A Boy and his....

Hello again. I know it's a odd event to have back to back postings, but I felt that a warning had to be put out there to all people who care.

Care about breakables that is.

You see, Marcus is all boy.

Both of my parents will relate stories of how I was a quiet child. Sitting in front of a speaker listening to classical music. Drawing pictures with much content. Have a babysitter take me to his college class at the age of four, and I was not a problem.

But my son is all boy.

The first sign, was when he whipped a ball across the room at the age of one. Wind up, move arm forward, and release. He has repeated this many times since, so weight of an object is now a concern if the item is small enough for Marcus.

Next we have his grip of steel. Markers, crayons, forks, spoons, cooking utensils - these are all items that once they fall into his grasp, it is hard to remove them.

The clincher is when something enters that tiny fist that has length. At first it was just a rod that served as the spool for a paper roll. Small, red and light plastic, we called it his lightsaber and just made sure he didn't smack Alya (or us) or anything breakable. Then he started going for the fireplace tools - which quickly entered a closet.

Today, my son showed how he's ready for the shaolin temple:


All boy. All kung-fu, baseball playing, lumberjack being boy.

And I'm proud of him for all that.

Now if only he can lay off the hard cider.



Be seeing you,

Jon

"Oh no, you have diarehaa."

Fabulous news in the BSer house - Alya will be leaving diapers behind!

It is fantastic. Today she didn't wet her pull up at school at all, woke up dry, and messed one pull up this evening while putting herself on the potty twice. That is such the relief.

"Bend over so I can wipe your butt."

Mind, I'm confident that accidents will happen but she is very proud of not wetting herself that I can go with that.

We were using stickers as motivation, but that has almost completely passed now. The bigger challenge at this point is getting her to dump out the "bowl" with the highest accuracy possible. And even that hasn't been bad.

"Get in the tub, we have to wash your feet."

Unfortunately for Marcus, Alya is setting the bar quite high. And word on the street is that boys are more difficult than girls to get trained. We will have the carpet cleaner ready when we get there. [grin]

But I'm certain that Alya will be very supportive when Marcus starts training. After all, she once again rocked him at bedtime.

"It's too poopie, mommy."

Oh, and all the quotes. Those were from the time that Alya was taking care of her Cinderella doll this past weekend. Apparently Cinderella had an accident. That girl just cracks me up.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Post Evening thoughts

Sasha and I had people over for a game night this past evening. The last guests left around 1:30 AM. I've been decompressing/cleaning/reading-Zot! and now doing a quick blog.

It was such a good night. Food was just the right amount - some left over snacks, but that's about it. Beverages flowed freely, yet no one felt the need to get completely snockered. Games were played, but without that intensity that can sometimes occur. Conversations were held, and the evening was such a relaxing fun time.

A very good night.

Thanks to you all for coming over. It means a lot to me to have such a good group of friends that are willing to gather for an evening.

Jon

Daylight Savings, Alya, and Chocolate Syrup

If you know me, you know that I hate Daylight Savings Time more than many things. It did serve a purpose at one point, but I feel that it's completely worthless to screw-up people's schedules for that "extra hour of daylight" at the end of the day.

So yoou want an extra hour daylight, go to work an hour early. Seriously. But making me do it with you is just unfair.

And no, I really hated it when our elected officials decided that extending daylight savings would be a good idea. I wanted my freakin' sleep patterns at a reasonable pace for half the year - not 4 months. Just make it year round then. Seriously.

Last year, I was really concerned on it's effect on Alya. Marcus was only a few months then, so it had little impact on his life. But Alya was a little unsettled by that transition last year. Another reason for the hate.

This past Sunday, the dreaded-evil-designed-by-the-marquee-de-sade Daylight Savings struck. And Alya was up until 10:30 that night. Now that is late for my little squirrel. Plus, she was on a Mommy-at-bedtime kick, so that didn't help matter.

Monday, Sasha had to wake Alya up in the morning in order to get to work on time. This has been a 7 AM work week for me - which has been painful. "Thanks, Daylight Savings!" [Please replace the word "Thanks" with your personal, favorite explicative.]

That night was a 11:30 PM night, with lots of false starts for sleep time. Frustrating.

Tuesday, was a case of "second verse, same as the first." Except I went out after work, so I only got the info when I talked to Sasha around 9 PM and Alya was still not down yet. When I came home, I noticed in the sink a dirty bowl that had previously contained ice cream and chocolate syrup. I can understand that, especially since Sasha spent a lot of time trying to get her to go to sleep.

