It has been a while

the Girl started 3rd grade and the Boy started 1st.
Wife and I are taking life one day at a time.  Her job is challenging more than enjoyable.  Mine is challenging and enjoyable.  Neither one of us have the same jobs.
Life is pretty fantastic, tho.  No one is in the hospital and wife and I both have jobs.  Not too far from the 1 percent in this country.

Another extraordinary day

I got home from Oregon around 1130 Thursday night. I had just driven a little over 100 minutes from the airport. While I tried to unwind, I read the weather forecast for the weekend and tried to plan what we would be doing.

I miss my family so much I want to spend every waking second with them until I have to fly away again.

69*F with some rain, some sun, some clouds.

Fantastic! I quickly make plans to keep Saturday as a stay at home day. A couple of weeks ago I took the Boy and the Girl to get their hairs cut. When the Girl was on the chair she informed Lisa that it was a Stay at HOME Day! The best kind of day.

So today has been unremarkable in its fantastic-ness.

We worked in the garden. Gave Max a bath. Chased the Chickens and gave them hugs. Searched for eggs all over the yard, in the coop, in the shed, under the bush. Darn chix won't lay in just one place.

We all took naps. Boy and I took two, we needed them. We have had multiple family hugs, where we all pile on top of one another and wiggle and squeeze. Or we stand in a tight group and squeeze.

We have had some drama, some tears, lotsa laughter, some Halloween candy, leftovers, and lots of hugs.

As much as possible Wife and I have distracted each other if we start to think about the stress of our jobs; both of which are very demanding as she travels and I put in long hours. If Wife notices a serious look, she distracts me with a pun or she tells the kids to tickle me. It works out well.

Mom stopped by with new clothes for the kids and we took time to take pictures for Xmas cards. Thank God for her keeping track of us.

I don't take today for granted; we are so blessed with riches beyond imagination. I pray for more days just like this one.

Thank You!

Middle of the night

It's been about 54 weeks since the longest night of my life.
Some things are easier. The days are busy and the evenings are busier.
The kids are growing so fast and expanding their worlds as much as they can.
Life is certainly an adventure and every day has experiences that both make me smile as well as roll my eyes.


Home from work late last night, Boy came out to say goodnight and give me a hug.
He crawled up on my lap and buried his face in the hollow of my neck.
"Give me a big hug", I said and he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed.
I squeezed him back only to hear, "buuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrp" beneath my ear.
He pulled his head back with a huge grin, looking into my eyes.


Life is so precious.


Then it is 3am again.
I wake up to a dream. Again.
"CALL 911! SOMEONE CALL 911! MY BOY FELL IN THE POND AND ISN'T BREATHING!"
I see myself continuing chest compressions as I yell.
I see the biggest blue eyes I have ever seen; a blank stare not seeing me.
I wake up. My mind a destructive tornado of thoughts that swirl around.
Vignettes of that afternoon. Songs from the radio. Projects at work.
Happy tears that what woke me up was a dream, only a dream that has the happiest of endings.
In spite of knowing the ending that is all good, I still see moments from that day - they flash before me.
Calming my mind to fall back asleep is beyond the discipline of my mind.
Still.

The baby bed

Who knew it would be so hard to take down?

A close friend of Mom offered us a twin bed if we would take it out of her house before her next open house (she is trying to sell her house). So we loaded up the kids and went to get it. Kat was over the moon with excitement... I don't know who said anything to her but she KNEW it was for her! Her BIG GIRL BED! Kat was all about getting rid of the little girl bed so she had NO problem giving it to Kyle.

In order for Kyle to get a new bed, we had to get rid of the baby bed that he had been climbing out of for a month. NBD, right?

I pulled the bed out so I could get to all of the screws and bolts and Wife came in, saw what I was doing and choked up. "He's not a baby anymore." That caused me to choke up because it hit me. My little snuggler, my little guy is growing so fast. No more can he be the little baby. He has given us a roller coaster of a year this year and while he almost didn't grow any bigger, he is. He is growing up and we don't have any little babies at home any more.

Wife looked at me across the bed with a tear on her cheek and said, "maybe we should have another one so we can have an adorable little baby at home." THAT gave me pause. While I miss the idea of having a little one at home I am not looking for another little one to expand our family. While I might have a hard time with my little boy growing up, I am not planning on having kids every two years to keep that loving feeling in my heart.

