little rest. She finally agreed to cuddle on the couch an watch a cartoon. My eyes had just closed when Zoe started screaming.

It went back and forth like this all day. It truly wasn't agony as much as it was really tiring. The one highlight was our sushi lunch. I had uni, tuna, octopus, an Alisha Roll and gyoza. Amelia had some chicken tempura that she really liked.

Finally at 3:00 I handed off the kids to Heidi and went home to rest and watch some basketball.

I was too tired to sleep so I cleaned.

Off work

Tom here. I have been off work now for a week and while I have gotten a ton of work done from home I have also begun to get a little stir crazy. A few things I have done.

• decided that all of the old New Yorker magazines needed to be burned up because they were everywhere. I kept on the task of feeding magazines into the fire place until I was distracted by a pressing issue on Law and Order SVU--that show sucks you in.
• researched the workout program P90X from computer while lying in bed. I think the presenter might be too annoying to listen to for an hour a day.
• played bristle blocks with Amelia for so long that I started to get a little mad when she wanted to take down my towers to build more of hers.
• researched how I could buy loose Lego blocks instead of kits. This took about an hour.
• listened to an interview on Morning Edition with Lawrence Wright about his profile of Scientology in the most recent New Yorker. Listened to Fresh Air interview with Lawrence Wright about his profile of Scientology. Read original article by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker. Went online and researched Scientology. Watched videos of L. Ron Hubbard. Decided that I had learned enough about Scientology.
• went to hardware store. bought one bag of salt. came home. spread the salt. returned the the hardware store. bought one more bag of salt. spread the salt. it still wasn't enough so I made a sandwich.
• took all the dishes off of their shelves. Cleaned the shelves. Reorganized the dishes and put them all back.

All in all a pretty good week but I think I'm ready to go back to work.

Total non sequitur...Amelia has been an amazing little girl recently. She talks so much and about such interesting things. Yesterday she told me a story about how Ryan and James and Henry and she were playing superheros. Ryan and James and Amelia were all playing Spider-Man so I asked if Henry was Spider-Man too. Amelia frowned deeply and looked at me like I was the biggest idiot on earth. No, she said, Henry was playing Batman. How was I to know.

She also does this cool thing where she lists out everyone that she loves.

I love mommy.

I love daddy.

I love Zoe.

I love Yoda.

I love Badger.

And then we ask her if she loves Toonces, our mean cat, and she will look at us skeptically and say, NO!

Dancing

All you can do is watch:
here!

Vacation is finally here!

Amelia has had some really funny comments over the last couple of days. She called the freezer the "icer" and when her hair pigtails were falling out she said that her "hair was leaking."

Funnies from today:

Number One

A: Why did Grandmother buy me this car seat?
Me: Because she loves you and wanted you to be safe!
A: Where is she at?
M: Remember? She had to go to heaven so we can't see her anymore; but we can think about her and sometimes we might even feel like she is inside of us.
A: Mommy, she is not in my belly.

Number Two

A: Is Santa bringing Yoda presents?
M: Uh, why yes he is. What should he bring him?
A: A tail warmer.
M: Like to keep his tail warm when he is outside?!
A: Yes. And a hat and mittens, too.

Our alert baby:

With her great-grandmother.

Amelia goofs around on the playmat with Zoë - the little one definitely seems interested in the big one, even if it's a look of confusion and being startled...

LOVE THIS!

Here we have Zoë and our middle child, Yoda. His reaction to her was totally unanticipated by me -- I really didn't think he would be that interested or affected (I don't know why I thought this...) But he is turning into Carl* from the children's picture books -- he licks her head and her feet; he runs right over to her immediately whenever she is crying, even if she is upstairs and he is downstairs; he sleeps at the foot of the bed when we are there; he follows me around whenever I am carrying her anywhere. It is too cute...

*Don't know who Carl is? Click here!

Start your anniversary early!

Around 11pm last night I finished sanding a little stool that I made so I could sit beside Amelia's new bed and read her stories. I was up a bit late because the night before I went to bed too early and was fully awake at 2:30am.

I was sleeping well until I heard Amelia moaning about her head. She had bumped it at school on a little stairway. No big deal--just a little black and blue. I went into her room and she was holding her cold compress. She wanted me to "make it cold." I went downstairs and got a new one but it was not shaped like a car. She wanted the one shaped like a car. I brought back the warm one--the one shaped like a car--and she happily put it on her head, pulled the covers over her face and went back to sleep.

It is 4 steps to get out of her room if you take long strides. The first step is the worst you have to avoid a loose board that doesn't just squeak--it pops as it clips its nearby boards on the way down to the joists. Tonight I missed that one. And I didn't make too much noise as I tried to glide over the last three squeakers. I had one leg over the security gate in Amelia's doorway and she popped up her head, looked right at me and loudly said, "TUCK!"

Tuck means that she wants to be tucked in. I hate this because I always tuck her in when I am leaving her room. She is just totally using me and my softiness. She knows I will come back and tuck her in one or two more times. But it was early in the am--argg. I tucked her in and escaped the room. She asked for more tucks but I scurried downstairs and after a few minutes she was quiet. I didn't want to wake Amelia, Heidi or Zoe by climbing back up the stairs so I took up a spot on the couch. I sat in the middle of the couch, adjusted a pillow in the right place, turned my body and began to lie down on my back. The instant before my head was down--I heard a shout--"Tails."

