Thanksgiving Day

Last year it was cold and we hosted our pals Doris and Christopher. We brined our turkey in a garbage can (with a liner, don't worry) outside our kitchen window on the roof so it stayed cool overnight. That would not have worked so well this year as winter has not yet arrived here. We had already had a few snow days by this time last year, but I don't know if we have been below freezing yet.

This year we are spending the afternoon with local friends and thinking about not so local ones and family spread far and wide. It's been a big year for us. As I was leaving the Y yesterday (I have still made it to exercise every weekday since I started my daddy day care routine) someone looked at Mo asleep in her stroller and said, "You sure have a lot to be thankful for this year." She's right, and Mo is only part of the story. We hope that all of our friends and family (who we don't see often enough and don't speak to often enough) have a wonderful holiday and that they know we are thinking about them.


Photos up soon, I promise!

One Week In

So, the early results were mixed on whether Mo was going to be at all happy with me being home. On Tuesday last week she cried non-stop from 1 until 4 in the afternoon when she finally passed out from exhaustion. Since then, she has spent less time each day crying. On Friday and today she spent less than an hour each day yelling at me. Progress, for sure. I have to figure out when she will get hungry and make sure I am in a place where I can feed her before the frustration sets in for her. I have to mix that need with the need to keep her moving and to change scenes often enough. Taking her for a walk is pretty much a sure thing everytime, but it makes it hard to feed her. I feel weird not working and being across the street from the action, but Mo is keeping me busy enough that I don't feel like I am on vacation.

I have also made it to the gym every weekday, plus playing ball on Saturday mornings, so I am keeping my word to myself so far. I fully intend to be in MUCH better shape when I return to work. My body is complaining a bit about weight lifting, but I know it'll get better. I need to be stronger and have more endurance in the spring when I get back to work and we begin the real craziness of balancing two jobs, two kids, day care for one, after school care for the other, my dissertation work, church commitments, etc etc etc

Daddy Duty

So, as of this past Monday, I am on daddy leave from school. Beth has been back at work for a week and a half. This at home adventure is going to be MUCH tougher than working every day. I'm loading up more photos soon and I'm going to try and write every day. We'll see how it goes...

Wow ... Some Unintended Consequences

SO, our schedule change has made it very difficult to keep up with this blog. SO sorry about that.

In an effort to help me keep coherent in the classroom, we moved Mo to our guest room/office so I can sleep through the night. What this has meant is that I am rarely able to use the home computer compared to how I used to utilize it. I am currently uploading a boatload of new photos and I will post a handful when that process is done.

Gram is settling into 1st grade, I am getting to know my students, fall is here, our house heater doesn't work reliably, I am tutoring two nights a week, the baseball playoffs are here, and on and on and on. Life has been busy. Oh yeah, we also watched all of Ken Burns' National Parks video and Gram was really hooked. He watched about 30 miuntes each night and is developing a list of parks he needs to go to now. Top of his list is Death Valley due to the name and the cracked mudflats that he saw.

Mo is terrific during the day (other than sundown) but she is still struggling with sleeping through the night. She actually had a stretch of about 6 hours one night and she has been able to fall asleep more efficiently when she does wake up, but Beth ends up away from our bed most of the night.

Photos in a few minutes.

New Schedules for All

Well, another grandma week has come and gone so we are on our own again as a foursome here. We were treated to great meals, help with organizing, fun stories for Gram and an extra lap for Mo. Gram started 1st grade and I started another year of teaching (my 23rd!)

Gram's school is a block away from mine so we walk together in the mornings (which I'll be able to do about half the time) and I can get him in the afternoon and bring him by school to visit the girls there.

It's almost midnight now and Beth and I are each up trying to convince Mo to sleep. I chaperoned a dance and came home expecting to find everyone asleep and Gram was the only one lucky enough to be snoozing.

Gram and I are off to Yankee Stadium tomorrow!

more soon...

Catching Up

I'll start again with Mo picture and a comparable Gram picture It's crazy to me how much they look alike at this stage.

I started work again this past Monday but, although with the way this summer unfolded, the main difference is that I am leaving the house every morning instead of writing emails and making phone calls routinely. Mo's sleeping is starting to stabilize a bit. Unfortunately, stable means waking up every three hours or so at night. Beth told me to sleep in our guest room Monday night, so I got the first uninterrupted night of sleep I've had since my mom left. She slept with Mo one night while we passed out and slept until the morning.

Summer appears to have ended here, we've had morning temperatures in the 50s a couple of times this week. I hope we have a long fall instead of marching right into a winter like we did last year. In 2008 it snowed before Halloween and snowed off and on until the middle of April. We don't need another season like that. Gram got a postcard from his first grade teacher in the mail yesterday. We are in countdown mode now until he starts elementary school.

Mad Men (...and a mad woman)

So, our heat wave has resumed after a few moderate days and Beth, Mo, and I have been a little stir crazy staying in one of the few air conditioned rooms in the house. Beth has caught the Mad Men fever from reading about the new season and she has been watching old episodes through our On Demand service. Meanwhile, Mo continues to make me regret talking about how peaceful she seemed the day after she was born. She has long stretches of the day where she is observant and kind of calm, but boy does she have a temper already. Tonight she passed out from the effort of screaming at me after dinner. She has had a few outings lately like visiting church and the mall on Sunday. Her normal response to such adventures is to sleep. Perhaps a 3 AM car ride is the answer to some of our late night troubles...

Quick quiz - One of the photos above is of Gram, the other is Mo. Can you guess which is which?