Then I took apart the bed.

Benefit of Swimming lessons

I am not sure what the benefit really is.
Friday afternoon we suited up both kids and took them into the pool a little early. I walked through the locker room hand in hand with the Boy and when we turned the corner and could see the pool he stopped dead in his tracks and started crying. I tried to reassure him that he was going to have fun and he had nothing to worry about and come on, lets go out and see the nice instructors and find Kat and try to have fun.
Just then, he saw Kat run into the pool (btw, zero entry pools= the best pool entry ever) and he chased her into the water. He was up to his knees chasing Kat and looked like he was having fun for maybe 20 seconds before he realized that he is scared of the water. Or hates getting wet or whatever it is that runs through his brain and makes him stand there and cry.
So then we proceded with the swim lesson.
Which isn't so much a lesson as it is an effort to help him realize that just being in the water isn't so bad. To be honest, he has moments where he is either distracted or forgets that he thinks that he needs to cry constantly and he smiles and looks like he is having fun. He splashes the instructor or throws the ball or watches other kids playing catch and you can see he wants to play catch, too. But then he remembers that he doesn't like water or wet or whatever it is and he stands there an emits an ongoing cry with his runny nose while he gently moves his arms and splashes the water.

And really - it makes me kind of crazy.

Because while I desperately want him to like the water as much as I do. And I have visions of me and the boy snorkling someplace cool like Hawaii or Key Largo or really anywhere because snorkling is a blast. Then maybe take scuba lessons then we could dive all of the cool places in the world.
It makes me kind of crazy because so far what he has learned (maybe a little) in swim lessons is that maybe he doesn't need to be constantly afraid of the water. That just maybe that isn't the theme music from JAWS that he hears when he sees a body of water larger than the plastic cup full that he is about to throw on the dog.
So while maybe he has learned that water itself isn't so horrible, what I don't see him learning in the remaining five days is how to hold his breath. I don't see him learning how to roll over and float and keep his nose out of the water. I don't see him completing the circle of skills that says water isn't necessarily bad, but you need to develop skills that makes it not bad. Like holding your breath or learning to float or staying out of it when it isn't safe.

Because this is what really is making me crazy.

I cannot watch him for every minute of every day. I cannot stay attached to his hand or within the circle of safety all the time. There are times I leave the house and go to the store. There are times I take a shower. There are times I am on the computer or cooking supper or doing laundry or taking a nap.
He is so fast. He wants to be independent. He wants to explore the whole world that he can see as well as everything he cannot see. He wants to do it by himself so he appears to plot as to when no one is looking so that he can take off and find out what makes the grass green or the birds fly or what is over that retaining wall ledge or under that porch. He has no concept of danger or safety or fear. Not even of water, it seems. (Still)
And he should.
Explore, that is. Every little child I have ever met has wanted to explore and understand everything around in this enourmous world.
I just need him to do it safely. To not break an arm climbing a tree. To not fall off a retaining wall or deck. To not get stepped on by the cow in the pasture next door.
So that the next time he falls in the water, he will hold his breath until he can get himself out. Not try and drink the entire pond.

NOW the boy takes lessons!

Last month Jill and I researched swim lessons for the kids. We found the local pool offers 45 minute lessons, 5 days a week for two weeks... 3 and under, then 4 and above.

Katerina has declared to everyone that SHE is going to become a MERMAID! I think she is looking forward to it.

We aren't sure WHAT Kyle thinks. We have tried explaining to him that he is taking swim lessons and he doesn't react much. We have had Kat explaine to Kyle that he will be taking swim lessons and he tackles her. Since he tackles her almost daily, we didn't read too much into it.

We started looking into lessons because Kyle had been increasingly upset whenever we put him in the bathtub and we were concerned he was having flashbacks or some such thing and we didn't want him to be afraid of water.