Tails is what Amelia shouts when she wants us to redo her pig tails. At the hour I didn't consider trying to convince her that tails were not needed in bed. I just went up and redid them. But I redid them poorly. Those of you who pull your hair up or who have kids will understand. You grab a sufficient amount of hair and put on the elastic. Then you twist and pull it over the hair again, then back. If you don't do it enough times it is way too loose and will fall off in minutes. This is where I left it.

So repeat the lying down on the couch paragraph and I was back upstairs to do the tails again. I don't know how many times this happened but I eventually took my sleeping bag and pillow upstairs to sleep on Amelia's floor. The squeaky boards are squeaky partly because they are uneven so my hip settled into a spot about 1 inch lower than my legs and body. This would be comfortable if it were a sleep number bed but a substrate of wood is not so forgiving. Amelia kept talking and intermittently sleeping, or at least being quiet. I never felt like I got any sleep but I did feel like I was protecting Amelia from herself and had her contained in one room.

Feet on my head. Amelia was crawling out of her bed and using my dozing head as a step stool on the way out. I saw light out the windows so I figured we could go down and begin the day. Amelia was beginning her morning mantra--hungry, hungry, hungry--and I can always get up when the sun is out. We made our way downstairs. I turned on Clifford (and entire blog should be dedicated to analysis of this kid heroin program). And I again took my repose on the couch. I looked at the clock and it was not our normal wake up time of 6am----it was 5am.

Sure there is more to this story. Amelia falling asleep on the way to school. Me falling asleep at my desk at work. Loosing my glasses because I was that tired. Wandering in to a Staples and wondering why it was so dark--before realizing that I had sunglasses on. But to get the whole story you would need an essayist who had slept all night. I knew that kids would be lots of work but I didn't know of their virus/parasitic quality. Like a parasite they not only are part of your world but they begin to control your world--no one told me this. Life is amazing and fun but it is not longer controlled by Tom or Heidi. It is controlled by Amelia who is quickly training Zoe to do the same.

Happy 4th anniversary to my great wife Heidi!

Hiking with Friends

Our friends Ron and Emily and their kids came up on Sunday to do a little hiking. This also gave Heidi and Zoe a little break to do some more sleeping. We hiked my old standby Mt. Major. It was a little bit longer than they might have expected but their son Eli (6) was a trouper and made it the whole way up and down with no complaining.

Here we are at a view point taking a break and eating some blueberries.

And here is Amelia doing some picking of her own.

Just to make sure we were not bored we were joined that evening by Heidi's mom. Edie has been great in the last week. She took care of Amelia, made us tons of food and has made the 45 minute drive multiple times just to see Zoe and Amelia.


Here is one final picture of Dad and Amelia with their babies.

Film from before Zoe was born

Here are a couple of video clips from the days before Zoe was born. Don't worry it is short.

Sick Amelia

Here is a picture of Amelia, Yoda and Emma. If you think Emma looks a little sickly that is OK. She is a plastic doll.

Here is a picture of Amelia and Heidi from Tuesday evening. Amelia is normally running around like crazy at the point in the day. As you can she--she has been a little bit off.

This picture was taken 2 seconds after the first. This shows clear proof that she is sick. Normally she moves 5-10 times in a 2 second period. If you look closely you can discern a small amount of movement in her feet and eyes.

I think this counts as Amelia's first real illness. She has been a little sick for 1 or 2 day periods but nothing like this. She has a fever, she sometimes shakes with the chills and last night was up all night. And both of her ears are infected.

One fun thing that we have heard she inherited from her Aunt Becky is a dislike of medicine. Even the sickly sweet pink kind that they have for amoxycillin now. And now they have these little syringes that allow you to squirt the medicine right into the back of their throat. I tried this earlier in the day. The nurse on call told us to squirt it in and then hold her mouth shut. Like all medical suggestions for toddlers--good in theory--not so great in practice. I squirted in the medicine and held her mouth shut tight. After about 10 seconds I felt so bad for the little thing that I had to let her mouth go. Pink liquid spewed forth. Most of it got on my hand but some of it also dropped on Yoda. (When giving a child medicine it is sometimes helpful to place a 100 lb. dog underneath. ) I reached 5 feet away to get a towel to wipe the family down and when I turned around Amelia was scraping her tongue clean and shaking her hand out on the carpet. For the record, Yoda still has a pink spot on his nose.

We called back and the nurse suggested putting the medicine in chocolate syrup. Can you see where this is going? I one upped the nurse and bought both syrup and iced cream. If you want to stop over we now have a dish of chocolate syrup with amoxycillin and a bowl of iced cream with amoxycillin. You will leave free of parasites.

For any of the big time worriers out there--she seems to be in pretty good spirits and the nurses that we have called (4 times today) keep telling us that by the time we are on our 7th kid we won't even call about things like this. I hope so.

Late Breaking News: Amelia has "gone to the bathroom" 4 times in the last hour. This is not only fun for us but necessitated one more call to the nurse. Her response, "Yes, that can happen."