But then she realized that Alya was just plain not tired. Sasha stopped trying to fight the bedtime fight and let it roll.

Armed with the knowledge of the previous night, I had Alya and followed Sasha's style to let Alya go to bed when she was ready. Which meant I was closing the door to her room at 9:15.

And as I closed the door to my sleeping daughter's room, it came to me that this is a good thing. Alya's sleep patterns have changed, but Daylight Savings has resulted in me having more than two hours with my daughter after work.

It used to be that both kids were tired as dirt when we picked them up at 5 PM. So, it was annoying to only see them for two hours before they went to bed. And much of that time was spent on dinner and baths if needed. Although we admittedly enjoyed having a few hours for ourselves.

Now we get to see Alya for an evening. Twice as long as previous. Plus, Alya is not completely wiped out. She was ready to enjoy being home.

I guess Daylight Savings did something good after all. And I'm quite happy with that result.

And yes, I did have that bowl of ice cream (lactose free!) and chocolate syrup, too.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Home Alone

I took a day off today. No family, just me and the cats. And now I feel a little odd.

The morning was awesome. We all got up, I helped get the kids ready, and saw everyone out the door. This helped kick things off properly.

I moved on to some fun things that both needed to be done and I wanted to do. One was setting up the PlayStation 3 to go through the stereo properly. After that was done, I proceeded to get my "Rock Band" on with the audio cranks and me singing some pretty difficult songs. Blondie's "One Way Or Another" was a tough nut to complete.

Other bits included getting into the shower, reading some gaming books, watering the plants and just relaxing.

But I didn't want to waste the day away, which is what I felt was kind of happening.

So post-lunch I jumped into the car and started getting things done. Exchanged a pair of slacks that were the wrong size at the Land's End Inlet. Stopped in Best Buy for canned air to clean the computer and to price out external hard drives.

The most difficult part of that stop was the fact that the strip mall also has Alya and Marcus's daycare within it. The time was just after naps would be starting, therefore stopping in would be a bad idea (and in other ways) but it was crushing to be so close and not see them.

Returning home I put a cat door in (success!), tried to seal the gutter over the leaky window (don't know if that worked...), cleaned out the computer (may not have worked), moved the downstairs DVD player up to replace the one that wasn't working so well (success), and managed to fire up Rock Band again but for drumming instead of singing. (Success until a Queens of the Stone Age song on Hard difficulty. Bad idea.)

That brought me to the point of picking up the kids and I was feeling a little blah. And the kids picked up on that a little bit, because while both of them supposedly had huge naps they also were on the tired side. We all came home just a little crabby. Marcus wanted to be held, Alya wanted to watch Dora the Explorer and not take her jacket off, and I remembered it was bath night and needed to get dinner rolling.

And then family happened.

Sasha was out for the evening, so I was solo with the kids. And from the time of picking them up at five to Alya finally laying down around eight, we all moved from tired/grumpy to happy. Happy to be together. Happy to be home with each other. Happy to relax and let things happen.

Alya got up when Dora was over to come and eat dinner. (Which she often fights.) Marcus just chowed down on the grilled cheese with ham that a made for dinner tonight. In fact, that boy ate half a sandwich and then grabbed my half from my plate and comsumed most of that too!

Bath time was lots of fun. When Marcus was done, he was peaceful getting ready in the bathroom, while Alya showed off her kicking in the tub - although there was much laughter when I was a monster eating his freshly cleaned toes. Alya was very good at singing the ABCs when I had to run out of the bathroom right quick to put Marcus in his crib with toys so I could finish washing her up. (Marcus's door is literally opposite the bathroom door.)

And post-bath, Alya and Marcus had some good playtime together where they were having fun while I just sat and watched and smiled. And then Alya said she wanted to sit on the potty - which she did and then she peed in the potty. That makes the third time today. Which is very exciting.

Bedtime was smooth. Marcus made it through two and a half books before wanting to be laid down. Alya did four books, including one story that was very long, but only a touch of rocking before she went down.

Sure, it was past nine before I finished cleaning up the dishes and the bathroom. And during that clean-up process I talked to a few people and found I was not going to see Watchmen tomorrow night. But I feel so good right now.

Family happens. And family can make things right.

I can only hope this continues through the teenage years.

Be seeing you,

Jon