So tonight was the first night. Since he has been a bit of a mothers boy lately, Jill got to sit with him during his lesson and I took Kat to the wading pool. Kat spent more time watching Kyle than she did wading. Then again, I spent more time watching Kyle than watching Kat. Throughout the lesson the instructors were great. When Jill first took Kyle into the water, the instructor noticed that he didn't want to go any farther in than his ankles. She came over and talked to Jill to find out what his experience has been with water. After that she stayed with Kyle for one on one instruction for the entire lesson. After the lesson was over for everyone else, another instructor came over and worked with Kyle for an additional 15 minutes. During this time, Kat and I went into the pool and used Katerina to motivate Kyle to step a little deeper into the water to give Kat a hug, which he did. He was willing to walk into water up over his waist in order to hug his sister. After the lesson, the instructors played catch with him so that he could associate having fun with the water.

I hadn't realized how tense I was until he got out of the pool and we dried him off. I think all of us took a big step tonight.

The Girl turns FOUR!

First, I want to let everyone know that the Boy is doing great! All we notice about him is that while he LOVES to splash in the water, he doesn't like to get IN the water... As we have signed him up for swim lessons next week, I hope he gets over it pretty quick.

Next, as the post reads, the girl has celebrated another birthday. I have been traveling almost every other week for quite a while and I got home from my latest trip ON her birthday. She was so excited to see me and could not wait to tell me that she was having a BIRTHDAY!
A couple of days later we had the grandmothers over along with the sisters and her cousins. And of course Grand-Pop Francis. Grandma Pat outdid herself with a pink cake that had a real Bar-B sticking out of the center of it. Girl's eyes got huge when she saw her cake. As you can see from the picture, we had homemade ice cream to go with the party. We topped off the afternoon with a water balloon contest that resulted in the kids getting all wet.
We continued the celebration on the 4th by going to her favorite park, then to a old time rendezvous to see a tee pee and settlers. Then it was off to see Grandma Sandy at the rodeo along with some cousins. A very full day for both of them.

What the news said happened (75% right)

http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/Cold-Water-CPR-Training-May-Have-Helped-Save-Two-Year-Old-From-Drowning-118270924.html

I will follow up with my own words and a quote from Kyle.

rings

This morning, the girl and I were sitting at the table. She on my lap while I read some blogs. Wife sat across from us doing some paperwork. The boy was chasing the dog and pulling the dogs tail.
While I held the girl and read a blog, Kat pointed to my wedding band and asked "What is that, daddy?"
I explained that a long time ago, Jill asked me if I wanted to be her best friend forever and if I wanted to be Kat's daddy and Kyle's daddy.

I continued explaining that when you find your best friend that you want to spend the rest of your life with and have two of the most wonderful children in the world, you show everyone that you ever meet that you have met your lifelong friend by exchanging rings of forever.
Then I showed her that like our friendship, the ring has no ending, it just goes round and round forever.

The whole time I explained and showed her the rings, she sat quietly watching my eyes and then examining the ring.

Then she peered intently into my eyes and asked a question I was not ready to hear for another decade.



"Will I get a ring someday from my best friend and will we be together forever?"

The thought of her growing up and finding her husband and getting married suddenly overwhelmed me. Time is going by so quickly and she is already three and a half. I feel that before I know it she will be bringing home a man to replace me in her life.
I am not ready for that.

"Yes sweetheart, someday you will meet your best friend and when the time is right you will exchange rings and spend the rest of your lives together."





Just not for a long time...

Maybe Engineer, maybe carpenter?

Yesterday, I needed to get some work done out in the garage, so I took the Girl and Max out and we closed all the doors to the cold and I let them play with each other as I tried to work on logs for the house.

After a few minutes, I look over and see that she has taken the wood scraps and is crouched down, arranging the wood. Some of it is standing up, some of it is balanced on other pieces. She had a incline in there as well. I thought, that is neat; she is creative.
After a bit, I look over and she has arranged the scrap in a straight line, from longest to shortest. Any pieces that are the same length are either on top of each other or side by side, depending on thickness. She pointed this all out to me, very carefully checking to make sure I understood.
Then I noticed that she really fits the stereotype for the Trades. Every time she bent over or crouched down to point something out, here pants creeped down and her plumbers butt crept out.
To complicate matters, Max took advantage of having us in the garage to treat Kat as his own chew toy. They looked like the ad for coppertone.

All Hallows Eve

It may be hard to tell, but the Girl dressed up as a flapper... or an indian princess, I am not 100

% sure. The boy is a road construction worker. He carries it so well, too.

When it came time to go out the door, Boy wanted none of it. He and Gma stayed by the door, giving out candy bars to the U of I college kids that felt like they needed to go trick or treating in the neighborhood.

