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iPhone 3G_S

It can focus close, but I still had to rest it on Joey's nose to keep him still.

Yep

Joey says "the only difference is that I look cooler."

History

I got to sit in a hotel room in New Jersey last night. Watched TV, relayed poll results to my little sister, and wished like hell that I could call my Dad.  I cried a little over the last one, but Dad is hanging out with his Dad, and Uncle Jerry, and Uncle Tom, Dam Jerry, Grandpa Kehoe, Tony Celebrezee and of course, Bill Moss.
My kids got to have a little fun, joining Great Aunt Maryellen on stage to start making an acceptance speech, only to be interrupted by the announcement that the networks were calling the race for Obama.
Either how, a night to remember.

(I'll attribute the image as soon as I can, but I saw it first at John's site)

Barack Obama Wins!!

Fin came flying up the basement stairs last night yelling "Mom! Dad! Mom! Dad! Mom! Mom Mom! Barack Obama won! Barack Obama won!" This was accompanied by so much jumping and gesticulating that we had to calm her down (after letting her and Ellie jump around and yell a little more).

Obama did indeed win the Nickelodeon Kids Pick the President contest and the results were announced last night in our basement.

Passed on without comment

...except that I went over and hugged my dog.

zoomardav: I am lucky

Momentum

I'm posting here more, and dammit, I should keep it up.

We have soccer every day of the week for the next 6 weeks. Ellie has soured on the pink uniforms, as they are the wrong shade of pink. Joey's team has day-glo yellow uniforms. I shouted across the entire field at Whetstone, "MY GOD JOEY, THEY WILL BE ABLE TO SEE YOUR TEAM FROM SPACE!!" He couldn't be happier. Bobby's Whetstone team is purple. He is Fin's new favorite brother.

I spend all day at work responding to emails. I hate doing it at home. Therefore I'm hugely behind.

Still trying to figure out why a company so powerful as Amazon doesn't let their shopkeepers set up shipping discounts. I ordered $116 of bike stuff (red tires baby!) and was charged $86 in shipping. The people who run the store told me they would have to refund me the difference.

Besides the red tires, I'm getting a rack and some folding baskets, tires for the trailer and pieces to try to make Jane more comfortable on her bike. We're also getting replacement wheels for our Little Tykes Wagon (thanks to Aunt Molly) HEPA filters for our vacuum (bite me Lowe's for not carrying them any more) and more kid-sized headphones.

My Grandma sent an email to most of her grandkids asking who to vote for, as she only likes Joe Biden. So far my brother Michael is the only one who took the 'Reply to All' bait. He told her to vote for Ralph Nader.

Some jackass kid stole our Obama sign, along with those of ~5 neighbors. Again. The neighborhood is in a tizzy. I woke up from a sound sleep (his music was playing in my dream) to see him take it, and peel out. I then fell promptly asleep again. Not a proud moment.

Raising Boys

Here are some things that happened to me today:

Jane reported back from a conference with Bobby's teachers that he managed to hold out for sixty whole seconds of his teacher struggling with a computer before leaving his work and volunteering to solve the issue. He then proceeded to talk over his teacher's head about what might be wrong. I have to admit that I felt a huge swell of geek pride at this point for both his restraint, and need to fix things.

I caught 20sec of South Park and thought to myself, "As God as my witness, Joey must never see the 'Number 2 in the urinal' episode."

Every paper that Ellie brings home from Kindergarten that has a blank back has the entire alphabet written on it. Today, she wrote out the alphabet and then drew a person sleeping in a bed and a thought bubble around the alphabet. She patiently explained to me that it wasn't really her dreaming about the alphabet.

I am married to the woman who produced the genes for the alphabet-writing girl. I will do everything in my power to protect that...... and keep Joey out of jail.

Um, a title

Just because the pictures of the singed hair on my knuckles didn't come out, you get to see my arm. Nothing says success like going to bed on a Sunday night reeking of smoke and with your eyes still watering from the noxious fumes that corn cobs put out when you cook them right on the coals. This was, in fact a Saturday cookout, with hamburgers for the kids, flank steak with blue cheese for us, grilled eggplant, corn and grilled peaches and pineapple for desert.

Three down

And here you have team O'Shaughnessy ready and raring to go for the first day of school this morning. Bobby leads with his perpetual bed-head, while Joey demonstrates exactly how much he can overreact to my command of "Stand up straight!" (Joey's hunched picture here.)

The real story here is Ellie. Her head has been about ready to explode for the entire summer as she counted down the days to school, plowed through her pre-K workbook, drilled her letters on SpongeBob Typing and pbskids.com (using aforementioned workbook as a reference guide) and talked her mom into the matching headband at the uniform store. Today, her only school-day this week was about managing expectations. She had to yell at me this morning as I explained that the shirt went under the jumper "Dad! Every girl that I've been watching has had her shirt on top! If I put this over it, how will anyone see the shirt!" We had a little lesson about uniform skirts at that point. Ellie exclusively watches the big girls.

Walking to dinner at Smith's tonight Ellie recounted the high points of the day: She made a friend, Isabella. There are two recesses. Lunch was outdoors. She wrote 'awesome' on one of her papers. And the low points: No homework (we promised to get a workbook for homework). Coloring was on sheets with pictures already there and there were no blank pages for drawing (Grandma would be proud) and that she wouldn't be able to go back until Monday. I also had to explain on the way back from dinner that she wasn't actually already for first grade.

Socio-Religious Dialogue at our house

Joey, "Dad what does ponchince mean?"

Me, "What?"

Joey, "Ponchince!"

Me, "What? Is that a word? Can you spell it?"

(repeat for about 5min)

Joey, "Mom! What does Ponchince mean?" (He's decided that I'm an idiot at this point.)

Jane, "Joey! Talk to your Dad!"

(minutes of discussion pass with various other kids adding their views)

Finally,

Me, "Joey, where did you read this?"

Joey, "Oh. In the Bible. Pontius Pilate"

Me, "OOOOh. That's a person's name."

Fin, "Yeah, like Krusty the Clown!"