Grandpa took Kat around the 'hood. Kat didn't know what all the fuss was about, but she really liked being the center of attention every time someone opened the door.

Both of them and both grandparents had a wonderful time Sunday evening and with the kids being watched by the grandparents, Wife and I managed to sneak a few minutes at the mall and then have a nice conversation at a quick dinner. So nice to have a quiet conversation with the one I will spend the rest of my life with.
The garden yielded a dozen pumpkins this year. However, the Girl did not want to cut into a pumpkin. "NOooo!" she howled. So I took a marker and drew pictures on the pumpkin. That seemed to be just fine.

If you look closely, you can see both of the kids growing before your very eyes. You cannot tell from the pictures, but the boy is NOT happy if he doesn't know where his older sister is hanging about. While it doesn't happen often enough so far, they play very well together. When she is out of sight, you hear him calling, "Neena!" and you can hear her call back, "I NOT NEENA!" On the other hand, she dominates him pretty well when she wants to. There isn't much he can get his hands on that she doesn't take away from him. I have warned her, He won't put up with that for much longer, you might want to start being nice now.

They keep us very busy and I don't have much time to post pictures of them, but I enjoy them more than I ever thought I could.

The Boys first haircut

A week ago I took the boy to (wo)menards.

As I pushed him around in the cart, encouraging him to pick out hammer, pliers, level, square, and duct tape, a lady approached us and said, "oh, what a pretty little girl!"

I was mortified.

Kyle flirted with her.

So I told Wife, it is time. Those curls have got to go. And go they did.

I don't think he was totally in agreement, tho. Just before he got into the chair, he filled his diaper, and how!

Jenny was so good, she distracted him and cut. Talked to him and snipped. Distracted some more and combed and cut.

In a brief 20 minutes, she had clipped over 2" of beautiful locks off of his head.

Now he looks like a proper little man.

We have lost our minds

It is official. Parenting by poor decisions.

Wife and I really like dogs. If you read far enough back in this blog, you will note that we had a really cool dog. Tough, Territorial, boss of all she could see (except me).

When she started attacking people, we couldn't keep her.

So we have been 21 months without a dog.

We couldn't stand it any longer so we started doing research. What is a good dog that is really good with children. Wife narrowed it down to 11 possible options.

This dog wasn't on the list, but was available and CUTE.

So we brought him home.

Maximillan, the Brittany Spaniel.

I think he is a keeper, but it does not matter what I think.

The Girl KNOWS he is a keeper!

Now we have another boy to potty train. and literally, as I typed that, he pooped on the kitchen floor, with Girl scolding, "NO! NO!"

What were we thinking?

And the kids are alright!

Well, they are a little sick.
The little one came down with the pukes this evening. Everything we tried to get him to keep down he brought back up. Yuck.
'Nina just has a cough and sneezes... I don't think it will get any worse.

I mentioned 'Nina. That is the boy's name for his sister, Kat. For some reason he cannot quite get Kat into his vocabulary so he calls out, usually at the top of his lungs, 'NINA!
It is still pretty cute.

Over the weekend it was cloudy and cold. Last night I put a fire in the wood burner to make the house nicer. Today it was 80F outside and Wife turned on the A/C. Gotta love Iowa!

It is amazing how quickly the kids are growing up. Kat is asking why five times for every question / situation that comes up. I think she is going for her six sigma cert pretty soon. If I see a fishbone chart, I will know it is a done deal.
Kat is getting taller every day and she doesn't miss a thing. Wife and I have to be careful in our conversations as her ears pick up every conversation... except to pick up toys or finish her squash.

The boy is into everything these days. If he cannot throw it, he wants to climb it. If it cannot be climbed, he wants to destroy it. Kat was always curious and tries to figure out how to take things apart. Boy doesn't have that patience, he just wants to wreck everything.

I think the next 20 years are going to be interesting.

Nephew turned FOUR

Wife and I have several dozen nephews to keep track of. At last count, right around six or so. Dozen.

At least that is how it sounds when any two of them are in the same room and gramma is feeding them some form of refined sugar because, "I don't have to take them home"

Anyway. At Nephew's birthday party, the Boy got a small piece of cake that was more frosting than actual cake.

He started slowly, trying to figure out exactly what type of food this was. Once he got a taste of that goodness there was NO stopping him.

He picked up handfulls of cake and frosting and proceded to lick and nibble every little bit off of his fingers then out of his palm. He went back to the plate for every last little bit of that sweet goodness and when it was gone, he was overwhelmed.

We don't give him refined sugar often but it was very fun to watch him to get caught up in the moment.

I am still around

Still around, really busy. Here are some pictures... got a bunch of funny stories.

I will be trying to post short little posts more frequently so I don't have quite so much dead air time.

Here are birthday pictures and when Aunty Gabby came to town and when Kat discovered mascara and boy in a sugar coma.

Where have I been?

On VACATION!
Except vacation for me does not mean going someplace exotic, it means take days off to work on one of the 15,000 projects that need to be done to get this place ready for sale.
And now, on my last day off before returning to work, Wife just brought back the boy who clearly has the flu.
So I will be finishing my windows with pukey, poopy boy helping me.
Other than I really feel for the kid for being miserable, understand me when I say...
LOVELY!

best Sunday evening so far

First, Yesterday was The Wife and I's (is that right?) anniversary. We been married a long enough time that we are barely newlyweds, but not so long that we feel like we have been married forever.
You guess how long. Mom and all the Dales and Nois, no giving it away.
She got me a nice gift, more than I deserve. I got her something practical that takes a battery. If you know Wife well, you know she is always 5 minutes late... So I got her a nice watch! Nothing says I love you like saying, be on time.

Tonight, we all took a walk around the garden. Wife has bronchitis and the kids are all fussy cuz it rained so much this weekend that it was wonderful to go out as a family and enjoy each others company.
In our walk around the garden we counted the apples (23) and walked the rows until we came to the peas. We noticed the peas were ripe and so Wife and I introduced Kat to the art of picking fat pea pods and splitting them open for the goodness within. Let me tell you, rabbits got nothing on this girl. She ate peas for 15 minutes straight. Later, as we were getting her ready for bed, she wanted to go back out and "pick peas".
Kyle wasn't much interested in peas... in fact, he had a hard time staying upright in the tall grass. After a while he just laid on his back and rolled around and laughed at us, nibbling at the peas on the vine.
It was such an nice experience I ran into the house to get a camera to capture this moment forever. People tell me they won't be little nearly long enough and I am starting to feel uneasy that they might be right.

Fantastic weekend!

We bought our log home in 2002. So far, I think every year has been a learning experience.
This weekend we learned about our chimney.
For the last couple of winters we have worked hard to heat the house as much as possible with wood.
Two years ago we bought a high efficiency free standing wood burner, a Lopi. We like it quite a bit.
As we heat more and more, Wife and I thought it was time to get the chimney checked out. When we bought the house we had it inspected along with the rest of the house. That was eight years ago and we are on our second wood stove.
So a husband of a co worker who used to work for a chimney cleaning and inspection service came over today. He used to work for the chimney service because when the great flood hit Cedar Rapids back in 2008, the shop was under 16 feet of water and the owner decided to not re-open. Of course, Brent's house had 10 feet of water in it, so he has had a lot on his mind.
Anyway,
Brent told me to clean out the ash box at the base of the chimney inside the house before he came over. So last night after a pretty busy day, I opened up the little doors and started shoveling out ash with a small garden trowel. Ash I expected. What I wasn't ready for was the birds. Seven bird skeletons along with feathers. Dried up, no smell, disgusting little skeletons. The skulls were creepy with the beaks and the eye openings.
So he stopped out today and gave me a list of things that need to be done. Just what i need, another list of things to do. He did, however, let us know that the chimney is in really good shape for not having been maintained for the last 27 years.
Now I am sitting on the porch in the shade watching Kat cover herself with sidewalk chalk.
Earlier she managed to find a bad tempered paint turtle. This is actually pretty surprising. How she managed to find an eight inch turtle, green, in foot tall grass, I will never know. When I picked the turtle up, she stretched her head out of the shell and hissed at me, then snapped her mouth shut.
In all of my years I have never seen a paint turtle behave that way. Kat agreed, we needed to put that turtle back in the pond. We did, and I hope she is happy.

What keeps me up all night.

Work, Ear infections, money, doubt.
Who knows.
What I do know is it makes me really tired in the morning.